The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 558: An Aldo Leopold Blowout Extravaganza

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Doug Duren, Karl Malcolm, Janis Putelis, Brody Henderson, and Randall Williams.  Topics discussed: The Aldo Leopold Foundation; a diamond anniversary; how “A Sand County Almanac” remains powerfully relevant today; celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Gila Wilderness; Aldo Leopold quotes; the object and its shadow; get a chance to be part of our MeatEater Podcast recording by joining ME Experiences in Cypress Cove; our Trivia board game is back in stock; when the kid has a bully body; It’s-Better-When-You-Don’t-Get-One-Jani; bird watching with opera glasses; Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work; how you can’t put Aldo Leopold in a box; killing the things we love; Doug’s non-profit organization, Sharing the Land; pulling that saw; and more. Outro song "Shoot Straight" by Jared Hicks 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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When we had babies, we'd say they had a blowout if you know yeah it would kind of i was telling that we were celebrating my boy's 14th birthday the other night and i was saying everybody's kind of sharing a memory and i said the thing i remember about you is when your little baby looking and seeing how you had a kind of a brownish yellow streak on your onesie above your diaper line oh yeah going up the back and we call it a blowout and i'd be like and i would see that and i'd be like man i was like that's my memory uh too huge so there's like a there's like a what's your problem doug uh i just an interesting way of starting that's bubbly bubbly doug duran's here uh

expressing disapproval already and we're joined we're joined by uh dr carl malcolm uh these are both longtime veterans of the show joined by randall is here brody's here janice is here and we're gonna we're celebrating and we're gonna we're gonna explain why it warrants celebration we're celebrating two sort of aldo leopold anniversaries yeah um one is like a real one one's a big one because it's the centennial 100 year anniversary of the he the wilderness area which was our first wilderness area yep and um just to throw it in there the 75th anniversary i don't know is that legit that's legit i don't like 50 10 50 100 is 75 oh yeah they celebrate 75th anniversary all the time diamond i was gonna say man if you were married 75 years, you'd sure as hell be celebrating

that. Hell, yeah. Well, I'd be celebrating how long I've been alive. How long have you been alive? That's a milestone. Listen. That's a milestone. The 75th year is known as the Diamond Anniversary.

Diamond Jubilee. All right. So it's legit. I questioned it all along. I never had any hesitation that we were going to do a thing because, and I'm going to tell you why. If you were going to do a Mount Rushmore of American conservation leaders, you'd put Roosevelt on it, but Roosevelt was, you know, he was a political figure, right?

He did things outside of politics. He was a political figure. He would go on it, and the second one, I'd have to stop and think about three and four. The second one would absolutely be aldo leopold like like roosevelt shaped so much policy from the bully pulpit right but aldo leopold is sort of the philosophical he's the philosophical father the philosophical founder of american conservation in that he was like he talked

about things that are still relevant now roosevelt talked a lot about a lot of things that became he he like helped solve a lot of problems that got solved right one of his first battles was against market like you know market hunting of waterfowl market hunting of um uh feathered birds shorebirds right like real things that were real issues and they solved them and then aldo leopold came along and talked about he framed up all the discussions we're still having today i would argue i i would agree with you completely here's some aldo leopold we're gonna then we're gonna do our normal thing and talk about a couple extra things but here's some aldo leopold quotes unfortunately these are ranked by likes i'm on goodreads which i like i like the

goodreads that will compile quotes from authors. You'll find that all of these, I believe all of these quotes are from, Oh, we never explained 75th anniversary of the publication of what I would regard to be the most influential piece of conservation writing ever in that it still maintains relevance today. Yeah. When you read,

just to keep this Roosevelt Leopold thing set up. No, Leopold was a private person. Leopold was a forester. He was a land manager. He was an agency person. You know, Roosevelt was a governor and a president. So we're comparing apples and oranges. But if you said to people, name a great conservationist, they're going to go Roosevelt.

Be like, name a second one. They're going to go, hello, Leopold. And then three, they're going to be like,velt be like name a second one they're going to go elo leopold and then three they're going to be like i don't know uh desert solitaire you know i don't know where they go with number three the general public but his book a sand county almanac which is a collection of his writing maintains relevance today when you go read roosevelt today you're reading roosevelt kind kind of like a hobby historian. You know, you're sort of reading it to find out about a long time ago. When you read a San Connie almanac, you're reading it and finding out, you're reading it and being like, holy, this could have been written yesterday.

And it would still be relevant. Wow, Steve, I am really happy to hear you read all this. I'm not reading this. I mean, say all this. Well, you know, before we started recording, I was pointing out that he was fathered by first cousins, and I was pointing out that he would take insanely long shots with a trad bow at deer just to kind of see what would happen. So Doug thought I was going to sit here and hack on different times then you're not confusing that with some with uh like art young and saxon poe leopold would take some

hail marys i think he basically to see what would happen you think what i think he admitted to it i think he talked about he'd take his recurve and cock back and, you know, hold like eight deer bodies high and take a 75 yard winger. Oh, well, everybody in the room, raise your hand if you have not done that. Oh, yeah, yeah. You've never launched one at a deer with a recurve? To like see what would happen? Way out of range?

No, never. And Phil hasn't either. Well, I don't bow hunt, so I never really had that opportunity. Here's some Aldo Leopold quotes. And again, these are listed according to rankings. 1,373 people who frequent goodreads.com like this one. I am glad I will not be young in a future without wilderness. I'm picking here.

Here's another one. So then this is number one. Then the next one down the line has a thousand less likes. That's too complicated for people. Here's a famous one There are two spiritual dangers In not owning a farm One is the danger of supposing

That breakfast comes from the grocery And the other That heat comes from the furnace Here's another one Conservation is getting nowhere Because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

Here's another one. I would apply this to someone taking a Hail Mary with his bow. He says ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching, even when doing the wrong thing is legal to those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste to others the most valuable part i feel like the first quote that you read had more to it. Like, isn't there a follow-up to that that has something about, like, what good is it without, like, places on a map to explore? Yeah. Well, these are just little breaks.

40 freedoms. You have to take it up with good. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You have to take it up with good reads. Right? But that's a part of that same quote, isn't it? There's another one. He refers to the value of wilderness and wildness

in a number of these quotes. But that's what makes, I mean, we're all clear that what makes a quote is you've pulled it, like Twain didn't publish, you've got to sniff it somewhere. He didn't publish one sentences, he published books, and a feller goes in there and pulls out the quotes.

Like it's all contextual. It's surrounded by a whole damn book. But Yanni's mentioning there are some quotes that are in a similar vein. And what he's referencing is a slight tweak on the quote that you shared that's also from Leopold and in a similar kind of line of thought. He talks about the idea of what avails our 40 freedoms without a young place without a wild place to be young in that's right like winds and sunsets wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them now we face the question whether a still higher standard of living is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.

Here's one on land management. Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays. Here's one that I like. Farmer as a conservationist when land does well for its owner and the owner does well by his land when both end up better by reason of their partnership we have conservation hit me with that one again when land does well for its owner and the owner does well by his land when both end up better by reason of their partnership we have conservation there you go that's that's that's very close to a doug duran quote well indeed well no that's a doug duran gripe you will say i see what the farmer gets out of it i see what the hunter gets out of it

but what does the land get out of it yeah your memory never ceases to amaze me um doug duran also steel trap another favorite quote of mine doug duran said um when when he was conjuring other people if the kids are going to hunt, I'm going to hunt. In reference to youth season. In reference to when, when they put it to the concert, when they put it to the Wisconsin, when they put it to Wisconsin voters,

do you support expanding youth Turkey from two days to four days? And simultaneously, support expanding youth turkey from two days to four days and simultaneously do you support expanding youth deer season from two days to four days they voted like a slim majority in favor of expanding youth turkey which i'm going to hire lobbyists to work on. And they had a minority in support of expanding youth deer. And Doug was, and if this process plays out, it will go to these meetings. And Doug was imagining going to the meeting and was imagining the man who would stand up and beat the table and say,

if the kids are going to, you did not have to imagine him. That guy, many of those guys exist let me tell you who likes youth season I'll tell you who likes it people with kids yeah well and kids like under 16 years of age yeah and who doesn't like youth season people without kids sure there's there's an area of there's like a area of um wildlife law and i was trying to explain this and we're working on our next close calls edition which has these sort of like transformative stories in it but anyways there's an area of wildlife law um i'm gonna juxtapose two types of wildlife law there's an area there's an area of wildlife

law where there's sort of a moral basis right where you'll look at certain questions and it'll be like well clearly that's the right thing like shooting a sow with cubs or something like that sure like obviously like it's like there's there's things that almost have like biblical reference about like like waste okay like and um and uh like to take the most classic example you know it's generally been understood for a long time like murdering your brethren is bad right in the ten commandments it's generally you find this prohibition around the world we now have very specific laws about it but you look and be like oh yeah of course wildlife law i think has some of that um you know the people would look and be like well yeah

that's got to be illegal you just went shot a whole herd of elk and just left them laying out the rot in the sun that ought to be illegal seems like that'd be illegal but then you have areas of wildlife law that are uh wind up there's no moral background and it winds up being argued by who stands to gain the most i'll point out that i think i feel like the corner crossing debate sits outside of morality people that want to be able to cross corners are people who want to go into those areas people that don't want you to be able to cross corners are people that don't want you going into those areas there's no like there's no one coming and saying like i have the moral high ground um and uh what the hell was i talking about oh the youth season thing yeah there's no like more you know i mean it's like everybody just jockeying for their own interests man unabashed damn kids taking opportunity away from me well

we had a guy right in we were you here for that guy that wrote in yeah why he's like sure pat dirkin writes an article about um it's the same old story you see all the time like during covid is all the articles like all these people hunting and fishing now there's all these articles no one's going hunting and fishing wisconsin's losing all their deer hunters. It's like, and you look and be like, okay, like a demonstrable decline, but you know, it's the same. Upsy downsiness that has always existed. Anyways, the guy writes in, well, I'll tell you, and he writes it a pissed his, his, he signs it a pissed off Michigan hunter.

He wrote in being like, I'll tell you why no one's hunting deer anymore. Cause the kid seasons kids kill all the big bucks and he calls it what was his term for like the the big hunt yeah the before the big hunt the big hunt yeah like the big hunt in his mind his general firearm yeah and he says by the time the big hunt happens they're all dead everything's dead it's not even worth going out now you got this season and you got that season and then you get the guys they say it's not the kids shooting them it's the kid's dad shooting oh yeah oh yeah because

there's a kid there in diapers with his picture you know six five creedmoor or something and a big giant buck and yeah and like and say anything with dog like if the kids are gonna hunt i'm gonna hunt on youth season here's my take i'm gonna hunt so you kids better start hunting well this is nothing to do with your ass this is me getting a couple extra days in it is fun going out with kids man i uh i love it but yeah i'm i'm like i'm i'm i'm not like well let me know when you want to wake up i'm up everybody up get up get up get up anyway back okay so oh a quick warning a guy wrote in two things if don't go to audible.com and buy a sand county almanac.

