The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 887: The Lizards Went Down to Georgia, Securing Hunting Rights in Colorado, and Big Ol' Lake Trout

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: Georgia's Argentine tegu problem with Daniel Sollenberger of the Georgia DNR; the Centennial State's fight for constitutional hunting rights with Dan Gates of Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management; the Trump administration's opening of wildlife refuges to hunting; giant trout in Lake Superior; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. If you do off-season work, you know it beats up gear. Scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. First Light fieldwear is built for all that. No shortcuts. Purpose-built, durable. Hard-wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters,

it supports the work that earns the season. Check out First Light's new fieldwear collection at firstlight.com. Welcome to the news show, ladies and gentlemen. This week we've got the state of Georgia playing hardball with some big-ass lizards that they don't want run in wild. The Interior Department opens up a metric shit ton of hunting and fishing opportunities around the country, but what exactly is an opportunity? Colorado outdoorsmen might have a chance to take the offensive against anti-hunting efforts in the Johnny Denver State. A Minnesota guide keeps beating his own lake trout records, and what's up with that?

But first, I'll tell you what's first is Bill Tong. You ever made Bill Tong? I've not. Made jerky. I'm assuming it's close. It's like a cousin. It's a second cousin. The making of is different how.

Well, you take, you don't slice it. You know what you make a jerky, you slice jerky? Bill Tong, you get a chunk. Kier it, hang up the chunk. Wait till it's crazy. kind of dry and then slice it. And it's gooey in the middle. Hmm.

Here. It's so good. This is a sample piece that I'm making. So I'm just trying to figure it out because I'm just hanging in my garage. It is soft in the middle. Yeah. So I'm just hanging this in my garage by Trappers wire. I got them hanging all over the damn place.

You're past one of those down to crin there. Thank you. B-I-L-L-T-O-N-G, everybody. This is my sample batch. That's a much different eating experience than jerky. Oh, yeah. This is good. Eventually, I'm going to be doing whole backstrap.

All the Bill Tong dudes tell you like, no sinew, no this, no that, whatever. That's really good. This is delicious. It tastes like you're just eating leftover steak from the night before. Yeah, a whole backstrap from a smaller animal, like an antelope or a white-tilled dough. I cured at my fridge 48 hours. It's vinegar. It's basically like salt, vinegar, stuff like that.

Stuff that's good. You add the working ingredients vinegar. salt. It's not overly salty at all. And then you add stuff that's good to eat in there. Two days. Then you take some wire, whatever you got, hooks, paper clips, whatever, and just hang them around your garage. You can really appreciate the meat because there's tenderness in there. And you feel like it's the same, you're getting a similar product to like it being hung like out in the sun and the wind. Mine's not in the sun. I know, but isn't that how they do it? in Africa. Sure, but my garage is dry.

And I did it this time of year, because I know what, because this time of year is what I picture being the time of year for that. No sun. No sun. In Africa, they do the sun. Yeah. When I saw it done. But people also use Umai bags.

Oh, yeah. Which I didn't do. This is hanging in my garage. Hmm. You'd walk in there and think something weird was going on. No, I wouldn't. I've been in your garage. It's built on, dude.

It's time now for the TRCP Turkey. hunt sweepstakes reminder. Okay. Every year we do this, we team up with me and Yanni Chimani, the Lavian lover, every year we team up with TRCP to do a turkey hunt giveaway. We take a winner and a winner's guest on a three-night, two-day turkey hunt. We cover all expenses. Our guys get birds.

Our guys this year got birds, day one. They get birds. go to TRCP.org and search up the summer turkey hunt sweepstakes giveaway. You'll find it easy. You buy, it's a raffle. You buy tickets to win. Again, we cover airfare, tags, food, lodging. We cover everything.

You pay nothing. If you're short on gear, we'll find you some gear if you're the winner. And anybody can win. Anybody can. Well, there's some states you can't win, which is like stupid. but just a guy who buys one tag. Listen, any Joe Blow can win it. And we've got a list as long as your arm of satisfied past winners.

We brought in a professional chef this year. We brought in a professional chef so that when you came in out of the woods, there was a professional chef cooking. Poot Magoo. We had a hell of a good time this year. We were eating fresh asparagus picked right out of the garden. What's the deadline? Don't know.

Once you look that up and chime in. Yep. I thought I'd do it in a more organic way. If I were. I'd like to know, actually. Just put some urgency around it. When are they going to do the draw? Ends at 1159 Eastern Time on 731-26.

Plenty-time. 7-31, plenty of time. Buy some now and buy some later. Winbeg. Me and the Ani are going to take care of you, man. We're going to take care of you. You guys get your birds before we touch our shotguns. That's our mom.

motto. And there's also their runner-up prizes, right? Like, even if you don't win the big thing. They're going to win the big thing. Don't worry. Yeah, yeah. They're going to win the big thing. I'm talking to you out there. You're going to win the big thing. That's right. Get your tickets. You're winning. You're up.

A guy wrote in. He says, on last week's show, Steve was confident that he was insulated from criminal prosecution for unlawful possession of native wildlife. Because we had a mouse that we detained. momentarily and it got away.

So I was, it was pointed out to me that I was in violation of the law because I had like had a wild pet. And I was that my wife would be who they'd have the problem with because she's the one that took it home. And I was saying, well, it got away. So now nobody, no case. A lawyer wrote in. He says, well, one problem. You've already confessed to it a bunch.

On the recording. And made video evidence of it. You blame your wife, but she hasn't confessed. So there might not be, yeah, he's like, you might not have the mouse, but there's, there's, there's room to make a case against you. But he's also a career criminal prosecutor and he's prosecuted numerous murder cases. Yeah. But he says I'm out of his jurisdiction, so he's not going to prosecute me. But I'd like to clarify again, the mouse is gone.

It ran off. Was there even a mouse to begin with? No, we'll never know. No. And how would you know that that wasn't a mouse from the mouse store? A guy wrote in, he says, his brother-in-law has adopted a raccoon kit after his father killed its parents. I don't think his father killed his parents. I think his father killed its mother.

He says, we all live next to each other and we all work together. It's the Phelps. That's the Phelps family. Thanks, Jason B. Thanks for writing in, Jason Phelps. We all live next to each other and we all work together. Everyone in the family, aside from my brother-in-law, feels that the raccoon is best left outside to let nature run its course. My etiquette question is, do I call fishing game in risk family turmoil, or do I let them raise and release the raccoon for me to trap and kill later?

We kept pet raccoons, and I was a kid, I think they're delightful, but I'm not telling you what to do. Guy wrote in. That's it. That's all you got for that one. I'm not going to tell them what to do. I got enough legal problems. Go longer than that. I got enough legal problems with his mouth.

I don't need to now be like gaining advice, giving legal advice. We kept pet raccoons when I was little, and they went back to the wild. After they turned vicious. They turn mean. They start biting you all the time. And then they eventually turned themselves loose. My third part of this is the certainty with which it ends when he says, let him release it for me to trap and kill.

Well, but I would draw into question. See, we got our pet raccoons before they open their eyes. So I don't know how far long that raccoon is. I don't know if it's going to live or not. Also, the kind of tacit, silent agreement of this whole segment is that someone asks a question, and then you tell them what they should do. I'm just, yeah, I just throw that out there. I know, but I'm feeling particularly vulnerable in the moment because of the legal problem I'm in right now with the mouse.

It's just smart of you. Okay, I'll hit this really quickly. Like dozens and dozens of people wrote in to say that I was wrong. I was wrong. I said that the capital of New York State was Buffalo. That's not true. It's Albany. I was just trying to give some context for Erie County.

And so the county seat is in Buffalo, but the capital is in Albany. And someone pointed out that Albany has been the capital of New York since 1797. So that's how wrong I was. Guy wrote in, this is going back so far, people aren't going to recall. Randall had some birds killing his chickens. Randall was joking about how he's going to kill those birds.

And one guy wrote in all worked up about that, but he's just joking. Another guy just wrote in and says there's an old-timer trick, you see. Yeah. His solution, and again, I hesitate to, to read this aloud for fear of whatever legal liability. I'm going to shut them down hard. Don't worry.

Yeah, he says, he says you, uh, you put some two by fours together, put a little plywood square on the very top to make a nice, attractive perch. Basically build a fence post. And then on that perch, you put a leg trap and you chain it to the two by fours and put that up. So it looks like a real nice place for a big bird of prey to sit there and watch your chickens. Yep. And then you're trapping that big bird of prey.

I will point out to this fellow, that is very, very illegal. Yeah. Very, very illegal. Yeah. With that. Don't do that. Do we want to do the West Virginia fishing records? Oh, yeah.

I do. We got an email from a gentleman, an angler in West Virginia, who saw Spencer's story on West Virginia State Fish and, records that were getting broken. And we kind of went pretty hard at some of those fish. So much so that he says in here, tell Steve he could suck it. Yeah. He says, don't go trashing our new state records.

