The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 892: Ryan Callaghan on Public Lands and Conservation

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with Backcountry Hunters and Anglers President and CEO Ryan Callaghan. Topics discussed: Cal’s life as a new dad and new CEO; the BHA mission; creating coalitions, community, and giving a shit; how our natural resources are not guaranteed; politicians claiming to carry TR’s torch; throwing the baby out with the bathwater in regards to regulation; approaching rollbacks and management changes with clarity; motivation behind scrapping the Roadless Rule; the pitfalls of absolutism; corner crossing; being engaged in the minutiae; 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.

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Or back from fatherhood. You had a baby. I assisted in having a baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand. How long ago? We, so Friday is the birthday. So it's very easy to keep track unless you're in between Fridays like we are right now.

Yeah. So it's, oh, two and a half weeks. Two and a half weeks? No, three weeks. First child ever. Three and a half weeks, yeah. First child ever. and a baby boy came out seven pounds five ounces and that that's a stat that people share but

I don't think that that's it's all relative yeah I don't know that that means a lot to people everything perfectly average like the doc said like perfectly average big hands big feet no but might grow into those type of thing got it and it was kind of hilarious so an average little baby. Yes. Yeah, perfectly average, but you're like, oh, kind of like clown hands and clown feet, which is funny. And then definitely my hairline, which is a bummer for that kid. The baby has your hair line. Yeah. It's like high up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Widows Peak comes back real far. Born with Widows Peak. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What's your biggest takeaway so far being a dad? I, you know like the biggest thing is oh my god it's not that big of a deal as like i think we're we're

blessed for the fact that it's not we don't fall in any of like the horror story categories yeah um it is a hands-on thing mm but the thing that i just keep coming back to is i'm like oh my god i cannot paid parental leave how did people manage this without paid parental leaf. I'm like that is such a, like that is the thing that makes this thing doable. You know what they give you in the military? The dad?

Three days. Oh yeah. You got three days. I was talking to my buddy Kyler who I used to build houses with. And he's like two days per kid. That's what we do. You know, and I'm like, I'm just like so blown away by, like, I get a focus on this.

as my job and get through that initial learning curve. It's all a learning curve and will be forever, I suppose. But I'm just blown away by that. I'm like this is, and I just feel like it's got to like make for better relationships with, you know, between the parent and child bond and all those things. The dad gets to be there and help a little bit at first. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, I took note that you somehow managed to. get the baby out of the hospital without it having a name. Yeah. And when we had our kids, I felt by the time we went away, they had a name. Yep. How did you, what did you have to say to say that I don't know the name yet? You know, the thing that I think got us out of there without the name is the fact that somebody was like, well, I thought you legally had to have a name.

And I said, no, you don't. and the hospital admin person kind of pauses for a second. Are you serious? You guys discussed it. Yeah. Yeah. Because we were fully being like, oh, yeah, we're going to see the little nipper. This is how the whole thing's going to go.

And by the time we leave, we'll have the name. He looks like a Chucky. Exactly. And you're just bugged nonstop to the point where I'm like, hey, Sam has got to get some rest. You know, but every shift change, there's vitals. And then all the things. And so we just got to the point where we have got to get out of here. There's no rest.

There's no time to actually just like sit with this and figure things out. And then, yeah, I will tell you that we are still nameless here at three and a half weeks in. But we are very, very close to about three names right now. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the mother shared, I heard this second hand, Sam shared with another friend of ours that she said it took Cal months to name his dog. Yep.

So I don't know. Maybe it's going to take a while. A lot of, it might be a generational thing or it might just be certain people, but I've, a lot of the folks in my extended friends and family have been like, oh, yeah, none of my kids came home with the name. Oh, really? Yeah. I just felt like, I don't know why.

I don't know where I got the idea, but I just came away thinking that it was like, like it was like an edict from God that you name before they come out. Yep. Oh, yeah. Now that I'm learning, it's not. It's too late. They all got names. My grandpa passed away like three months before, um, he had like this, these series of

complications that were like, you're going to have to go in and, get your chest drained and all these things in order to stay alive to meet this baby. And he was in perfect mind and, you know, so it was a bummer 91 or 92, 91 or 192. And, you know, he's a James. And so I was like, you know, I can't get the name James out of my head because I was so excited for this, for Gramps to meet this. kid and then you know i was like hey you got to stick around he's like well how long is that going to be it was like three months he's like yeah and didn't make it yeah he's like i'll see him later type of yeah yeah um because yeah he just was he had you know he's an old doc and stuff didn't

you know had no do not resuscitates and all the things sure sure yeah he had his plan laid out of like not one i didn't know so he passed away yeah yeah maybe i can't i don't think i knew that yeah it's like three and a half months ago now. You know, so but that was like, and I think James is still in the running. But now we're like so far down the name rabbit hole. There's like the social pressure of being like,

oh, you guys waited three months and you came up with Jim. Yeah, no, yeah, they're expecting some real razzle-dazzle now, man. They're expecting like something crazy, you know. Exactly, yeah. And a bunch of folks were like, snort was such an awesome name for your dog we're really really can't wait to hear what you name the kid

yeah yeah well you could take snort give that name to the kid and then think of a new name for the dog yes if you needed to do something like that yeah but we all kind of already did that because I had gotten in a panic about getting a new puppy to give snort some backup prior

to the kid showing up Mm-hmm. That didn't happen, but the breeder that I got snort from, her, the snort sister, the same litter, was having her last litter. And I was like, oh, my God, I got to have one of those dogs. Mm-hmm. And I just got that dog yesterday. Oh. So that dog got one of the kid names right away.

So we named the puppy right away. Oh, you took a discard and gave it to the dog. Yep. Yeah. Homey, you have a two and a half week old baby and you went and brought a dog into the house? Yeah, but the dog's way more advanced than the kid is. Dogs eight weeks old. So because they're living in dog years.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, man, much so I love babies, I want to talk about your other big life change. Yeah. So a lot of you list, there's no Cal from Cal's Week in Review. And a lot of you know that Cal recently went over, not even, what, I don't know, a few months ago, six months ago? Six months now, yeah.

Six months ago, Cal took over as, I believe, is it CEO? It's president and CEO, yeah. President and CEO of the conservation organization, backcountry hunters and anglers. What's going on? How's that been? Oh, I mean, it's been awesome. I mean, as you know, like, I found like every which way to make all my previous jobs harder than they needed to be. Because I was always trying to find good conservation stories or angles or ways to make bigger impacts.

And that gets, it's a way more complicated job, but it's also in a way more simple and focused. Because it's like that's what I'm doing as my job every minute of the day. Yeah. And you're leading to team of how many people? Right now we are 36. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

So membership organization. Active membership. You know, we got like a bunch of members that aren't active. Active membership. We're a little over 30,000 right now. Okay. growing, which is great to see. And then 44 chapters, active chapters across North America, you know, they're not chapters

anymore because they're officially standalone nonprofits in Canada. Okay. But Alberta and British Columbia, which is, you know, out here, we have a lot of cross-border issues, conservation issues. and then yeah we have everybody kind of works on everything but it's like a stewardship

so like hands on dirt underneath fingernails side of the house policy and I kind of break it down into like community building right so people know people that follow these things people that support at the org know that BHA, as it's commonly known, the BHA stands for public lands.

But like, like, how do you describe like a layer deeper? How do you describe BHA to somebody? When you say like our mission is to what? Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot because the scope of the organization, and I'm not beating up on anybody, right, but it's like, like trout unlimited. I got it. They're like, okay, general idea.

Yeah. Yeah. And then people are like, well, what does it at BHA? What is it that they actually do? Got it. Yeah, exactly. RMEF, yeah. And intentionally, the scope of BHA was really broad because they wanted to fill all

these gaps that were kind of getting left out. of some of these species-specific hook-and-bullet organizations. And oftentimes, that would just be like, BLM land. Okay. Wilderness. And there's wilderness organizations out there, but there weren't any that were really, like,

firmly pro-hunt, pro-fish. Yeah. They may have been at one point, and they work on similar issues, but it's not like the mast head. And that idea is, sound, but it makes the, the mission huge. I think the benefit is we can think a little more holistically, but the negative is we get spread really thin. So by and large, if we were a, like a for-profit

business building the widget, as they say in the business world, that widget would be conservation leaders. And it's like people who show up and want to do stuff. And that is advocate for their issues, which, you know, if you're working on behalf of BHA, it's our issues too. But public land, public water, public wildlife, and the access word would be like access to those things. And that can get kind of nuanced on the wildlife side of things. But it makes the organization a little more swift and adaptable. and then on stewardship, it is literally coming out in augmenting landscape. So habitat work, which for us would by and large be trail improvements and juniper removal, some planting.

But our migration corridor work is really, really significant. And again, because of our scope, nobody really knows about it. but we just got the Bureau of Land Management's Conservation Partner of the Year award. Oh, really? Which, like, we just punched so far out of our weight class. There are a lot of really big organizations get this that have hundreds of employees and deal in many, many millions of dollars of federal grant work to do this stuff. And so, yeah, really incredible that we got this award.

and we almost exclusively remove or augment fence within migration corridors. Okay. Which basically you have your big grazing lotments. Doing like the physical work. The physical work. So people might use GPS collar data or car crash data to know that these are problematic areas along migration corridors and doing the physical hands-on work of removal. moving barriers. Yeah, and oftentimes it's

your grazer on the ground who has their allotment. And they're like, you can't keep a fence up here. Oh. Like, we build them in the spring and winter migration comes and they all go down type of thing. And so we'll go in there

survey those fence lines. And so you have like your allotment fences, which kind of by design of the BLM are always firm. Like, they're always non-negotiable. And we'll go in and augment those

fences to wildlife friendly. Okay. And then you have your interior fences that basically create pastures within that allotment. Those ones are negotiable. So if they, there's a lot, the U.S. used to produce a lot of sheep, right? And there's a lot of that. you know, square fencing out there on the landscape.