Here's a problem you guys at the Elder Leopold Foundation need to figure out. I just downloaded, this is a guy writing in. I just downloaded the only copy of a Sand County Almanac available on audible. He'd already read his hard copy several times. Okay. He says, imagine my disgust when I realize someone has added what amounts to a politically charged high school essay as an introduction, as well as removing the whole second portion of the book. Nowhere in the description does it say that it's an abridged version with a, I haven't listened to it an apparently questionable the uh introduction the introduction is part of the book that's currently published it's written by a pulitzer prize-winning essayist barbara king solver right yeah that's what's what he's talking about yeah

there's a couple people that are upset about the politics of the intro which i think is actually i thought that was highly i thought that that choice of an intro was highly questionable it's not a bad intro i've read her work yeah i i just really felt that was a bad move yeah i mean i could see what it's one of those things and not to interrupt but it's one of those things where like she mentions the fact that people disagree about climate change and this and that but she takes a pretty even handed approach to it I don't know what that's not how I would have had right the intro oh no I mean it's an interesting choice for sure nonetheless I've seen several people I looked at the comments on audible after reading this email and there's a lot of people that claim

it's a high school book report which is like, but as a part of the book missing. Yeah. That seems to be, there's like 10 or so people that make the same claim. So the sketches here and there part, they say it's like a chunk out of the middle. Well, that would be the middle. I mean, it's really three parts.

Yeah. Carl and I of course have old copies that don't have the intro. Yeah. His is signed by one of the Leopold kids. Yeah. Carl and I, of course, have old copies that don't have the intro already. Yeah. His is signed by one of the Leopold kids. Okay. So anyways, you guys got to figure that out. Yeah.

At the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Foundation, yeah. Why don't you get someone to read the sumbitch? Do like a proper version. Put it on Audible. I'll work on that. Please. I have an idea.

You know, there are no recordings of leopold's voice there aren't so you can't do an ai him no you can't yeah him but i listened to both uh kurt miney and stan temple who held leopold's position at the university of wisconsin talk about leopold and you close your eyes and stan temple's talking, you kind of feel like you're in the presence. He'd be a good guy to read it. I think he would be. I would agree with that.

The current, we also bought it on Audible and the narration was not great. Yeah, that's what I, I also picked that up from the comments. I didn't go so far as to buy it, so I can't really speak to that, but. Understood. You put it on your company card, Randall.

I don't have a company card. Maybe Chili You put it on your company card, Randall. I don't have a company card. Maybe Chili can put it on his company card for you. Okay. We have, okay. We, we, a long time ago, we did a special drop episode. I think it was called, we had when, when Renee Cross came out. The title of that was. Come on, Phil.

Good Lord. Oh, where'd she come from? Yeah, Corinne's sitting in here. Corinne's on the floor. I had no idea you were in here. That's the title for this episode. Back in the old days, that would have been the title of the episode. Oh, Grin's on the floor. Back in the old days, when we had titles that told you nothing.

What was it called? Are you bitter about that? Yeah, I'm bitter about it. When we had to switch, when we switched titling so people could tell by the title what it might be about. Yeah. Yeah. I remember we had an episode called an object and it's shadow there's something to say for the you look at it be like what the hell is that supposed to be about

i'd listen to that one yeah well it's like an easter egg hunt you got to figure out where they got the title from yeah yeah i explain at the very end i explain what the concept of an object in its shadow now that i brought it up i'll just point out it means like um i'll explain some more time takes too long from bass to blue water okay a while back me and Yanni had an extra drop. So a Friday drop. Is it a Friday drop, Corinne? Whatever the hell. An extra drop called from Bass to Blue Water where we had in a guest, Rene Cross.

As we explained back then, I became friends. Rene Cross owns Cypress Cove Marina in Venice, Louisiana. There's kind of like two marinas. There's a big,ve marina in uh venice louisiana there's kind of like two marinas there's a big huge marina i don't mean to knock it but it's like very like a very touristy marina the venice marina and then there's cypress cove marina which is a smaller kind of i don't know more intimate

marina we would i've been down there i've been going down there to spearfish last few years and we hunted ducks down there, uh, and, and did some filming down there. Uh, the owner of the Marina came up one day and introduced himself to me while we were cleaning fish. And that was Renee cross. And as we explained the special drop, I just became friendly with Renee cross. And we started coming up with this idea of doing a sort of a, like a takeover of Cy cove marina in october and we have a thing called meat eater experiences and so we lined up so we're starting out with we lined up two media experiences one is a waterfowl hunt in kansas in cooperation with foul planes so we're gonna have like yanni's gonna for for the times we're there yanni's gonna be there i'm gonna hunt there

for a while a couple of the turns brent reeves clay cal i don't know who all the hell is gonna be down there there's one more you got five out of six i can't i can't think who the sixth is but bunch of people going there at foul plains now foul plains they're already a waterfowl guide we're taking time there to kind of make our own curriculum at foul plains okay so you'll still go and you'll how many days of hunting is it three days of hunting yes yeah three days of hunting because you can only transport a three-day limit of birds so they kind of do waterfowl hunts three days because you can have you could kill limits all three days and still go home so what we're going to do is the way it normally works is like you know you go there people clean your birds whatever out of sight you go have a cocktail we're going to kind of

change the format up we're going to hunt together we're also going to do a lot of stuff around cleaning food prep nighttime entertainment do trivia, um, some different lessons on waterfowl and lectures on waterfowl and make it a more educational experience and just more hanging out and really fill it out. So we have that with foul planes and those are all happening in December and January. Okay. There's still some spots left there and that's hunting waterfowl at Kansas, hunting waterfowl in Kansas with foul planes with

the meat eater crew cypress cove marina trip is in october now the reason we went with october is because october is kind of like an unsung time down there where the fishing is absolutely spectacular but the sort of summer rush is laying off and we're taking over the whole cypress cove marina from october 4th to the 16th october 4 to 16 so we're gonna come down and fish we got a lot of guys from the crew coming down to fish we got a lot of friends coming down to fish we're gonna go down and fish and you can go in and book trips so it's it's all like when you book the trips it's all your lodging we have a ton of guides lined up because there's a lot of guides that fish out of cypress cove marina that run their own businesses out of cypress coves marina we took those guides and

booked those guides for the time that we're there and the cool thing about cypress cove marina is you're sitting in venice louisiana so you have an amazing inshore fishery and then right there the continental shelf is 20 miles away so when you're sitting there at cypress cove marina this is no joke you've got guys launching bass boats to go fish largemouth bass they're going up river and like literally right next to them are people gearing up to go out for bluefin tuna and mahi it's like that crunch together you got guys fishing bluefish catfish uh you got guys doing tons of redfish um speckled sea trout we go down there for red snapper we go down there for uh what they down there call lemon fish

or cobia it's just like it it is the greatest fishing i would say globally of everywhere i've been it is the greatest fishing spot i've ever been to it's what i mean like i love alaska it's just better i mean like the fishing is just better than alaska there's so much more to do so we have when renee cross came on when reene Cross came on and talked about it, we weren't, like, the seats weren't, we hadn't opened availability to book yet. It was just kind of a precursor to the whole thing. But it's open to booking, to go and get trips, to come to Cypress Cove, fish with us, clean fish with us, eat Cajun food at night. It's going to be a great time. And, like like you're doing

like guided fishing so you're gonna do you got three fish days you're gonna do inshore and offshore we'll be swapping out and jumping on the different boats we'll be hanging out at night we'll be cleaning fish together we'll get all your fish packaged up so you bring your fish home recipe ready it'll be educational be a ton of fun booking is available now are you going to tell a couple of good stories while we're hanging out after cleaning fish i'm going to tell some great stories i'm good and i'll be able to tell the stories i would never tell on air about doug doug told me a really good story i can't tell on well i got a number of stories i've heard from doug that i can't tell on air i came home and he told me a funny one story I can't tell on air. Well, I got a number of stories I've heard from Doug that I can't tell on air. I came home and he told me a funny one.

I came home and shared it widely. I would get done and people would go, that's not funny. That's my favorite kind of story. It has to do with your little health scare. Oh. I thought it was a delightful story. I like that story. I thought it was a delightful story. i heard a turkey remembers it i heard

a turkey hunting story the other day that i vowed i could like i can't like i really can't tell it on air yeah i heard a turkey story the other day that's just my new absolute favorite story you know when you go to some comedy clubs where they tell like racy humor and now they got that thing where you got to put your phone in that bag. When we do this Cypress Cove deal, I'm going to get some of those bags. And I'm going to be like, put your phone in one of these bags

and I'm going to tell you a turkey hunting story. Well, if you're going to tell any of those other stories about me, that's all just... Well, that one, you know, going to tell any of those other stories about me. I'll tell you about Doug's health care. Yeah. Well, that one, you know, there were a couple of others that you know that I'd rather he didn't share that someone might hit record. Here, let me tell you a quick version. I'm like, just don't even chime in. Okay.

Doug had to have a battery of tests done. And he came back with a, like the doctor calls him okay and what doug wound up having a false positive which is not a false positive you want and they call and go hey we have your results and doug's like oh i'm sitting here with my wife i'll put her on speakerphone um because she's real concerned about my health you know likes to follow along as one health. As one would. So he puts his wife on the speakerphone and he's like, well, Doug, your blank came back positive. To which Trish is like, what?

It made for a really interesting weekend while we were waiting for it. How long did it take to get sorted out? Well, the interesting thing about it was that we both then kind of had, well, you know, before we were married kind of talks. It was, yeah, no, it was Monday. And in the meantime, I had to, I was doing a talk at a environmental education center. We were selling a house and all these things are bombarding me. And, you know, when you go and do one of those talks, you try to gather your thoughts before you go out there, but I'm getting phone calls and checking messages and to see if the test

results had come back. And I walked out there and I started doing my talk. And interestingly enough, I was talking about Leopold and the Riley game cooperative, which results would come back and I walked out there and I started doing my talk. And interestingly enough, I was talking about Leopold and the Riley game cooperative, which maybe we'll get to. Um, and then I'm transitioning to the next part of the talk, which was about sharing the land, this initiative that I've started that was inspired by Leopold. And in the middle of the talk, I stopped and all of these things were going through my mind at that particular moment. And it just stopped me.

And I'm like, well, I wonder if we're going to sell that house. And I wonder what's going to happen with those test results. And all this is in my head and I'm standing in front of 200 people. You started crying. And then I went into the next part of it. And my wife said later, I said, did you notice that I kind of freaked out there for a minute? She goes, no, I thought it was a dramatic pause.

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It was. It was. It was. We're going to record podcasts down there. We're going to have a way for people that come down and fish with us and book trips. We're going to work on a way for people to join in the podcast recordings. 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 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. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Trivia board game back in stock. When was it ever out of stock?

Not long after we Oh we ran Oh that's why we ran a lot of them Oh if you wanted a trivia board game they're back in stock You know Go camping with your family be able to play some trivia And also Spencer's plugging away on Spencer's plugging away on the

The packs Which I totally disagree with the avenue he took plugging away on the packs. Expansion packs. Which I totally disagree with the avenue he took. What are the expansion packs he's doing? I don't know. He's talked about Whitetail. He's talked about... I don't know.

What ones is he doing? I want to say... Is Mountain Men one of them? No, it's not. That's my great one. Oh, gotcha. I can't remember. Yeah, he's doing expansion packs.

I'm sure everybody will like it. I would have made him a little weirder. I would have done the weird. More trivial? I would have done, yeah, like more trivial, like the weird. I would have called it. I did an expansion pack called the weird shit. And then Frontiersman and Mountain Man.

But he's doing like White Tails. Whatever. People like those deer. Here we go before i'm joking before we start recording um all you leopold fans hang tight we're getting to it before we start recording we're gonna before we started recording today we were hitting on some some reminiscing about about spring turkey hunts i got some turkey hunts in the highlight of my turkey season was as always going to the uh lovely durin family farm for youth turkey season uh we've had phenomenal hunts we've had some bad weather now and then this year was phenomenal um we had four kids hunting, two got birds.

