The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 898: Marijuana Users Win In the Supreme Court, Sicilian Curses, North Carolina Elk Hunt

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Steven Rinella and the MeatEater crew discuss: marijuana users buying guns; Steve’s Sicilian swear words; logging after wind storms; the North Carolina elk hunt; the Colorado moose explosion; and more. Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. This week on the news show, Steve trespasses in Sicily. Brody runs his first marathon, and it looks like dope smokers can now get a gun without lying about it. A logging project that might not actually be about logging. Oregon finds a way to do something that more states need to figure out, which is finding additional sources for wildlife funding and habitat.

New public lands in Ohio and Utah. North Carolinians are going to get to go elk hunting. Hunting rights are getting an unexpected boost in Massachusetts and more. But first, our news. I just got back from Sicily. Oh, that's why Sicily's on the... I had no idea. My great grandparents are from Sicily.

There were Sicilians. So there's a couple things that went on. As a kid, my main takeaways from this trip. My dad had a curse. Like if you hit your, if you hit your thumb with a hammer sort of situation, he would say what I remember to be, I remember it to be Votanabe Shaku. I have gone to a lot of Italians over the years and said,

does this mean anything to you if I say Votanabe Shaku? And they're always like, no, I don't know what that is. Once I was in Sicily, I didn't appreciate the difference between Sissile. Sicilian and Italian, huge difference between Sicilian and Italian. We had a tour guy, like you're doing like a little tour around an old town. And I'm chatting the tour lady up at the end of the tour. And I say, maybe you can help me with something.

Does it mean anything to you if I say, Votanabe Shaku? And she says, do you maybe mean botana Rushaku? I'm like, that's it! and her response was wow that's a big one i'm not i'm not going to tell you what that is i'll write it down for you and you can look it up later bad words terrible then i was talking to a guy a youngster 30-year-old guy long hair man bun i said to him i'm telling him the story he's a celian i tell him and he's like wow yeah that's a big one it's a big one Commonly used or no?

It would be What you're saying is that there's a lady of the night with an equine clientele I'll leave it at that Wow But it's Yeah

Terrible No wonder he just said that in Italian Mm-hmm And he would say that in a moment If he hit his thumb with a hammer Like instead of saying mother Mm-hmm You say that

Yeah, horse Yep The other thing to happen This is another, this is another Sicily highlight. So we go to, oh, another one is that we've been, I've been saying my name wrong my whole life.

It's Rinella. I've been saying it. I've been saying it right all along. We go to this little dinky town. We're on this volcanic island. And here and there's like these little valleys. And sometimes it'd be a place where the volcanic crater like blew a wall out. And what it blew a wall out,

it would create like a little spot. You can put a town there and grow some, grapes. Somebody's places just have one road going in and a road and you know

that's it one road goes down in there. So we have this we have a driver and he takes us down in this little town not far from Renoa

the town of Renewa but we go down in this little village and we kind of want to walk so he's like well just walk and I'll pick you up down in town

so my wife my kids were whining all around and we eventually get where we just never run into the guy like there's not a lot to do and it's very it's rural and we wind up there's these rock walls

and there's this road the road has signs we come to where the road has these signs and I don't know Italian but I know enough to know that these signs say private road and I confirm it's private road

like in eight different ways private road we're staying there talking and this one old timer who's got like he's just got a pair of shorts no shirt no shoes he comes out of the bushes

and he's kind of wondering what we're doing and then I see him turn a ball valve to like irrigate something and go back into the bushes. My wife gets the driver on the phone. We clear up where we're at. The driver comes down. We climb in the driver's car. He drives into through the signs.

I say to my kids out loud, I say, I guess it's okay to drive on a private road here because I have a very familiar anxiety from growing up when he got stuck driving on a private road. We start driving on a private road and also out of the bushes. here's this other old timer. Mad. And I can't speak any Italian, but I've been in this situation so I know exactly what's happening. The guy comes to the window

and his basically, he's basically, Mamma Mia! You know, he's like doing all the Italian hand gestures and he's pointing. And without knowing any words, I know exactly what's transpiring. The driver is trying to take a, like, what's the big deal?

he's trying to do like a what's the big deal and the guy's trying to do like I can tell he's like this is the 10th time this week how many signs do I got to put up but I can't understand any of it but I'm so familiar with the situation and the guy's doing a like super cash the driver it's like trespassing is the universal language yes it was just it was the best and I normally I'm high I'm like I'd be anxious in that conversation but I'm just a dude paying for a ride. So I'm like totally divorced from it. And it was the first time I could ever be in a fight, a trespass and fight where I like had my heart rate never went up. There's no consequences for you. No. It was great just to be there and see it. We pull away. And he got his to speak much English. We finally get out of it. Then we go back out and turn around and go back out. And he looks over his shoulder and he goes,

no problem. So how do you pronounce your name? Rinella. now you know how Elliot Cows feels Yeah, I know how he feels Everybody mispronouncing the name Now those were your highlights What would your kids say?

The highlight was Going, we went and watched a We went and took a boat out And watched the volcano We erupt for a couple hours Oh, cool It erupts all the time Stromboli

Um Stromboli You can swim Lay on your back Watch it shooting live out How was the food Hit and miss, dude I hate to say it

I hate to say it Hit and miss Hit and miss No, I mean, not every Italian probably makes great Italian food, right? Hit and miss. Yeah, some real highlights. Marinated anchovies, not like salted salad, like a marinated anchovy. That's good.

Some of their stuff is, yeah, hit, miss, hit, miss, that's all. Brody ran a marathon. I did, my first one, this past weekend. Give me your biggest takeaway. Hold on before, though, before you give the takeaway already. know if my little message of inspiration at 5 o'clock in the morning, did that help you? Well, I didn't feel like, I didn't feel like you were inspiring me. I felt like you were trying to disagree with my strategy, so it didn't help. I went into that. What was your question?

Well, like, what's your biggest takeaway? You ran, how many miles is that? 26.2, but you always, here's the thing is you don't know this because you don't run. You never run 26.2 miles in a marathon. It's always like 26.5.5. or 26.7 because you're not running in a straight line. That's a good point. So your watch is lying to you the whole time. So you're like,

oh shit, I'm almost done. You're doing an extra half mile of zigzagging. Yep. Yeah. Trying to go around people or whatever. Go to get a drink. But it was like,

it was cold and wet, but it was very great positive experience. Like I loved it. Did you have a number in your head? Yeah. Did you hit the number? I did. Well, close.

Close. I was a little slower than the number. But the main thing was, is I was using this as kind of a dress rehearsal for the one I'm going to do in September. Why is that one different? Because I was using this one to learn how to do it. Because like you're in, like, the longest training run I did was 20 miles.

So like, you're in no man's land for a while during the race. That's the farthest you ever ran. Yeah. You never run the actual, I mean, most people don't run the actual distance in training. But like, I figured out fueling and hydration and pacing. Like, so that was all. perfect. And I didn't hit, many people hit what's called the wall between 18 and 20. They get hurt. They cramp up. They fuelings messed up and they just, they're dying, right? That didn't happen.

So like that was the coolest thing. A couple big takeaways was I learned an awesome trick, which is, you know those silicone straws, reusable straws? Yeah. So you take one of those, they're bending. That's one of the things my kids own that annoys me. Yeah, yeah. So the aid stations, there's people like handing out Dixie cups of like Gatorade and water and stuff. And trying to drink one of those while you're running sucks. Like it's like hard.

You can, you want to choke on it, you spill it. There's a trick where you bring, you cut one of those silicone straws in half and just shove it in a pocket. Like a little shorthy. You grab that cup, throw the cup, put the straw away. Oh, really? It was pleasant. That's your takeaway. Other takeaways.

It's 26 miles. And that's what you got, that's what you came away with. He's become a straw user. Yeah. Other takeaway is middle-aged lady runners are just like machines, man. Really? They just freaking go. Just better endurance.

Something happens. Or it's like younger than younger than age thing, dude. I think like they could be younger, they could be older. Do you regard yourself as a middle-aged guy runner? Still, yeah. I'm not an old age yet. Oh yeah, you still got 10 years. Yeah, like they just go, man.