And he goes on to make a point that like a few decades ago, a lot of the water in West Virginia was so damaged by acidic rain that you couldn't even catch a fish in them. So he's got a good point there. They've done a lot of work on Streambank restoration. in and you know he's he's and give it yes i love giving credit for the habitat work it's been done but you still catch a make-belie fish yeah golden trout are he says brody's correct they're bred and grown in hatcheries and uh the big ones usually have some wear and tear on their noses and tails from from the cement raceways they're grown up in um but he also goes on to say that they're notoriously hard to catch which wasn't wasn't my experience when i was 10 years old with a

pitching a salmon, Uncle Josh's salmon egg. But that's okay. He says, did you already get, he wouldn't, he bets you wouldn't pass up catching a five pound tiger trout? He says, I would not pass it up. Correct. Correct. Yeah.

But I wouldn't send pictures of it around and sign up and sign up for the state record. But sure, I would catch it. I, I would be like, hey, watch, I'm going to catch that. I held my tongue last time. I just feel like you shouldn't shame people. for going out and catching a fish. No, we're not shaming the people. Not shame in the people.

It's, I'm not hating the player. I'm not hating the player. The game. Yep. No, I'm not even that. It's not like this is the biggest problem. No. You know, it's like, it's like a bigger problem than the Strait of Hormuz situation.

But it's not the biggest problem the country faces. Yeah. Sure. But it's a big problem is if the state has broodstock in a tank and its tail is rubbed off from living in a tank. And one day they take it and they set it in a river. And a guy catches out of the river and then you go

wow, a new state record. I just, it's not. Yeah. It's something but not that. But this gentleman Yeah. Had some great ins,

all the dumb parts of ZEL are made up for by the good part. Yeah, one of the fish that we didn't bag on was the chain pickerel. Because that's a native fish. But then we proceeded to bag, well, people in the room proceeded to bag on him for fighting it for 10 minutes. Not me. I was all for him. Anyway, the gentleman who caught the state record

chain pickerel, which is not a large fish, relatively speaking, fought it for, what do they say 20 minutes, 10 minutes, a long time. He had a big tussle. Seth said he would have taken him three seconds to both. To pitch that thing onto the bank. The guy who wrote in says

the reason the fight lasted so long is that he didn't have a net. Every time he tried to pick it up, it took off, again, he was using four pound test, so he's like baby in the fish. Eventually, he got tired of messing with the fish and lipped it, which you don't do with chain picker on. Dude, just shred. Yeah.

Shred your thumb. Yes. And the interviewer asked him, didn't the teeth cut you? The guy who caught the fish responded, bleeding is temporary. A state record is forever. Well, unless you're breaking. This is also the guy who's breaking his own state record. Yeah, listen, there's holes in everything.

You can find a hole in everything. I get the sentiment. People out there catching big fish. Yeah, have fun. Go catch more state records. He points out that West Virginia likes Randall. Oh. I didn't even see that.

That's because the part of Ohio that Randall is from is not really Ohio. It's more like Kentucky and West Virginia. I thought it was because his hair got long in the back for a while. Yeah. He fit right in. I think I just have a certain sensibility. that West Virginians are looking at Randall now and be like, you changed Randall.

I know. I can't put my finger on it, but you changed. I will say, you got snobby. There are some comments about the haircut, wondering if I got a haircut. I did, in fact, get a haircut. I didn't mean to get this much cut, but it will be back.

It will be back. All right. That's our news, your news, and all the news. All righty. So, Phil, we have on the line here, Georgia DNR, herpetologist, Daniel Solenberger. Daniel, thank you for joining us today.

day. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me on. So I came across a few headlines yesterday about an issue you guys have going on down there with an animal, a lizard called a tagu. Is that the correct pronunciation? Could you... That's right, yeah. Could you tell us the listener, what is it, Tagu? And why are they in the news right now? Yeah, so they're a really large South American, lizard. They grow, you know, four to four and a half feet long, not commoda dragon size,

but much bigger than anything we have here in the U.S. normally. And they've become established in some places in the southeast. There's, you know, a few different populations in Florida, and now at least this one in South Georgia, and concerns of them becoming established elsewhere. where in their, as you'd expect a big reptile to do, they kind of eat what they want. And it turns out they can kind of live where they want. Yeah, I was reading that they'll actually broomate. So they will shut down for the winters.

They could maybe survive in colder climates than what you might expect for an animal like that. Right. What's the main? So there, you know, a lot of people think of, I'll just say a lot of people think of South America as being like, tropical rainforest all over, but, you know, where these tagu's are from, in terms of latitude, if you were to mirror it onto North America, you know, the southern end of where they live would be equivalent to like 40 degrees south, which is roughly like Pennsylvania.

Wow, man. And there's a lot of other things that determine climate, you know, but just to give you they live in a very temperate environment, very similar to what we have in the southern U.S. Now, when you're saying that they get to four or four and a half feet, do you think that right now in Georgia, in the wild, is a four-foot specimen? Or is that just what they would get in native range or in a zoo? Meaning are they legitimately achieving that size in Georgia? I mean, you're asking if it's like the broodstock trout and whatever.

Yeah, are we talking broodstock or we talk of wild here? In terms of actually being a product of the environment, possibly, yeah, I mean, so, you know, we have harvested animals or the public has shot them and we've trapped some that are, you know, three and a half to four feet in length. I mean, yeah, we've had some pretty big ones. It's usually the males that get that big. So yeah, I mean, eventually I'm sure we have some four plus foot tagu's out there. Man, you'd hear that thing coming to the woods, man. Yeah. And for the DNR, the concern is that they're eating a lot of eggs of game birds and things like that.

Can you sort of put a finer point on what the issue is as far as conservation concerns? Yeah, they, so they'll eat just about anything, plant, animal, matter, whatever they want. But they really like eggs. And so, you know, ground nesting birds, you know, a lot of songbirds nest on the ground, turkey, quail, reptile eggs, they'll dig up the nests of turtles. They've even been found raiding alligator nests in Florida. So, you know, the impact they could have on some of those things, you know, there's a lot of

concern right now for turkeys in the state, probably about. pretty much everywhere. And having an additional nest predator on top of the native ones that they've adapted to deal with, we've invested a lot of money and effort into go for tortoise conservation. The public's gotten several new WMAs out of it. We do, you know, prescribe burning for them and do a lot of management for tortoises. And something like a tagu digging up nest could undermine a lot of that work. Sure.

Their egg eating activities are a big concern. that's big enough just to go back to that bigness it's big enough for you could hit it with a bow and have to track it yeah that's a big lizard yeah yeah yeah you know you did the blood trail that lizard probably wouldn't do it you know like so we do recommend that people shoot them um that's usually the the quickest way to dispatch one and not let it get away yeah i'm only just throwing that out as just an observation i'm not suggesting that people do that. Oh, that's the recommendation is, right? It's kill on the bone arrow. Oh, sure, yeah. But the recommendation is to kill on site. Yeah, yeah, certainly. You know, if you see one and think, I'll call DNR, let them know, and maybe they can come trap it later. Sometimes we try and sometimes we do get the animal, but it's very common for those animals to just run off and they're not seen again, at least not in that location. And so if it's safe, now if you live in a HOA,

and, you know, nan from across the streets walking her dog by, you probably shouldn't do it in your front yard. But if it's safe and legal where you're at and you have a firearm close by, just go ahead and dispatch that animal and then call us. Give me a wild ballpark. How many are in Georgia? Oh. Okay, let's play a game.

More than a thousand or less than a thousand? Okay. Are we talking adults or like including all that? hatchlings because depending on the time of year adult that number could adult so like one year plus year old animals that more than a thousand oh wow all right so it's a real deal um they're around yeah yeah i mean it's like i'll clarify you know i'm

hold me cover up my shirt like that is a guess that is a total wild guess i said a wild ballpark yeah yeah So they do turn up over, you know, two counties, which, you know, we have 159 counties, so our counties aren't very big. But there are two of our larger counties kind of across that whole area, like, I don't know, probably a few hundred square mile area or something like that that we've really had, you know. So to give you an idea, they turn up all over the state. Most of those animals are just people's pets that have gotten loose. So they're in Atlanta, Millageville, and Nutton Mountains everywhere. And we think most of those hopefully are just people's pets.

But just in those two counties where your Vidalia onions come from, we've had like 30-plus animals that have been killed, captured, hit on the road. You know, something where we have a carcass or a photo of an animal. And then a lot of other credible sightings that were someone just saw one run across the road. and wasn't able to get it. Do you, and again, I'm not asking to comment on this as a representative of Georgia DNR, but just as a guy on the street, have you heard anything? Are they good to eat?

What's the recommendation there? I knew it was coming, you know, sitting at last time, I'm like, oh, are they going to ask? You know what? They're going to ask what they taste like. I've not had the pleasure. I've not had the pleasure of eating one, but I imagine it tastes a lot like iguana or something like that. A lot of reptiles kind of are similar to me. I thought you were going to ask,

what's the drunkest you've ever been or something? It's nothing embarrassing. Well, sounds like a quick, quick hit in the deep fire is what's in order for the Tagos then. Yeah, yeah. Anything else we should know before we let you go here, Daniel? No.

I got one question. I see in the notes. Sorry, I see in the notes. Kill on site order. Is that true? Or is that something in our notes? That's your notes. Okay.

We can't. Yeah. We can't force people to kill them. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. I figured that was something that generated on our end, but I just wanted to clarify that it wasn't like the cops are like, they're ticketing people. They're ticketing people for not shooting the lizards.