Yeah, I always call it hogwire, but I don't know what you're supposed to call it. And like just for people listening, like everybody can picture a barbed wire fence. Yeah. And you'll talk about whether it's three strand or four strand, whatever. And for wildlife friendly fencing, there's considerations about how low the bottom strand is meaning can prong horn or whatever get under it there's considerations about how high the top strand is like can it will it stop stuff from being able to jump it right does that have barbs on it that could hang stuff up then there's this other question of when you put these these panels

in that have like eight inch squares yeah which no big game's getting no big games getting through that Yeah. By going under, right? Yeah. And it's a small game thing, too. They're hell on sage grouse. Okay. And like, if you can picture an animal on the landscape,

you can find it dead in one of those fences somehow, some way. Mountain lions, bobcats, everything. But so go in, cut that stuff down, roll it up, pack it out. Also, installing virtual fence. So there's, yeah, there's big grants out there for the actual producer to trial virtual fencing, right? So we'll put up the, and then it's vents is the working term, right? Yeah, yeah. Put up towers for, that creates the connectivity for each individual caller.

No kidding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there's a bunch of cool stuff happening out there. And the BLM uses their own math to measure impact on there. And depending on where you are in those migration corridors, you can, you know, it's all hard. But we had one project last year that was a one-day fence pole, 2.1 miles. and the impact because of the location was over 30,000 miles of positive impact within that migration corridor. Help me understand that.

It's, I think it's because of bottlenecks that animals are moving through and dispersing too. Got it. And then, and then some of them are six miles and way less too. So our job, the stewardship team's job, is to look at these projects and then, because most of what we do, and this is like the doing things the hard way. But I think in the long run, the better way is we're trying to empower whoever wants to show up to do the work. So volunteers because we want people to have that sense of ownership in their public lands and resources. Yeah. So and then they're all mixed groups. So you have a lot of people who will, because we'll put up signage at like REIs and try to get people from all slices of the pie to show up and they're in this mixed group. And we try to get people to camp out on a Friday night. So you leave work with. your car camp and stuff, ideally.

Show up Friday night. Oftentimes we try to have some sort of wild game food there for the volunteers. And then we get to talk about wild food and where it comes from. And everybody gets a taste of that. The next morning, you get a brief

on what we're going to do that day. You get tools. You get team leads. We get lots and lots of repeat volunteers on these things. So they get, you know, you kind of have like crew chiefs that are volunteers too. And then you're out there rubbing shoulders with hunters, non-hunters, you know, birders, whatever.

You know, people who just thought it was neat. And certainly people all across the skill level spectrum. And then you have this sweat equity in your, in your public lands. You have Bureau of Land Management professional. out there. Oftentimes you have the grazers out there too and it's

really the secret sauce, right? Because you have people who are like, nobody gives you shit about this stuff. And then they kind of get blown away by like, oh. Yeah, man, for sure. These really random people people showing up and doing it. Care about this stuff. Yeah. So we've gotten 2,000 volunteers out

on the landscape right now. And, you know, the idea, right, is like, there'll be like a little ripple effect. Yeah. Within those communities and they get it to be like, oh my gosh, this is really hard stuff. But it has an outsized impact. Yeah. And rub shoulders with new people, tried wild game for the first time. And so our stewardship coordinators have a really hard job because they're handling a lot of logistics and trying to find these projects where you can conceivably draw from a bunch of population centers to get people.

people out. And then make sure that you have people on the ground, too, that are supportive of the work, right? Yeah. Because you have a lot of burned out folks on the landscape who are like, because these contracts, some of these contracts don't get bid on. Some of these contracts get picked up by groups that are well-intentioned, but just can't get things done on the landscape. And we want to have a stellar reputation.

right um and so far it's working right so we got got that award which you want to get like if you say you're going to do it you're going to do it yeah yeah now you guys here you brought me this shirt feel can you see this good oh yeah cal brought me this shirt so michigan says this land is my land but it's like the m i michigan and it shows in orange it shows public land thank you buddy Phil, tell me what you can best see this sucker. It looks great right now. Okay. Here's Michigan.

It shows public land in orange. Okay. This is all public land in Michigan. And you were saying the point of the shirt is show. Here's a stick. Oftentimes a lot of guys, especially people out West, associate public land out West. And even just talking to you, you mentioned big grain migrations,

juniper encroachment. Okay. These are like, these are sort of like Western things. Yep. But then you got 44. four chapters. All over in the east, right? Yep.

What, like, help me understand that. So Michigan, I get it. Like, man, there's a boatload of public land in Michigan. But if you go south of there, Ohio, Indiana, right? Much less, right? You get up in the northeast, you get more, but you got these pockets where there's not much. But you got chapters there and you got volunteers there. if what is the what is the eastern equivalent of pulling fences what is the eastern equivalent of

improving grasslands by removing junipers in areas where junipers are encroaching on western grasslands like what does that look like somewhere else well um the juniper like the green glacier thing that i know we've covered on on meat eater before that juniper encroachment into our grasslands is a major issue throughout the whole prairie states um And we'll do some of that work in Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa. And then there's a lot of burning, you know, out in most states, too. And then just low barrier to entry, right? Like, what BHA has been doing well, and really my dream, right, is to have an accessible conservation group to where it's like, if you don't

don't have a bunch of money, we still got plenty of things for you to do. If you don't want to go to a banquet, we got stuff for you to do. If, you know, I want the whole political spectrum, the whole working class spectrum to be invested in their public land, public water, and public wildlife. Even if you never step foot or interact with those things, I got lots of arguments as to why they should matter. Yeah. But if you show up to these community events, you get to meet these people firsthand and you may not have a thing in common other than the fact that you appreciate this stuff.

But it turns out that's a lot. Yeah. Right. So stewardship in some areas made never get beyond a public land trash pickup. Okay. And but oftentimes we'll make them, you know, it's like what we talk about a lot, right? you can have a really strong message as long as it's like 80% fun. Yeah. So we'll have a biologist come out and talk about turkeys and why what you're doing,

picking up trash in this area is a good thing for that resource or talk about burning ecology, stuff like that, have giveaways, but make it like a family-friendly event. Yeah. Because, you know, one of the things that I'm very concerned. convinced on is like we got to get this stewardship ownership mindset like indoctrinated into people in in as young as we can get them yeah because you know that's some aldo leopold stuff man like yeah that being an active participant yeah out on the landscape man like his thing of like the you know the the the person wielding the the person wielding the axe or whatever you know

like the person out working on the landscape as a conservationist, you know. And I would ask. I mean, I love going down and winning. I love it going down and bidding on auction items at the banquet as much to the next guy, but like there's more to it. 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,

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Check out First Lights, new fieldware calls. collection at firstlight.com. There's this thing that I think's gotten us in trouble over the years, which is like, somebody else will do it for us. And that is part of the benefit of a membership organization. Like, we have people at the state house, at the Capitol, because you have a job and you cannot be there. But we work our asses off to empower volunteers to be there too and get that feeling

of empowerment and ownership of I get to represent myself and my community at the Fish and Game Committee or in front of Congress even, right?

But I feel really strongly that we kind of got in this like, oh, the Ranger will come by and pick that up type of mindset. The government's going to do it for me. And it's like,

we're in this crazy political football age where you can take whole programs of the government doing it for you and they're gone in the blink of an eye, right? And then it's like, okay, well, it's everybody going to get so pissed that we're going to be like, okay, sell it. Right? Well, there's all sorts of ways that we can try to prevent that through working within the political spectrum, but the surefire way to prevent that is if everybody just gives your shit. And it's like, oh my God, this is ours. It's a national treasure. We're invested in this. And I learned about this in kindergarten and grade school. And we are invested as Americans in our natural resources. And so much so that they go on beyond.

the next administration. We're talking about these things in perpetuity. And that's part of what community building will do is, you go, oh, the burden's not just mine. It's Steve Ronellas and Phil the Engineer and all these people from across the spectrum, like we all are invested in this. It is ours. It's our American right.

And it's, you get a way, from some of this kind of politics stuff, this choose inside stuff, because this stuff is squarely in the middle. There's a level of realizing about public lands and public land resources and in a personal responsibility to them, there's a level of maturity that is required

to see those places that way. And I say this from my own experience. And I've mentioned, I've talked about this a bunch before, I grew up near what was in Manistee National Forest. I think it's got a slightly more complicated name now, but it's kind of the southern end of Manistee National Forest. We hunted on it, hunted on it, hunted rabbits on it, trapped it,

recreated on it, had BB gun wars on it. It was like we viewed it and treated it as though it fell from the sky. It was just that it was there, always had been there, always would be there and there was no sense of personal ownership right and it would be that you'd go to kegger

parties and the kegger parties would be out on the national forest and you'd burn tires and burn pallets and you know 10th grade whatever and then walk away because it's just here oh yeah someone will get it do you know what I mean yep and it was like it took

and I don't know if I even if I had someone telling me the conservation history of those spaces and someone telling me what is required to maintain these places and the deliberate actions that took place to make them here and to make them available and make them public, even if you told me that, it might not have clicked that I was a certain age anyway. For sure. But I think that it would have definitely helped if someone had articulated it to me.

But I don't think it was really even known or recognized by our elders. Yeah. Like people didn't the turn, like this is in Michigan, the vocabulary wasn't there. Yep. Do you know what I mean? No one, even are the grownups,

if I'd have said, why is this here? No one would have said, oh, it was because of this act of Congress or the actions of this president. And like here's all the deliberate steps that took place to make it what it is. and here's the management strategy and here's what does happen and doesn't happen and here's the work that goes into it.

It was absent. It was absent. I don't know what I'm telling you. I'm telling you something you already know. But when you go out in the woods, you see where people just decided to shoot trees down for target practice and trash a place. It is because it's like they view it like a guarantee.