Like I paced off of a lot of middle-aged women runners because they're just very steady. So yeah, I'm going to do another one. It was great. I loved it. It's five plus months of training, which was the, like the... Yeah, but you, like, gave up fishing in order to train. And turkey hunting.

I don't really understand that. Isn't their way to have both? For sure. I did a little, but... That's why I kind of, like, maybe... the focus on this one, but then I wasn't going to do the one in September, and now I'm going to do it. You can be like a big marathon guy. I don't know.

I'm going to do another one. We'll see. It's not as far as Janus runs. How far Gianni run? Did you, one more question. I know you didn't hit the wall, but did you ever hit what they call like the pain cave sometimes? No. Like, I definitely was feeling it the last 10K, but like in a good way.

Yeah. The last couple three miles, I was like, yeah. No, it was good. Maybe that means I didn't go hard enough. Were you listening to some tunes, like stroke or race or anything? I listened to tunes, and I forgot my headphones, so I had to use my kids, and only one of them was working, and that went dead a couple hours into the race, so I just rodogged it, as they say. Yeah, I could picture saving stroke race for like the last mile, dude.

Stroke race is born to race. See, in the morning, I texted Brody. I said, is it today or yesterday? He's like, man, I'm about to go. I was like, all right, you ready? He goes, yep, I'm just going to run like a, you know, smooth, consistent, steady. I said, screw that. I said, empty the tank, man.

Let's go. I just did not reply. And he didn't empty the tank. You went, ran another super race? Yeah, ran another hundo in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming. Which calls around your neck? No, I didn't bring my calls. That's this for later.

Maybe you were checking. No, I did, when you finish, you actually get a belt buckle, which I forgot to bring, but they give you, like, this jacket, which I'll probably never wear again. It says Big Horn Ultra Run all over it. That looked good on you. And I got this hat. To wear it again. So, you know, when you get a hat for run 100 miles, you got a sport it around.

Was it different than the last time you ran 100 miles? Yes, Mary. Easier course, by a lot. Like, in the crazy mountains, you run on a lot of rocks. shale like just rocks like we call them babyhead rocks and they're just all over the place which when you're 20 miles in and you're fresh it's no big deal with little severed baby heads all yeah it's a good metaphor because we all know what that's like but at 80 miles uh those things just are brutal because you just can't you can't run on top of them and then it takes a lot

of focus to run between them and it just it gets really hard really quickly this trail was like just smooth dirt pretty much the entire way If you get way into this, have you kicked around doing the Tosik 100 and doing a Tundra 100? No. Is that a thing? The Tustick? Do you just make that up? No, I just made it up, but that could be your deal.

The Tossack 100, where it's 100 miles of Tustac. He's done two 100-mile races. I'm wondering when you think the threshold is where he'd get really into it. Well, what's the most times you've heard of anybody running 100 miles? I ran with a guy wearing a kilt, which at first you're like, come on, guy, wearing a kilt. I'm like, oh, I'll chat.

No chafing. Yeah, he said his chafing is much better in the kill. I think he said he was up into the teens now of hundreds done in a kilts. But why can't he just wear a skirt? Yeah, you could wear a skirt. Just like a tennis skirt. Yeah, totally. Does it need to be plaid and made out of wool?

He actually wears one made by that company. Is it 5-11 tactical? They make it like an adventure kilt. Yeah, did you, but did you hear about? how it came about. It was like a, it was an April's Fool's Day thing. Yeah. I didn't know this. So many people were like, oh no, we want a camouflage

kilt that like every like couple years now they make a run in these kilt. Anyways, that dude was running his 76 100th mile or. What's that time's 100? We were to get 7,600 miles of races. Yeah. He'd do the Tustick 100, dude. He probably could. Yeah, his goal was to get

to a trademarked. A hundred of them in a couple more years. Yeah, the Tundra 100. The Tustick 100. I think getting into it is I'm approaching that because I'm you finish one and almost the next day you're like what I could have done better like that's all you think about you like I had good parts and I executed but all you can dwell on is like oh I had three to four hours of nausea where like I felt like I was just going to puke the entire time and like everything shuts down I wasn't moving like what if I had those three to four hours back how well would my time? beat, you know, what could have I done? So this all makes me jealous because it makes me feel like a cupcake, dude. Yeah, honestly, it's not that hard.

I mean, because you got to remember, but they call it ultra-running, but it's more like ultra-power hiking with some running thrown in. I mean, sure, there's the elites that might actually run the entire course. The guy set a course record that won, and I think he went just under 18 hours, and it took me 30.

So he did it almost twice as fast as me. What was the most you slept? I didn't sleep any on this one bit. Not one bit. When you're training, though, are you training? You didn't sleep one bit. Not one. Are you training power hiking?

Are you training running? Both. I mean, I just can't run up like our local hill here that we always run the M and then up towards Bald Mountain. I mean, you can maybe make it 50 yards running on those steep sections, but eventually you're just, you know, your power hiking. That's my wife found that mouse. Yeah.

That's right. That's right. She was running, she would have blown right past it. So, yeah, you're trying to always push what your slowest pace is, right? That's what makes your pace faster throughout the whole thing. And to do that, you train by doing intervals or little short runs up, you know, mountains. And so hopefully in a race, your base-level power hike ends up being faster than it once was. So.

Oh, congratulations, boys. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. It felt good. Yeah, but I'm ready to do another one for sure. I am, the reason I was excited to do this run in Wyoming,

Big Horn Mountains are in Wyoming, is because I also drew an elk tag in Wyoming, coveted elk tag in Wyoming. Yeah, I thought you were supposed to be like all buddies on Wyoming tags and stuff. Then you went like totally rogue. I didn't even know you went rogue. Well, I realized that especially on a hunt like this, it's better that like if you want you can come and join me and help me out and then when you draw

the tag you don't need two guys trying to hunt no because then it's just going to it splits your time and it gets complicated and there's too much there's too much pressure at least for me i'm like i have 16 years of applying invested in this and now i got to split this hunt with steve i don't want to do that i don't need him cramping my style no but if you want to come class for me and help me find a big bull i'd be super stoked on that i probably got something like I got to do. But speaking of Elkhutney... But you will take his waypoints when he's done.

I can't believe that you guys haven't used this. No, somehow I have it. This is the Kaivan bugle tube. Collapsable bugle tube. Did you take that on your run? Because it collapses? No. No.

But if you didn't see it beforehand, Steve actually thought that it was a water bottle. I thought it was for technical hydration. That's roughly... Where's that camera? There it is. That's roughly the size. it is.

Yep. So you put it in a water bottle holder. Yeah, and it fits right in that pocket real nice. And so when you don't need it, the thing about when you have a full, when you're carrying around something that's always out like this, like I always have to have a little bungee or string on it. Like for the jackasses at home, you should explain that you're holding an elk bugle tube. Yeah.

Didn't I not say that already? We haven't covered that. I thought he said, I thought he said, Kyvin bugle tube right off the bar. Oh, did he? It's a collapsible bugle tube. And when it, when I'm normally running with a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a full-length one that just stays like this, you've got to have some sort of attachment

and you sling it over your shoulder. For most of the time, when you're on an elk-cunt for, let's say, 12 hours dawn till dusk, right? You're only actually elk-cunning for two hours of it, where you're actually probably going to be using your bugle tube. Maybe you pull it out midday once, blow on it, see if you get a response, right? So I've been using this for two years.

I had a prototype two years ago, and then this thing's already been out for a while. So I had the same version that you could have last year in my pack. And yeah, it's just nice and tidy because you don't need to have some string, you know, looped around your neck. You just tuck it in your water bottle pocket on your pack and when you need it. Can you tell the difference with the sound? No, not at all.

The sound doesn't sound collapsible. You guys tell me. I think it sounds great. Oh, man. That gets the people going. Deep resonance there. Sounds pretty good, I think. I have a headphones on.

It sounded good. Anyways, that's the Kaiv and Bugle, too, from Phelps. Check it out. I'll be running it this fall, my super bitch. So I don't want to give way details, but did you, like, feel like you were kind of scouting while you ran? Or just kind of more getting a flavor for the area? Flavor. Flavor for the range.