Uh, everybody had an opportunity. My little boy, it was his first year. My younger boy, it was his first year on the shotgun. Uh, had a miss kept stoic, but with Doug, he was hunting with Doug. So my daughter was hunting with Doug when she got a Turkey. My little boy was hunting with Doug when he had a miss. He kept stoic, got home, went upstairs at the farmhouse and cried. And then the other night my wife said, what's

up with Matthew? Cause he was crying about that turkey. Quite a number of weeks later. Yeah. And I thought that he was, uh, uh, he was so good about it after it happened and I'm still playing it through my mind. So he's not alone in his disappointment. Haunted by the lung.

Yeah, you're always haunted by the ones that got away, right? But we, outside of the blind, and I was just, I was crushed by it. And I said, Matthew, I'm so sorry that that happened and talked about it a little bit. And then he just kind of shrugged his shoulders and said, that's okay. No, he like, he's pretty, he's private about, he kind of, he kind of spills his guts at night.

Yeah. But he spilled his guts upstairs at the farmhouse. You know, my favorite story that he told me when we were in the blind was about how the kids at school, because he's kind of bulky. Yeah. Not yeah my mom would have called it husky yeah yeah he goes the kids at school thought i was a bully yeah they call it he says i have a bully body at school he's got a bully body he's got the build of a bully but not the temperament yeah yeah no he's such a sweet kid man which makes me feel even worse about that.

He'll be fine. Yeah, we'll try again. Next year, it's like game on, full pressure on him. Oh, in the end, it's better this way. No, I like getting them. He'll like getting it even more, though. I like getting the turkeys. Brody Hayden had a good year. You don't think that some failure for your kids

In these hunts Is a good thing? No I like getting them turkeys, I like cutting the spurs off Yeah I understand all that But you're telling me that you think That all these kids should just go out there And just try and kill their first, second, third bird?

But I never sit there. Okay, let me ask you this. Do you hope your kids miss it? When you're sitting there in the blind, there's a turkey coming. Are you saying to yourself, I hope she misses? It'll be more meaningful if she misses. Afterwards, kind of cleaning the bird that you got and taking photos. Are you like, man, it would have been nice if she just missed this one.

Do you spook a lot of the turkeys? It would have been a more been nice if she just missed this do you spook a lot of the turkey so it'd be a more valuable experience if she just missed this do you spook a lot of turkey so your daughter doesn't get the chance so it'll be more meaningful to her or take her to really bad spots because it'll be more meaningful to her no but builds characters what we don't we don't take them to spots where there's a corn pile and just try to guarantee a turkey feed feeding there that they can shoot their head off of where's that spot yeah in hindsight yes in the moment that's how i put it yeah in the yeah you did and in the moment i was like of course and it's way easier for you to say that than to convince the kid of that at the time yeah because his daughter's both tagged out you ain't never gonna convince the kid of it at the time but i think you're right you're honest bro your boy got a double yeah he hadn't that was actually

his first spring turkey, first two. He had killed a gobbler in the fall a year or two ago. Yeah. But yeah, we had a, we had a gob, a gobbler drag in five jakes and he got two of them. So he shot the big boy and then got the jake? Yeah. That, that, that they were coming in, there's

a log on the ground that I had ranged at 50 yards. I was like, they got gotta come closer than that log. And that gobbler, when he got to that log, hopped up on a branch on that log and sat there for like three minutes, didn't move. And all those jakes were bunched up behind him. Hayden's like, can I shoot him?

No. Can I shoot him? No. Finally hopped down, got one and I was like, shoot another one, got him. By the time he handed me the, got one. And I was like, shoot another one. Got him. By the time he handed me the, I had left, we had repositioned, so I'd left my gun away from us.

So I didn't have a chance. He handed me the gun and they were all, finally all scattered. Yeah, it was cool. You'd got a triple. Yeah. Maybe a quadruple. Oh, the rear quad.

Did the juice. It is. I haven't been, I've never been present for a quad. I don't think I have either. But Yanni. That's a, that's a mess. Yeah.

Yanni got a triple. You know, it's funny. Yes. I got in yesterday and I walked down to the, from the hotel and walked down to the meat eater store, which I have to say is beautiful. You liked it? I liked it a lot. What'd you buy?

A little thing for my wife. Oh, you did? Yeah. Yeah. And, um, I thought I'd got some kind of discount, but those guys, man, they held me right up for the whole time. Yeah. Not that guy.

You know, if they don't recognize, do you have any idea who I am? So when you went into the media store, they didn't know who you were. They immediately recognized me. Oh, okay. Anyway, it was interesting because the, interesting because the, you've got that YouTube videos running on loop and here was the turkey hunt that you did with Miller. Mm. And I'm talking to the guy and I'm kind of looking around and I was like, this doesn't get interesting until they leave Yanni's property and come over to my farm. And he got a triple.

And the guy goes, I've seen this so many times already. How did I not see you guys get a triple? You know how turkey populations are declining in this country? It's because of guys like you. Guys like Yanni. Guys like, oh, it's better when you don't get one, Yanni. You know what's better than not getting one?

Yanni's walking away. He's got a big gobbler in the middle of two jakes You know what's better than not getting one? Yami's walking away. He's got a big gobbler in the middle of two jakes hanging right on his side. It's always better to go skunked. But you guys had hunted quite a bit before you all of a sudden got into them. Oh yeah, we put our time in. The Dern Farm, we didn't save one of our episodes, but it real helped it.

Oh yeah. When we had to come over from Elroy, way the hell over from Elroy. With your cheese curds on the dashboard. Carl, you got you hunters, your kids this year. Yeah. Yeah. How'd that go?

Had an awesome hunt and back to the connections to farms and, and sort of the meat eater crew. Um, after meeting Chester, he grew up about 45 minutes North of where I'm living in Southeast Wisconsin on a beautiful chunk of land. And his family has welcomed me there the last three Springs on the farm where Chester grew up. And it's beautiful. And actually the work that they're doing on that farm, um, as stewards of the land ties nicely

into some of what we're covering today. They're knocking it out of the park, aren't they? They're doing a beautiful job. I mean, it is a beautiful piece of property. And so I've gotten to know both the Chester's parents and also his brother. Yep. Um.

Ike. Ike. Ike's a cool dude. Trad bow guy. Mm. Yep. Um. Ike. Ike. Ike's a cool dude. Trad bow guy. Mm-hmm. Um, total entrepreneur and had a chance to take my four-year-old son along this year. Uh, and we had just a phenomenal, phenomenal hunt with perfect conditions. First morning, got in there in the dark.

As things are getting light, we've got deer close to the blinds. So my son's checking out the deer. He's got his, his farm and fleet plastic practice shotgun along and have a bird goblin on the roost. Had a possum come out in front of us real close and walk by.

I got to watch this possum. Sandhill cranes, Canada geese, the just amazing diversity of dawn bird song, everything just like 10 out of 10 in this incredible farm, just a beautiful spot. And, uh, as the morning wore on, we had a hen kind of calling back and forth with me. And my son was totally on edge listening to this hen. Hen comes out into the field, into the decoy spread. And my son immediately is like, you're going to shoot that?

You're going to shoot that turkey? And I'm telling him, no, we're waiting for a gobbler. You know, this is the spring hunt. Of course, it's got to be a male turkey. And every once in a while, you'd hear this gobbler gobble at the sound of us calling back and forth with the hen. And every gobble, my son's getting like more and more amped up. And I don't know. I think many of us here have been in the blind with kids.

My son is the loudest whisperer ever. He whispers like borderline yelling, right? He's like, did you hear that gobble? Yeah, I heard the gobble man and we got to keep it down so i'm trying to keep him quiet and the hen comes in i've got a strutting tom and a and a hen decoy out in front of us the hen comes in she's purring and making all kinds of very very subtle vocalizations and she gets right in there with the the two decoys the strutting gobbler and the hen and And I know this Tom is somewhere nearby, right?

And he's been coming to the sound of the hen. And so I'm telling my boy, I'm like, just two things. Do not move and don't speak. Don't move, don't speak. And it's that moment where you know the gobbler is somewhere nearby but we haven't seen him yet and i you could you could cut the silence with a knife right it's just like perfectly there's not a breath of wind nothing and i'm just waiting for this gobbler to appear at any moment and that's when my son farts like loudly did he get a shot with a super we could add that to the list and he's got just like a totally

innocent look on his face and i look at him i'm like dude what the heck man and he looks at me like what i'm like when i said don't speak i meant like don't make any noise and we're whispering back and forth out of any orifices so and you know he four, right? So, so then I'm wondering, did the tom hear this? Because I'm, I'm serious. It's like that moment where any, you're thinking the gobbler is going to show up any second. And 10 seconds go by, 20 seconds, we probably get close to a minute and then boom, the edge

of the field, this gobbler comes strutting out. And as soon as my son peeking out, you know, we got a, we got a ground blind set up. As soon as, as soon as the gobbler starts coming out, my boy starts reaching for the other side of the blind to get his farm and fleet shotgun, the little, little toy gun. I'm like, don't move, don't move. Like you can shoot the turkey in a second, you know, after, after we take care of business. So the gobbler struts out right into the, the spread and he's all fanned out, get starting to nudge right up on the, on the strutting gobbler decoy.

So shot the gobbler, went out there. My son was over the moon, you know, turkey's flopping around and he's asking questions about, you know, is the turkey still alive? And we're talking. Is it true that you can't stop the flop, daddy? I, I've got, I've gotten to the point where, you know, I used to stand on the, stand on the

neck and all that anymore. If you know you've made a good shot, just kind of wait for the flop and stop. So took some pictures and then went back, uh, back up to the farmhouse and Chester's mom, dad, brother, all there. I bump into Chester's dad, Greg first, and he's over the moon. He didn't know I was going to have my boy along with me. Right. And so he sees my son and my son walks up to him without hesitation. He says, hi, I'm Alexander. Thanks for letting us hunt on your farm this morning. And Greg, Greg Flood, Chester's dad says, hold on. I need to get my wife.

That was the first time I'd met her. Um, you can, you know, Chester's a super solid dude. You can see when you meet his mom and dad and brother, like why he turned out the way he did. They're just a really awesome family. And so his mom took a few more pictures of us up there at the farmhouse. And we shot the breeze a little bit more. And then his brother has a cookie business going right now. And he sent us home with a few of the cookies. So like we show up, hunt at this farm.

We're treated like royalty by these folks. They send us home with cookies. And then they give you presents. I know, man. I know. So we went right home and my boy and I wrote a bit. He's getting to the point where he can write A-L-E-X pretty well. So he and I collaborated on a thank you card and sent him a little token of our appreciation.

But super cool. And seeing the way, I mean, that farm, not unlike the little bit of our appreciation, but super cool. And seeing the way, I mean, that, that farm, not unlike the little bit of property that my family and I live on has been heavily impacted by the emerald ash borer. So they've got dead ash trees everywhere. And they're also at the headwaters of, of a really important trout stream tributary.