If there's one thing the public is eager to help you do. Yeah. Yeah. They're eager to help you kill something. That is something we generally can get people to help with without coercion. I do got one last question. Maybe Randall's got more. But I got one last question.

When you look at around the nation, around the world, you look at battles with invasives. usually, you know, maybe early on when there's an invasive species takes hold, maybe there's some optimism or some hope that you'll actually get rid of it, right? But oftentimes it turns into a continued management issue, and people will point out that, you know, outside of some pathogen emerging, we're not getting out of this problem. Asiatic carp I mean I could go on all day but like

Asiatic carp in the Mississippi watershed Zebra mussels Pigs. Zabre muscles in the Great Lakes. Wild hogs in Texas. No serious person is suggesting that we're going to take care of the problem. In your mind

where do we sit on this lizard issue in Georgia? We're still early in that curve, you know, but the, so it's, it's, a thousand animals sounds like a lot.

Let's say it actually was a thousand, but it's really not, like, that's doable. And the area is fairly well known, um, in terms of the extent of the invasion. The problem is it's almost entirely private land. There aren't a lot of people there. It's, it's very rural farmland, timberland. And there's a ton of place.

for these animals to hide. It's hard for me to say for sure. I think there's some optimism to, at the very least, contain it to that area. Okay. Gotcha. Eradicating them, well, we'll have to see. You know, it's really good.

It's going to take a lot of help from the public on that. And there's no magic bullet yet for them. So we'll see where we're at in another 10 years. Sounds good. Daniel. Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, no problem. I appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Daniel. Yep, y'all have a good one.

You do. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you. Anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone or listen now at iHartRadio.ca.

Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season. It's not glamorous. Scouting, hanging cameras, cutting lanes, fixing fences, packing, practice, prep, the stuff that doesn't get noticed, but that makes the difference. That's what First Light fieldware is designed for. Fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends. Every piece is built for real use.

No shortcuts, hardwaring where it needs to be versatile where it matters. Built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right way. If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out First Lights new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. Okay, next up here on the news show, we're joined in the studio by Dan Gates, from Colorans for responsible wildlife management. Dan Gates has been on the show before. The reason he's here now is we're going to talk about,

we're always reporting on all kinds of bad, crazy things coming out of Colorado of late, right? People looking to suppress rights and kind of subvert wildlife management to conform to a animal rights agenda in the state of Colorado. And rather than just pointing out all the things that are wrong with the world, Dan's here to tell us about a way that hunters and angers might move forward in a more proactive, and constructive manner with the passage of an amendment that would provide a constitutional right to hunt and fish. Yes, sir. Yeah.

Call what? 302. Initiative 302 is what it is right now. If it passes and we get the signatures on it with the support of the International Order of T. Roosevelt, those signatures are due on August 4th. And if we get the signatures, it'll be on the ballot for people to vote on this year. How many signatures do you need? 125,000 roughly.

So we're looking at probably trying to gather 200,000 to make sure that we have enough to clear the threshold and get certified. If that dude in Oregon could get the necessary number of, if he could get the right number of signatures to ban ranching and having rodeos, I feel like you should be able to get the right number of signatures to get this going. But in all seriousness, is there a concern about signature gathering? Yeah. To some degree there is, Steve, I think that the biggest problem that we probably have in the long run is getting people to understand why you need something and what it does. It actually codifies what we have an existing statute, but it does it in a constitutional right manner. And it gives you another tool in the toolbox to where you can go say, you can't do this unless we have the science and the data to be able to support that. This doesn't give anybody the unequivocal ability or authority to.

hunt from January 1st to December 31st on private property and all species and methods of take and no limit. The agency, Colorado Parks and Wildlife still has the overwhelming authority, just like what they should. And the commission, even though it's a bad commission at this point time, still has the ability to interact with the agency in that process. So it just codifies it. So that's kind of one of the main things I wanted to dig in on this issue. But I mean, I want to alert Colorans to make sure to go get their signature taken care of. Yes. Make sure to start telling, you know, when it makes the ballot, right? Did they start telling, you know, whatever, their aunt who doesn't hunt, hey, heads

up when this thing comes out. Here's what you got to do to support me. So make sure the word gets out. But I wanted to narrow one on something with you. How many states have this now? Twenty-two. Twenty-four states. Colorado would be the 25th.

Okay. Colorado would be the 25th state that have a constitutional right to hunt and fish. Yep. But here's the thing I always wonder. How does it have teeth? Like, are you aware of the states that have, are you aware that the states have ever been able to use the constitutional right to hunt and fish to combat a piece of a bad regulatory piece to combat a bill? Do you mean, like, how does it become actionable? Like, let's say you're sitting there and you have it passed.

How do you then use it to litigate bad legislation? That's a good point. And that's some of the questions that we've been asked over and over. And talking to the Travis Thompson's and the Luke Higman's with the International Order, they did this in 2024 in Florida. Okay. And there's many other states have attempted to do this successfully through the legislative method or madness. And the ballot side of this actually provides a level of constitutionality to the point to where,

on certain circumstances for certain issues, states have had to be able to turn around and challenge maybe an attack or an assault on some sort of prohibition or restriction on hunting or fishing. But if you look at what it's probably prevented the states that have had this in place, they haven't had the fight, the fight, because the people that are one that come to the table with those fights are like, if we go there, we better have the science on our side and they don't. And so it prohibits. It's like a, I joke about this, but it's like a windshield on a truck. It doesn't stop a B from hitting

inside the head of your windows down, but it stops a lot of the stuff from coming right into the front. And it just helps codify, like I mentioned, the opportunity for game agencies to science-based regulate what we have to do when it comes to regulation of our wildlife resources.

Let me put the question. Let me put the question to you a little bit different. Not that you didn't answer, but let's play with time a little bit. Let's say, let's go back and say that 10 years ago, 10 years ago, Colorado passed constitutional right to hunting fish. And then they had come up against two years ago now, when the hell was it? 127.

The cat hunting. Okay. So the constitutional right to hunting fish was magically in place 10 years ago. Right. Let's pretend. And up comes this ballot initiative to end all hunting of wild cats in Colorado. Yes. Do you feel that that constitutional

right would have offered some protection to that, prevented that, argued a counterpoint to that? Wholeheartedly. I think that it would allow us to be able to turn around and prop up the science-based wildlife management in a manner to where it would be less likely to be attacked and assaulted by the things that they're doing, just like we've got prairie dog petitions, we've had furbearer petitions, we've had attempts to turn around to restrict other forms of hunting, not just on the ballot measure, through the legislature. Yeah.

It would have, it would have prevented that from even moving to those levels unless the agency had the science to turn around and say, hey, guys, we need to step back and we need to do some of this. Yeah. But at that point, it would also be an opportunity for the antis to say, maybe we should go to some place that is a little bit less prepared. I see. Typically, they're not going to places that have the constitutional right to hunt and fish

in the manner that they try to do it in the other places that don't because they know they've got that roadblock that they're going to have to fight. They can fight to get something past, but then they've got to fight to turn around and keep it past. Doesn't this seem, it seems so strange to me, I'm sure it's explainable, but it seems strange to me that Colorado and Washington have sort of become the, oh, God, yeah. Like, have become the sort of test grounds for how to chip away at, how to chip away at hunting practices. Yeah. in situations where you cannot point to hunting having you a detrimental impact on the resource.

So it's sort of like a make-believe problems. Oh, yeah. Right. Like, oh, we have a lot of black bears. In fact, we have expanding populations of black bears, but you shouldn't be able to hunt them. Right. Like, that seems to have become those states. Look at Oregon.

IP 28. I mean, that mentality floats around that you mentioned, that when they want to turn around and make states a complete state, state in an animal sanctuary state for everything under the sun, it's easy to say that that doesn't happen in other states, but Colorado's doing the exact same thing, except for we're doing it individually, one little small thing at a time. Try this, can't accomplish that. Let's go with this. Oregon, they're just trying a whole thing in one great big sweep. And I think that you look at the Western United States, one, because of the public land side of things, two, because of the big game resources that we have that other parts of the country don't. And the people that move to those

locations, there's less of a population density of humans that you have to turn around and convince to do something. It's harder to do it when you're in Alabama and you got 12 million people and 7 million to hunt or whatever the heck of numbers are. But when you get into a state like Colorado, we've got such a transient population that comes in, just like in Oregon, just like in Washington, Arizona, New Mexico. The West is particularly vulnerable to the ideologies of people that come in and it's easy for those animal rights groups to sway them because it's not in their heritage or their tradition. Yeah.

But only in certain Western states, right? Like, they're not going to try, like, Wyoming is not at risk the same way Colorado. Oh, no. You know what I mean? Yeah. But, but, but Wyoming is probably just as fragile if you turn around and look at the influx of people that could move into Wyoming and change the political. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But you need to, you need less of those to be able to do so. Ours happened over 30 years. Yeah. But you know, what's funny is if you look back pre-COVID, And the people that I know in those states that we mentioned, including Idaho and Montana, and people said, oh, we don't have to worry about that gates.