I'm like within a couple hundred miles of where I'll be hunting. They could feasibly wander over that way. I feel like, you know, you run like that, they will. You run 100 miles in Wyoming, and then you kill the biggest bull. of your life in Wyoming the same year. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Just because it's my favorite thing. Yanni knows how to make a noise of an elk real far away. Listen. That's one way off. Yeah, I love that.

You're like, was that? He's close enough to go, though. Oh, this is a major correction because we really kind of screwed something up. I was all shooting my mouth off about New Mexico's landowner tag program. And the guy wrote in, he was riled up. Very. Rightfully so. Yes. Rightfully so.

But not just in an axe-grinding kind of way. No, no, no. He's trying to do the good thing for humanity. He wasn't just trying to settle a score. Right. No, he just came in with a correction. Yeah, a proper correction. He's going to tell you about his correction.

Here we go. It's truncated, but you'll get the idea. He writes in, for anyone unfamiliar with E-plus or the elk private land-use system, it's New Mexico's landowner elk authorization program. One thing that makes New Mexico confusing is that people often talk about E-plus as though it's one program with one set of rules. It is not. The primary management zone is where nearly all of the conversations surrounding unit-wide authorizations take place.

It's also where most of New Mexico's Elkine opportunities exist. Within that zone, qualifying ranches have two enrollment options, ranch-only and unit-wide. Ranch-only authorizations work pretty much as people assume. The authorization is tied to a single ranch, the hundred-eastern. is limited to it and the landowner controls access. When a ranch voluntarily enrolls as unit-wide, it earns the ability to receive and sell unit-wide authorizations. This is where it starts to get important.

Yeah, this is where you guys went wrong. They allow the hunter to legally hunt public land throughout the game management unit and every other unit-wide ranch within that unit and any other private property where permission has been granted. In exchange, the ranch has to allow access to every hunter holding a valid elk license for that unit. with the exception of those ranch-only license holders.

That includes hunters who purchased a unit-wide authorization from a completely different ranch and hunters who drew an elk for that unit through New Mexico's public draw. See, I've read this three times that I didn't get the public draw part. Yes, yep, exactly. So you guys made it out like they're just getting away with murder and they're not. Well, come on. Was that bad? I like it. This is my segment and I skated through without anybody pointing the finger.

me because I probably said the same thing. I wanted to say the same thing over, you know, so people get this. Yeah. Because what we were talking about is, is, I said a few years ago, I bought a, I bought a unit-wide landowner elk tag in New Mexico. A thing I forgot is that it was pointed out to me that that ranch has no elk. Right. Like, you're not going to, you can go hunting or you want. You're not going to find an elk there.

I had no idea that anyone that gets those can hunt any ranch that gets and sells unit-wide tags. So when you go and say, I want some unit-wide tags to sell, you're really open and your land-up to a lot of not just people that bought landowner tags, but dudes that drew the units. Yeah, it's a thing that came up is like, how good are those ranches, though? I don't know. That can't answer. Yeah. That I can't answer. Yeah.

Like our lot, like are in this area, is there ever a dude? Here'd be the question. Maybe the same guy can write in. Are you aware of any ranchers who have Boku elk on their ranch during season and do unit-wide tags? I think he said in his email, he says, he says, I don't do it. Yes. So that leads me to believe he's got elk. I think he, but I think he said he had hunted.

He had hunted other ranches. When he drew a tag through the public draw, he had hunted ranches that had gotten unit-wide tags, and he was like, use that access opportunity himself. And he pointed out that he doesn't put his own ranch in it. Now, my question would be, and this is a great letter, my question to him would be, are you doing it because you don't want dudes running around on your place,

or is it something different? I don't know. He also talked about that E-plus is not perfect. We just had a mischaracterization of it. Oh, gross mischaracterization. That was an omission. Yep. It was being wrong.

We're considering bringing back the correction segment. That's a great correction. That would have won. Phenomenal. Should have sent him some to COVID. I failed to mention Jim Heffelfingers here today. Hey. Hi, Jim.

How do you do? Haven't seen somebody in a while. Good to see you. If Montana were to propose something similar to this E-plus, seems like we kind of have a similar situation where it could help people out that are like own a bunch of land. They want tags on the regular and it would help put some pressure on these lands to move the elk around.

I don't know. Would you guys support it? Yeah. As he's laying it out, as he's laying it out, yes. Transferable tags? Because 90% I mean, I believe 90% of these tags are not the unit-wide tags. So I think most of the E-plus tags are the ranch-only tags. I bought it unit wide.

Yeah. hunted public land and was told that there's no, I didn't go look, but I was told by, not by the guy, but by other people, like, there's no elk on that place. Yeah, I'm, I'm very leery of setting a present of transferable tags that are owned by private landowners. Did I say yes? I should have said, like, I don't know. If it led to. If it led to access to. If it let a net access increase, then I'd be like, let's talk.

Yeah. I'm going to go sort of in charge of all this. I'm going to go further. I said I was leery of it. I'm adamantly opposed to it. That was my recommendation at the end of the segment. As I was saying, I'm not condemning what they do. And all these places have their own histories and how they came up.

But I'm saying, if I lived in a state and we didn't have transferable landowner tags, I think my suggestion was if one were living in a state that doesn't currently have them, and someone was proposing changing the status quo in order to make transferable tags, I would say, uh-uh. Yeah, I would not trade block management for this system. No way. I think they also have a block management system in New Mexico. I don't know anything about it. Jim, you must have something to say about this. I don't. I spent all my time with my sons and my dad hunting in Arizona.

I'm not that familiar with even next door in their system. She does have something to say about it. You end up how with weekend gold tickets to Lassau Montreal. Thomas Rhett. Mumford and Sons. Well, here's my pride and here's my shame. John Party, Old Dominion, Carly Pierce, and more. And the prize gets even sweeter.

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No shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Another piece of listener email real quick, this is just a heartwarming story. He says a few weeks ago, you guys were talking on the news show

about Minnesota sales tax for outdoor recreation, habitat, water, I just wanted to share a little story about it. What we're referring to is Minnesota developed an alternate funding mechanism which was a, it's like a percentage of a penny of sales tax

that goes toward wildlife work. And they're they got a lot of money to do great stuff with it, including buying a lot of new public land. Anyways, he says, my dad was huge on getting people to vote. for it. He had hundreds of signs that he gave people and helped put

them in people's yards. He was very excited to see that bill get passed. My dad, like any good old Dutchman, that's his racist thing, not mine. You know the Dutch and their signs. Here's what my dad knew

to be true about. He called him Hollanders. Didn't like him. Not that he didn't like him. He knew that if you went to a Hollanders yard sale, they would overcharge to the point where it wasn't even worth going to a Hollander's yard sale.

He'd be like yard sale, Hollanders? Yeah, I'll pass. No deals, no deals to be had there. So he's saying, my dad, like any good old Dutchman, didn't get rid of the signs after the election. And over this last 17 years, he's been using them for all kinds of things. He uses his signs to pattern his shotgun.

He included the photos where he's got his shot up sign. And normally when someone shoots the sign is for something totally different. But this is a guy, this is the owner of the signs shooting his sign. Recycle reuse. He patterns his shotgun with his old signs. He stretches turkey fans with his own signs. When he needs to clean fish, he cleans fish on his old signs. The last election, even though it's not even up for a vote anymore,

he put his signs back out again. I like that. I like that a lot. Put him in your neighbor's yard. That's the sort of victory laugh. He stuck them back out just to remind people about how they did vote to pass it. That stuff's great. Oh.

Yeah. When we did our yard sign, that one hanging up there. That's a great sign. I use that for stuff. Remember, at first, we were going to do one side that was going to be a target so that you could get. shoot, I don't remember that. But I've used that material a handful of times.

I wish I had a stack of those. Oh, they're great targets. I wish I had a foresight to do that. Anyways, dope smokers. They can buy guns now. They can. Yeah, it's been, I mean, if you're paying attention to the news, there's a lot of action at the Supreme Court right now,

as there is this time of year. Yeah, they've been tearing a new one down there at the Supreme Court. A lot of decisions. Yeah, so there are two major Second Amendment rulings. Well, I guess now it's July. So in June, both went in favor of gun owners. Well, yeah. The one went in favor of gun owners.

The other one went in favor of dope smokers. That's true. Dope smoking gun owners. I feel like you should not say... It prompted the question. Yeah. It prompted the question. And I want to hear about the story, but it prompt the question.