They're doing so much work to remove the dead ash trees, to plant new trees. They're obviously, they're, they're big, they're big deer hunters. They've got deer blinds all over the place. They're plant new trees um they're obviously they're big they're big deer hunters they've got deer blinds all over the place they're thinking a lot about deer but they're also they're approaching the stewardship of that property with a focus on back to what doug was saying like what does the land need from us and they're providing it and then you pull out of the driveway and at the end of the driveway they've got a bunch of big rounds of dead ash stacked up with a sign, free firewood donations accepted. So anybody who wants to roll up and grab firewood and if they want to throw a few bucks in, like that's the kind of people

that they are. So just felt really privileged. And that experience with my boy, like the, the getting a turkey is always cool, but having that morning and seeing all the wildlife and the woods waking up and his excitement and just all those details. Um, it was one of the most fun turkey hunts that I've, I've experienced in my life for sure. So good, a good start to the spring and UP

next week, man, I'm taking the week off to float some rivers up in. Oh, for turks? Up in the UP and catch trout and, uh, and hunt some gobblers in the north country that'd be cool all right we're going to talk about yanni's arizona we're gonna we're gonna move on next time i want to dig in on leopold um okay because it happened first we're here we're here to celebrate the hundred hundred years of the gila wilderness gila wilderness yep and then we're going to talk about more about Sand County Almanac. Yeah.

But you want to take the Gila, Carl? You want to dive into the Gila? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me like, like how it happened, why it happened and what the repercussions were. Well, a good place, a good place to start the conversation as it relates to Leopold is just a reminder of the fact that Aldo was a Midwestern boy by birth. Grew up in Burlington, Iowa. Spent a lot of time actually growing up, summer vacations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan over in the Les Cheneaux Islands. A lot of formative experiences in the Midwest that definitely shaped his philosophy ultimately around, around private land management. But at a very formative period in his career, after just graduating from the Yale school of forestry, he did what basically was really the only option for an aspiring young conservation

professional at that point in time, which was to get a job with the also young United States forest service, the agency I work for now. I want to hit you with a quick question on biography. Yeah. We've joked before about how he's one of these people that has multiple places that claim him. You know, like the writer Jim Harrison is like, Montana claims him, Patagonia, Arizona. Grayling, Michigan, baby.

Right. So it's like you get these people like they're claimed by, you know, a bunch of spots. Harrison gets claimed by Michigan though. We'll just put that to rest right now. Yeah. Like the big claim. Does Iowa take any just put that to rest right now. Yeah. Like the, the big claim. Does Iowa take any like, yeah, Wisconsin loves Leopold.

Yeah, for sure. New Mexico loves Leopold. For sure. Yeah. Iowa is a little bit like, yeah, that community is where his, his, the house that he grew up in is still maintained as a very important historical site right on the banks of the Mississippi river

and Burlington, Iowa is, you know, inarguably that's where he got, got his start watching, uh, watching the birds in the yard with opera glasses that his mother gave him. So that's, that's where it began. Uh, absolutely influential experiences throughout the Midwest. Yale School of Forestry graduates and does the one thing that a young forester can do at that point in time professionally, which is get a job with the United States forest service. They promptly ship them out to the Arizona

territory, like bear in mind this, this predates Arizona, New Mexico statehood. And it's what year? Uh, this would be early 1900s. Like I'd have to, I'd have to get a time. 1909. 1909 that he gets shipped out. Yup.

Okay, good. We can tag team this. Yep. Okay, good. We can tag team this. Yeah. So, and, and by the way, anybody, anybody who wants to get into Leopold's biography in a very detailed way, a friend, a friend of ours, Kurt Miney wrote a phenomenal biography of Aldo Leopold, Aldo Leopold, his life and work. Um, grab a copy of that if you really want to get into the details.

It's fantastic. Um, so young Leopold straight out of college shipped out to essentially cruise timber, uh, on the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest. What is today the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest, which is right on the sort of southern end of the, the border between what is now the state of Arizona and the state of New Mexico. And so his job is to quantify essentially how much timber is out there and bear in mind at this point the history of the of the forest service the genesis was was rooted in a recognition that these landscapes were important for producing timber and also important for protecting the

headwaters of critical drinking water sources, particularly in the Western United States. So early on in the Forest Service, the focus was really on watersheds and timber. agency has to go beyond timber and water and include fish and wildlife habitat, outdoor recreation, and also brought in rangeland management as one of the five pillars of the multiple use mission that the agency has today. But at that point in time, timber was essentially king. So Leopold's out cruising around, filing reports with the headquarters office, letting folks know how much timber is out there, of what different varieties and potential merchant ability and logistics of accessing that timber, et cetera, which is what he was trained to do in school.

And spending a lot of time, you got to bear in mind, like that field work was on horseback, extended periods of time out in the back country, exploring a landscape that would have been totally unfamiliar to leopold and in quite like in quite remote quite remote back then yeah yeah i mean part of that landscape is is one of the prominent features there right on the new mexico arizona state line is escudilla mountain and there's an essay in a sand county almanac called Escudilla, which was the home of one of the last grizzly bears to live in the Southwestern United States. So Leopold is seeing and experiencing all these things, including those stories he's hearing about the grizzly bears and coming to have a real appreciation for what that landscape has to offer in addition to the timber that he's out there cruising and over the course of his time in the southwestern united states and ascending into

different positions and thinking a lot about the change that he's watching occur on the landscape he starts posing some questions that at the time were extremely radical. And this was a period of time where there was a huge expansion of the road network. Basically every corner of the Western U.S. it felt like to Leopold and others had new roads being built into wild country, in part to extract resources, but also to support people's tourism to these places and economic development and this is when the you know the automobile is becoming more commonly owned by by middle-class families throughout the country and so leopold started asking some questions about uh whether or not certain places including the gila if we want to talk about highest and best use of these landscapes, does it not make sense to refrain from having that development incur into at least some of these remnants of

wildness that exist? And, um, he was able to do that because he was a well-respected sort of insider within the agency. He wasn't, you know, he wasn't seen as, as, uh, some, some radical from the outside with these crazy ideas. He was trained at the Yale school of forestry. He was very much indoctrinated in agency culture, but he was also, um, asking questions that nobody else at the time was really, was really posing. And so with the Gila coming up here in, in just, uh, about two weeks time, right at the beginning of June, we'll hit the hundredth anniversary of the administrative designation of the Gila as the first wilderness area anywhere on the planet.

And it was really at Leopold's urging that he convinced the regional forester, the big boss of the Southwestern region to make that administrative designation that then carried forward another 40 years so that was 1924 that the the Gila was administratively designated it took 40 more years before in 1964 the passage of the Wilderness Act and then the Gila and a number of other wild landscapes around the United States were included in that first batch of congressionally designated wilderness areas a full 40 years later. So Leopold is, is widely seen as, um, one of the, one of the critical players in helping set the stage for now we have about 110 million acres of wilderness that's managed under the national wilderness preservation system. About 2% of the country, right? Yeah. How big was the, the, the Gila, the area that he identified?

It's in the, it's in the ballpark of 550,000 acres. And what's cool now, and there's actually some really interesting history here, but for anybody who's familiar with that landscape, you have the Gila wilderness. And then just to the east of it, you have another wilderness area called the Aldo Leopold wilderness. And there's a road that divides the two wilderness areas i think it's forest road 150 also also referred to as the north star road and that road one of the reasons that that road was put in was actually to provide

easier access to the burgeoning deer herds. And this relates to some of the other things that, that Doug and I were talking about earlier today about Leopold's questioning of predator control, um, his work on trying to argue in favor of more aggressive deer harvests, including antlerless deer harvests at times when that was wildly unpopular. Um, but one of the concerns that he had back in the 20s was the idea that predator control had been so effective at promoting these burgeoning deer numbers that then the need to access and manage those deer numbers

was one of the reasons that management agencies like the Forest Service and state game and fish agencies were using to build new roads into wild country to get more hunters in to kill the deer that the predators no longer could control. And he published some research papers. There's, there's a paper, um, that he published in 1943 titled deer eruptions, where he evaluates a couple of different case studies where for various reasons, in the case of the Kaibab plateau, this is post predator control

the deer herds inflated by orders of magnitude over over browsed the range and then had massive die-offs in the winter and that impacted the ability of the forage in the near term after those years to actually sustain the deer population rebounding and then another case study where I've got a really personal connection is a research reserve in Southeast Michigan called the Edwin S. George Research Preserve. It's a 1200 acre property near Hell, Michigan, if anybody's familiar with that, which is fenced. And the man who owned that property at the time in 1928, he brought in four does and two bucks from the UP of Michigan, released them on the property at the time in 1928, he brought in four does and two bucks from the UP of Michigan,

released them on the property at a time when there were virtually no deer in Southeast Michigan. And over the span of just a few years, the population demonstrated essentially exponential growth in the absence of predation went from the four does and two bucks to 160 deer in the span of, I think it was four years, six years, somewhere in there. I'd have to go back and revisit the digits, but exponential growth. Leopold uses these two case studies to make the argument for. Did he have some real studs on that place? Well, so, so I say a personal connection to that property because when I was an undergrad at the University of Michigan, they had no management plan for that deer herd.

And so one of my first forays into wildlife management was incorporating a little consulting business and bidding on a contract to manage the deer herd at the Edwin S. George Reserve, where also some of the most important white-tailed deer population ecology work was published by another scientist named Dale McCullough. So this is a really well studied herd that had a history of really good management. And then they basically did nothing for a number of years. And so I was out there doing winter kill surveys and seeing, we would, we would find 30 to 50 winter kill deer per year inside this research because there's no predation.

How many, um, how many acres was it again? 1200. 1200. Yep. Yeah. So there's another book for folks who really want to, if you're in the wildlife management realm and really want to get into it, um, look for Dale McCullough's book, the George Reserve Deer Herd, which is one of the foundational sort of wildlife management books on the reproductive

capacity and population dynamics of white-tailed deer. And Dale McCullough also did a lot of research in Australia with kangaroos, and he's a big population dynamics guy. Coincidentally, also a student of one of Leopold's sons as a graduate student as well. So Leopold, just tying this back to the Gila, he was the driving force for pumping the brakes on the idea that all of these national forest system landscapes should be looked at through the lens of how much timber can they produce. Stepping back and saying like, wait a minute, in some of these places, these vestiges of wildness might actually serve us a much higher value over the long run. And this is what I wanted you to jump into next. Yeah, sure. And just to tee it up a little bit differently.

Yeah, go ahead. At a point, Leopold has like make a non-emotional case. Yeah. Like he needs to go to an, he needs to go to administrators. Yeah. Like bureaucrats. Yeah. Who are serving a mandate

about delivering value yep all right and he needs to say maybe he he feels something spiritual yeah probably he's like feeling a spiritual need to preserve wild places in america but that's not gonna fly right he's got to put it into he's got to make it pragmatic yeah in some way yeah like talk about that that process because so you still wind up with it you still is you know you still have people critical of wilderness yeah well so thinking back i like where you started our conversation today steve, and sharing some of those quotes. Love the cousins? No. Oh.

No. That doesn't seem relevant particularly. But where you did some of the language used in a Sand County almanac and in many of his essays where he's using language that departs from the objective voice of a scientist, right? He wears it on his sleeve that these are places, these are issues that are of deep importance to him. He clearly cares, which in the science realm, if you're working on a peer-reviewed research paper, the culture of our Western science approach is to purge virtually all of that from the conversation. And he, and he was like very conscious of that. Like he wrote, he wrote specifically about the need to balance the two. Yeah. Like there's some quote he has about, um, like you don't need

something like you don't need a PhD to see the land for what it is yeah but if you have a phd you run the risk of being like a mortician looking at a dead body right and you're not appreciating the actual what's you know the the magic of it all the mystery i'm gonna hit you with it it's um damn it i'll buy you just a minute because the part that you're the part that you're getting into um is is it sort of represents an evolution of leopold's thinking about the significance of these places and providing opportunities for people to participate in a form of outdoor recreation that he holds in very high regard which is essentially observing and learning about the natural world.