Do you follow me? Oh, there's that? And there is just what you said. Like, they don't know. Yeah. Like when we, we're, yeah, I'm having a lot of conversations with, with landowners here in the state of Montana.

Like, like, mid-level, the large landowners in the state of Montana. And there's a lot of just, like, for sure and certain things that come out. And it's like the percentage of folks who display poor behavior on private and public land. The vast, vast, vast majority just do not have a freaking clue

at this point. Sure. Right? They have no idea about agriculture. They have no idea about a lot of, whether it's in the regulation book or not, the kind of like the Hunter's Code, the ethics of certain things,

the stuff that we talk about a lot. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right in all cases type of thing. And then there's, there's a percentage that are just doing bad stuff. Yeah. Right. But if I had, man, I feel like, I feel like when I was a kid,

if it had been that my own man dragged us out to go do a stream project on the National Forest or in some way instilled this idea that like, this is sweet and it's here because people, it's not here by accident. Yep. Right? It's here because people work for it and cherish it. It might have set me off in a different direction earlier. But I think in a lot of places it's absent, man.

It's absent. So what I'm getting at with that is that like that kind of work of just results like the labor that you're talking about results in a good result. Sorry, it yields a good result, moving offense, improving migration. But it's more than that because it probably is very eye-opening for people. to all of a sudden understand like, oh, I see what this is. Yeah. I understand now what this is, man.

This is like a thing we fight for. And that's like we can use that cash to go that grant money. We can, it's in our power to use that cash to go pay contractors. Right? And just third party the whole deal. Sure. But what's the long term effect? of that.

Yeah. Right? It's like I would say not much in comparison. So. Yeah. To make it, yeah, to be able to build a generation of people who kind, who just are invited to see it as a thing that you labor for. Yeah.

You know, as a thing that people labor for and is the thing that took deliberate actions to create for you would make it a lot harder to go shit it up. And I think we've had as a nation, as I by and large, like an ethos of, serious reverence for public wildlife, for instance, right? Like, there's all, you can research all sorts of articles that were in papers of like, saw a deer today, right?

White-tailed deer was spotted on so-and-so's place out by whatever. That was in the newspaper. Yeah, like it was noteworthy. Yeah, it was a really big deal. And so there's this era of extreme scarcity that came on the back end of an era of, I would say, like, abundance to greed, which led into, oh, my God, I better get it before it's gone. It's going to be gone anyway. And then here comes this overwhelming surge of, again, reverend.

and what we call conservation today. And then I think your dad's era, right? It was like, I really don't want to think about anything, by and large. I've been through a lot. I'm more out here for a level of independence and therapy of some sort. And now I can point to like many, many examples across, Western states, they're seeing a lot of hunter pressure relative to the history of those states. Yeah.

Or doll sheep in Alaska where hunter behavior anecdotally has really changed around that resource. Yeah. Where it used to just be like, you'd get laughed out of town if you shot illegal ram. But now it's like, a legal ram is what you're after because by God, if I don't get it now. it's going away anyway type of mindset right um and throughout all of these changes in history our uh federal workforce peaked in the 1970s and the demands on that public ground are and that workforce hasn't increased along with those demands and now we're dropping way back down and my only point here is that at the beginning of the National Park system or the forest system,

the refuge system, there was never a point in time where there were so many wardens on the landscape that you were going to get caught. Yeah. Right. It was a social contract out there that was like, by God, you better respect this stuff. And it was the other users on the landscape that were really enforcing these things. plus the idea of the super sneaky woods wise game warden that was going to pop out of nowhere type of thing right you know it's funny about that man i uh we hunting fished all the time so i was very little kid i never got checked by a game warden until i was 20 years old yeah and believe

it 20 years old never laid i'm not that i didn't lay eyes on one never got checked by one you're right i mean it really is like um like speeding you know you kind of don't speed because you don't want a ticket. Yeah. But in fishing game law, there is a social contract, right? You don't go like, I better get a license because I'll get checked today. You're just like, you feel this moral obligation to get your license. Right.

The math does not add up on getting checked. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do it out of some like, because you do it because you believe in the system. Yeah. To some degree. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, we were a relatively small conservation group, right? But I mean, if that is the goal, it will never end, but I would sure like it to, right?

Like if we had a nationalistic pride in these resources, and they are resources, extraction is part of who we are as well. But there's been many times throughout our history where we were like, oh, my God, we need to self-regulate. And that self-regulation turns into it a whole. system of regulations because it it is just got to happen. And what's really interesting right now is like I know through conversations, you know, from the White House throughout the Senate and the House, there is a drive right now for deregulation. Yeah.

And a lot of the people who are pushing for deregulation are not connected to these resources at all. There are many degrees of separation. Sure. But they are running off of, well, that's what the people want, right? And our job, as is the job of a TRCP and many other conservation groups, is to say, like, yeah, there's changes that can be made. And there's antiquated things out there that don't make sense. But the reason that we're having this conversation right now is only because of regulation and the adherence to those. Oh, that there's anything left to argue about.

Yeah. On the hunting fish side of things, we just wouldn't be having this conversation. Yeah. Right? I mean, you're, yeah. You're bringing up a huge point. I always like to bring up this point that there's not a politician alive today that wouldn't like to be. favorably compared to Theodore Roosevelt.

Anyone would be like, oh, if you're going to favorably compare me to TR, please, I'll accept. Not only that, there are politicians that claim the mantle of TR that are undeserving of that. But they want it so bad, they'll just take it for themselves. They'll draw comparisons. It's like, I'm sorry. He was a regulation guy. He was a regulation guy because lack of regulation had brought us into the dark ages of American wildlife. And so when we applaud, when anyone applauds the North American model, when they applaud TR or TR being up on Mount Rushmore, what you're applauding is you're applauding someone saying, we are going to put limits.

We are going to regulate harvest. We're going to regulate sale of wildlife. we're going to regulate timber extraction. To then land in the spot, to land, then land in the luxury of saying that the American way is to deregulate, it's mind-boggling. Memories are so short. Memories are so short.

You know, obviously there's an opportunity here right now too. But one of the things that is certainly part of our mission at BHA is like we have got to get um if if you love doing anything on public lands or seeing anything on public lands um or seeing migratory birds songbirds whatever it is like you have got to get active here and you got to start associating with other groups and finding these big common themes right so um obviously i know you guys have covered like roadless rule a bunch the executive order on OHB use, oil and gas lease sales, deregulation through the big, beautiful bill. List really does go on and on.

That is the theme that is happening here. Yeah. Is broad deregulation because that's what the American people want, right? And we have got to be like, wait, wait, wait. not that and not that and this can be done better but there's a model of there's a model of pointing to

there's sort of a rhetorical strategy where you go find examples of regulations that are antiquated or regulations that don't work or regulations that are just goofy and maybe you always have been goofy right or excessive and you go because of that let's just ditch the whole thing.

Yep. You know, it's a point I bring up, like a way I think about it is, is if you look, if you go back to COVID, COVID restrictions, you could look and say, and I saw people do it, I did it. The minute someone's like, man, you shouldn't, you need to be scared of the boxes that were delivered in your yard. Like, leave them out there for a couple days. You know, and then you hear someone say, like, well, that's, that's ridiculous. And you're like, you get fixated on how dumb that was. Mm-hmm. And then you get to where like, I'm not listening to any of this stuff.

You're right. Right. You know what I mean? Like, remember the box thing? Yeah, like the boxing, dude. Pretty far off. I'm done washing my hands. The box thing was crazy.

Yeah. But that's like a human way where you find, you sort of see this category of things. One of those things seems crazy. And instead of isolating out the crazy one, you get where you're just, done oh yeah you're done you see it in friendships you have a great friendship with someone and they do a thing a couple times eventually you're just like i know i know he's got some nice things i'm done yeah you know i think that there is we hit these in in like regulatory stuff where you'll hear about a crazy thing and then people get like bah yeah absolutely let's just go back to the old way you know

and you kind of go like you want to be like well let's let's address the real problem But let's keep our eyes on what the goal is here. Yep. Like, we agree that we want clean air and clean water and healthy wildlife populations. Like, we agree on that. And sure, let's talk about these things that are off. But we don't. We just, we jump to a radical.

We jump to a radical thing. Absolutely. There's some government waste. Kill the whole thing. You know? Insanely diverse landscape that we have, right? like blessed as an American with unbelievable opportunities that it can be so wildly different from an edge of one state

to another state or the end of a watershed to the top end of a watershed. The people on the ground understand that you can't blanket, manage all of this stuff. Like it is complicated and it does take time and it takes real on the ground knowledge to inform how that stuff needs to be managed. And that complicated, you know, time-consuming approach to something that we will never be able to recreate ever gets wrapped up in this like, well, see, the government can't do anything right. Yeah.

Right. What, this might be hard to answer. what when you're talking about like you're you're talking about doing work on BLM land right so so you're coming in and doing like you're you're coming in on there's federal property and you're coming in and doing work on federal property so you have private people coming in and doing work on federal property or you could have private people a private organization coming in and helping clear trails on federal land um so there's jobs that need to be done yep on public lands that aren't getting done or aren't getting done all the way. And so there's a need for private people to come in and do it. Have you seen, like in your time and your role, and you've been involved in BHA for a very long time as a board member. Yeah.

But so in your time there, particularly in your time in the leadership position, have you seen like literal situations where doge cuts have left things undone that then private organizations have found a way to go in and get taken care of, or is it not that literal? There's certain, like, staffing is a huge issue because, like, it's not, and, like, there was a time where there just literally wasn't a person

in the office who could physically handle the check. I couldn't write the check, sign it, put it in a mailbox. Yeah. You just, that has to get done somehow. And there wasn't a backup mechanism for that. Yeah. When we talk about inventoring a fence line, for example, you know, there's a lot of communication on the ground with the people on the ground,

would be a rangeland ecologist or you know on the Forest Service side any number of people right they get stretched in on a bunch of things because they're not going out there to address problem A

and they run across problem B and they just ignore it so there's gaps that I think the private sector is very capable of filling in, but oftentimes it's that historical knowledge on a landscape. Sure. That is the real conduit to making that private sector work anywhere near efficient.