Well, tell the story. And then I'll tell the biggest thing that comes to my mind when I hear it. Well, so I'll tell you right now. So there's two, there's, there's, there's, there's, The case that was decided is United States versus Hamani, was decided on June 18th. And before we get into that, there is another,

in order to understand why the court did what it did, you have to look at this other case from 2022, which is the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association versus Bruin. And in that case, it had to do with New York's handgun licensing system, where you had to show cause for why you needed a carry permit. And the court struck down that New York law. And what it did in doing that was it established a new set of criteria by which the Supreme Court assesses the constitutionality of gun laws.

Prior to that New York State Rifle and Pistol Association case, what they did was they asked whether the law burdened your Second Amendment rights and then weighed that, weighed the individual. interest against the government's interest in public safety. And so it was like a very much sort of facts of the matter weighing two sides. And in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, they instead established what's called the history and tradition test. So under this framework, the court basically asks, does the Second Amendment cover the conduct in question here? and then it puts the burden on the government to show that what they're doing has is consistent

with historical tradition of firearm regulation in America. And they basically are looking at early America and saying, is there something back then that sort of can be used as precedent, although that's not how you'd use the legal language, but basically is there something in the past that says this is what sort of the founder's had in mind. So in this, in this Hmani case, the one that we're talking about with the dope smokers, this is a guy who his house was raided by the FBI in 2022 during a terrorism investigation. No charges came up.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting when you know the, there's not a lot of news coverage that gets into the full back story. But he had, he, they found a gun. I believe it was a Glock 19. They found a little baggie of cocaine and they found some marijuana. He admitted to the FBI that he smokes marijuana or uses marijuana every other day. And so then he was charged. Every other day.

Every other day. Not every day. Every other day. Consistently, recreationally, but not every day. Like odd numbers on the calendar. Never on Tuesday, Thursday. Yeah.

And so he was charged with three felonies. one for, you know, when you fill out a 4473, when you're buying a gun from an FFL. Randall likes to flex and he knows those numbers. Yeah, well, I learned a new one. This is 922 G3. That's the, that's the dope smoker clause under U.S. Code. Yeah, anyone that goes and when you go to buy a gun, they give you that little form. Yeah. And you got to go, I believe it's yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no. Yeah, they changed something like that. They changed the questions around at one point, and I noticed it. And I said something to the

after felony is like, good. No. Good eye. Basically, it's like, have you ever renounced your citizenship? Yeah. Do you have a restraining order against you? Are you a fugitive from the law? Have you been dishonorily discharged from the military?

And if any of those is a yes, right. Your purchase gets denied and they ask you, are you a dope smoker? Yeah, they say, are you an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant or stimulant drug, unlawful substances, things of that nature. So he got charged with a felony for answering no when they say you had weed in your house. Yeah. Same thing that happened to Hunter Biden. Yeah. And he got charged with a felony because when he answered no to that, that becomes part of the FFL's records. He got another felony for his answer becoming permanent records that the FFL has to maintain. I'm assuming he was

a legal owner of that Glock 19. Well, yeah, because he filled out the form. Well, he lied on it. But it wasn't like... It wasn't, no, yeah. He had filled out a 4473. So anyway, he got hit with these three felonies, all stemming from the fact that he uses marijuana and he owns a gun.

The court ruled unanimously for him in throwing out those convictions. Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion, and he uses the history and test that I talked about earlier. And it's kind of funny because what they looked at was they looked at old laws. The closest analog they could find were old laws that pertain to, quote, habitual drunkards. Who are okay now, though. Yeah. Well, yeah.

I mean, there's all, there's, you can look at this on a number of different levels, right? Like, but he, he says essentially those laws only applied to people who were totally incapacitated by their drinking and not just users of alcohol. He said, you know, if it's just someone who uses, like, unlawful substances, it could be, if you take your wife's Ambien, these are his, I'm not just pulling drug references out, but he's like, he's like, by the government's definition of an unlawful user, it could be someone who takes their wife's Ambien to get to sleep. It could be a college student who borrows Friends Adderall to study for a test or something like that. Like, they're very, they're very, they're very, they're very, They could be very narrow instances, and the law leaves a lot of gray area. And so this is one of the issues with the law is that it's just vague. They didn't really address the vagueness question in this, which leaves the door open for further. There are some people that would have liked the court to clear that up.

But they basically said that someone using an unlawful substance doesn't immediately forfeit their Second Amendment rights. I read this thing though I read this the totally wrong way I like I arrived in the same place a totally different way when I saw the headline for this in my mind it was that

now that though it's the weed's not federally legal you have all these state legalities so when I'm filling out that form and I see a line and I'm in a like weed legal state I'm in a weed legal state filling out the form and I see the form

asking me, are you addicted to marijuana? Why doesn't it say are you addicted to booze? Right. So that's when I was really like that, I was like with legalization and we're eventually headed to federal it'll be decriminalized federally

eventually. Yeah. So I was like, why are you pointing out this one substance but you're not pointing out alcohol? It's like, why? Because alcohol is legal. It's like, well, weed's legal. Right. So they shouldn't be asking you about, oh, are you using a thing that's totally legal that you can buy down the road? And if you are using this totally legal thing you can buy down the road, you can't get a gun. That to me is a more compelling argument.

They're not concerned with whether it's legal in a state. They're concerned with the federal law. I know. But I just, when I encounter that question that all, when I'm doing my FFL thing, which is frequent, I always. pause and say, how could that still be when it's legal or to make it consistent, you'd have to point out, are you addicted to alcohol? The interesting thing about 922G3 is that the language comes from the Gun Control Act of 1968, and I was doing some reading and reading some congressional reports about this.

And it seems like the way that made it in there was elected officials were just kind of like, Well, this all makes sense and just wrote that language without much debate or consideration. Because it is, it's just asking, do you use drugs or are you addicted to substances, which are not, they're not things that are established in the legal process? No. Right? Like, sure, a court could say you're convicted of illegal drug use, right? But you're asking someone to say something that there's no public process by which they've been determined. to be an addict.

Yeah, it's not like you get like a card. Yeah. You got to go apply for an addiction card. You're like, if you said to me, you know, I used to like to pull a cork. If you said to me, are you addicted to alcohol? I would have been like, I drink every day, but no. Right, right. And the first, I mean, that's the first step is denial, right?

Like, that's what's so funny about it is the government's asking you, are you addicted to a substance. Most addicts are probably going to say no. Hell no, not. Yeah. I'm a total control. And then how does the court prove that you knew you were an addict, but even though you, right? So it's, but there's all this vagueness.

I could see if it said, if the form said, like, are you a user of an illegal, are you an user of an illegal substance? But then picture this, if depending on what state, give me a non-legal state. Texas? No, this is, this happened in Texas. I think what's a non-legal reason? Wyoming, I don't think. Probably Utah. Okay, let's just say, let's just go out of limb and say marijuana has not been legalized in Utah.

Yeah. So if you're taking a federal form and the federal form said something to the effect of, are you a user of illegal or controlled substances? Mm-hmm. Such as blank by blank. Here you have a situation where a guy in Utah has to say yes, but a guy in New York gets to say no. On a federal form. Mm-hmm. What's going to happen to that? Is that question staying on the form, Randall?

I mean, the court ruling doesn't change anything. Right. And another... How could it not change anything? It's the Supreme Court. Where do you go from there? I mean, it doesn't rewrite the law, is what I mean. Like, the court has made a decision that if you're convicted under this, it's unconstitutional.

But it doesn't actually... It doesn't automatically go into U.S. code and rewrite it. One of the issues with this, and this is something that also came up in the... in the Hunter Biden case is that it's... Can I refresh people real quick? Yeah. Hunter Biden bought a handgun during a period that he later admitted to being addicted to crack cocaine. Yeah.

We're not talking about weed here. We're talking about crack. Right, but it's like it's vague enough that it's not, there aren't very many cases prosecuted under this part of the, you know, like, like, like, like, like, Like whatever cases come up for lying on a 4473, this is a very small, like, single-digit percentage of them. And so he made the case, and Hunter Biden made the case that they were being selectively prosecuted.