We don't have to, we've got that barrier. We've got something. COVID hit. And all the people from Oregon, Washington, and California started moving to those other states. And everybody's calling me going, how the hell do we deal with this? Yeah. Well, we've been dealing over it for 30 years, but everybody else thought that they were bulletproof because they didn't have that sort of influx.

Yeah. They want to, it's just funny, I don't want to get political. But really. Well, there's like, okay, this is a humongous issue, but it would be that people move from left-leaning states to right-leaning states and then want to then turn them into the states they left in a little bit, not totally, but in a little bit of a mentality. Like you come and you're like, I cannot believe these rednecks are allowed to hunt mountain lines. Yeah. I need to fix this. The amount of people that we saw during the 127 campaign on the mountain line.

deal in 2024 versus the amount of people that we hear talking about this that are completely 100% animal rights extremists often say in their testimonies and their op-eds and their public engagement, I didn't know this was going on. If I did, I would have stood up sooner. And I'm like, you're 77 years old. You lived in a state for 44 years. You don't have a clue of what the hell's going on on something. And now all of a sudden it's tragic because you heard somebody's killing mountain lions or somebody's managing fur bearers. Yeah. But it shows the depth of their knowledge. Yeah, which is very shallow.

That they found out about this last week. Exactly. And it's not going to stand. No. No. And they don't know anything about it except for what somebody told them. Yeah. If you look at the testimony that these people put out and not to get off on a tangent,

but they all say the exact same thing. They don't have an opinion for themselves because they've been told to say this, this script, this bullet point. This is what you say. And they get up and they repeat it over and over and over. And I'm like, it's like deja vu. It's like Groundhog Day. They don't say anything new because they don't have anything.

except for what somebody told them to say. How do people find, I guess, generally about ballot initiatives? We always joke about where they must go to get signatures. Like, you know, you go to, I can think if you go to Whole Foods, you can picture a guy with a little table set up. Oh, yeah. Out front. And that happens.

Yeah. So how do people get the signatures and how do people find you if they want to join the ballot? If they want to join the signature. Well, and honestly, and you're, In your waiting room out here, I was answering emails that people wanted to be able to get signature packets. And so they can become certified through the Secretary of State. It's about a 20-minute deal you've got to take online. Oh.

Once you get that, they can reach out to me or they can go to savecoheritage.org, which is the website for the international order process that we're doing. You can actually get certified and have packets to be able to turn around and distribute. And you can't get, it's not like a statutory ballot initiative. This is constitutional. So we need the signatures, 2% of each of the signatures need to come from the 35 Senate districts that we have. So you have to go to the smallest communities and the largest places to get 2% of the voters in those communities. Okay. Can you say that again? I got confused. Okay. So it's probably because of the way I explain it more than it. As soon as I started hearing numbers, something happens in my head.

So if there's 10,000 people in a Senate district, you've got to have 2% of the signatures from that Senate district. Really? For a constitutional amendment. So you need to walk away. How many districts make up Denver, Fort Collins? It's about 11, 12 in that general vicinity. You need to get 2% of all those. 2% of all the registered voters in each one of those districts.

Damn, really? Yeah, but if you go to a Senate district like on the Western Slope, it might be very broad and very vast, but there's less people there. So when people keep asking us, well, I haven't seen anybody around. Maybe those districts have already fulfilled the threshold. And so you won't see somebody there. They try to get the farthest way, way ones first, and then concentrate on the ones that you know you're going to have to have, you know, 35,000 or 16,000. So you could have some guy out in eastern Colorado just kicking ass, but after a while it's not doing any good.

It doesn't do any good. He's like, I signed up the whole county. Yeah, exactly, all 12 of them. And pretty soon you're in your one. And that's the frustration because people don't understand. Yeah. If you go statutory, you can stand out literally in front of one whole foods in downtown Denver and get whatever you want. want that's what cats aren't trophies did our friends back in 2024 it wasn't constitutional it

was statutory so they could get all the signatures out of Denver if they wanted to do they didn't have to go to these other rules uh-huh yeah that man see this is something i had ever understood okay so where do you need where do you feel you need signatures well the hardest places are going to be in the Denver Boulder fort Collins areas just because of the vast amount of people that you've And you got a lot of people on the ground there doing it? Or should you be calling for, like, should you be calling for guys to go do that 20-minute thing and get the packet? No, we're asking people to do the 20-minute thing and get the packet. And the main reason is- Okay, by God.

Yeah. Can you bring in non-residents to collect signatures? That's carpet bagging. We should go down there and that's carpet bag. Knock up some doors. Can you carpet bag down there? Yeah, we can carpet bag down there. It's just that you have to be, you don't have to be a resident of the state to get the signatures.

You just have to be a registered voter to be able to sign them. Right. And because there's canvassers. They call them canvassers, the petition gathers, that come around and travel around the country. This is what they do. So we have a roughly- Like guns for hire. Yeah. We should go canvas.

Yeah. You know. It'd be fun. I know where I'm going to be fun. I know where I'm going to put you, though. On the Boulder campus. Right down on Pearl Street. You could do a meat eater live deal down there and turn around to do signatures.

You're a Rockies game, you know. So if someone wants to become a signature collector, and they're not one of these roving guns for hire, and they're just a, they're just a person out there looking to do the right thing. They do what? They come find you. No, they can send an email to us through save the hunt, Colorado.com. They can also get on that other website, save c.oheritage.org. Put your name on there for contact.

They can reach out. We will send them the proper information to where they can go get certified. They get certified. They come back. I mean, the certification deal is kind of a, it's a weeding out of the, the unwillful. You know, everybody wants to do something until they find out there's an effort to it. It's like, you know, I got to sign up for a test and I got to the secretary of state knows who I, who I am and where I live. And they know that anyway. It's just that now you're actually putting your, your mark on your preferences and so forth.

Sure. So you get that, you turn around. We'll put you in touch with the canvasser coordinator liaison organizer. And then she's been doing very, very good of being able to just turn around and say, okay, you got your certification, here's your packets, this is what you need to do. The certification actually came into place in December of 2025. It didn't, it used to have to do that. But there's a volunteer position that you can get the signatures on, or there's a paid level to where this is a business. And for X amount of dollars, and I don't know what the current number is, but X amount of dollars that for every signature you collect, you turn around and get three bucks or five bucks or $27 or whatever the heck it is.

If it's $27, there should be a lot more people out there. But, you know, most circulators that you see in front of King's Supers or Whole Foods, they'll have a table set up and they'll have maybe five different petitions for different ballot initiatives. This is their job. I mean, see, I always associate the person collecting the signature with sort of the, that's what they want to happen, but they could be indifferent to this. Oh, yeah. They're just, they're just money. There are some states, there's some states where you're required, if you're paid, you're required to. tell all the signers that I'm a paid right like like different political transparency laws in

different states require certain things of these these canvassers but it's a whole network hmm it's a complicated process and and while I don't sounds like well I don't want to call it crooked but it's not a crooked process but I just surprised I just feel like it's got to be true believers out there getting them signatures yeah well and see what going back to 2024 on the Cats Aren't Trophies campaign, they were having a hard time getting their volunteers to get the necessary signatures. There was an agreement made by Governor Polis with the oil and gas industry about a ballot initiative. And the oil and gas industry backed off so they didn't employ the signature gathers anymore. And those signature gathers were looking for a job and they cut the price in a half

or 75 percent and went over to the freaking Cats Aren't Trophies people and said, hey, we've got these people available. You couldn't pay $20 like what we were doing before. That's why the oil and gas was there. But now we made this deal. We'll do this for X amount of dollars and cats on trophies could be able to come up with that money. Wow, man. Yeah, it's a racket. Huh. And there's a good racket for people that are in it for a business because they're really good at it. Yeah. But other people are like, I don't want to stand on the street corner and a hail storm trying to turn around it. Oh, getting it all kind of arguments of people and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And we have a tremendous amount of ballot initiatives coming up that people are trying to get

signatures for to meet the deadline. And there's some stuff. I'd look and I'd like, I don't want to argue with those people on that stuff. I argue with enough people. I don't need to stand on the side of the road to the clipboard. So let's move ahead. Let's say you get all this. You're going to get the signatures. We're going to get the signatures.

Yeah. There's no doubt in my mind. We'll get the signatures. Yeah. How do you think the election is going to go? Has any, has any constitutional right to hunt and fish been beat at the ballot box? Not to the best of my knowledge. There's been some that have not made it through the initial thresholds on legislative issues

because of differences between the House and the same. Senate in a particular state or something. But when it gets on the ballot, I mean, the overwhelming majority of the general public agrees with legal regulated hunting methods for wildlife management in a manner to the point where, I mean, Florida passed by, I think, 67%. And they needed 60. The difference was like on cats aren't trophies when we did the deal in our state, statutory. You needed 50 plus 1%. That's why the Wolf deal passed because it was statutory. We need 55% to meet that maximum, the minimum threshold on the constitutionality. It's got to make it a little easier dragging the anglers into it too.

Oh, tremendously. Yeah, especially in a place like Florida because there's a hell of a lot more fishing down there than there is hunting. Yeah. But in Colorado, I mean, we've got roughly a million sportsmen and women in the state of Colorado. And my song and dance is, if you know anybody that hunts and fishes around the country, you need to turn around and get them to support this on their social media or outreach

or something because this is something the international. national order wants to do nationwide. Yeah. And if they can get done with Colorado and accomplish that, making the 25th state, or pretty soon you'd look at maybe, maybe Arizona, maybe New Mexico. They're talking California. They're talking Nevada. I met a guy in Nevada who's pushing for it, and he's adamant.