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Schnee's vortex federalortex 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. I think the other, I mean, I'm not a Leaphold expert, so I'm just sort of chiming in with what I've taken away. But one of his sort of utilitarian purposes that he identifies is specifically hunting pack trips in the Gila. He's like, we need places that can specifically hunting pack trips.

Yeah. In the Gila. Yeah, yeah. He's like, we need places that can sustain a pack trip. And that's sort of his measurement of like, what's a big enough chunk of wild country. Large enough to contain a two week pack trip. Yeah. And he's like, and I believe he proposed calling it like the Gila hunting.

Primitive hunting ground. Yeah. Something like that really yeah like it was baked into the idea yeah so he had there was there was an article not included in a sand county almanac i believe it was published in outdoor life but it was entitled a plea for wilderness hunting grounds where he lays this whole case out so steve just going back to the question that you posed about what was the pragmatic argument that leopold had to make because you're right you can't necessarily go in with a bunch of flowery language about beauty and love and these emotive arguments that are such a compelling aspect of a Sand County almanac and have that

work in the bureaucratic space of a federal agency. So Leopold did bring a number of arguments and talking points to bear in support of this vision that were very pragmatic in nature. And one of, one of the points was related to different forms of outdoor recreation. And he makes this argument, essentially, if you have a whole universe of people who want to engage in different types of outdoor recreation, and you've got folks who want to go out in their, in their Ford and park and camp on the roadside. And they've got 90% of the opportunity already locked up. And you've got other folks who want to be able to get off the beaten path and escape

and get into the back country and get away from all that and experience some solitude. Doesn't it make sense to maybe hold on to the remaining 5% or 10% and try to provide a diversity of opportunity types for the different ways that people want to engage? So that was one aspect of the argument. And then in the case of the Gila, one of the, one of the points that he makes that, um, maybe helped carry the day. And you've, a number of us in the room have been down in that chunk of ground. It is rugged. It is gnarly, and it is not a place where getting at that timber would be particularly easy to do. And so he also makes an economic argument that in the case of the Gila, at least that landscape, you'd have to put so much investment in the infrastructure to access the resources that you want to extract that the net gain wouldn't really be all that big anyway so maybe just don't mess with it and keep it wild and spare yourself the hassle of all of that additional road building and infrastructure so yeah i feel like in effect

at a time he had said basically giving into the giving into the value thing saying okay let's talk about value right like you're saying economic value yeah he's like like arguably the greatest value of this in time will just be itself yeah and in a criticism you hear wilderness areas is you hear people say like it's a lot of rock do you mean like you like you go you look at a mountain range out here you know and be like well let me guess where the wilderness area is. It's up there. It's at the back.

It's like at the back end. And in time, we now know there's probably enormous mineral. There's probably enormous mineral wealth in a lot of these places. Yep. Right. Like, like in hindsight, a geologist might now be like being like, boys, you set the wrong stuff aside because like gold whatever the hell in those hills at the time though you could kind of go well look at it yeah like what really what are we really leaving on the table it's a pragmatic decision yeah it's not like

there's not a ton of mature timber you know in, in some, not all, but in a lot of the wilderness areas, it's like, it's like be hard. It's not a lot of it. It's hard to get at a lot of rock, a lot of ice. Yep. Yeah. Rock and ice. It's like, we're just not leaving a ton of money on the table. And in time, it might be that people are just glad to have that stuff.

There's a good chance Leopold wouldn't have won that argument today. Oh, if you, if Leopold wouldn't have won that argument today oh if you if leopold no today for sure yeah and if leopold would have said like i got an idea all these big huge valleys in the west let's make these all giant riparian wilderness areas no yeah yeah he had to point to the stuff that was like no one had touched and be like listen no one's gonna no one's gonna mess with that yeah let's just set it aside well and a lot of the stuff that you're talking about, like the, the riparian, uh, valley wilderness model, a lot of that was already wrote it up. You know, like if you think about that point in history, so 1924, and you look at the remaining chunks of big wild country and in a couple of these essays, Leopold highlights specific places another spot in new mexico he specifically specifically highlights as the pecos up on the border between the santa fe and carson national forest northeast

of santa fe as another sort of opportunity and coincidentally the pecos wilderness was also included in that original batch of of congressionally designated areas in 1964. but there were not that many of them left is the point. There had already been so much expansion of the road network. And Congress is just throwing money at building roads. Yeah. Both on the agency side and, you know, in the state side. Brody, talk about or touch on what you were saying that you wouldn't be able to pull it off now. Well, I mean, it's an argument that's been going on since for, for a hundred years, right? Like there are those people who will want to extract resources from it. So what good is it if it doesn't pay up, pay off in some way, some tangible way. But there's also, I mean, you still hear this argument, you know, as far as the wilderness hunting area goes, there are people who are

like, I can't get in there. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, like you young fellas that can hike all day long can get in there, but it doesn't do me any good. And I've heard you say like, well, you had your time. But what else Jim, I was going to say, you

remember how Jim Poswitz, the conservationist? Yeah. Jim Poswitz put it. He's like, I used to get back in there. I'm too old now. I've been too old for a long time. But man, am I excited for you guys that can. Yeah.

Yeah. But I think these days it's more of a resource extraction thing that would not allow it to go down the way it did. This is a frustration I have about um memory and politics in america would be and i say this every time the subject of roosevelt comes up i'm like any politician would welcome a favorable comparison to ro on conservation record. Right. Yep. Um, they would hang that guy from a tree nowadays.

Yeah. And the amazing thing about the wilderness. And they wanted to then he would be a, he would be regarded today as an insane libtard tree hugger. Yep. But, but because he wanted to create national forest and people were pissed back then yeah but they were livid and now we're like oh let's carve them on a big mountain sure they felt that thank god he gave us the national forest system the same people that would be pissed now were pissed then the same thing with thing with Leopold. Leopold, I bring this up all the time,

the fact that the Wilderness Act passed the way it did, you would never pass the Wilderness Act today. That's the point that I'm trying to make. There was a time when both sides were like, this is a really good idea. It makes sense.

For a lot of reasons. One dissenter wasn't there in congress and only because it wasn't big enough yeah it was it was something like the senator one of them they both were like overwhelmingly yeah yeah and i think you know this is something i talk about all the time i'm not gonna talk about it what's interesting about leopold i think is that he's got these two sides like he speaks the language of utility and he also he's a talented enough writer and and a deep enough thinker that he also has like this element of thoreau and sure muir and you can sort of see what you want in him when you read it you know like you like you could, you could have someone on the,

on the far left, read this and think, oh, like he's in touch with the spiritual aspects of nature. And you could also, you know, people on the right side of the spectrum, look at him and be like, here's a very like agency man, you know, uh, Forrester works on the land, like has this sort of rural authenticity about him, which I, I find like, there's just, I don't know. I find like it's really, he's, he's hard to sort of wrap your mind around. You can't, you can't, you can't box him up. He's a poet. He's a poet. He's a farmer. He's a Forrester. He's a poet yeah exactly he's a poet he's a farmer he's a forester he's a big game hunter you can't box him up and that gave him room to do what he did yeah because people had to take him seriously and there's also a little bit of uh he's gonna be the smartest guy in the room

oh yeah you know which is hard for people to fight against sometimes. Thank goodness. Speaking of the smartest guy in the room. Speaking of the smartest guy in the room, probably Doug. Let's move into our 70s. What do you call it? The diamond anniversary?

What's the 100th anniversary? Diamond Jubilee. What's the 100? Is that diamond? Platinum? Oh, I don't know. Airlines had to think of a new thing. Silver?

Gold? Take all that stuff away. I think platinum does come after the diamond. No. Diamond, I think, is high as you can get. Let me look. 100. Centennial.

Centennial. Obsidian? Obsidian. Obsidian. Dude, if you said to me you want to honk a diamond or obsidian. They all have these like natural, other terms that are like natural. The obsidian anniversary? That's what it says.

Who are these people? The centennial. People who have interest in obsidian apparently. So. Big obsidian. 100 year anniversary. Yeah. Well, I got one last question before we move into sand county almanac which i want you both you guys to talk about but

if you had to crystal ball it okay um if he hadn't did if he hadn't set this concept into motion when he did with the gila do you feel that we would have landed where we did anyway with wilderness areas no you don't i think he i think so there's there's a lot of other rich history we could get into another very cool example um from up in colorado like in the in the white river national forest flat tops wilderness area there's a place called Trapper's Lake. Dude, it's Yanni's old stompa grounds. Oh yeah. So you know Trapper's Lake, right? The story there, there was another Forest

Service colleague, Arthur Carhart, who helped inform some conversations about. He had one pair of stiff bibs on. He had some stiff bibs, but they got supple when they were broken in. They became real trendy. About the pros and cons of developing more bibs, but they got supple when they were broken in. They became real trendy. About the pros and cons of developing more infrastructure on that Trapper's Lake property

for, for recreation and debating whether or not it would be better left with an undeveloped lakeshore. You had folks up in the, what's today the Boundary Waters Canoe canoe area wilderness advocating for the importance of that wild landscape but i think for a concrete administrative step to be taken in 1924 and to be able to hold that up as an example and an extension of that one of the things that's really challenging about leopold is there's so many different little anecdotes and alleyways that you can go down but

we didn't even mention the fact that he's one of the founders of the Wilderness Society as well. So not only was he advocating for that specific piece of ground to be administratively designated, but he was also instrumental in convening a community of other thought leaders to help push that vision more broadly. And that organization is still alive and robust today. But I don't think we would be in remotely the same situation with Howard Zahniser's success in shepherding the Wilderness Act to signature in september of 64 without not just the gila but all of that hustling that leopold was a part of leading up to the gila and after the gila's administrative designation and right through the end to the end of his life i mean these were concepts that he was helping try to advance and build community around um into the

late 40s when he passed yeah so that's a good point about the con he was, he was doing the conceptualization. Right. It wasn't just like the Gila came into being and then he moved on to other things. Right. That was a very important milestone on that timeline, but he was helping foster a groundswell of movement around those concepts much more broadly as well. He, he came at this interesting moment in American history a really pivotal moment in American history where if you look at pre-Leopold like pre-Roswell pre-Leopold

you have we had Wilderness in spite of our best efforts to get rid of it do you know what I mean it was like it was there because we hadn't gotten to it yet yeah and then there was this this this minute this moment where it all of a sudden became not a thing that we were we we like fought fought fought fought fought to rid ourselves of it yeah then all of a sudden it immediately had to become we fought fought fought fought fought to keep it right like a lot of countries never got never a lot of countries never had the luxury to hit that inflection point. Right. They bar, you know, they like go to survival mode.

Yeah, like go to like England's history. Yeah. You know, I mean, they deforested the entire island right there was no like inflection point where someone had those sort of like power and and public backing and whatnot to go like hey at what point should we just not do this to some parts and the the quote that you read earlier about the trading off the geese for the television yeah i. I mean, I, I think what's really interesting when you read Leopold is he recognizes that conflict.

He doesn't have like this utopian, you know, if you look at like previous resource managers, there's this very like progressive idea of we can just manage it better and manage it better and squeeze everything out of it. And he recognizes these trade-offs and it's strikes me as like a very fundamental concept to our modern sensibility about wildlife and environmental issues is like, someone's, you know, someone is going to pay somewhere for any little decision that's made, you know, someone is gonna pay somewhere for any little decision that's made.