Yeah, like you guys can't just roll up in a truck and decide what fence you want to start working on. I mean, it's got to go through, yeah, it's got to go through a process. Oh, you're going to come in on what road? Yeah. Yeah. I see that. No, you need to drive 300 miles around and come in on this road, and it'll be faster and way less wear and tear on your equipment

than trying to come in on the road that's 50 miles long. So you find places where, like, just those, there's gaps in those pieces. Yep. Like pass-through individuals aren't there? Yep. Yep, for sure. Yeah. For sure. 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 FirstLight's new fieldware collection at firstlight.com. Can you think of anything from the last, let's go back to the beginning of the current administration. What are things that happen in like Trump to? And a lot of things get, I want to preface that a little bit.

A lot of things get plugged to like the administration that are probably well outside of the white, the view of the White House, right? Like, you'll hear like, you know, Trump is doing X or the administration is doing X. You'd be like, yes, the administration, but many layers removed from the White House, meaning in the White House, they're probably not aware of this. It's coming from downstream, right? But can you think of many cases or any cases of things that have come out in the last year and a half

that that you can applaud to me like what are you looking at that excites you? Well, I mean, I do. And I'm not saying you have to provide something because I see I've seen some things. Oh, for sure.

But but well I do I have seen as many things to excite me as I've seen to depress me that, uh, as you know, right? Like if you're, you're in a leadership position, you have a lot of people providing you with with information. And some of those people may or may not have agendas, but they do want typically to make things go well, and they're probably outsourcing information too. And we've come across many things here recently

where we've heard directly from high-level officials conversations like, well, we were told that everybody wanted this. And you're telling me that that's not true. And why are we getting so much negative feedback on this thing that was overwhelmingly positive? And you have the feeling in the back of your mind of like, oh, you were misinformed. Give me an example.

So, let me, I don't want to leave you. I don't want to, like, leave you trying to struggle to understand my intent. So let me, let me ask it a little bit differently. Our organization, like at Meteor, we've talked a lot about we covered in Trump one. We covered it a little bit during the Biden administration. We covered again in Trump two of the move. And Trump two being the biggest move in this direction was like freeing up hunting and fishing opportunities on refuges. Refuges.

Yeah. In some areas administered by the National Parks Service. Yeah. And we've explained it. applauded it, defended the rationale. Here today someone sends me an op-ed of someone saying

like a lot of media organization, he doesn't name names, so he's like a lot of media organizations, a lot of wildlife organizations, a lot of conservation organizations refuse to acknowledge any of the positives. Huh.

You know? Yeah. And I looked at that and I'm like, man, that doesn't ring true to me. Yep. I've read about this refuge system all over.

The expanded hunting and fishing access on refuge systems. The New York Times attacked it unfairly, and I addressed why I thought it was an unfair attack. We applauded it when it happened the first time. Applauded it now. No one's ignoring this, but there has been a, in my mind, there's been an undeniable feeling of of cascading bad news

and so I just want to ask you from like in your position to not be guilty of what the op-ed was saying like from your position yeah what have you seen this made like what are you seeing lately at the federal level that you're applauding or that you're liking

you know I mean several executive orders and I'm brought up the OHV one. It's a good example. It's having negative consequences right now, unfortunately. But many of the executive orders are big statements that do at the end say, like, unless there's currently a travel management plan in place. Yeah.

Right? Yep. Like it seems, you know, I was putting in the idea, I was putting like this. Like if I said, let's say I said to my kids, I'm like, don't even ask me. Don't even ask me if you can spend. the night at your friend's house i don't want to hear any requests about that it's done and then later i'm i say i don't know what the answer will be on an individual basis but i'm okay to field requests now but i don't know what i'll say you can at least bring the request to me so some

of these things have this like this and it gets put into press like um oh it's all open now you can drive anywhere you want now yep you know but you'd look and be like if you're read it and the fine print it just says we'll see case by case basis right but but something shifts yes yeah and when it comes time to have a new travel management plan it's going to be these things are going to be considered right but for the time being if there's a travel management plan in place that is the law yeah um and yeah a lot of a lot of media because of this need want for hyperbole have really, really put a ding on our public lands because they're saying, oh, all this stuff's open now.

Yeah. And that is not the case. Yeah. And I can go into a bunch of work that we're doing right now to try to help some positive messaging around that. So what really is in the, what really is, everybody saw the headlines, or not everybody, but there's a lot of headlines like,

help me describe the general headline. about off-road use? What would be the general headline you saw about off-road use? Oh, the general, it would be like Trump rolls back, bedrock, travel, management plans. It opens the way, paves the way for off-road use. Okay. Would probably be the thing, right? But what is happening there?

Let's take this example. Like, what is happening there? Well, so when I saw it, I didn't get a, I didn't get a feeling without, you know, my, my knee-jerk reaction was to be like, oh, oh, yep. Yep. Yep. I don't like the sounds of that. First of all, off-road on BLM and Forest Service land is kind of a misnomer because you can go off-road on these designated roads and trails, not cross-country travel. Yeah, when they say off row, they mean off of pavement, off of designated highways, off of county roads.

Yeah, big thoroughfare or main artery type of thing. And then that's broken into single track motorized. Of course, there's single track, non-motorized, wilderness, no bicycles. Okay. Right. And then you have your 50-inch. or less width restriction, four-wheel. And then you have your full-size, like, Jeep Trail,

high-clearance vehicle roads. And that's like, that's where you do your off-roading. And then there's certain areas where there is a designated spot for ripping around wherever you want. And it is visually the place to do that. Hard to mistake it for anything else. Like Bahá on some big sand dune or something. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And then so what the OHB order did was it said this Nixon era executive order. And then I want to say it's Carter. I'm a little sleep deprived right now. Carter era. Oh, HV executive order. We're going to rescind those.

They were, you know, I would say like very forward. thinking as far as like, hey, as this user group and technology expands, the impacts that we're seeing today are only going to be exacerbated on the landscape. We have a lot of industry out, and this is something that gets lost a lot, right, is we have a lot of extractive use industry that's out there. and it will be a danger to individuals and an impediment to those industries if people are riding wherever hell and gone. And it will impact the return that we have on our growing forest for the timber industry. And it's a bad look. It causes erosion, which impacts our road systems and our culverts and our, spawning habitats in our streams and, you know, the typical cascading effects, right?

Yep. And then the thing that most people saw was the switch from a de facto closed unless posted open to open unless posted closed. And the way that that works is every district has MVUM, a motor vehicle use map, which I always thought was a really sweet idea. You can go get an arm load of them if you want, and they're typically at gas stations that are selling off-road gas, and they're at your Ranger District offices and stuff like that. But you have that map in your possession. it shows the exactly what's open to what. And then it's supposed to work

is kind of like an affidavit in your pocket too to be like, oh, I know the rules. Yeah. And then, you know, because of like years and years and years of litigation, the way those things are posted and signed, they all have open dates and closed dates. Yep.

And if you want to color outside the lines on those, if for trail condition closures or whatever, if it's not within the dates, you're not going to get ticketed. You might get a talking to. But that's how that whole system works. And the implication of those headlines being like, oh, my God, it's all doom and gloom,

Armageddon, it's all over. A lot of people were like, oh, okay. And more folks than I don't, What do you mean? When you say, okay, what do you mean? So we've just been getting a lot of reports from districts all across North America saying like we're seeing rampant cross-country travel, motorized cross-country travel and the destruction of signs and gates.

And as well as the promotion of essentially fake news, like that everything is. open now. Yeah. Versus, hey, travel management plans ride responsibly. Yeah. Right. Like any changes that actually occur are forthcoming. Yeah. As they consider rule changes, but it wasn't something that all of a sudden announced from now on unless if it doesn't say you can't go there, you can go wherever you want. Yep. Yep. And, you know, there's all sorts of implications there. But to go back to like the broader scale of management when you kind of get into the nuances of all the tools in it in the toolbox of management where you get really ticked that is like well why is this for a service road buttery smooth and at the end of it there's a big maintained campground and nice toilets and

potable water or uh you know frost-free taps that you can get instant water at your campsite. While as this camp, this road is full of potholes, you got to go really slow, especially if you're towing a camper, and then there's primitive sites at the end of that. And it's like, well, they don't know what they're doing. Well, a lot of times your travel management plan, your maintenance plan,

those are all ways to disperse the amount of pressure that you get within your forest or BLM area, right? So you're like, yep, this one is, you know, way more conducive to bringing in big pump trucks to hit the pit toilets and, and maintaining at a larger scale. And it's very family friendly. We're going to divert a lot of people here. This road over here is more of a pain in the butt.

The site's more remote. It's actually more sensitive to. So we actually want a little less human pressure up there. So that is the reason that the roads are pain in the ass. Yeah. Like no one's trying to make it a high traffic area. Exactly. And we also don't have the staff to maintain that one on every single day basis like we do down here,

which is why we're diverting more traffic down here. Yeah. Type of thing. What do you think what on the on that OHV on the off road rule change or paving the way for rule changes going forward? What is the real deep down motivating factor? Like what is someone after? I think it is another case of just like the pendulum. swing in really hard.

I think roadless rule is also a case. The pendulum swinging really hard where, and we've gotten direct feedback as to, I just want to say, like our communication at BHA has changed a lot. And I'm adamant that we take an issue, we break it down in a nonpartisan fashion, take it or leave it.

It is just what's happening. there's a page break, here's BHA's position and why. Yep. I got it. And we're a membership organization, which is awesome because I get to say like this is what the membership wants. And we actually, yeah, we just, we've had some high level meetings because people have been paying attention to our communications and saying like, hey, thank you for not raking us over the coals on this.