And people keep telling them, don't do it this way. He's adamant that he wants to go for hunt, fish, and trap. And they're telling them, man, you're, you're, you're clouding the water. waters. He's like, but I, I, I, if he pulls it off, I think it's a stroke of genius. Oh, yeah. But some people are like, you got to keep it hunting fish. Write it in such a way. Write it in such a way that it covers what you want. But once you throw the word trap in, they're like, it just is going to get harder. Yeah. But he's, he, the guy I met, and I don't even know how serious he is about. He is a, he's a lawmaker. He's a lawmaker. He wants to go for

hunt, hunt, fish, and trap. And he's like, I'm not, he don't want to leave anything unspoken. Well, and there's something that needs to be mentioned, too, because. this talks about traditional methods. And legally, it talks about the traditional methods that are legal at the time of passage. So when people keep coming out and saying, we're going to get bear hunting back, not through this year or not. We're going to get trapping back, not through this year or not. I see. I see. The trapping amendment in 1996, Amendment 14, was a constitutional amendment. Initiative 10, which was the spring bear hunting, pounds, bait, and everything in 92, that passed by 69 to 31%. that is not, this is not going to bring that back.

Yeah. Now, if you want to go back and try that after this is an effect, but anybody that believes that you're going to get that stuff back by putting this into place, those laws precede this. This is protective what you have now. Yes. Yes. And if we want to go back down that road at some point in time, you won't be able to hunt wolves with this.

It does not give you that privilege to be able to do so. Yeah, it's not like, hey, go hunting anything you want, you know, the rest of your lives. I've had guys come up and say, well, now I can kill a big horn sheep. I'm like, if you draw a tag, yes, you can. You know, it's not. And a guy from Mississippi comes up and has one point now and he wants to kill a big horn sheep and he thinks this is going to open it up. It's not.

This is very strict and it's very sideboarded. It's got blinders on it. And there are laws, rules, and regulations that adhere to this. It still gives the agency the overwhelming authority to be able to manage our wildlife resources and perpetuity. Excellent. That's good. Yeah.

Everybody needs it. Man, good luck on that. We're trying. We're trying to do everything we possibly can. Money is a deal. Everybody needs to turn around and figure out a way to help every other state on the money side. I already gave the websites and stuff, but if you don't mind, I'll give a plug real quick. Please.

The raffles that we're doing that we've got going, the big one, is on the Hill Ranch. The deadline for that is the 12th of June. But it is a tag that non-residents cannot get through the draw. This is the only way you're going to hunt this, unless you pay an exorbitant fee. What is it? It's 34 points to be able to get on that if you draw through the ranching for wildlife program through the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Draw. Nobody's going to draw that.

For what? For what? Elk. Yeah, for elk on the hill ranch. And it's, I mean, it's, we, we encourage people. And that money goes to you guys for this fight. Every single thing. Oh, dude, I'm doing it.

Yeah. I mean, and then we've got a fishing trip up and sit in. Tell me how I go do that again? So you can go to SCI Colorado.org. for that. And we've got stuff on Instagram and Facebook. But Bobby and Doddy Hill at the Hill Ranch contributed to this. This is where the bunch of the big guys hunt.

This is where they do a lot of they're filming. And this is an opportunity that everybody should take advantage of because you're just not going to find it. This is Lorenzo Sartini. He commented when we did the Go Hunt podcast and he said, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to get on this ranch. And so that's, there's the fish and trip and that one there combined on the same deal. SCI Colorado.org. It's a raffle. The raffle.

Dude, I'm going. Drawing as June 15th. I'm going to win. Fuel up my bones. Yeah, we've got to get, we've got to get buying tickets here. You get buying tickets. And if you do that, you've got to come, if you, if you win, you've got to come down and collect signatures. Yeah.

Deal. Deal. All right. Dan Gates, thanks for coming out, man. Appreciate your time. Keep us posted on the fight. We're here to help get that thing on the ballot and we'll be, we'll be plugging away on it. We've got a ton of information coming down.

down to pike and you seem to be interested in Colorado stuff anyway because it's always flavorful. Oh, yeah. It's just close. It's never not interesting. You can smell it from up here. Brody spent many a good year down there. Yon, you live down there. What's the signature deadline again?

Signature deadline is August 4th. August 4th, yeah. And once we get that, then it's going to be certification. And after that, it's full-blown election cycle, just like what we've done every other time. All right. I'm buying them tickets. Okay. Appreciate your guys the time.

Yeah, man. Appreciate it. Thanks. Close your eyes, and you can hear the entire world come alive. 2026 FIFA World Cup is on, and you can stream it all live on TSN Radio. From the opening kickoff to the final celebration, every match, every moment. Listen to FIFA World Cup on TSN Radio. Here's Canada to the Lift Off!

Available on IHeart Radio. Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season. It's not glamorous. Scouting, hanging cameras, cutting lanes, fixing fences, packing, practice, prep, the stuff that doesn't get noticed, but that makes the difference. That's what first light fieldware is designed for. Fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends. Every piece is built for real use.

No shortcuts. hardwearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters, built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right way. If you live in preparation, fieldware belongs in that routine. Check out FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. Speaking of initiatives and petitions and whatnot, we just touched on that thing in Oregon where they're fixing to,

there's a ballot initiative coming out to, it'll never in a million years, pass. A ballot initiative that would ban ranching rodeos that would ban hunting. It'll never pass. But they got the signatures to put it on the ballot.

And Oregon's governor Tina Kotech came out and publicly announced her opposition. Is it worth playing the video? We can play the first. Sure. Yeah. So she's getting a lot of calls. Hi Oregon. Governor Kotech here. After hearing from

concerned Oregonians, I want to take a moment to be very clear about where I stand on IP 28. I oppose it. Criminalizing activities like hunting and fishing would be wrong for Oregon. I know tribal leaders, family farmers and ranchers and Oregonians across the state who care deeply about protecting our land, waters, and wildlife. This petition does nothing to help them and it risks criminalizing common agricultural practices that are critical to Oregon's economy. Oh, keep playing. Oh, okay. Because there's a little, there's a little road.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, okay. Keep playing. I believe that we can have an honest conversation about responsible conservation and animal welfare. Pause. Without attacking the. That's, there's a little, like, you're watching it and you're like, hell yeah, go, woo! And then she does that, sure. We could have an honest conversation.

about animal welfare. Yeah, she's got to... What does that conversation look like? She's got to acknowledge a certain segment of demographics in that state. She's throwing a little bone. Yeah. But still, thank you. Governor.

Thank you, thank you. Okay, on the National Wildlife Refuges. A lot of news. This gets tricky. A lot of news. I almost want to snout it. No, we're doing it. Can I start by saying the,

the headline that I saw. Please. Okay. We'll lead into it with this. Then I'm going to do, then I'm going to do the whole. Yeah. I feel like this will give you a place to start.

Please. Please. I got a text from my buddy last week or the week before with a headline that said, Trump creates 92 million acres of hunting and fishing access. Yes. Okay. And then there's the Times headline. Yes. Then there's the Times.

Okay. During Trump won. During the Biden. administration, endearing Trump two, we have been witness to, we have seen a general relaxing of hunting and fishing

regulations on certain federal lands. Which create opportunity. Trump one picked it up where they would look and be like, well, why can't you fish here? I'm just pulling out an example, not a concrete example, but a loose example. It would be like, let's say there's a waterfowl refuge that hosts

where birds spend on their migratory journey. They're spending time there in the winter, but someone realizes that for some reason you can't fish there in June, you know, and there's, there's no birds, right? So they said, well, why can't you fish there in June? And so they would open up and they'd say, you know what, there's no real reason you shouldn't be fishing there in June. So we're going to increase these opportunities. Trump, one, started it under Secretary Bernhardt, that started up. I think Obama, Obama did Obama do something. Yeah. Biden did some. Trump two, though, has announced The biggest one.

Like, this is the biggest one. So just to give you a little fact about it, okay, there's a press release the Interior Department put out. And here's some lines. I'm going to give you some lines from the press release. This is from the Department of the Interior, okay? So lines such as, the Department of the Interior today announced major actions

to expand hunting and fishing access across lands and waters managed by the department. The actions include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife services proposed largest expansion of hunting and fish hunting and sport fishing opportunities in agency history alongside national park service actions to remove unnecessary hunting related restrictions across national park system units where hunting is authorized by law that's an important thing where authorized by law now but just just this is coming for me not the DOI. Before anyone gets excited here, we're going to be throwing around national park system units, but just trust me. We're not talking about hunting in Yellowstone or Yosemite or whatever,

not these big marquee national parks. This isn't national park derangement syndrome. Yeah, these national park system units, okay? So we're not talking about no one's hunting Yellowstone, no one's hunting Yosemite. So put that out of your mind. All right. Back to the DOI. Together, these actions reflect the department's commitment to expanding responsible access to America's public lands while maintaining strong conservation stewardship and aligning federal management with state wildlife frameworks where appropriate. There's a quote from Secretary of the Interior Doug Bergam. He says, America's public lands belong to the American people and they should be able to access them without a unnecessary bureaucracy standing in the way.