Yeah. Because it is vague. And they don't, and they generally, I remember reading about this in Washington State, where you have a lot of people in Washington State being like, we want more gun laws, we want more gun laws. But then someone pointing out, you don't enforce the gun laws you had. And they went and looked at how many people they were prosecuting for lying on that FFL form. and they don't prosecute anyone for lying on that form.

They'd never gone after anybody for lying on that form. Well, in the AT or the, I guess it may, yeah, it's ATF internal guidance. It actually says, like, using drugs, failing a drug test or being charged with a crime, having to do with drug possession or use, one of those three things does not constitute a violation. Like, if you were to say yes and you'd use drugs, they say that's not a lie, right? Like the ATF internal guidance actually has a fairly high standard for what constitutes lying on that form. Like you might have failed a drug test once, but you can still answer no truthfully.

That's like most of the other questions are very binary. Yeah, yeah. Do you have a restraining order? There's not a lot of, like, there's not a lot of guys that feel like, well. Yeah. I mean, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Yeah, you do or you don't, right? Have you ever renounced your citizenship?

You don't be like, hell, you know, one time. Right, so you either did or didn't. So I could see it. Yeah. I was joking about dope smokers and all that. Well, I think you'd like to know that marijuana remains fully illegal for both wreck and comprehensive medical use. Idaho, Kansas, South Carolina, and Wyoming.

Only four states left. Utah's good. What's Utah guy going on? I didn't go that deep. Who makes it illegal for? Idaho, Kansas. South Carolina and Wyoming. Completely illegal all the way around.

Recreational and medicinal. I feel like Wyoming's kind of got like a little bit more of a libertarian streak, but I guess not. My son used to work behind the gun counter at Sportsman Warehouse, and he said people come in, fill out the 44-73, answer all the questions, and then he'd ask for an ID, and they'd pull out their medical marijuana card. There you go. As a joke? No. No. Like, all right, we'll throw that form away.

Yeah, it's good they clean that one up. Oh, the other point I had, it's an easy point. Yeah. And I think that this is answerable. It's like, if you got to encounter in a bad situation, a high guy with a gun or a drunk guy with a gun, what would you pick? I think most people would pick the high guy with a gun.

Yeah, I think there's like, it's been clearly established that like drunks are violent. Yeah, a drunk guy with a gun. Yeah, they said like, hey, man, you can go confront that stoned guy with a gun or can go confront the drunk guy with a gun. I'll take the stoner. Yeah. Same thing with being behind a steering wheel. Who's better?

Well, like, which one would you rather have driving next to you on the interstate? That I don't know enough about. I don't know about that. I'd take the stoner. Yeah. Any other. Listen. And you're there.

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Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Windstorm logging. Stoners to storm logging. I picked up this story from Nate because I saw Windstorm logging and, you know, since I'm basically an expert on logging these days

since we logged our 40 acres in Wisconsin a couple years ago. I'm like, yeah, this'll be easy. It's right on my head. Turns out not a story really about, it is about logging, but it's just so more complicated. So about a week ago,

the Daily Montana reported, United States Forest Service announces an emergency logging project over 5 million acres in Montana and Idaho. And the basics are, because of two major straight-line wind events,

USFS made a plan to expedite logging operations to salvage timber, reduce habitat for pine beetle type insects, citing safety concerns, and limiting wildfire conditions. For those of you that don't know, a straight-line wind event is like where you have, it's like the temperatures change rapidly, and you have really cold air rushing down,

sometimes associated with moisture, and it basically just comes straight down and then shoots, you know, wind and straight lines, you know, every direction. Is there a difference between a micro-bird? in a straight line wind event? Very similar. When I was looking up straight line wind events, it looked like it was a synonym. Yeah, we're just levels.

How long ago was that weather event? Oh, we had them here in Gallatin County. It was December of 2025. And then I think, I think was it March or April of 26? And I can tell you, because a snowmobile route that I like to drive and check for lion tracks on, I did two days of cutting in December so we could get through it with actually a friend of Jake's,

Chase, and then late in the year, we had to come back and do it again because it just got wrecked by those. I was on a trail the other day and it was, I was like, I pity the guy that gets up here on the mule.

And the idea, like you're just not. The idea behind the logging is they only have so much time to use that stuff for it goes bad. Well, here's a deal. So to really get into the weeds this, you've got to go back about a year.

Because, yeah, originally, when I first read it, I'm like, great. We're making use of some timber that's already down, preventing, you know, more pine beetles. Awesome. But if you go back about a year, March 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production. And basically in the four or so months following that, the USFS, BLM, Fish and Wildlife Service, they were all ordered to rework their processes. to fast-track logging projects.

I remember that because it was like the anti-Canada thing, right? Because we were using too much Canadian lumber. Yeah, I think one of the things that they say is that we should just be using more of our own lumber, right? So basically the way they did that was that like getting rid or at least minimizing like all the NEPA policies, which is National Environmental Policy Act, rescinding the 2001 roll this rule, which that's like still in the works, reorganizing the USDA in general around like we've talked about this before on this show, like where the headquarters are now, right, for the USFS. They've kind of gotten a lot of people out of D.C. and put them in regional places.

A lot less people on the ground to help work through this stuff. The key here is that the order treats ESA consultation requirements as a source of delay for timber and forestry projects on federal land, and it directs agencies to speed those requirements up whenever the law allows. Farther, the ESA has an expedited consultation process meant for genuine emergencies. The order directs agencies to use this emergency pathway to the maximum extent permissible to facilitate timber production. And if you remember what I said two minutes ago when I read that headline,

this is an emergency, right? So that's kind of where we're at. The backlash has come because they basically slipped it out this plan. It's like it wasn't brought out to any media. Some people got wind of it. And there was like a week-long comment period, which is already passed. It ended on June 29 a couple days ago. So people are like piss.

So basically, I mean, I don't know what else there really is to report on it other than like. Do they got to construct? Roads or not construct roads? Oh, 100%. Okay. And they're pissed along, like, correct me if I'm wrong, they're pissed along kind of partisan lines. Sure.

Correct? Oh, I would imagine so. Yeah. When I've seen, if they weren't, we should figure out why that is and just trap it and bottle it up and sprinkle it on every other issue out there. I've seen one thing that makes it not an emergency with an uppercase E, but an emergency with a lowercase E is sometimes this will happen when there's a big burn. is they'll want to go in.

They'll be like, well, let's go do a timber harvest and harvest all the burned timber. Yeah. And all you got to do, if you're an anti-logging organization, all you need to do is litigate it to stall it long enough for the stuff to dry and corkscrew because the tree's dry and twist

and they're no good anyways. Yeah. So if you could be like, if you can hold them back for, I don't know what it is, six months, eight months, I don't know. If you can hold them back, then it's like becomes, there's no point to it because the timber's all gone. So lowercase E would be if you're really going to go utilize this for real,

you've got to go now or else you're not going to be able to utilize it. It's going to dry out. That brings up another tricky point in this is that the plan is like a five-year plan. And so some of the people against it are saying, oh, really, it's an emergency, but we're going to, like, we have five years to get this timber. By then it's called firewood. Yeah. They're thinking that it's just really opening it up to like just,

generally more commercial logging. I talked to a guy that connected to the Forest Service. His questions, and that's what sort of, I think, my takeaway is like, it's time to it's just good to ask questions. Like, what constitutes an emergency in this case, right?

Like, if those trees are left, like, maybe there's more pine beetles. We don't know that for sure, right? We might have a severe winter for the, there's severe winters for the next. next four years. It might not happen, right? I think there's places where there's fallen timber over roads and near public use areas. Should that be cleaned up? Yeah, 100%. Fire risk would be uppercase E? Sure. I mean, that's like another, like just a whole other, you know, can of worms. There's all kinds of forest management that, you know, has increased fire risk,

you know, in our country. So there is a line in there that says, in quotes. And this project will contribute towards forest resilience, community protection, and ingress, egress. There's the old.