Got it. We were told everybody wants this. Yeah. Like, we were told that. Why is it that we're getting beat up here, here, here, here, here, and here? And I say, well, we represent a bunch of people who actually love this. And it is not always congruous with that. And the reason that we're in this situation is because, you know, certain, we kind of divert certain people up certain trails.

and we divert other people up other trails. And when you're riding really fast on a dirt bike, you don't really want to be stopping for backpackers all the time. And that's kind of how we have this system. And conversely, you've got a string of mules. You don't want mountain bikes or motorbikes ripping really fast, especially in spots where there's no place to divert. Right?

So Capital W Wilderness and some WSA. and stuff like that, right? So there's just a huge burden of education that has to happen here. And within the first Trump administration, this Trump administration, they move incredibly fast. Yeah. Incredibly fast. And there's a bunch of catch-up that's happening.

And I posted when this OHV order came out, said, listen, I'm not worried about the motorized use community at large. I'm not aware of any motorized groups that want to see habitat destruction, that want to see a decrease in wildlife populations. Yeah, yeah. You know. Yeah, no one has that policy. They don't, they don't, that's not part of the mission statement.

But every single user group out there has people that are more than willing to color outside the lines. And I am worried that because of the way that this is messaged, that we're going to see those people out there representing the outdoor community. And it is a burden on all of us, right? It's like if you get, if you don't have folks who are out there using public lands frequently, even just on like,

this is what I do most weekends type of basis. You show up and you're like, oh my God, the people that come out to these places are total pigs. Yeah. Right? Just as I've been reaching out. to a lot of motorized industry folks and a lot of athletes right now to say like, hey, let's work on some messaging that's on responsible use. Got it.

And the response has been like, oh, absolutely. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, take the, the, the, the oldest rule, and you mentioned earlier, and the role in very simple terms for, for listeners to understand, the role this rule, um, it's one of those political ping-pongs that bounce back and forth but it'll be like are we cutting new roads on a national forest lands it became especially relevant to tongus national forest where there was is remains a desire to cut in roads on national forests that would lead to old growth timber cuts cut in roads where the government would cut in roads on national forest land to facilitate mining activities and other things.

The roadless rule came out and said that not constructing large-scale roads and areas that are through some formula designated to be like without roads. So not tapping into areas that are that are enough of a size to be regarded as an area that has that is roadless, right? It doesn't prevent you from cutting a little whatever driveway somewhere or something but from building roads to access new areas and it would go in under an administration and then it would get revoked or people would attempt to revoke it right right now we're in process again of undoing the roadless ruling okay so going back to the time of being able to cut in roads to facilitate mining to cut in roads to

to facilitate timber cuts. In some cases, the cut in roads to facilitate timber improvement. That isn't even related to mining, but just to do timber improvement work. When I asked you on the OHV thing, I asked you like, what is someone really driving at there? Like, are they pursuing a particular end? And you said, it's just kind of a pendulum swing of trying to do a large scale reversal of a, of a restriction that was in place. with the roleless rule is it like is undoing the roleless rule

meant to drive a particular project somewhere or do you do you accept it as just a more general movement or is it tied to some like distinct thing that someone wants to do somewhere but in order for them to do it they have to undo

the role of this rule I you know I think it's bolder that there's some, you know, real specific projects in mind. I really don't think it's timber. I think it would think it would be like mineral extraction. And it is just part of this theme of like broad deregulation. I think there's parts of the roadless rule that need to be like greatly reformed. Okay.

We're talking, so every state could have had their own version of the roadless rule. Idaho and Colorado are the only states that did that. Okay. So we're really talking about like 45 million acres. And we've said from the very beginning, it's like, well, tell us what you really want because the timber industry says this isn't about timber. It's not going to be 45 million acres. like we're talking a few thousand here and here and here and maybe a couple hundred miles

a road you know like let's talk about that like inviting the conversation to get down to like if if this is about a thing let's talk about the thing yeah yeah got and we haven't gotten there yet um all i will tell you that there's legitimate gripes on the roadless rule uh because it is open to a little bit of interpretation. And there's been areas, districts for us, where

the managers decided that they wanted to like a little extra buffer around their roadless, their categorized roadless areas. Okay. Right? And it's like, I mean, just think of all the conversations we've had about like, the National Park has got to end somewhere. Mm-hmm.

You don't get a buffer or else just call it park. Yeah. Or don't. Yeah. I'm with you. Yeah. Just for listeners, what Cal is referring to is you might have, I mean, everybody in the world has heard of Yellowstone National Park. Oftentimes, there's wildlife management issues.

There's wildlife management decisions that are made along the border where the park has a gray area, right? there's like if the if you imagine the park is is black on a map and out of the park is white on a map they create certain gray areas for wildlife management and for other management practices to create like you said a buffer yeah buffer zone meaning it won't be um uh that it wouldn't be that cities get built up to the wall to the line because you're trying to you're trying to mitigate impacts on the edge that might affect the interior year. Yep. Yep. And then from a wildlife perspective, right, it's like we have like wolf management zones in Montana

that are right against the park. Yeah. Because, um, socially it was decided like, well, if wolves are going to leave the park, they're probably going to get really beat up right on the edge of the park. And then there's going to be a little, uh, education curve. And the further they get away, the more wary they're going to be. Their survivability is going to be higher. Yeah, so some wolf pack that spends 75% of the time in the park and they tend to wander over to some little area. There might be some extra regulation where they wander over

in order to protect the integrity of the popular wildlife viewing pack in the park. Yeah, well, on the road list side of things, you know, there's like viable sold timber projects. that were tied up in a lot of red tape because they were adjacent to. Okay. Right. And then the- And that causes frustration.

Big time frustration, right? And it, like, I can see how that leads to, like, it's totally flawed through the whole thing out. Yeah. Like someone's saying, no, I get it. We can't, we're not going to cut in the park, but you're saying I can't cut by the park. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

And not only not by. the park, but how far away from the park? No, yeah. Yeah. And then the roadless rule, as it's written, you can build roads or reopen roads temporarily to go in and do wildfire mitigation. You can go in and do like habitat work. Okay.

And oftentimes that stuff gets litigated to death and tied up. And sometimes it's just not even a conversation. that people are willing to have because it will get litigated and tied up. Got it. And so the proper implementation, and this is where I think conservation has a real, all of us groups have a real failure is we work like hell to build something like the roadless rule. And then the implementation part, like we're in it for the sanctuary areas.

You're like, by God, we got some areas carved out here where there's not going to be roads. It's human powered only. It's going to exclude folks who aren't willing to do that. I'm going to have a little honey hole. And that's our focus. Or we protected, like really protected these zones from anything but natural erosion. We're going to have great Chinook, Socky Salmi Salmon, Bull Trout spawning there forever type of thing. Yeah.

Well, we don't show up when the litigation group show up and say, oh, no, you guys can't do a habitat improvement project. You guys can't go in there and do wildfire mitigation as it's outlined within the roadless rule. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, I haven't put my money where the mouth is yet, but I've had a lot of conversations to see, like, how it would be feasible for, a group like backcountry hunters and anglers to weigh in on those on behalf of proactive management. Yeah. Not because I think that's exactly why we're here, but I do want to take that argument out of the quiver, right?

And be like, yeah, we came to the table, we signed the dotted line. We agree that this is how the roadless rule should function. So shouldn't we have some skin in making it function that way? 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 it's so interesting you bring that out because I was discussing this with a friend of mine a couple days ago and we were talking about the way the conservation community will get activated around certain marquee very high value, around the protection of certain marquee, very high value areas

and resist development on those places. We saw it with a coalition of people from across the sporting and outdoor and birding and commercial fishing spectrum, in opposition to developing a mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, right? Everybody saw that. We saw not nearly as dramatic, but a coming together around protecting the headwaters leading into the boundary waters, wilderness area. Maybe even less than that, but seeing a coalition of people questioning the idea, pushing back against the idea of building a 250-mile,

industrial corridor into the Brooks range called Ambler Road. And what we were talking about is, is like when it's a no, we come out to say no, right? Yep. And if someone came to me and said, okay, then, okay, I get it. You don't like that.

You don't like that. You don't like that. What is okay? Yep. What is okay? It's a fault. it's like a negative about me. It's the fault that I would say,

I don't know. I'll have to tell you when I hear. Do you know what I mean? Because that's the argument that we use on the roadless rule, right? It's like, okay, if you're talking about timber, what about all this high alpine terrain

where it's so highly erodable, you can't build a road? And there happens to be no timber. Can we still call that inventory roadless? Yeah. If you want the timber, right? Like, so it's the same argument.

Yeah, right. But I mean like, but I sometimes wonder is if you, if you are, if you're going to come and you're going to be in opposition to some things, at what point do you have an obligation to go and say, but here is what's okay? Yep. Yep. Or is it morally okay to just be like, no, I'm the guy that tells you when it's no. I don't know the guy. I don't know the yes guy. I don't think it is.

I think the answer, though, is like it is. just complicated. We have a insanely diverse landscape, a tree faller back when those were the dudes really doing the work on the landscape, and there still are plenty, but it's a dying breed. They will tell you, like, you can't cut the same tree twice, meaning that the aspect matters, the slope, the pitch of the, all the things. It is a tree by tree calculation, right? which is why it's it's hard and it takes skilled people with lots of lots of knowledge lots of practice so um i think people are capable of being the yes person when it comes to a renewable project such as you know a good timber project right good timber project pays lots of dividends on the wildlife side

of things. But you're going to have to wait, but it will come back, right? You're going to eat that cow elk tag for that zone maybe this year, but there's going to be parts of it next year you can hunt. And then there's more of it the following year. Yeah. Right? And then it's probably going to suck for a while as once in 15 years down the road, depending

on where you are. It'll be sweet for 10 years after the cut. and then lame for a year then like increasingly better than eventually go away and you look forward to that. But those areas also do their own job of

spreading out the pressure on public land, right? Because we all have those spots where it takes us years to be like, you know what? This place used to be sweet. But I've just been coming here

and it's sucked the last three years. Yeah. Time to go find a new spot. Well, you've been sitting there pounding your head against, you know, a dense mat of trees. Somebody else is being like, oh, my gosh, this place is sweet. There's nobody here. Yeah. You know, on the other side of that block, right? And so those changes in the landscape are always a negative and a positive for all of us out there. It's just like the game. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I do think it is, it is possible.

be the yes person, but you got to be involved enough to be like, oh, this project's proposed. Is there a mechanism for us to weigh in on that? Yeah. Yeah, I think that that problem, I think that it would be a good pressure relief valve. If the, for the conservation community to maybe get more involved in what's, more involved in pointing out and facilitating what's okay. But a lot of it is there's just absolutism. Yes. And there's been a lot of absolutists that are very celebrated.