We are, he goes, Bergam goes on, we are expanding opportunities for hunters and anglers reducing duplicative restrictions and making federal land management more practical, consistent, and acceptable. Okay? And they go on to say, here, I'm going to throw some numbers your way. They're proposing to open or expand.

Now, you got, here's, all this stuff is where the words start to matter. And this is good, I'm not saying this is good news, but let's just look at it in a measured way. Open or expand more than 1,450 hunting and sport fishing opportunities across 111 stations in 32 states. Okay. Sounds huge. It's good. It's good. First of all, let's define an opportunity. When they say open up an opportunity, what they mean is, open up an opportunity for a specific species on a specific unit. Okay? So there could be a place where, for whatever reason,

and this would be a totally normal example of something, that there's a refuge where you're allowed to hunt, you're allowed to hunt big game, you're allowed to hunt waterfowl, you're allowed to hunt upland birds. Well, drop that one because of the example I'm going to use. making my own thing confusing. You're allowed to hunt wild pigs. You're allowed to hunt

deer. You're allowed to hunt waterfowl. But for some reason it was closed to alligator hunting, but all of the surrounding areas are open for alligators. The state allows alligator hunting and all the surrounding areas, but for whatever reason the refuge was closed. If you

then make it that, you can hunt alligators at a specific time of year in a place where you couldn't before. That is counted as an opportunity. And let's say there was 10,000 acres on that refuge, that adds 10,000 acres of opportunity to hunt for alligators. Yeah. And likewise, let's say there's a 10,000 acre refuge.

And historically, you could hunt alligators on 9,000 acres. And they open up the remaining 1,000 for alligator. That would be, Bing, and opportunity. They don't split hairs on fish. Okay. So fish is like fishing on, fishing off. Meaning if you can fish bass and all of a sudden they're like, hey, now you can fish croppy. They're not calling that an opportunity.

So they're not trying to inflate the numbers by doing weird little things. They treat a fishing opportunity as fishing, right? But they would look at if you open up big game hunting where it wasn't previously done, that might create multiple opportunities. Or they might even do it where it's like you could hunt grouse and you could hunt some other upland bird, but you couldn't hunt pheasant. Yep. And now they're allowing you to hunt pheasant there. So now that whole 10,000 acres where people are already hunting grouse and other upland birds, when they add fessent, that's 10,000 acres added to that total. Hey, 10,000 acres.

Another example, I think that's not specific. Go ahead. I got millions of examples. But like, I used to run into this in Nebraska where you would go to a national wildlife refuge to hunt deer. When you get there, it says non-toxic ammunition only. Dude, I got a whole segment on this. Okay. Go ahead then.

Thank you, though. Jumping the gun. And again, you got excited. I get excited all the time. This is all good stuff, but it's nuanced. As much as I hate to use the word. It's good news, it's good news, but it's not as good news as some people want it to be. Some people want it to be bad news.

And some people. Okay. This is new, though. This is the new part that's interesting. Okay. The Department of Interior's new perspective is this. when it comes to the lands under their management, consider it open unless otherwise.

Used to be historically was consider it closed unless otherwise. So they're flipping the sort of philosophical angle at which they look at these. Not, hey, convince me that it should be open for alligators. It's you'll have to convince me that it shouldn't be open for alligator. It's just flipping how they look at it. That's big. All right. Here's an overstatement.

There's an organization that comes out and says that the proposal would make more than 90, no, their own, sorry, this is not an organization. The proposal itself, the Department of Interior itself says the proposal would make more than 92 million acres or more than 95% of national water. Wildlife Refuge System lands available for hunting. It's important to point out that it would be that around 91.6 million are. Already. Yeah. But you look at that and be like, my God, where are they finding 92 million acres of land to open up? What they're saying is with these additions, the number jumps to 92 million from somewhere

around 91. something million. Yeah. But it's a little. It's all in the presentation. It's a little misleading. I'd have to check where this came from. SEI was feeling that it was going to open around 2 million acres of new open or expanded lands now expanded or open for hunting. I think that other organizations have looked at that, and I think it's probably about a few hundred thousand acres.

Not two million, but a few hundred thousand, which is a ton. that these expansions and openings will affect and create opportunities on a few hundred thousand acres. Yeah. And getting rid of the kind of like red tape or like confusion around regulations is huge too. Yeah. Yeah. The New York Times, and I'm a New York Times subscriber and reader, I get a lot of great news from

New York Times. I read a lot of different things. I intentionally guard myself against bias by reading, I recognize that all things have a bias so I just read things

that I recognize the bias on one side and I read things where I can recognize the bias on the air side and I don't pretend that there's a flat line of no bias.

This show, there's no bias on this show. Mm-mm. No. This is the only non-biased news source out there. Mm-hmm. The new show.

But the New York Times pointed, they looked at this and they tried to find the weirdest things, the most alarming things they could find. This will be good. So they do nothing to point out like all the, you know, common sense.

Yeah. Like the fact that there used to be places where you could hunt invasive hogs all around an area, but you couldn't hunt them on the refuge, even though, like, why would you not be able to hunt the invasive hogs in a refuge, trying to get rid of the hogs? Anyways, instead of pointing out those things they point out, like, there's a new rule that would make it that you can clean. Then they're like, good Lord, according to this, you'd be able to clean fish in the bathroom. This is in the New York Times. We're still trying to figure out what this is talking about, but it would open up the cleaning of at a specific refuge.

I think that that sounds like good news. Yeah. But they found it to be very alarming. This idea that somewhere was it in Louisiana? I forget, but it's like one specific refuge. Those restrooms are now open. They are now closed for fish cleaning. And I'm like, if you know,

what's going on with this please write in. There is obviously more to the story here, but the New York Times has read it to beat that now they could clean fish in the bathroom. But there's some story here that I don't know. If I walked into a bathroom and somebody was in there clean a fish,

I'd be like, huh, and then I'd go to the bathroom. Yeah, I'd take a leak. I'd be like, what'd you guys catch? And if it was little kids, if it was kids, yeah, I would go, boys, make sure you clean that up. Yep. Because you're going to get someone all pissed off.

Just make sure you clean. Nice fish. Nice fish. Just clean that up. The Lake Meredith National Recreationary in Texas. Specifically, you can clean fish and game in the bathroom. There's more to the story. If someone down there can write it and tell me why this is a thing, please let me know.

Because it's in every article about this. I'm all for you cleaning fish in the bathroom, scaling them on the toilet seat. I'm joking, but there's got me more to the story. New York Times also pointed out that there's like a place in Colorado, where you can now shoot from or across trails, without mentioning that you can always shoot from or across trails on all national forest land in wilderness areas. Like, if you're walking down a footpath and you see a deer, you don't have to step across the footpath.

It's not unusual. And again, I don't know the specifics of the area, but that in and of itself is not unusual because on any national forest land, when you're out there, there's designated, marked trails. There is never rules about shooting from trails. Roads, yes. Yeah, but that's just, like, I just see that as like a typical example of a disconnect from a New York Times writer with reality. Right?

Yeah. I wish I was pointing out to someone today. I wish Jim Robbins has written the article. But yeah, because it's meant to be, people are meant to read it and go like, good Lord. Yeah. The world's coming to an end. And it might not. Okay.

Now, we've shot down. Okay, we've talked about extremes on both sides. There's the extreme that, good Lord, there's going to be hillbillies cleaning fish and bathrooms. And there's going to be people shooting from trails. That's terrible. Two people kind of like a little bit overstating the benefits here.

And the benefits are many. Let me give you an example. there is a 4,300 acre complex of prairie and wetland in central Montana. It used to be called the half-breed NWR. It's now Grass Lake National Wildlife Refuge. All right. It was previously close. So 4,300 acres, flat out, 4,300 acres was previously close to all hunting.

Not no more. So that is a straightforward opening of hunting opportunities on 4,300 acres, like, like, from off to on. And that's the problem with the name, like, the name National Wildlife Refuge, because a lot of people hear that name and they're like, how could you ever allow hunting on a wildlife refuge? It's all over the place. I know, but it's like, you can hunt, you can hunt virtually all of them. A lot of people are, don't, like, it's just a problem with that name, you know. Neil Smith, National Wildlife Refuge. here's another one,

6,000 acre property. It was established in 1990. Okay. Its purpose is to, its purpose is to restore and protect tall grass prairie and oak savanna. Okay. Previously, so it's, it's tall grass prairie and oak savanna,

but for some reason previously, you could not hunt waterfowler upland birds. But you could hunt some big game. You can now hunt birds and waterfowl on 6,000 acres that you previously could not. So that's just flat out. That's good stuff. Okay. It creates first ever hunting or sport fishing opportunities at 14 refuges and three fish hatcheries.