Yeah. You know, like every bit of, you know, sure you could, is the juice worth the squeeze is kind of Leopold's big question in a lot of these things. And that's where sort of the ethic. He might be the father of fathers arguing with their kids about television. He might've been the first person. God bless him. He might've been like, I god bless him he might be like i picture a future conflict yeah between nature and tv so that point you made steve about um sort of the tipping point

between wilderness being this thing that we're stacked up against versus wilderness being this thing that we're trying to steward um one of the things leopold had to say in that space i'll try to i'll try to quote it here but it gets at that idea that you were hitting earlier on the blank place on the map he talks about man always killing the things we love and so we the pioneers have killed our wilderness you know be that as it, I am glad I will never be young without wild country to be young in

of what avails our 40 freedoms without a blank spot on the map. He did it with his eyes closed. I think, I think that's the quote I was trying to get at earlier.

And then Steve, before we move off the wilderness, I want to, I want to, I want to touch on just like two, very quickly,

two principles that I think in and of themselves could be a whole other conversation. Hit them, then we're going to get into the book. We'll hit them quick. for wilderness management holds and all of that complexity and what we know now that we didn't know at the time of leopold's effort with the gila or the wilderness act um and even the language in the wilderness act and the and the deeper history of these places so a lot of that conceptualization of these wild lands is rooted on an idea that these places were uninhabited the idea of terra nullius that this was just wild land waiting to be don't do so that's that's a whole no that's a whole thing

that needs to be acknowledged right it is and in the wilderness act there's language of places where man is a visitor who does not remain but in the case of the gila in the case of the boundary waters in the case of every one of these in the case of the Boundary Waters, in the case of every one of these places, there's a much deeper history that you know a whole heck of a lot about. And we would be doing a disservice, I think, by just glossing over that reality. And then another aspect that I think is a nice segue to a Sand County Almanac, and I think the lifestyle that Doug lives, the lifestyle of Chester and the whole Floyd family with their property, this idea, and you've touched on it already on this podcast, Doug, but the idea of the reciprocal dynamic between providing what land needs from us and us getting what we need from the land, that active involvement where human activity in a landscape can both make the land better and people better.

A lot of the conservation and ecology discussions we have at this point in history are rooted in the notion that all people do is screw stuff up. We've got too many people, We're burning too much fossil fuels. We're having this many impacts with overpopulation and all this development, et cetera, et cetera. But we are also capable of providing so much value to these places, just as these places provide so much value to us as human beings. And in the case of wilderness, one of the foundational tenants there is this idea of an untrammeled landscape, a place where we're not meddling in the system. And that made a lot of sense in 1964. And as we're moving forward and trying to wrestle with some of these big conservation challenges of non-native invasive species and climate change and the disruption of historic disturbance regimes like fire, we are quickly awakening to the

fact that the land needs a lot from us in terms of active management and taking a totally hands-off approach in a lot of situations does not necessarily serve ecological outcomes. So that's a good pivot to thinking about a Sand County Almanac and this reciprocal relationship between land and people. What does the land need from us? It's a good pivot to thinking about a sand county almanac in this reciprocal relationship between land and people what does the land need from us it's a good pivot to talk about doug absolutely doug started doug has started an organization when i talked about doug's quote earlier i'm going to talk about the contextualized contextualized doug's quote doug has started an organization a non-profit group called sharing the land and and looking at the the increasing trend we see all around the country of of leasing agreements like it's birthplace was in texas but it's it's spread everywhere it's everywhere it's in the it's in

the northern rockies it's everywhere now which is landowners who might have traditionally um generations past their fathers their mothers might have just had um granted permissions to neighbors granted permissions to relatives granted permissions to whoever it was when i grew up it was like loosey-goosey we hunted this the zerlots farm we had the zeldin rose farm shit loads of people hunted the zerlots went to their church hunted the zelda's farm and zelda's farm and then it kind of came this awareness of like oh man we have like as much as we're raising they raise apples alfalfa dairy right they're like man there's another like cash crop here and the cash crop here is wildlife right and people want it and they're willing to

pay for it so leasing has come in. You're not going to change this. It's just come in. And when Doug looked at sharing the land and started to set up this organization, he's taking the same perspective. He's like, there's a landowner and the landowner holds a thing of value and there's people that want access to the thing of value well rather than maybe taking that interest and leveraging it into cash payment maybe we can solve that question of what does the land get out of it so landowners through sharing the land a landowner can have conservation work they wish they could do on their place i wish i could do tree planting on my place i wish i could

take up old fences on my place i wish i could I wish I could fight non-native invasive plants on my place. I wish I could restore my stream bakes on my place. Well, those hunters that are lined up waiting to hunt your place, put them to work. Right? Like through an organized fashion. Be like, here's your chore list, buddy. You know? And then let's talk about hunting. Let's get some chores done on the ground.

And that's kind of, it's a very Leopold concept, right? Well, the concept was inspired, borrowed, possibly even stolen, but from Leopold and the idea of the Riley Game Cooperative. When Leopold, when he was living in Madison in the early 30s, looking for a place to hunt, he pulls up on the side of the road and here's a farmer working and he starts chatting with him, this fellow named Reuben Paulson. And he gets around to that where one would about asking permission. And Paulson says, well, yeah yeah i guess you could hunt my place but you know i have to tell you i i uh there really isn't much game around here and he thought it was because of

trespassers more than anything else or poachers is actually what he called him and leopold um one i have this vision of these two guys meeting you, because people do stop and I just have this vision of this meeting. And Leopold, in that moment, said to him, well, you know, you could have more game if you had better habitat. And they came up with this idea, as Leopold called it, and there Riley was born, the Riley Game Cooperative, where his buddies from town came out and Leopold put a plan together and then his buddies helped implement that plan. And then they all benefited from that work. And the land benefited,

the members of the biotic community benefited, and the hunters and the farmers benefited. And from that, a community also developed that it became a community, a gathering of people who shared those ideas. And some of them kind of came to it because of that. And some of them were farmers and some of them were students of Leopold. It's a fascinating thing to me. You know, I learned about Riley about the same time I met you.

And it was about 15 years ago and I was riding a bicycle through Riley and here's this, they're putting up this kiosk and it's, I had no idea. I thought I knew a lot about Leopold, you know. And then they talk about, there's this whole thing about the Riley Game Cooperative. And it's something that was in my head for a long time. And so that's where sharing the land was, was born from. And can you, can you explain, cause you got to him coming to Madison. Okay. And his, his, and we talked earlier about all the states that claim him. Can you, being from Wisconsin, can you set up what Sand County, if you're looking for that on the map, what that is?

Yeah, you won't find a Sand County that I'm aware of, but he was near Baraboo in Sauk County, right on the Wisconsin River, and the Wisconsin River is very sandy. That whole area is, the Wisconsin River is an ever-changing river. There's lots of sand, a lot of sand dunes, sand bars. And as a little side note, he ended up buying this piece of land, and it sounds like pretty much for the back taxes, that it was an abandoned farm. So if you're in Wisconsin and southwest Wisconsin, it's right on the banks of the Wisconsin River. So from our place, I guess you wouldn't necessarily know, but to the east of us on the Wisconsin River and very 30 miles away.

And it's very, very different terrain than what we have over in our, um, driftless area. Very sandy, uh, lots of bogginess and water, lots of mosquitoes if you go over there. Um, so a very different place, but about a half an hour, 45 minute drive from Madison. And, um, it was, you know, it was in within reach and, and sounds like for the most part, it was exactly the property that he was looking for, the kind of property he was looking for, one that had been degraded, that he could then practice these conservation ideas that he had been talking about, the whole idea of wildlife ecology and what kind of habitat that the wildlife that he was interested in and that we tend

to be interested in as hunters, what kind of habitat they needed. And so he bought this and began working on it. 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.

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He was dead when it came out. Right. He did. He died. He didn't sit down and write it like beginning, middle end. Like you write a book. Yeah. Do you, do you, like you write a book. Yeah.

Do you, do you, do you know that that's about the extent of what I understand, that what I've come to understand? He had been putting these essays together in a, in a logical manner or what he thought is a logical manner. Okay. And his daughter. I think it was his sons who took, I think the kids had a critical role in working with the publisher after he had gotten a letter of acceptance for the manuscript. Yeah, the book had been accepted, but it wasn't complete. It was a more. Those individual essays were not like previously published in other places.

Well, so if you look right at the beginning, I've got my copy here in front of me. And one of the first things that you see is a grateful acknowledgement made to the editors of the following magazines and journals who have kindly allowed to be reprinted in book form from portions or all of individual articles. And here's a list of the periodicals american forests uh audubon magazine uh the condor journal of forestry journal of wildlife management meat eater.com uh perhaps if you'd been in existence at that point outdoor america um silent wings wisconsin agriculturalist and farmer wisconsin conservation bulletin so parts of a sand county almanac appeared in the wisconsin conservationist bulletin

uh let's i can give you the specifics no no you don't need so and actually one of my favorite essays skydance burr oak and skydance i believe that's right if i've got the order here there's a lot of semicolons to make sense of, but the short answer is it's a collection of a life's worth of work that he brought some structure to, but when you're reading it, it isn't like that. No,

I read it without knowing that I read it. Like a dude sat down and wrote this book. Do you know what I mean? It's not like, you know, when you, when you get a writer, you like, and you read all their work and then you're stuck reading the, like the book or they're like letters and correspondence and this, how it's terrible. This is not that. No.

Right. No, it's really, it's, it's really a lifetime of work. And I think that's one of the, uh, beauties of it. To me, the most beautiful thing is, is the first sentence in the four or the first two sentences in the foreword there are those there are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot these essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot the delights and the dilemmas yeah and and then the rest of the book just goes from there so divided in three parts as a as a young man a 16 year old uh walked into the high school library and our librarian i'm sure i was

going into study or something and not talk to girls in the corner or anything but uh miss hendrix handed me the book and said, I think you'd be interested in this. Really? How old were you then? I'm sorry. What, when was this? When was that?

Well, a long time ago. It was 1975. The book had just come out. He was still writing it. It was a new, it was a new release. Um. Well, it, it wasn't, uh, I mean, it wasn't immediately like this iconic.

No. Oh, not at all. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was, I mean, it wasn't immediately like this iconic. No. Oh, not at all. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was, I mean, I didn't think you were a teenager in 1949, but I was kind of curious cause it was a slow burn up until the like early seventies, late sixties.

Yeah. Late sixties, like 69, I think was when it was published in 68 or 69 is when it was published in paperback. Yeah. And of course that coincided with the new environmental movement that was happening. And so it became, you know, incredibly important,

um, and really spoke to a lot of people. And it has sold millions. Yeah. Millions of copies. In a bunch of different languages. Um, so yeah, so I wasn't reading it when I was, whatever, 1968 or 69, I was nine years old. Yeah.

But in 1975, to have Miss Hendricks, who was our librarian, hand this to me and say, this might, you seem like the kind of guy who'd be interested in this or something. What a compliment. Yeah. That is a great compliment. I think she was really searching for some way

to get me moving along a little more. And at that time in my life, the first part of the book, which is the phenology of our area, really, where he goes through the seasons and he talks about these different things. I was just fascinated by that because he was putting, giving voice to things that I was, I don't know if that I was thinking about him, but I was certainly experiencing them.

You know, 16 years old, we were going hunting and you're hearing this different stuff and what's this and what's that. And, and I had kind of, Carl and I were talking about this earlier when we were having breakfast that I walked along with my grandfather when I was eight,

nine, 10 years old and with a bucket of paint and a paintbrush. And I was marking, he was telling me paint that one. And I put these, and so I was having this. Marking trees.

Marking trees. And I was having this, uh, experience that I didn't think about for another, you know, 50 years that my grandpa was teaching me that whether he knew or not, but I remember as every eight or nine year old kid would ask, why, why do I paint this one? He's, well, we're going to cut that one.