Yep. And regarded as effective. You know, like Edward Abbey was a desert absolutist to the point where he sort of, to the point where he, not even tacitly, to the point where through fiction he like glorified eco-terrorism. Right. like he was an absolutist and a lot of people would look and say like absolutism anything else is you know anything else is you're weak anything else is you have cracks in the you know you have cracks in the fence but i do wonder about being more like like if i don't even know the answer to this that if there had been a greater effort toward negotiating certain things, we would not be in the situation

of talking about repealing the of repealing the role of this rule. You know, I don't know. Another case of absolutism gone wrong in a different direction, the Wild Horse and Burrow Protection Act Yep. There was a time when there weren't that many wild horses around.

People thought they were being abused and thought they were going to vanish. They made it. an absoluteism case and now it has generated enormous friction. Yep. With wildlife managers where you're like they just left no room. There was they left no room for for logical, meaningful corrections to a problem. Well, yeah, because you kind of get to this trap, like we said in the beginning, right?

Like we got to think beyond this administration, right? And so this OHV deal, like I spend a lot of time. Like, I feel like everybody knows that I gravitate towards human powered. Love my wilderness areas. Love big backpacking trips. You know, just not like, certainly not a proficient motorized guy. But I'm like, listen, every single trip I take starts with a four-wheel drive truck getting me to the trail. head.

Mm-hmm. Right? So I can't be anti-motorized use. Yeah. Right? Like, that is the thing that facilitates everything. Yeah. You know, 99 times out of 100 for me.

And so when these headlines come out and it's like, oh, all the motorized people want this. And I was like, no, they really don't. I know that. Or it's all the motorized folks are slabs and they're tearing the things up. And I'm like, well, there's lots of different groups out there. that preach hard responsible use all across the landscape. And they are policing their own community.

And that's like something that we have always done is like, is that social contract. If you're going to represent single track dirt bikes, do it in this manner. Don't do it like this. Right? Because there is the. pendulum swinging the other way, it's like, oh, you lose access to all of this stuff.

And access can be weaponized. Like, it was the first thing that I saw on this job, right, is like, everybody. You know, Dave, six or seven on the job, I went and testified in the House Natural Resources Committee, which was pretty wild, you know, because I did have, like, a moment. of like, oh, I could tank the entire organization right now. Live on C-SPAM. Yeah, it's a stressful situation. Yeah, I could just say whatever.

And it would probably just be done. No coming back. But, you know, everybody there was talk was like access, access, access. I was like, well, wait a minute. What do you mean? I've run into this. Right. It means different things to different people.

It means different things to different. And it's like, you're like, oh, if we're going to, if that's good, I'm going to define it how I want and know that everyone thinks it's good. Yeah. Because the word is good. Yeah. And, and, and then we have to have this more in-depth conversation of being like, listen, the thing that you're after is only going to survive for so long if that's where we punch a big road in. if we remove the seasonal closures that exist for wintering range or calving areas. Like the reason that those regulations are in place are so you can go have that experience

is just it's only going to be there if you do it in this way. Yeah, that's a great point. What you want to, what you're so dying to get to is there because you can't. Yeah, in these fashions, right? At this time of year or whatever, right? Yeah. What you're wanting is you're wanting to, yeah, you're wanting to drive to a thing that wouldn't be there if you could.

And like I, high country mule deer, right? Like, I used to just love spending so much time, uh, early season scouting for muleeer and, and then, uh, archery hunting,

that high country, big basin muleeer, right? And it's like, if they see you one time, they're just gone. Right? And it can take them weeks to come back to that spot. Yeah. And yeah, you can go find them again somewhere. But having this notion that you can create access as defined by whatever,

like there's some things that just are not going to tolerate it. Yeah. Right. If I could just drive in there and finally get them big old bucks that are hiding back in there. Right. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, well, you can drive away as in there. and then get really, really sneaky and hike off trail

and, you know, play the wind and do all the things that you pick up over the years. And then if you really have the mental fortitude at the end of a long day, drop all your stuff and slide on your stomach up there and peek your head over, like, good chance, like, you're going to see one. Yeah. Unless some jackass was there before you

and stood up on the ridge, right? And those are tough conversations to have because there, you know, there's a lot of folks out there too who are like, well, man, I'm a disabled veteran. Are you against me having that experience? Yeah, I understand. And it's like, no, I want you to have that experience. I would love to help facilitate that. But as a guy who's had that experience a lot, you just got to trust me that, like, that you just can't get in there that way and have that experience. Yeah.

And we pick and choose all the time. And so if we go back to roadless or this OHV executive order, I can be a big enough person to be like, okay, well, what are we going to open up? But what are we going to close? Yeah. Because we have to have that because there's just, there's too many of us doing too many of the things to, you know,

point literally like point that gun of impact at these areas yeah because it we know through our history that it will have this adverse effect that we just can't think about when we're so gung-ho on the opportunity right sure let's jump subjects and talk about the ongoing corner crossing debate and i'll put it to you this way uh well just i hate doing the back we We talk about this so much and it's such an important issue. We've covered it so many times. It's always changing. But just a very quick, very, very quick recap.

Corner crossing, if you're just kind of joining our sort of universe of shows right now. Corner crossing has to do with imagine that you're looking at a checkerboard and the black squares are public land. Are they black and white? Black and red. Black and red on the checkerboard. Yeah, on a checkerboard. The black squares are sections of miles, miles. by miles sections of public land the red squares are mile by mile by mile sections of

private land when we refer to corner crossing we refer to whether it is legal or not to step from the corner of a black square to the corner of another black square that's corner crossing and so that your shoulder your feet are never leaving the black but your body's passing over the red and this is a this has been a debate that's playing out for a long time particularly in the American West where you have what we call checkerboarded landscapes that are laid out in that same fashion um through the courts through federal court corner crossing was made legal in wyoming Colorado New Mexico help me out here yeah the 10th circuit the whole the whole 10th circuit so and i wouldn't say made legal i would say

confirmed legal. Confirmed legal. Yeah. Okay. Not me. Yeah. Like, yeah. That's a great point. Yeah, it was there was a there was a debate. It was never, it wasn't like a change in the law. It was just defining the existing law and clarifying the existing law because there was there was confusion about it. Yep. Um, but there's still a big swath of the American West where it's up in the air. Yep. Um, and different states have different interpretations, different states open, interpret, you know, put out different guidelines if you had to crystal ball it a year two years where do you think things are

going to where do you think things are going to land do you think that we'll see more confusion more obfuscation of whether you're you're allowed to do this or do you think that it'll that we'll see more clarity about what really is allowed and what's not allowed when it comes to corner crossing Well, I think the reason that we're seeing this debate get more and more intense, because it used to just never, never, it was a question. Certainly here in the state of Montana, it was never an intense debate. There's many areas within the state where it was just what people did. Yeah. For a long time, it was a question that rolled around in the back of a small number of people's heads.

Yes. And then it became a question that was in the front of. many people's minds. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, the reason that that is, right, is because, like, we are just developing more and more of the West and people are planting their flag permanently in places that were seasonal at most. Right. And, you know, I think there is absolutely no question whatsoever as to the legality. I think there's many, many questions right now that are getting played out. So, for instance, back in the Tenth Circuit in Wyoming, there's a push to provide landowner

compensation to people adjacent to corners. So there's people walking from public ground to public ground without ever touching private property. Can we monetarily compensate the land. owners who own the private lands that touch those corners. There's differences. But that's not, that would just be, help me understand that mode. That state question that's coming up.

But the state would be doing it as a goodwill gesture. They're not doing it. They're not being legally forced to do it. They're not being legally forced to do it. There's an ask. As to, like a real legal one would be, can you corner across from federal to state? Okay. Right?

In states where we have a kind of a de facto public access, we use state ground as public ground. Well, this was a federal decision. I see. Not a state decision. Yeah. That needs to be figured out. I'll tell you, it's interesting you bring that up, I would never consider that. Like if I was in a clarified corner crossing legal state and I saw where federal land and state land were connected by corners, I would never even question whether you were allowed to hop that corner.

Right. Yeah. And that that is like one of the things, right? Like the huge broad general public, you give them a pop quiz on this? It is just pure confusion. They're like, why in the hell would that not be legal? Right? You're not touching private property.

And then you get in circles where people have really, really gone through the grinder on this. And they've looked at case law and it gets overly complicated. Like you start getting into these conversations where you've kind of lost the on the ground fact a long time ago. where it's like you're you're just walking from here to there. Yeah. So no question in my mind as to if it's legal. It is legal. I think because kind of like we talked about on your motorized community or non-motorized community,

I remind people all the time, like if you're on the private side of that fence, you're a public landowner too. And you also have way better access to that square that you're trying to get to. Yeah. So it behooves all of us to come up with common language assurances that clearly define the private property, the public property, and the access, right? But there is, and I can speak to Monta, to Monta. where we're sitting right now. I can't speak to other places.

There is like an uncertainty here where if you go and get your hunting regulation, there's not a part of the hunting regulation that clarifies. Corner crossing is okay. Right.