Another thing it does is it, sometimes you'll have regulatory, rules. Here's Brody's lead thing. I think I'm on the lead thing now. Sometimes you'll have regulatory rules that apply in all the surrounding lands, but they'll be a little bit different on the refuge, and it can create confusion. So where they can, where possible, they're taking away refuges having seemingly arbitrary restrictions that sit alongside the regular state restrictions that govern all the surrounding lands. For instance, there's a location where

there's a refuge location where for some reason Sunday hunting was prohibited and it didn't conform to the surrounding lands. That would be a thing this could take care of. You have hogs which are

an invasive, exotic, deleterious species. You have a new trio which are an invasive, exotic, deleterious species. There are some refuge is where you used to be able to hunt them part of the year, you'd now be able to hunt them year round.

Okay. At Padre Island, you'll see an expansion of hog hunting opportunities. For some reason, there was a refuge where you weren't allowed to hunt from tree stands, but in the surrounding lands, you were allowed to hunt from tree stands. That tree stand ban would be lifted. Also taking a look at areas where, Refuges have different rules about lead, shot shells, and fishing tackle. Okay, so they're looking at it.

And all this stuff is open to public comment. The public comment period runs through June 26, I believe. Let me make sure that's right. June 26. Public comment period ends June 26. So you can go chime in about all this, right? But there's some refuge lands where they have banned lead fishing tackle. I understand a waterfowl refuge land.

I understand. Well, you can't use lead for waterfowl federally. Okay. But let's say there's refuge land, waterfowl refuge land where you can hunt pheasants and you're allowed to hunt pheasins with lead and the refuge would say, because it's the waterfall refuge area, we want you use a non-toxic shop for pheasants. The conversations such as that I'm totally open to. But the not, the lead thing has even moved over to fishing.

tackle, which I'm skeptical of. Banning leadhead jigs, banning lead sinkers. I have a hard time accepting that you would ever accumulate any kind of meaningful quantity of lead head jigs and lead sinkers. It's tough for me to accept.

Lead shot, I get it. I get it, get it, get it. Lead fish and tackle seems a little extreme. Anyways, revisiting lead restrictions in Indiana, on refuge land in Indiana. visiting lead restrictions in Maryland.

Revisioning led restrictions in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine. Okay? In other places. So big news, bigish news. Huge news. Huge news. If you live next to one of these places, it might be somewhere out there, some lucky fellow, some lucky person who all of a sudden realizes that all of a sudden now they have, you know, next door down the road,

our drive away, 4,000 acres of new waterfow hunting opportunity opened up. If so, congratulations. With all that, the final caveat I want, all caveat I would like to add is there will be situations where there will be situations where you're going to have to have restrictions

in order to make the refuge make sense. You know, there's a refuge in this state, that hosts a, you know, there's a refuge in this state that hosts tons of migratory waterfowl, you can't hunt it in the fall. You can hunt around it and it creates phenomenal waterfall hunting around it. If they were to come in and say, hey, you know what, anybody can hunt at any time and all of a sudden guys are zipped around in boats, you're going to, you're going to negate the quality, you're going to negate the purpose of that refuge, right? So I don't think it's It shouldn't be like all regulations need to go away.

But when we're talking about the ones that aren't compromising the core mission of the refuge, I agree, let's get rid of the unnecessary regulations. If it winds up being that the restrictions create the core mission of the refuge, like providing a sanctuary for migratory waterfowl, which then drives phenomenal waterfow hunting opportunities all around the region, because you have safe roosting ground, keep it. Don't throw it out. it's like they should be doing wildlife conservation on these lands but agreed they shouldn't be doing

arbitrary unnecessary restrictions because someone decided 20 years ago that they could yeah good job steve thanks man i try it's a sprawling topic it is yeah somebody's topics so big you're you're hesitant to get into them i dug up an old press release for one of these announcements because it's they you know like annually they make these and and this one is formatted in a way it says this rule opens the following refuges to hunting for the first time

colon and then it says it and then it's they do it in a much easier to understand way it says expand migratory big game bird hunting and then the next sentence says this is already open to game bird hunting migratory game bird hunting maybe you kind of lost me there

I think like there's so much information in these announcements the way that it's presented you have to really dig in to wrap your head around it. And it makes you almost want to not talk about it because it's so complicated. Yeah, I know. It's like, do you even touch it? Because it's just sprawling. Just go check the regs for the National Wildlife Refuge near you.

Sorry to deflate the strong ending to your segment. Yeah, it did end powerful, didn't it? Yeah. And then you kind of chimed in and kind of ruined it. I was trying to get the banner going again because I feel like the work stands. The work stands on its own. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart.

IR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists. Like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate, love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. Let's be honest about the kind of work that earns a season.

It's not glamorous. Scouting, hanging cameras, cutting lanes, fixing fences, packing, practice, prep, the stuff that doesn't get noticed, but that makes the difference. That's what first light fieldware is designed for. Fieldware is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues long after the season ends. Every piece is built for real use. No shortcuts. hardwearing where it needs to be

versatile where it matters built to handle varied tasks and the demands of doing things the right way if you live in preparation fieldware belongs in that routine check out First Lights new fieldware collection at firstlight.com

would you like to tell us about what you're going to tell us about? Are we going to do the Texas Mountain Lion? Did I skip something? Oh, just real quick. Yeah. Okay. We discussed Texas having this outlandish idea that you'd have to report your mountain lion harvest.

A lot of people got worked up about that. We talked about people getting worked up about it. I kind of explained my take on it. Well, the proposal is withdrawn. If you are a Texan who does not want to tell any government official that you got a mountain lion, rest easy. You will continue to not tell. You will be able to continue to be able to not tell. It's your little secret.

It'll be your little secret because they withdrew the proposal that you should tell. All right. On to more federal news here, President Trump signed an executive order on May 29th that rescinded two longstanding executive orders, which guided federal management of off-road vehicle or off-highway vehicle use on public lands. and these are two, again, he rescinded two preexisting executive orders, one from Nixon, one from Carter, that were sort of the framework of how the federal government manages vehicle travel. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is tied to when you get to a trailhead and you see those little signs and it'll have like a jeep with an X through it. Yes.

And it'll say, or there'll be a horse and that's okay and a dude and that's okay. Yeah, exactly. So the first executive order that got rescinded was Nixon, and he ordered the heads of public land management agencies to develop regulations and policies to designate where you can use motorized vehicles and where you can't. So he basically just said, you need to plan for this and it outlined what they should consider when designating motorized routes. soil damage, watershed impacts, vegetation, minimize harassment of wildlife, and minimize conflicts between different user groups. And part of that order is that in developing these regulations that the public has to have a say.

So it follows like the public process. The second order that was rescinded came from Carter, and that basically stepped up what, Nixon had laid out and he empowered agencies to issue emergency closures when motorized vehicles are causing damage to a resource. So they don't have to, you know, that doesn't have to go through a full planning process. But when there's considerable adverse effects to the resource, the agency is empowered to shut down that motorized route. And it also, we were just talking about how on refuge lands in respect to hunting and fishing and they're closed unless open and they're moving towards open unless closed.

That was sort of what Carter put in place with this executive order. That routes are closed to motorized traffic unless designated as open. So that's out the door. The argument behind the executive order rescinding these two prior orders is that it was too vague. These are too vague and they put unnecessary restrictions on access to federal lands. They want to reduce regulatory burden. and increased public access. And the administration says that NEPA, which is the National Environmental Protection Act,

and the ESA provides sufficient framework for managing motorized vehicle use on public lands. They also make a point here that I thought was interesting. They say that restrictions on motorized vehicle use amount to de facto bans on hiking. and other forms of recreation that require accessing remote areas, all while doing little to benefit multiple use of public lands. So again, this is one of those things where you have to read past the headlines because there's folks on both sides that are either cheering or criticizing this. It doesn't open up the floodgates to just drive your vehicle anywhere you want on

on national parkland or national forest land or anything like that it's kind of hard to predict what the exact results will be but um those executive orders that were rescinded created a framework for rulemaking and so doing away with them doesn't get rid of the rules that resulted from that yeah it just means that in future uh travel management planning things of that nature it's it's going to look different. And it's important that people keep a close eye on what's going on there. I give that a big old boo, dude. I don't like it. Yeah. I always say, man, I think call me crazy. I just don't think we're going to run out of roads. I don't picture a future where people are like, dude, what happened all the roads? Yeah. I mean, you can't go nowhere now. It's like,

what we're going to run out of is places that don't have any roads. That's what we'll run out of. Yeah, there's something like, I saw this statistic that there are, at the end of World War II, there are 100,000 miles of road in the National Forest System. In 50 years, that quadrupled. And at this point, we have 10 times as many miles of Forest Service road as we have in the interstate highway system. It's damn hard to find a place in this country, like in the lower, 48 where you can walk five miles without hitting the road. Yeah. Real hard.

But people act like it's just like that they're just locked out. It's like, dude, this world's a damn place. You ever been up in a like, well, one year, ever been out driving around or two? Should you ever be coming into some airport? Look out the window. I just, they're just everywhere I looked is the road. Yeah. We got one right here up against the office.

Yep. And it's important that like the travel management planning that is meant to mitigate the impact recreational use of these places. Like that doesn't affect, the agencies can still use those closed roads for fire suppression and all that stuff. The minute I saw this headline, without even, you know, I understand it better now, the minute I saw the headline, my initial feeling was, that ain't good. Yeah.