And then why are we cutting that one? I mean, that's, that was one of my earliest experiences with that sort of thing and then spending time on the farm with my dad so by the time just i won't butt in on that because it's interesting that you had that because you came from an agricultural family and that you had an introduction to conservation thinking like that like landscape care landscape manipulation i i would say that i that i was completely unaware of anything surrounding conservation the conservation movement until i read the sand county almanac i was raised with the get it while the getting's good yeah yeah i get it again like my dad was like brought up in a house where they spoke italian

he was raised by italian immigrants born in the great depression right the like these people aren't coming for from italy to be in the america in the great depression to not get the turkey son you know these trees right it's just like it was it was get it while the getting's good was the attitude yeah and then i didn't know about i didn't know about any of these even thoughts until i read a san connie almec so it's like to have a upbringing where he was at least talking about something you've been exposed to that you picked this tree and not that tree is cool, right? Oh, yeah. And you know that because of the number of times you visited, my family, the reason they came from Germany in the 1850s is they were looking for a place to set up sawmills. And they did over there on Duren Road.

And then our. Duren Road. And who knows whether it was already named during road or not, but, um, the property that we own, they bought because it had timber on it. Yeah. My people weren't really farmers. They were Sawyers. So, uh, my great, great grandfather, mygrandfather, my grandfather all had sawmills. And they, you know, it's not like today where you're going through and you're just ripping.

You can go through a lot of trees in a hurry. They were being selective about it. Leopold speaks to those people. At one point in the Santa Colina Almanac,'s like, talking about an axe biting into a tree. Yeah. And he does a history lesson. Flap! Right? Out flies a chunk of the tree and you think about the growth rings and he walks

you through where you're at and you take a couple more whacks and where are you at? A couple more whacks. Oh, is it a saw? Oh, is it strokes of a saw? Strokes of a cross. You're right. You're right. You're right there. Oh, I got it.

As that saw bites into that tree, he walks you back into time as you go into those growth rings. Right. It's a saw, not an axe. Pulling that saw. Yeah. With his partner on the other end. That kind of exposure is not something that you think about at the time. It's just happening to you, right?

Even now, identifying trees, I can't explain. It's difficult for me to explain to people that that's a red oak, that's a white oak, and here's why. It's because of the way it is. Yeah, it just is, right? You know, when you see it. I mean, pretty much everything in the woods is like that. That's just the way it is well right well actually my dad always used to so say that's what they call and then insert whatever

there that's what they call um but had those experiences and and and i guess didn't appreciate him it was more uh or didn't understand that there was a lesson being taught. And I don't think it was an intentional lesson at all. It was just, this is what we do. Yeah. And a farm was carved out of that land. And, you know, to this day, the farmland is 100 acres or 60 acres of pasture, and there's remember my father telling me 15 years ago, you know, you remember when we did the cutting of those big trees that, I mean, this was one of these ethic things, right? We were sitting there as I had gone through the management plan, the shelter would harvest.

And I was talking with him about it and he looked at me and said, well, Douglas, I need this. I know this needs to be done. I just didn't want to be the one to do it, which was meaning he didn't want to be the one to kill those big trees. Because he, 90 years old at the time and he grew up with them. I've had that conversation with Yanni. Oh, killing, killing oak trees? He doesn't want me to kill the trees on that place. Just cutting into them big old oaks.

Yeah, you know, here's the thing about that. One of my favorite lessons from Forrester was the trees kill each other. That over time, the bigger they get, the fewer of them there are. And that what we're doing in our timber stand improvement process is we're selecting for the better trees. So I can support you and your timber stand improvement. There's some things that maybe not so much, but I like what you're doing with your place. Would Leopold like it? Oh. Oh, I, I would never expect to speak for Leopold, but I think much what Yanni's doing is Leopoldian.

I don't think. Leopoldian. I like that. Well, I mean. I think I would certainly fall in like the, the greater than than, rather than the lesser than category, you know, as most of what I'm doing, he'd be into. I, I think you're right. And the part in all of us, right? So here I am 65 years old, sitting here talking with all you young bucks.

Oh, one sec. For folks at home, Yanni has taken a, a property that's, he's spent his life around and his family has deep history and he's, he's improving. He's taking steps to improve it as wildlife habitat, particularly he's trying to, uh, attract big giant bucks. And squirrels.

And squirrels. No, not squirrels. Any, any more. It started, I'll be honest, two years ago when it started,

I would have, I would have said that's correct to say particularly big giant bucks. But two years into it, it's just improving wildlife habitat. Yeah. When I dog on Yanni, I'm joking. I know what he's doing. He's learned more about it. I've never done that project. He's studied up on it, right?

I'm just teasing him. Yeah, no, it is. It's fantastic what he's studied up on it right i'm just teasing man yeah no it's it is it's fantastic uh what he's doing and and i think what leopold would like is that you're you're thinking you're adapting you're managing and you're looking at uh that bigger biotic community and and i think that's the part of the thought process that I was learning and didn't really understand it. So then I'm 16 years old and I read this book. And boy, that first part, the phenology was just fascinating to me. Then I got a little older and I traveled a little bit.

And so the central part, which sketches here and there, where he's talking about these different parts of the country where he visited. And the different experiences that he had in there and how they were beginning to shape. But all through it, you can see, you can hear that these essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot about wild places. So he's, you can see what he's going towards. And then at the end, it's the upshot, the land ethic. And he says somewhere in there about, I don't pretend to say that this is something that I've known all along, that this has been the evolution of life.

It's something that's learned over a lifetime. And- When you, I want to butt in on a thing because you brought a thing up that reminded me of something I'd like to touch on with him is, you mentioned the biotic community. That was like, some people say aldo leopold's the father of ecology because aldo leopold was looking at um community like the the what like nature as a community of parts and he has this metaphor where he has this metaphor where you have a clock, right?

And you have a person who doesn't know a lot about clocks, and they start going, what in the hell could this wheel be for? It doesn't do any good, right? And you start pitching parts. And he looked at nature that you have to have an appreciation that there's components of this that you don't understand. This is a collection of cogs and wheels that function together to do a thing. You cannot throw out little parts because you don't see what it's doing.

That can't be helping this clock tick. Right. He, I think like as a game manager prior to Leopold, very generally speaking, it's like if you want more game animals, you either stop people from hunting, you kill predators or you, you know, transplant animals or, or propagate animals and breed them. And his, his sort of generation, and it's not that he was just part of it, but I mean, he was a leading figure in this

recognition that all of these parts matter. And that one way to get game animals is to improve habitat. Right. And like previously there was a much more sort of narrow focus on like the number of deer in the, in the woods and not necessarily like how the browse is doing and all that. And you've probably all heard the part about when he shot a wolf and saw the green fire go out of her eyes. I don't think that he was saying we should never control predators. He was, I feel like.

Especially after that research just came out of British Columbia recently. That was interesting. But the idea that they are members of the biotic community. And then later he wrote in the, I think I sent it to you, a summary, and I don't have it in front of me, but essentially where he said where rifles can control the antlered or the game populations, but they rarely do. As you once said to me, as we were talking about white-tailed deer, he said, well, what do you mean too many deer?

You were playing devil's advocate. I make that point all the time, and I don't make it, I make the point all the time. The minute someone tells you something's overpopulated, I always point out, ask yourself according to who. Right. From whose perspective? And I think my perspective is it overpopulated?

And my response that day was. It's not like, there's just not like an objective truth. Oh, there is. Please. There is. Go on, Doug. Leopold told us what it was too. There's a thing. Lay it on him Carl.

Right versus wrong. Okay. What is it? A thing is right when it tends to preserve the beauty and integrity of the biotic community. It's wrong when it, when it tends otherwise. And so if you have the land telling you there are too many deer, if you have the ecosystem

telling you that there are too many deer, objectively, there are too many deer. Okay. As opposed to. Somebody who's like. Car insurance. Car insurance company. Yeah.

Or hunters. HOAs. The biotic, the biotic community. Like 50,282 deer. Go on, Doug. Right. Yeah. Too many deer. Do you take a stance there on, Doug. Right. Yeah. Too many deer.

Do you take a stance there? Too many. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. And that's, that is what he was getting at in all of that. When you, when we had that discussion, I said, well, how about from the perspective of the land or something to that effect? And you were like, hmm. And I understood the position you were taking, but that also goes to the biotic community.

When we see ourselves as a member of the community, we'll treat it more lovingly as opposed to that. The first quote you read about, or one of the first quotes, was that we are the masters, the Abrahamic, that it's here for us to exploit, essentially, that when we see ourselves as a member of it, we'll treat it more lovingly. And that's the kind of stuff that I've really taken to heart. I mean, I want a healthy biotic community. I want a healthy ecosystem, healthy forest. I want a healthy deer herd.

I want big giant bucks. When we start boiling it down to my place, in my area. And I want turkeys that got it all day. But when it comes to hunting, like what was Leupold's, like what was it about hunting for him? Was it that, that game was a resource like timber or soil or water? Or was it that, that game was an indicator of a healthy landscape? Or did he just love hunting or was it everything?

It was all of that. All that. And again, I think that's an evolution in thought. That, that, as my dad used to like to say, well, it's all part of it. Right. And I think that's very, my father was very Leopoldian when it came to things like that, right?

Well, it's all a part of it. And when we're in a situation very different than the Gila and those wilderness areas where I'm in a situation in southwest Wisconsin where 95% of the land is privately owned. And almost 100% of that land has had this heavy impact of humankind and farming and things that seemed like the right thing at the time, like the planting of multiflora rose or autumn olive or that kind of thing. And Yanni knows about this. Autumn olive, buckthorn, Japanese barberry, all of these different plants that we're really spending our time in. We're out there managing invasive species now that were introduced by us because it seemed like the right thing at the time. The same agencies that maybe encouraged some of that planting are now also encouraging, well, we'll never eradicate it, but the management of it. So that heavy hand of man and agriculture and all of that is a real interesting part

of this discussion to me. And I think one of the beautiful things of leopold is that he was both this advocate for these wilderness areas in this this wildness but then he was also heavily involved with private land conservation that's a great that's a great point man that he like when I look at my social circle, right, I got the friends, right, that are the, you know, the last vestiges of wilderness and just like, leave it be, leave it be, leave it be. And I got friends that are very steeped in like proper land management. We recently had Becky Humphries on. Becky Humphries is like like the ship has sailed man yeah for most of this stuff the leaving it alone ain't working yeah it needs we need effort money

time put into active land management leaving it be is not helping i uh right and it's like here's this guy that at that time saw that these things are like, was able to sort of see the world and these things that were like these two different conversations that needed to happen depending on location. Right. That's exactly right. So here in, uh, it was in 1924 that he moved to, to, uh, Madison, you know, he was transferred to the forest products lab in, in, in Madison, Wisconsin. And he, you know, he did that for the Forest Products Lab in Madison, Wisconsin.

And he, you know, he did that for about four years and ultimately quit and was hired by the Shooting Arms. Sammy. Sammy. Tell me what it is. The Shooting Arms and Ammunition. Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute. Yeah, there you go. To do a.

That is really well on trivia. Yeah, I know. I wonder if they're both going to play later. Tape their mouth shut or something. I am looking forward to it. What was I talking about? If I ever have a podcast. He went to work for Sammy after quitting the Forrest Products. Right, he quit. Uh, what was I talking about? If I ever have a podcast.

He went to work for Sammy after quitting the Forrest products. Right. He, he quit. And so this is in the 1920s, you know, things are going pretty well and he quit. And then he convinced that group to hire him to do a game survey of multiple ones of the upper Midwest.