Right? You get a mixed... Am I wrong? No. You get a mixed signal. Yeah. Yeah, it used to be if like our are not suggestion different word are what Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks would like you to do is to contact the adjacent landowner

for permission to corner cross that was and then if if somebody were to try to get a warden out there to cite you the warden would then have to contact the county prosecutor in order to issue that citation. Okay.

And then, you know, that language, uh, ramped up and to the point where the state was implying, like, this is illegal. Um, if you write the governor, you get a response back that says it's illegal and always has been. Okay. Um, the secretary, not the secretary of the state, the lieutenant governor, um, you know, offered her opinion. A couple of our state senators said,

there it is. That's the law. It's illegal. Which is not how we create laws in the... They offered the opinion that it was forbidden. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, based off of case law, you know. Like they offered an interpretation, which was then received as someone as the giving of the law.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And it is, I mean, it is tricky. It's not tricky to read this stuff. It's not tricky to come up with your own interpretations. But if you were to listen to the lieutenant governor's kind of case that she made, she's using all the same cases that you would use to say it's legal.

She's just using a different excerpt of those cases and a narrower, narrower, interpretation, which also is like how the law works a lot of times. Right? So I'm not like bad, bad mouth in the lieutenant governor at all, but it is just been very, very interesting. 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,

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fieldware collection at firstlight.com. What do you think will happen? Well, ideally, we have a legislative session coming up that we're going to see some legislation that comes up to clarify this at a state level. Backcountry hunters and anglers,

we entered into a lawsuit with the state of Montana after hitting this wall that, you know, we were just told flat out, said, hey, even if this went back to the previous memo where it's like, corner crossing is a gray area. That's okay for right now until we can get legislation through. Because the people that want to do it, do it, and the people who don't, don't. And, you know, ranchers don't want to see a bunch of people piled up at corners.

Hunters don't want to see a bunch of people piled up at corners. We want this to be quiet. Yeah. It's the best thing for everybody. But if the state, okay, in Wyoming you had a case where it got moved to federal court. Yep. If the state, if state legislators were to come in and say it's illegal. Yep.

Wouldn't that then open a pathway for someone to say, your prohibition is in violation of federal law. Yeah. And that's a no-no. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, that is a thing. And that's why by and large, we're talking about broad acceptance of legal access through the corners. We're talking about extremely broad acceptance of if you.

enter or damage private property, that's trespass. Yeah. So there's a ton of middle ground here. And I think that we're capable of coming up with a state solution that, you know, prevents a federal case. That prevents an escalation. Yeah. And part of this is totally out of our hands. Like that could happen anyway.

but you know it's a question i never thought to one that i never thought to ask do you have any sense if you went to wyoming let's say there had been a ballot initiative yep and it was just very clear on everyone's on everyone's ballot during a presidential election year it just said like um corner like should corner crossing be legal yes no and you put it out to the voters yeah in Wyoming before all this happened What do you think the answer would have been?

Like overwhelmingly, yes. You think so? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, TRC and BHA hosted listening sessions across the state. Obviously not everybody shows up to those things. Yeah. But I drove over and sat in on a few.

And I was really shocked by how few people actually wanted to talk about corner crossing. Because it was just like a given. They were like, yeah, yeah, this is something everybody else. is talking about. It's something we do and we'll continue to do kind of regardless of what everybody else comes to the conclusion of. So yeah, and then, yeah, I mean, there's a long, there's more paper history of corner crossing in Wyoming than there is in Montana.

Okay. There's a decent amount of cases that apply in the state. there's, you know, no actual, you know, anything that's really specifically corner crossing in Montana has always been thrown out. It's never made it to a judge's decision. That's what that, that blows my mind. Yeah. Yeah. For something that's always been illegal.

Yeah. Yeah. That there are not people out there sitting in jail or whatever who got in trouble for it. Yeah. Yeah. But we do have, you know, several state programs. We have a lot of money sitting in the Habitat Montana Fund, which was, you know, part of the marijuana tax money, $41 million in counting. That has to be used for access programs. Okay. Or acquiring land, you know, it's a little, little broad on what, but it can be used for Habitat, building boat ramps, acquiring new. ground, stuff like that, or else that cash sunsets and it can go into the general fund.

Some people speculate that it's not being used because they wanted to go into the general fund. But, I mean, there's a lot of tools in our tool belt that can make this a state-led initiative. I've talked to a lot of folks long before we entered into this lawsuit and then after we've entered into this lawsuit who are both, all of them landowners, both for and against corner crossing, the folks that are against corner crossing and willing to talk to me or asking me to call them more accurately.

Do you make those calls? Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, I love talking to old ranchers. But they get fed up with bad hunter behavior. Yeah. Which I totally get. And most of them have been working for years to do land swaps with the BLM and can't get them through. Got it.

And, you know, so that's something that where we've offered to help. And, you know, I just just talked. with one fellow just like this and did some due diligence on whether or not this was like an actual good land swap. And it sounds like it really is. So we're trying to help accelerate that process. That's great work, man. And then we have a program where you can identify corners and we can come out and mark those so people have no excuse. this is public, this is private.

We can augment fence. So you can have an access point there that, as one old codger pointed out to me, he's like, you know, I get that the land's public, but that fence isn't. So we can augment that private fence and keep it in good work and shape. Yeah. And allow legal access. and then there are these corners, typically called problem corners, where there's just no way to legally access public to public without stepping on private. Yeah, like just for people listening, picture that the pictures, I don't know, just, it's a tree.

Yep. Picture there's a, there's a 12-inch tree at the corner. Yep. Right. And you got to. and you're supposed to do the right thing. When you wiggle around that tree, you're off on where you're not supposed to be. So yeah.

So identifying those and we're the only entity of any kind out there. We use ArcGIS on the BHA website. So you can just punch in your lat long of where that corner is. And then we have some surveyors that have reached out that do this work professional. Oh, that's great. That have offered their services to come out and mark corners. And these are folks who have actually, like, worked with the BLM to adjust corners to where they're truly supposed to be. Yeah.

Because some of them do migrate over the years because, you know, people have moved pins or the pins never existed. So they were going off landmarks and those changed generationally sometimes. and then, you know, we can augment that fence at the same time to wildlife-friendly fencing and do it at no cost to the landowner. Again, kind of like our stewardship project idea is, I'm like, man, if you're fed up with bad hunter behavior, I can't say I'm going to fix all that, but I will bring a crew of people out there that you're going to be really impressed with that really do give a crap. And at minimum, it's going to give you a little bit of fuel back in the tank

that hopefully lasts you until your next bad encounter. Yeah, yeah. And then, which I typically do get a chuckle out of that. And then I'm working like hell trying to get some funding and some folks together to put together a hunting around agriculture program that ideally states will want to adopt because we hear all the time that something's got to be done because people don't know how to behave around working farms and ranches anymore. And they're drawn like flies to them for hunting purposes.

And just the basic stuff. Etiquette, where to park, where not to park, how to operate gates. You know, driving on wet rows, you shouldn't be driving on. Yeah. Driving across freshly planted fields, leaving gates not the way you found them. Yep. Spooking the hell out of cows. Yeah.

Yeah. Recognizing where you got a bunch of cow calf pairs that just got moved in from the range, they're super scared. Mm. Probably just leave it alone. Yeah. You know, so not hard stuff at all, but something that everybody is getting direct asks for. And it's not being addressed, unfortunately. And we can put together the program

that is built off of producer feedback, right? The farmers and the ranchers are going to tell us what they want. And then, you know, meat eater will hopefully distribute that out. But we really need states to adopt this as well and use it in a fashion where people have to pay attention, right? So I want like, hey, you just bought your big game combo license. In order to complete purchase, take this five-minute tutorial. Yeah. Right?

And, you know, people want to hunt in these places so bad. I don't think that that's going to be a barrier to entry at all. Hunters being hunters, we're going to complain. But I think we're going to take the test. And I really do believe, like, if we can just educate a big group, right, like, like 40,000 hunters hunting Montana every year, if we can educate them a one and a half percent more, that's going to be a big impact on the landscape. And if we're not working hard to kind of hold up our.

side of the social contract we're going to lose access on the front range and everybody's going to be in the back country yeah i like a lot of what you're saying i like it really rings true to me and you know congratulations on viewing it this way but i appreciate the way you're willing to acknowledge and take responsibility for ways that your own community could be working against their own better interests. Meaning, you know, let's talk about bad hunter behavior. Let's talk about people kind of exploiting this corner crossing thing

to feel that they can just get on that land however they want to get on it. Right? And kind of holding your own community up to like a certain standard and acknowledging to the people that are offended by bad behavior that, yes, this is true. What you're seeing is true. I want to make that go away, right? Well, I mean, what other choice do we have too, right?

Like, it's going to go away. Just ignore it. Yeah, right? And let the tensions faster. Let the tensions faster. And then what everybody's feeling, the state agencies, the agricultural producers, the hunters in areas where we're seeing this really big increase in, in hunting pressure and demand on the resource is like that scarcity mindset creeps in.

And it's like, I don't care. I got to get mine before somebody else does. Yeah. Right. Versus, you know, so many times, you know, I had great hunting mentors growing up. And it really, it was like, oh, well, part, let's leave that one for another day. somebody else is already on it type of thing yeah right and looking back at those scenarios then like it'd be hard to talk some people into being like well there's only one truck at the trailhead

why wouldn't we go type of thing right no it was like well somebody beat us to it let them have it go down to the next trailhead sure you know what do you imagine we we've talked about a bunch of things that are in the news now being talked about right now kind of hot button issues, right, that are on everybody's mind. If we were having this conversation a year from now or this conversation two years from now, what do you think we'll be talking about?