Because I know, like, I know the secret conversations happening. Do you remember years ago, years ago, we interviewed Rob Bishop. Yes. Congressman Rob Bishop from Utah. And it was not right when, but the word access was becoming a real buzzword. It had always been, but people were really narrowing in on access, access, access. And when people in my circle are saying access, we were talking about being allowed, right, opening up new lands where you'd be allowed to hunt fish or maintaining. Yeah, or maintaining access to public lands.

And that if people wanted to sell public lands, it would reduce access. So we're like, oh, I'm pro-access, meaning I'm pro having these places where you can go. If he, those, this must have been seven, eight years ago, he was shrewd enough to say, oh, I'm pro-access. We need more roads. And I was like, oh. Yeah, it's, I mean. That kind of access. The people who are kind of anti-wilderness area.

like that ain't the kind of access they want no right they'll talk about there needs to be access to that and you're like well hey i'm pro access tell me more and it's like well what what i'm talking about is roads yeah we need roads and like randall in your research you may have come across i don't know but like the the the kind of back room conversations like is this setting up yeah like is it setting up everything up to roads for development of one form or another? No, and I didn't, you know, I saw suggestions not only in response to this immediate news, but I saw reports from a few months prior that suggested the administration is looking at overhauling or doing away with travel management planning.

I looked as best I could for any sort of official communication of that, and I didn't see any. But taking in hand with the roadless rule rescission. I was just going to bring that up. There's no question what they're gunning for here because they want to repeal the roadless rule. And so I think like my takeaway from this was it's not the end of the story. Right. There's a next move because what this does isn't necessarily clear for in terms of on the ground impacts. But I did I did talk to Cal and he said, you know, no mistake about it.

This is a serious thing that happened. happened. And he says, you know, whenever you talk about access, it's always a tradeoff between impact on the resource and access. You know, no matter if you're talking about a hiker, a side by side, whatever else, like when you talk about putting more people on the ground and more places, it always is going to have an impact on the resource. So it's not like a conversation you can have in absence of the other conversation. I want to do a terrible analogy on some of these things. We brought it up when we were talking about the M44 devices

where, let's say you tell your kids, don't even ask me if you can go spend it at your friend's house. I'm not open to even, there's a prohibition on you even asking. Right?

And then one day you say, I'm open to you asking. They might be like, sweet. Yeah. But I still have to say yes or no. So some of these things, what they're doing like on the M-44 thing, it was don't ask. Don't even ask. Now it's like, okay, we're open to you asking.

Yeah. Right. But you still don't know how the decisions are going to end up being made. So some of these pieces like this say like, okay, we're removing the absolute ban, but it's still case by case. Right. How bad was that analogy? Like on a one to ten. No, I think it's, I think it's fair because it, this is.

something that signals future action. Yeah. And, and you can guess what that future action is. And from where I'm sitting, it's not good. Yeah, like my kids, if I said, okay, I'm open to the question. Yeah. That's good news for them. If you're a dude that likes the hot dog around in the woods.

Yeah. Off trail or whatever around like seldom used trails and like to burn it up, you could probably read this as good news. But it doesn't immediately mean anything to you yet. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't take my dirt bike and just rip across the Lamar Valley and Yellowstone thinking that I'm off the hook there. But I read the news.

I read the coverage in the Times that said he's opening all public lands to do whatever you want. But I mean, I do like, you know, it's one of those things. It's like you know that they're not doing this for no reason, right? Like there's a longer play in mind. And so, you know, the groups that, the groups that stand up for roadless areas are, they are waving the red flag at this point. It's making me nervous. Yeah, it's making me nervous, too. I'm excited about those, I'm excited about those new fishing and hunting opportunities on the refuges, and this is making me nervous.

You'll be able to drive right to those new opportunities. You know, it's making me hungry. Because these new lake trout records. These don't, these don't get eaten. Yeah. So out of Minnesota, Lake Superior. This is going to be a record fish thing that's about real fish, unlike Spencer's bullshit reporting. West Virginia, I love you.

Phil, can you pull up the number one photo? Yes. Oh, my. That gentleman's name is May Joe Buddha. God. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. What's his name? May hyphen Joe Buddha.

B-O-U-T-A. Like a Jedi Knight, dude. On May 9. It's like something Java would say, Mejo-Buta. On May-N-N-Jol Lake Trout. Yeah. May-Nine Lake Superior this year.

Holy cow, look at that fish. Forty-five-inches long. Now, that fish was landed vertical jigging in approximately 100 feet of water. Oh, so jealous. Are you serious? 15 minutes to bring it to the net. And it's certified as the most recent

Minnesota catch and release Lake trout record estimated to be a gorgeous fish man estimated to be about 30 pounds I hate to do this

I hate to do this I wanted to find the spelling of May Joe Buddha yeah you might have had a transposition error where you deleted that it was caught on May 9th and you deleted a 9 in a comma

before it said Joe Buddha of Benson well he's known as May Joe Buddha now because he catches records in May that is what what happened. I like Mr. October.

That's awesome. Now, you should be thinking, wow, that's a great fish, right? Joe Buddha. Okay. Less Star Warsy, but still.

Salt to the Earth. God, that fish. Yes. Okay. What a beautiful fish. What a beautiful fish. That fish beat a record that was caught a month ago

on Lake Superior. That measured 44 inches long. Pull it up, Phil. Oh, my God. Now does, I mean, it's the good old days. 44 inches long. That dude was fishing on a nice calm day, man. Also caught in Minnesota Lake Superior.

Look at that thing. That was the catch and release state record for like two weeks. Oh, my gosh. Here's the thing. Both of those fish were caught. These guys were clients of a guide named Ethan Wightashik. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. he's got a business called Lake Superior Jigging Guide Service.

He gets right to it with that name. Yeah. He ain't trolling. Yep. They're out of Twin Harbors, Minnesota. White Tashik focuses on using electronics to find large Lakers and catches them by vertical jig with two-ounce lead leadhead jigs with a white tube tipped with smelt. Oh, my God.

I'm just, that just like makes me. So you're probably thinking this. I think I just did the wrong thing in life. This guy. That guy. What's his name? Ethan Wightashik. Now listen.

It doesn't end there. Last year, Wytashic guided Isaiah Bartlett to what was then the state record catch and release Lake Trout. Oh, my goodness. Isaiah Bartlett.

Look at the heads on those things. That is a fish. And the year before that, Wytashic guided Keltz. I'll see Vanderhaden to the state record catch and release leg trout at 42 and a half inches. Look at that thing. My goodness.

Now, you might be thinking this guy's just catching the same fish each year, but I don't think that's what's. That's a big body of water, dude. He's got some good electronics if he's finding that same fish. This guide knows what he's doing, man. Dude. And so Minnesota, like a lot of states, keeps traditional. state records, which are based on weight, you've got to kill the fish and bring it to a certified scale. These are catch and release records. And there's like a, you're seeing this

in more and more states that have this category for anglers that want to let the fish go. What's his company's name again? What's that? What's his company? It is. Jig and wall. Lake Superior jigging guide service. He's going to get a lot of calls. Dude, those fish, man, he's going to be getting calls because you go out that dude, drop man you want to talk about fun man two ounces deep dropping yeah it's good practice for halibut fishing yeah um so for catch and release record you need multiple photographs that clearly show the fish being measured a witness who can sign their name and the fish has to be at least one quarter inch longer than the existing

record so these fish met all those qualifications they don't want to be splitting hairs on that shit no no especially with catch and release stuff since you can't you know you don't have the right there. Lake Superior has like been a traditional big giant lake trout fishery. And this just shows that it's still going on, which is like a lot different than other great lakes that have had trouble with lake trout fisheries.

Lake Erie where I grew up, there's hardly even any lake trout left there. I'm not sure where Lake Michigan's at. They came back good in Michigan. They did come back, yeah. But the reason why Lake Superior is so good for lake trout is extremely cold, deep

water with abundant forage fish such as Ciscoes and Smelt. To grow a lake trout like that takes 30 to 40 years, I think. Man, you put that, you can just picture that sucker into smoker, just that fat dripping off there, man. I'm glad he threw him back. That's cool. So the one guy, he had the record,

but only for a couple weeks, and now it's, it's Majo, Buddha's record now. May Joe. Yeah. Thank you pointing that out, Randall, because I did not, I feel like, that's a weird name. Well, then I want to go back to the guy that the, the West Virginia guy, he said, bleeding is temporary, as state record is forever. Not really. Not if your lake trout fishing with vertical jigging guide service.

I should have had a picture of Ethan, but I'm sure you can find a picture of him, the actual guide. So yeah, good news out of the Minnesota side of Lake Superior. Yes. Please subscribe to the Meat Eater podcast YouTube channel. If you're watching, if you're seeing this happen on a video screen,

go sniffing around down there and hit subscribe. If you're listening, driving around in your car or whatever, hit follow wherever you listen so that this show gets served up to you every week. And so you can keep up

on all things going on outdoor news. Thanks for listening. If you do off-season work, you know it beats up gear. Scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days. First Light fieldwear is built for all that. No shortcuts. Purpose-built, durable.

Hard-wearing where it needs to be versatile where it matters. It supports the work that earns the season. Check out First Light's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human.