So the folks who are selling guns and ammunition, we're beginning to recognize that if the folks who are selling guns and ammunition, we're beginning to recognize that if we're going to sell guns and ammunition for people to hunt, boy, they better have something to hunt. And what can we do about it? So he spent a lot of time in the upper Midwest doing these game surveys. And what he came back from with that from was it's not just regulation and in fact regulation of well it you know just don't shoot any deer for a while and he'll come back or don't shoot any of this

that they have to have the habitat to whatever that species happens to be but they have to have that habitat so let's start to work in that work on that and then of course in the 1930s when the depression came and things like the Civilian Conservation Corps started and the Soil Conservation Service that we all know as the Natural Resource Conservation Service now and the programs that Becky Humphreys was talking about, the Farm Bill stuff like the Conservation Reserve Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, EQIP, all of those things. The precursor to that, Leopold was involved with that on private land between Madison and La Crosse. There's this place called Coon Valley, and they wanted to do something, they being the Soil Conservation Service, to conserve the land. You know, those were the dust bowl years, but in that area, it was erosion from just overuse, over pasturing, over planting, you know, just plowing right across the side hills, all of that.

And so the Soil Conservation Service, using the CCC, started to help farmers to slow that down, stop it, you know, improve soil conditions. And Leopold stuck his nose in and said, you know, we could probably improve some wildlife habitat at the same time. So rather than planting this, that, or the other thing, let's look at what improvements are going to be made and how we can improve things for wildlife. And they did that. They accomplished that in Coon Valley. But he, and at that time when he was talking about, he wrote an essay called Conservation Economics, which is a really interesting, you know, and it speaks to all of what I just mentioned, conservation economics.

And he said that conservation will ultimately come down to rewarding the private landowner for conserving the public's interests. And a lot of that was born of it. What bothered him ultimately, again, these are things that you have to learn over a period of time, right, is that farmers were getting paid for this stuff and for doing that kind of work, or the work was being done for them in areas they were improving their pastures

or they're stopping the erosion, doing all these things. And what ended up happening then, once the program was over and maybe the payments stopped, they began to revert to their old practices. Because we got to get as much as we got to extract as much as we can out of there. And that was definitely a part of his evolution in talking about the land ethic, about having that ethic. Modern day, we have seen that. I've seen it in my lifetime where the, if you would have done some of the farming practices that I've seen in our area on those side hills and people doing fall plowing, people would have called you out on that when I was a kid. We don't do that. You know, big buffer strips and you always rotate hay into it.

But now it's corn and beans and corn and beans in a lot of those areas. And they've improved some of the soil conservation practices, but land that came out of CRP, marginal, highly erodible land that's come out of CRP and went back into corn or beans because there's more money in it, in planting corn and beans, than there is in having it in a conservation program like CRP. So that's where he begins to, in the last part of the book, the third part of the book, that speaks to me more now, at this later part of my life, about conservation philosophy and having a land ethic and seeing myself as a member of the biotic

community. And, you know, I've had all this advantage in my life where I'm the steward of a property that's been in my family for 120 years. It's easy for me to stand there and think about my dad, my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, and them being on that land. And, you know, the plane goes down on the way home, and that land is still there. The land abides. How do we influence how that, because it's been so, I was going to say negatively influenced, but that's not necessarily fair. It's been so influenced by the presence of man. How do we going of man how do we going forward how do we going forward do the best thing that we can for the land how can we honor the past while we plan

and implement in the present to do the best we can for the future summed up in it's not ours it's just I just can't tell you how important this the essays of this book have been to me I've been reading through it again knowing that I was coming on and I kind of forgot about that or how he makes these points a lot of quotes you know one sentence quotes but it's the whole paragraph yeah that's important when you look at like just this revolutionary figure and understood all this stuff so well it does make you question current prohibitions on um cousins you know like you know you right yeah it's a real real check on the scorecard of the yeah real it worked once obviously yeah i'd be like well you're saying it's almost unfair you know he's like such a brilliant thinker this incredibly accomplished professional and you'd

made it he's also like a prophet in some respects and a philosopher and a writer. It's just like. Yeah. You tell me that's no good, huh? Well, and he was 62 years old when he died helping a neighbor. He had a hard time. Doug hates this joke.

The cousin thing? I'm sorry. He's changing the subject. Yeah, I am going to change the subject. So Leopold. We're going to wrap the whole show up. I want you to have the last word, Doug. Leopold died when he was 62 years old.

Did he really? Died. I feel like I knew that and forgot it. He died that young? He was 62 years old. He died helping a neighbor fight a grass fire. He had a heart attack. Yet when you look at pictures of Elder Leopold,

just I defy you folks. He died at 62? 62 years old. Google Elder Leopold and then click on images and it will be a whole raft of images of him doing nothing but sitting on his butt. It just amazes me how much this guy did in a lifetime. And seemingly there aren't any pictures of him doing much other than looking off in the distance and maybe writing in a journal and whatnot. But. 62.

62. I don't think that was that unusual back then. Well, you had to be sitting still to get a good photograph. No, no. You would die at that. I had an uncle die burning leaves. Smoke inhalation? No, fire got out of control.

Oh, shit. There's a good action shot on the Rio Grande of Leopold as a young man with a boat, like a flat bottom boat that he fashioned for duck hunting named the Binnacle Bat, he called his boat. And he's out there dragging this duck skiff. Not sitting in that one. He's not sitting in that one.

But there are a lot of thoughtful. He was a man of action action and motion remarkable and i uh would ask you all to go and check out the elder leopold foundation it is the source for information about leopold and it will take you in a lot of different directions. They are also, the Leopold Foundation is located on the Leopold Farm. The shack is there. It's open to tours. We should put that in the Sportsman's Atlas, Brody.

Totally. Leopold's Farm. We got the Gila. Yeah, we're going to get to Leopold. Can landowners enroll, can they sign up to join your Share in the Land program? Please. It's interesting. We have 30 landowners in eight different states, and we have about 1,300 conservation resumes from access seekers who want to be cooperators.

So we, as you probably are not surprised, the demand is outstripping the supply. And landowners, one of the things that I would tell you is that it's, it's very much your, what you're able to do is offer access for the things that, that, that you are willing, you don't have to offer access for everything. But it's like conservation related.

It's not like shoveling shit and taking out the trash. You know, it can be. What I've noticed about most of our landowners is that they're real interested. The ones who are interested in sharing the landowner, part of sharing the land are very engaged with their property, very engaged landowners who are interested in spreading conservation education. And, you know, the truth is that there is a big need to get things done on projects. I got a list of stuff at home that we're going to be getting busy on. Does Steve ever pitch in when he's there?

I got to tell you what, Steve Rinella works his butt off in a very short period of time usually, but he gets, he gets, he gets more done than most people do. We had a, an elm tree right by the house break off and, um, it was just a mess in the yard. And, uh, yeah, he got after it, um, to the point. I'm he got after it um tasmanian devil that's just

because all the windows were there's no more windows or no more windows to break yeah and the kids helped out jimmy mostly the other two you know they they come along and but they they feel that helping is being in the vicinity well they run, they can run for help if you need it. So, so that's it. Like you're like doing a chore, they feel like I'm just going to kind of play like by the chore area. Right. Except.

Through the auxiliary. Steve had Matthew out, uh, because I had clearly failed as a guide and, uh, Steve took him out, but Rosie and, and, uh, uh, the one, Jimmy, had already gotten their birds. And I said, well, I've got some stuff for them to do. And I had a bur oak tree, a couple of fruit trees to plant, a little more picking up to do. And they stepped right into it. Yeah. Bring your kids.

Yeah, they weren't afraid. They got right in there. And they did a great job of it. We're going to wrap it up. Oh, Doug, one that you were going to say is for landowners that want to participate with sharing the land, you don't need to be like, hey, here's the keys of the farm. Oh, not at all. You can be like, hey, turkeys, cool.

Hey, late season white-tailed does, cool. Squirrels, cool. Yep. And that's exactly right. Don't shoot my big giant bucks. Okay. Well, sure. I mean, that can be a part of it too.

And to be perfectly honest, I, as I think everybody at the table knows here, I don't bow hunt because bow hunts for people don't have enough to do. But I lease my farm to some bow hunters and who do a great job of it. And I'm very happy to have them there. And that revenue, I mean, they simply pay, is a part of it too, right? Because that's a part of the a la carte menu that, well, you can't bow hunt then. But some of my cooperators, literally, they're like, when are those guys leaving? And there's some good days of the rut left and they're in there right after that. And think about that on both sides,

right? So those guys are, well, we've been doing this work. We should get that opportunity, but they know. And then the guy who spends serious money to come and hunt, he's like,

so will you explain this to me again? That we're paying. And then tomorrow after we leave, you got these other guys coming, they're not paying nothing. Like, yeah, that's the deal. It's a value thing. I don't quite know how else to put it.

Well, you sum it up. I've been working with those, those guys have been leasing my place for eight years now. And that has been, and, and, and then when we come in, now the gun hunting, you know, all hell breaks loose. You hold up your end of the deal though, man. Like you have a window of time that they want to hunt carved out and they hunt it.

And nobody else hunts it before them. And they get that period of time. And then. I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're being kind, but like you're taking like peak whitetail rut on a beautiful whitetail property and that's theirs. And that's theirs. And, uh, and then, and they shot four deer last year and then we came in with rifles and shot 43

more. You know. And you wouldn't know it from looking at it this spring. It's like, oh my God. Well, that's a whole. There's a million deer in that place. That's a whole nother thing.

We, I, uh, at our seat, I just want to put deer in that place. That's a whole nother thing. I, at our seat, I just want to put this in our CDAC meeting, the County Deer Advisory Council, which I'm a member of. We actually had someone come in from the public and we had public comments, but online, but somebody came in from the public and he was nice guy. I've had other conversations with him.

He goes, I don't understand why you want to kill all the deer. Why are you killing all, why do you want to kill all the deer? And it's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to give opportunity, as much opportunity as we can, because we have a lot of deer and 95% of the land is privately owned.

And if you don't think that you have enough deer on your property, then don't kill many. It's a pretty simple premise. All right, man, we're going to wrap up. Thank you, boys. Thank you so much. Carl Malcolm from the U.S. Forest Service. Glad to be here.

And Doug Dern from Casanova, Wisconsin. Casanova? That's what I like to call it. That's what you like to call it. Casanovava wisconsin and please go and check out the aldo leopold foundation all right thank you very much i used to be the one asking, Dad, is he close enough for me? And he'd say, a couple more steps before you click the safety off of that old 243.

I'd do my best to sit there quietly say, son, you gotta learn to be still. And now it's me telling his grandson all the things he used to whisper in my ear Just a little more patience, son Ain't gonna hurt no one Ain't got a pickin' good shot Before you pull the trigger on that old gun All the steady and true

And when you take aim The rest is up to you Man, you're gonna do great Just shoot straight Now my daddy's up in heaven One day I'll be up there with him looking down I hope we watch another generation Show him the next one around

And they walk through these old Zarkwoods And they teach them everything they need to know Because they learned it from their daddy Learned it from their daddy And the story goes just a little more patience son ain't gonna hurt no one ain't gotta pick a good shot before you pull the trigger on that old gun On the steady and true And when you take aim The rest is up to you

Man, you're gonna do great Just shoot straight Straight Just a little more patience, son Ain't gonna hurt no one Yeah, you gotta pick a good shot Before you pull the trigger on that old gun Hold it steady and true And when you take aim The rest is up to you

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