Yeah. There's the old sticker. So again, could be fine. Like, I don't want to state, too, that for the most part,

I'm like very pro-logging. Yeah. Especially these days. I don't think I grew up that way, but the more I've learned in my adulthood, like, I think logging can be great,

right? There's a lot of log in needs to happen. Yeah, like good for habitat, good for jobs, good for economy, all the above. But I think you've got to do it in the right way. Yeah, it's like yelling at your kids. Sometimes you've got to yell at them. That's right. But you should do it in the right way. Right way. It can't be yelling all the time. Yeah. The person I talked to said, you know, think about tradeoffs, right? There's salvaging timber and limiting bugs versus the additional road building. You know, what do all those things do? They

felt like these days, you know, anything come out of the current administration can be regarded or regarding land management should be viewed with a high degree of skepticism because they felt like the economic bottom line is what's important to them. And then discussing environmental tradeoffs is really just getting in the way. So as far as what we can do now, it doesn't, like, comment period's over. But I think you can still engage with the Forest Service. And you can just pay attention and understand what the plans are. And when you're going to see them probably in action.

And if they're diverging from what's supposed to be happening, you know, say something about it. Interesting concepts in there. It's tricky. Tricky, tricky, tricky, tricky. Do moose? Do moose like that kind of habitat, Brody? Sure. That was nice.

They love it. You know, I'll tell you what they don't like is, this is an art thing, just to go. back to step away from Moose for a minute. You get some of those areas, like what you're talking about, where all that stuff blows down. If we're just talking about a habitat issue, you get some areas that it becomes not usable. Yeah. Yeah. Game don't use it. Oh, for sure.

They can't get through it. Just match sticks on match. Yeah. It's like you can have huge areas become that like it's just too hazardous. They can't get in it. And then it winds up being that nothing uses it. So in those cases, if you can do it without like just tons of. excessive road building and then future and then future of like massive amounts of traffic

go clean those areas up you're also making besides the cuts make good successional forest habitat there's places i mean you can go look at places all day around here there's too much blowdown oh yeah it's like there's too much blowdown and eventually it'll eventually it'll be good yeah it'll rot and and there's there i mean i don't want to say big game maybe doesn't use it but that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that doesn't mean that birds and small game aren't up in their... And in a human lifetime, a human lifetime doesn't see this,

but long term, sure, decays and all that, long, long term, but like, you know, if you're 40 and there's an area that's just too much blowdown,

you're not going to be a hot when you're 50. It's basically for you. A. happening. No. Here's a transition. I was hiking in Missoula like a couple months ago with my brother,

and I couldn't believe the amount of blowdown. Like, huge, root balls just up in the air from that windstorm that is and that same trail he's been running into a moose he's run into him three times now nice well he's drawn to that root wad tailor made just that's a transition oh that's great thank you rana we're going to talk about moose in the southern rockies um shifting baseline syndrome of uh shiris moose in the southern rockies uh you've talked

about shifting baseline syndrome a number of times but if you're not familiar um shifting baseline syndrome occurs when each generation inherits kind of an altered perception of their world compared to the last generation. For example, like gradually forgetting what an ecosystem's original or formal state looked like. Yeah, it's like people

that my favorite is when people say like, you know, boy Montana sure changed a lot. I'm like, you should talk to the blackfeet about that. Exactly. Yeah. So yeah, everyone experiences it. They just, like forget what happened or they they weren't like present when things were different so like my former understanding of Moose Shyrus in Colorado was and along with a lot of other people was that they probably weren't this is just

like I always heard they probably weren't native and occasionally they wandered into the northern part of the state historically a recent study at the University of Colorado Boulder and that Gio they refute that belief that moose are this like non-native or even some people will even call them invasive species which is i i don't agree with that all the invasive part um and they did this they refute this by tracing archaeological evidence um historical texts indigenous oral histories and archi uh i said archaeology well and dudes old photos yeah and we'll get to that yeah pictures um And like you might like wonder like how this would even happen like this kind of gap where people are like, oh, they were never here when they probably were. Like this isn't hard and fast. They're not saying 100% that there was always moose in Colorado, but it's like leaning heavily in that direction. And one of the ways that you, they figure that this was able to occur that people kind of forgot about them is European settlement.

Like, they didn't frequently record moose encounters in the Southern Rockies, Colorado in particular. And then later, moose were likely in those areas were likely hunted to localized extinctions during like late 19th, early 20th century, like a lot of other species. So by the time like the 40s and 50s rolled around, Colorado wildlife managers just had no knowledge or experience with moose. And they just simply assumed that moose were not native to the state. They were never there. So the baseline was like incorrectly reset to support the idea that moose were historically absent. So when a introduction or whether you want to call it reintroduced or introduced, there was a program established in 1978 in Colorado to cut moose loose.

They were class of, they classified those moose as a non-native introduced speech. species, not as a native species. So another, like, example of this shifting baseline syndrome with, with, for, that hunters can relate to, especially, like, people of our age would be wild turkeys. So, like, from the early 20th century to, let's say, I would say, like, in my head, like, around 1990, like, close to the time I graduated high school, it's like, when we just started, like, seeing turkeys in places we had never seen them before. But like hunters for generations were used to just, there was very few turkeys around.

Then all over the damn place, they really quickly got used to having turkeys everywhere. And that's their baseline now. And now we're seeing these like declines in population. It's like, what's going on? So like that baseline might change in the future. Yeah, you want to be like, what's going on is you got used to something that lasted about three years. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But like I remember like turkeys being like unicorns, man.

Like they just didn't exist where I grew up and now they're everywhere. But going back to this study, they are using archaeological remains. I said indigenous accounts and early written accounts. So there's a couple archaeological sites. Once located near Greeley, Colorado, which is pretty close to Denver. And it's moose remains dating back 9,000 years. another one is Mesa Verde National Park which is like southwestern Colorado

moose bone specimens dating back a thousand years and the idea is that like because there's a kind of a time span between these dated remains like that they're probably present throughout that time there's more examples of bones and teeth and things like that they do acknowledge

like they need to study these these like remains for further biochemical and radiocarbon verification. So there's like hard physical evidence. And then you go to like Native American oral histories, the Hickory Apache and the northern Arapaho. They have language markers like words for moose that show up frequently. They have stories and songs where moose show up. So there's like that's some major evidence there.

And then if you go to 19th century, early 20th century newspaper records and photo archives, you'll find more evidence. And they're like, do we have that map, Reeva, that first one? There we go. So this is like shows all these records of moose sightings at a time when, you know, there was supposed to be no moose in Colorado. those are just like some of the recorded instances of confirmed sightings. Front Range media, local newspapers, archives, and pioneer diaries throughout the 1800s frequently reported sightings along the front range, which is like not, you know, like the Denver area is not real close to the Wyoming border where they are considered native. And these historical accounts didn't just note like wide-ranging bulls. They documented cows and calves, which suggests a breeding population.

And there is some photographic evidence, too. There's a picture of railroad worker from 1912. We got that picture, Riva. And he's standing over a dead cow and calf. He was called a tie chopper. The tie chopper, yep, railroad lumber worker. 1912 and that's fair play which is like southwest of Denver kind of in the middle of the state Can't argue that guys got a great posture too straight as a board

Then there's a there's a Milton Estes I did not know that's who Estes Park was was named after But that's like a that's a town right on the border of Rocky Mountain National Park This old quick back up from it Yeah, yeah This this to tie chopper Yeah, had to shoot the cow and the calf huh? Well

shot the cow, and then the calf would just stand it. They had hungry railroad. They had some hungry railroad workers, man. But yeah, a gentleman named Milton Estes strikes me as like an old time like whatever railroad baron or something like that. He shot a bull near Estes Park, and that area where he shot that bull is now named Moose Park. 1863. Can I share something real quickly? The black foot word, I was just going to suck because I remember it was cool.

The black foot word for moose, six-sizo. I don't know, that's my just rough pronunciation. You know what it translates to? Black going out of sight. Yeah, that makes sense. That is. That is. Yeah.

Arapo, it's Hennon. Henenhi. Hennon-he translates to big man. I like that. The other one, I cannot. There's no way I'm going to pronounce, which it references the moose's large, flat nose. But anyway, so there's your evidence that there's probably, moose were probably in the Southern Rockies in Colorado and that they're probably native. If you look at what's happened since, we got a map from 1982, which is after the introduction started in Colorado.

It's a teeny weenie little spot there in the flat tops area of Colorado where they cut some moose loose in the late 70s. And then you fast forward to the next map, which is 2015. And it's like they're all over the place. And that was 10 years ago. Because they made it into New Mexico yet. I'm sure. I mean, they're so close to the border.