What do you see kind of lurking that's going to be jumping into the, that's going to be jumping to the front of the line in terms of hot button issues? Well, I think there's just two broad themes that are possible, right? And it's kind of like what you said about, like being the no no no I'm just in the no guy I point out the things that that's wrong and the solution I don't want any part of yeah um that person is real and they exist and if everybody turns into that person or the majority of us turn into that person who are like I don't want

the hard work of being at the table I just want to sit back and throw stones and tell you what's wrong as I see it. That's, it's very possible that there's a bunch of those people who go, holy cow, I wish I would have drugged myself to the table because I never, ever thought the end result would be something like this. Got it. Or there's the opposite of like, I dropped a bunch of partisan BS. I really focused on the things that I really, value and I know

I want other people to see because they will value it as well and I kicked, screamed, Claude, drugged myself to the table and I was consistent until like we turned the tide and people saw the middle ground because what I'm seeing

and there's all sorts of people who get ticked me for this is like I do see a lot of people there's some people who just want their thing and they don't care about anything but I do see a lot of people who really want to do the right thing and they're just grossly misinformed. And it takes big moments right now

like we saw during the public land sell-off budget reconciliation where it was just like every user group was getting to the table and coming together and being like, yes, this is valuable. We want this. We don't want it to go away. How dare you sell it? And being engaged, even in the mind,

NUcia in broad coalitions are the thing that's going to turn this thing around, right? So that example, I know I'm kind of beating it to death here is like I can talk about motorized groups all day. And I know there's tons and tons of good representatives out there. But the thing that's going to turn the tide for motorized groups to be like, oh, hey, travel management plans are in place, practice responsible. ride responsibly are people within the motorized community saying, hey, I want this cross-country motor experience that we do every year because of the fact

that it's pristine and the solitude and the gorgeous views and all this and the limited use it gets, I don't want to turn this experience into that true your Sandoon experience. sort of like there's this event every year called king of the hammers where it's like you know you get to really show off what you can do on on off road no road yeah it's like that stuff can exist and this stuff can exist and because we like both doesn't mean we have to turn this into that yeah right yeah so um but again like i think a good step is acknowledging like even though i am not a representative of the motorized community, I drive a four-wheel drive truck to every trailhead, right? And some of those roads are really long. Yeah. They're real bumpy. Right. But that is my,

I don't know, my vector for backcountry travel, right? For the human-powered stuff, too. What else has come? What other kind of issues are coming down? Do you're catching wind of? I am very concerned about Ambler Road. Yeah. Um, that seems to be making progress. Um, there's a lot of, a lot of the typical things that we've been seeing. We're like big broad statements of like, everybody in Alaska is for this. All the Alaska tribes are for this. Um, all the communities. You know, I, I have a lot of calls every week from guide outfitter communities saying like, I don't care if they say this road's not public, it is going to create a huge impact on, you know,

caribou, moose, trapping, all the things. Yeah. The fisheries components. And, and then there's the side of like, that road's not supposed to be for us. It's a haul road. They're super dangerous. People aren't going out there. Why is public, why are our public dollars being spent?

on this thing that the public isn't going to use. Yeah. And then there, there's just like all the, like the real biological science things there and the fact that like, I don't care what type of mitigation we do out there. Like it is not coming back. Yeah. That scar is there forever, right? Like you fly over the Arctic, the coastal plane up there.

And where they were doing that seismic testing like in the 70s. Like those wheel routes are still there. You know. And it's, I think we're big enough to say like, we have to have some carbouts for what always has been and can always be. And like having that baseline, that through line should be, again, like of national importance to Americans. Yeah. I think we remain, I think our country remains in a strong enough position.

where we can continue to afford to have wild places in this country. You know? Oh. We're in a strong enough position where we can continue to invest in that and practice restraint and some of our biggest contiguous pieces of wilderness. And by saying that what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to recognize it like, that stuff's a luxury. It's there because we decided to let it be there.

And we have restrained ourselves from certain activities. and that's why we have it. Like you look at for a long time we had wilderness because we hadn't wilderness wild places, wildlife was there because we hadn't gotten around to destroying it yet. And then there's a switch. Yep. And we crossed like this threshold and it became it's around because we choose it to be around.

I mean, and that's what every single person needs to understand. Like none of this is luck. Right. It is all here because people for us made real choices, sometimes very unpopular. And that is why we have the luxuries that we have. Being able to float fish, you know, camp on public lands,

hunt game, and take it home. Like, that is an absolute luxury. And, you know, the world is full of examples of places that went the opposite way, right? And it's like, I definitely like picking in choosing there, right? But like if you look at Australia and the battles that they've had just to have legal regulated hunting in that country. Yeah. Because it's like it just got social, got turned in such a way to where so few people did it, what did it matter? Yeah. Gun rights in the UK. So few, so few people,

what does it matter? Right? Access to wildlife in the UK for the purposes of hunting. You know, It was always this thing that was for somebody else, and it was very exclusive. So what does it really matter? Right. And, you know, for the folks who are on the private side of the fence and they might be thinking this another public lands conversation, what does it matter? It's like, well, maybe not too much to you right now. But if you just look at the history of every other place on this planet, it's coming for you.

Yeah. So you better keep other folks involved, you know, have a little equitable access to wild places and wild things or else it's going to cross the fence and get you too. Yeah. You see that expressed like in the case of Washington State, I've seen it expressed where people actually say they'll point out so few people engage in spring bear hunting. they shouldn't even be allowed to where it's like that they pointed out yep you know yep i always uh this is a lot of extractive use but you know we come up with fun arguments right it's like by and large we all agree that sex is a good thing like we need to have sex it's how people are on the planet it's how we reproduce it's just an accepted thing at the exact same time

we all kind of agree that sex shouldn't happen wherever whenever right it's just like socially we're like yeah not on the city bus you know we're open to nuance when it comes to sex yeah yeah we take a nuanced approach but when it comes to like in the case of the boundary waters right by god we need copper we need mineral extraction like you're either for it or you're against it Yeah. And I was like, well, no, not necessarily. It's like, yeah, I am a consumer of goods. But you're telling me that I have to blanket before this type of operation in all landscapes at all time.

I got to support sex in the airport. Right. Yeah. To remain consistent. Yeah, yeah. You know. Tell people how to tell people how to get invades. involved with BHA and like and what you need most.

You guys want members, I'm sure, but what do you guys need most? Yeah, I mean, membership is is the absolute lifeblood, right? Like if if you want an independent organization, membership is the key, right? Like if you don't want to be beholden to the changing tides, a membership organization is a really nice thing to be a part of because those membership dollars, dollars give you that independence. Meaning that you're not subject to giant government grants and you may hold off on certain programs. Yeah.

Yeah, you don't need to curry political favor at all times. And also your whole program doesn't get shut down when a grant doesn't come through. Yep. Yeah. So membership's huge. And that's really my biggest. ask. So the reason that I'm in this position is because I have always just been so blown away by the rank and file member of the organization and how impressive BHA members are because they are

there to be proactive and do something. And at this point, having been around the organization for 10 years, we have members that are in the Senate, in Congress. They are fish and game commissioners in many states. They are community leaders for stewardship projects, waterkeepers. They're out really doing good work, and they literally started because they showed up at a pint night, very low barrier to entry, have a beer, talk about conservation. Here's a couple of the issues that we're working on.

and you know we got people in the door and they were like oh my god i'm not just a fundraiser i'm a doer i want to go out and do stuff and and and those are the the that's what we want want to make more of and we want to enable and empower those people to step up and represent at that commission meeting or go pull a couple miles of fence that benefits 30,000 miles in a migration corridor. And we can give you the straight dope, the nonpartisan dope on what's happening. And really, we need to get to this point where we're really providing the proactive legislation, right?

Like the proactive policy that prevents some of these things from being political footballs. Yeah. So lots of ways to be involved. We'll give you the tools to do it. And you'll be a part of an awesome community. And the ripple effects of that community are going to turn everybody into stewards from this tall on up ideal.

I don't get to see as much now and I don't get to have as many laughs with you. But man, I'm glad you're in that. I'm glad you're in that role, man. I think it's great. Oh, thank you. see you over there thank you yeah i mean it's it's consuming and now with the the little nipper uh at the house it's uh it's more powerful in a lot of ways because i'm like oh man i all the talking ad nauseum about like doing this for my kid certainly is a little more impactful yeah sure yeah uh and i'm like

I'm like, can I get, he's, you know, almost four weeks old now, can I get this guy up to the Arctic in August? Like, is it like he's going to be able to see something, right? I remember all, yeah, I remember all those. I find that it's generally, you can generally get a, you can generally pull off more than most people think you can pull off. but I also have my ass handed to me a couple of times taking kids to do stuff. You'll figure it out. All right, ladies gentlemen, again, Ryan Callahan, chief executive officer at backcountry hunters and anglers, a membership-based organization.

You can just go to bha.org. Backcountryhunters.org. Oh, sorry, backcountryhunters.org. See what they're up to. You can sign up for, I find them quite helpful. You can sign up for email. Yep. Keep you apprised on stuff.

You'll get like Cal's take on things and other issues and stay educated in what's going on, follow along and hopefully find it in you to support the organization, support the great work they do. Thanks, Cal. And the action alerts will you'll get the information, hit the action alert. It puts you directly in touch with your representative or member. And it just makes it easy. you can use the form letter, but we want you to do it on your own. So use the info, say where you're from and what you want.

Cal's Review. Your podcast. Oh, my God. Cal's Week and Review. Oh, my God. Cal's Week and Review. Lots of good info there. And it's quick 22 minutes.

Like, I'm looking at you totally like the BHA CEO right now. Yeah. Man, life's not worth doing if you're just doing one thing. You know, spin those. planes. Also, hear Cal's hot take on everything conservation related and also get some of those laughs I was talking about by tuning in

Cal's Week and Review right here on the Meat Eater Podcast Network. Thanks, man. Thank you. If you do off-season work, you know what beats up gear, scouting, land work, crawling through briar patches, brush, weather, long days, first light fieldware is built for all that.

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