They got to at least end up down in there at some time. And yeah, this map was 10 years ago. That population... But not moose. That population has increased even more in the past 10 years. So this shifting baseline syndrome it kind of shaped decades of wildlife management and public perception of moose

because they were viewed as non-native. So recognizing them as natives could impact like future management decisions. Initial introduction of 24 animals. estimated population of 3500, 36500, 670 moose tags was by far out of the western states like more available moose tags

than any other state. Is that something that CPW is considering? I don't think they've got, this study just came out like CPW is not even involved with it yet. I don't know if they'll like formally recognize them as natives. Was there a said reason for the study?

Someone was just like, I think because it was just for the longest time It was just this unknown. It was like, are they, aren't they? They probably knew a lot about it, and it burned their ass. They were calling them non-native. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there was a similar case with Bison in the Grand Canyon area where the park service

considered them non-native, and there's about three manuscripts now that do the same thing. They'll look at archaeological evidence and document that they were native. It was at the fringe of their range in the plains. And then you do this, you go, well, sure, but not a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But also, it looks like they've got a lot of evidence for, for moose, but the 9,000-year-old, they need to stop using those kind of things.

Because we had mammoth 8,000 years ago on Rangel Island. Right, right. That's not really something. There was like caribou in Ohio. Yeah, and, you know, bones can have a way of showing up in weird places. But I think they got a solid case for what they're saying. When you march stuff back, it's like, march it back. Everybody's got their own pick.

But if I was looking at that, I'd be like, hey, we're going to go back to European contact. Well, yeah, and one of them, they did have 1,000-year-old, which is a lot closer. Go back to European contact and see what's going on. They had a ton with different dates. I feel like that's always a good base line. This is working in my favor,

because I think I've got like 15 points or so now. I got quite a few. Moose in Colorado. Just hope them wolves don't eat them all. Oh, you're right. Yeah, I thought about that. Listen, and you're there. for heart-wrenching knockouts.

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Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Well, speaking of growing populations, what do you got, Nate? North Carolina, elk season coming at you in 2020. North Carolina opener. Yeah, man. So here's the deal.

Eastern elk, they're extirpated, North Carolina, 1800. And Reeva, if you can pull up that blue map. This is the most depressing map in the world. It's so sad, man. Look at that. What we're looking at is current versus historic elk range. Basically, if you're listening, you're in elk country.

Unless you live in Texas or California, well, California. Not even. Unless you live in the lower nine-tenths of Texas. The Atlantic Coast. Is that the great basin that's between California and Nevada there, where they weren't. Eastern California, western Nevada.

And so you'll see if you look real close in western North Carolina, there's a tiny little blue dot. And that is where in 2001, North Carolina introduced a herd of 52 elk

in a great smoky mountain National Park. Following about 15 years population growth, 2016, the state agency created a framework for hunting. In 2018,

General Assembly made a resident and non-resident license. Now, that's great. But take a guess at how much that resident elk licenses. That's beefy. That's a beefy price. Throw a number out there if you haven't seen it.

I've been looking at it the whole time. $500 for a resident license. That's like, that's cheap non-resident, but that is about, that is about 450 bucks more than I would picture it being. I don't think it's expensive to get the opportunity to. Well, you must be relative to other opportunities. It's expensive. It doesn't bother me. Well, you must be from California.

I'm not saying it bothers me. You can almost hunt for a decade in Montana. It's a debt, but there's not many of them there. It's going to, the only about, like, I agree with you, Brody, because I feel like, oh, it's a great way to raise money. But it is definitely going to limit opportunity. You can't do that to some kid. Some 14-year-old kid draws it. He's got to come up with 500 bucks.

And he starts to go-fund me. He'll be fine. Listen, if you're a 14-year-old kid and you draw it, we'll buy it. Yeah, there you go. But you got to be a resident. 14 I want to choose my words very carefully 14 year old non-resident

or 14-year-old resident Elk Hunter in North Carolina If you draw as a resident in North Carolina and you're 14 we will buy your license And Yanni will come bugle for you Yeah 15 you're screwed 15 you're out

At the time of draw 14 at the time of draw Well you'll probably get some California 14 year olds writing in Because their resident elk tag is 595 bucks It's rich That's a lot Utah is 314, Arizona's 135.

So North Carolina, a little spendy. As a non-resident, which they will have tags for, potentially, a thousand bucks. Yeah, stick it to them. Stick it to them. They're already spending all kind of money. Exactly. Like, they're, like, that's a, by the time they spend all the other money, that won't even matter. So that takes us to today, House Bill 747, which passed the House with only one dissenting vote.

And it's being considered by the Senate. And that would authorize two tags, one by raffle and one by auction for the 2027 hunting season, which stretches from October 1st to November 1st. Oh, man, just to have that tag. Oh, dude. So those license prices don't mean anything anyway. So what do you mean? Because you're not going to win it?

Because you're going to get it by. So the raffle rules 20 bucks per ticket, and you can buy a max of 30. Okay? So you could put $500 in. So they're not auctioning. They're doing a draw for how many? For one. One.

And that's a raffle. It's a raffle. One $500 elk tag. It could be $1,000 if a non-resident wins it. Right. So there's two permits. They're doing one by auction, one by, oh, but then so if you win, then you got a pony up 500.

Then you got a pony up. I got you. I'm surprised that for one tag that's in the draw that they're letting non-residents in. Yep. Dude. Yeah, they should have a sell. Real quick. Real quick.

This is from a place of love. That's not true if you're going to make a statement on that. Because half of the raffle tags got to be reserved for North Carolina residents. And so in this first draw, that raffle will go to North Carolina residents. Okay. The auction, which is how the other permits going, facilitated by a yet to be determined nonprofit, that one is just your typical governor's tag auction type deal. This is the message for North Carolina.

It's not too late. If you have two elk tags, you cannot auction one of them off. You are getting off on the wrong foot. You are getting off. You are setting a terrible, this is from a place of love. You are setting a terrible precedent

that you're going to build a public elk herd. Your lawmakers are sitting a terrible precedent. You're going to build a public elk herd. issue two tags and one half of it goes to the highest bidder? Come on. I'll play devil's advocate, though. Come on. The people are going to say,

what an opportunity to raise $500,000 to go to... No, so I don't care. 25. That's the argument. Both those tags. Raffles. Yep. I'm just saying what the argument's going to be.

I would say both those tags raffles. Raise a bunch of money like that. You can't... It can't be that the... sandwich shop guy or whoever that always buys all these buys this. It's funny you mention that because they did a survey in 22 about just elk support in general. And 61% of the folks are all four regulated elk hunting of like local landowners. 19% approve of non-North Carolina residents elk hunting.

Yeah. That's great. They're making a huge mistake to auction. I'm not even getting into the resident non-resident thing. Auctioning off 50% of your thing to the highest bidder. and removing 50% of the tags from 99.99999% of North Carolinians or Americans in general

and handing it off to the highest bidder is just shitty. It's stupid. We need a billionaire in North Carolina to step up buy that auction tag. Yeah, or just make sure it doesn't go to a non-North Carolina. It's just terrible. They shouldn't be doing that. do a raffle, do a draw. Don't do that.

Moving forward, they have a rule where if they add another, they have to add an additional raffle tag before they add another auction tag. Okay, sure. But it could just grow. That's good. Equally. It could just be like two and two and four and four.

You can't auction. This is, there should be a T-shirt says, Jim, you can't auction half your opportunity. You come from a big auction state. Jim, what do you think about that? A former auction state. Yeah. Our commission stopped auctioning and we do raffles for those.

We don't have an auction tag anymore. Nice. I'm not anti-auction tag. I'm anti-having half and whatever the numbers. I'm anti-having half of your tag allocation go to the highest bidder. Auction states usually take what? One in a hundred? Like a percent?

Yeah. A percent, two percent of the opportunity to the highest bidder. Okay. sure, that's fine. 2%, 50%. I could see it being if it was a one-time deal

that was just like this money is to get the elk management, give it some legs, right? But to just have this be the perpetual allocation is not. I'd sell it to the highest bidder

and then raffle that money off. You buy a raffle to win all that money. I like that. idea. Or something like that. What's what this don't name elk is I really like it.

This is the best part is you go on on North Carolina's state agency and they have all these recommendations on be an elk smart, be elk aware, yada yada. One of the bullet points is I quote, don't name elk,

characterizing elk or any wildlife by naming them degrades their wild essence. The very reason people are drawn to elk is their unaltered independence from humans. personifying elk as humans takes away from their truly wild nature. I agree that non-hunters have no business naming elk. Coming from a guy who just named a mouse.

Non-hunters should not name them. But if hunters can't call them old picket fence or old drop-tine, how are you supposed to know what you're talking about? Colorado's got a whole anti-poaching law named after an elk, Samson Law. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, but non-hunters shouldn't name them. Like old cutesy, whatever they name.

stuff? No. Yeah, I'm 100% against naming animals, researchers naming individual animals, and I have graduate students that start naming things, and I tell me, you're not naming animals. Scientists don't name animals, but that's a different wrinkle I hadn't thought about hunters naming. All of their target bucks is a different name. I didn't think of that. I mean, you can only say that one buck. There can only be so many bucks that are that one buck. moving into another state that's near and dear to my heart, Ohio, a active listener and burgeoning conservationist Josh Sheehan wrote in about 12,000 acre purchase of private land for state recreation Ohio.

I think this is super important because Ohio is one of the lowest rates of public land in the U.S. It's like 2.5%. And they've just passed it. A $4 billion infrastructure bill, which covers part of, parks and public buildings, museums, 100K for the Johnny Appleseed Museum, um, 25 million for Central State. Did you gesture toward me when you said that?

Yes. Yeah. Because of the recent podcast. Uh, 25 million for Central State University, which if you're from Southwest Ohio, you'll know why that's funny. Um, but 25 million of it,

uh, is for buying state land. And that can be matched with 25 million in Pittman-Robertson funds. And, uh, they're looking about 12,000 acres in the southeast of Ohio. basically the fracking capital of Ohio, which we'll get into. There's a number of public state pieces that people already hunt, that they're adding acreage to, Richland Furnace, Shawnee, Tarah Hollow, Concole and Cooper Hollow, and it's just going to broaden public access.

The interesting tidbit here is that they're prioritizing sustainable timber management, soil and water preservation and public recreation. Where it gets a little weird is that this is where a lot of fracking goes on. And so there's a little bit of questions about are they just getting more land to frack? It's unclear. That process

will play out over the future the coming years. But I called one of my buddies who's down there in Ohio, and I've hunted in this area too. And worst case, I mean, you hear stuff like fracking. Oh no, it's all just this cloak and dagger or whatever. but we've hunted on fracked land.

You know, if you have a 12,000 acre fracking operation, you know, they plunk down 40-acre little hubs, and then you hunt the rest of it. And so I'm kind of sitting here like, okay, even if it does end up going in getting fracked, at least it's public that I can go hunt now. You know, Egypt Valley, Salt Fork, Jockey Hollow, those are all examples of that that it's still good access.

But keep your eyes. And that money, then, you know, there's a royalty portion of it that goes to, purchasing more. And where this original $25 million came from is partly from these gas royalties. And so it's just nuanced, but it is exciting that a state that doesn't have a lot of public land can get more of it. And it's going to happen. Finally, another great new story from state levels, Massachusetts, modernizing their hunting laws.

Massholes. Those assholes. The governor put forward a note to update outdated laws, outdated laws and reduce the deer population. and she says it's specifically in relation to the spread of alpha-gal. These three initiatives she's got is removing the Sunday hunting band because they're between them and Maine. They're the last two with Sunday hunting bands. Removing the permanent disability requirement for crossbows so anyone can shoot a crossbow.

And then reducing the archery hunting setback from 500 feet, which it is currently, to 250. The interesting tidbit here. I get very excited about number one. Yep. decreased enthusiasm on number two. Real excited about number three. Totally agree. Crossbows are a complicated issue.

But yeah, doubles your Sunday hunting ban. It cuts your weekends in half. So doubling your opportunity is great. And the setback, at first I didn't really think that that was a big deal. But when you throw the numbers to it, and Reva,

if you can pull up that green and red map, if you were to drop, like let's say you have a piece of woods and you drop a building in there and it's by, statute you cannot hunt with archery tackle within 500 feet of it. You lose 18 acres. If that's reduced to 250 feet, that standoff, you lose four and a half acres. And so applied to a pretty suburban area where these, where White Tale are generally doing well and where there's a lot of

concern about stickborne illness as well as CWD transmission, it has a significant impact. And so looking at that map, all that green is what it currently, this is a township, Norton, all that green is what's currently open to hunting with a 500 foot standoff. On the right is what it would be with a 250 foot standoff. Now it gets more complicated. There's local rules and whatnot, but the base, this is the baseline. Yeah, you never think of those, I shouldn't say never. You don't think of those standoffs as really reducing hundable ground, but then you look at that map right there and it's like, it's shocking how much it does. And I'm no math wizard. I would have thought 500 feet, 200 feet, I would have thought it would have been 50%. Yep. But it's the, it winds

up being different. So if you... At 500 feet, you lose 18 acres, a 250-foot standoff, you lose four and a half acres. And so just applied to this township of Norton, right now, it's about 19,000 acres,

the whole town. Off limits at 500 feet is 13,000 of those 19,000 acres. At 250, only 9,000 is off limits or about half. So your huntable acreage at the five, as it stands currently, is 5,600 acres.

If you reduce that to 250, it goes almost to 10,000. at 9,700 or 52% of the area. What an interesting way to increase access. Yeah. Especially at a place where White Taylor are crushing it. Let's run the numbers with a one foot

restricted area. You have to give me some time on that. How does this... Can't shoot within a foot of that guy's house. Explain how this is coming from the governor. So that's the interesting tidbit. She is a governor known for anti-gun legislation. She's also getting re-elected this year.

And so a thought is that she's pandering to hunting organization and hunters who are a swayable demographic traditionally by giving some throwing some bones to the archery hunters. I'll take them bones. I know, man. I know. Or you'd have your cake and eat it too. Take them bones and then don't vote for her. If you want. There's a lot of ways to play this.

The bills, I passed the House. It's sitting with the Senate. They're trying to reconcile. But, you know, just follow it. Sportsman's Alliance has got a call to action. Check it out on their website. Really good coverage there. And it's good stuff.

You know, take what you can get. And finally, like Steve talked about, Oregon raised their overnight lodging tax by 1.25% for conservation. It's great. That's great. Alternative funding mechanisms. Did you see what Gianforte said to the people in Oregon that came up with the hunting ban legislation? He had message for them? He said, don't come to Montana.

I keep wanting to do a, if we had better production capabilities and actors and stuff that worked here, I wanted to do a skit series where that guy, you know, that little Moby-looking dude, the vegan guy that pushed for that, where the day after the election, he goes out to ranches to inform him that they have to wind down their operation. He's like, I hate to be the bear of bad news, but ranching is now illegal. you're going to have to take that cowboy hat on. You boys are going to need to wrap it up. Give me that cowboy hat.

He'd only make it to one or two rain. So these are just a generally good news stories coming from the state level, especially when there's chicanery happening at the federal level. So stuff to get excited about and stuff that you guys can really have an impact on if it's in your home state. The funding, and I don't like when people say, say alternate funding mechanism. I should point out for listeners,

the standard funding mechanism for wildlife at the state levels, hunting licenses, tag, stamps, fishing licenses. Like hunting licenses, fishing licenses, excise taxes on sporting goods, pay for your state level conservation. When people say an alternate funding mechanism,

sometimes what they're getting at is this idea that we should ditch all that stuff and have something different. I like to think of these states that are doing supplemental funding, mechanisms. And there's novel ways of doing it. And what happened where you do a percent, like a fraction of a percent of state

tax puts a state in a position where it's being like doing great wildlife work and doing public land acquisitions? Hell yeah, man. Yeah, it's like it basically puts an extra $1.25 on your taxes per night when staying at like an Airbnb or hotel. Yeah. And most of those are people. don't even live in that state, so screw them.

Yeah, and it raises $38 million. Here's a good one from Utah. This is an interesting one. This is another bit of like, this is a kind of public land going public land. The information I'm going to share with you is taken from Utah as Department of Natural Resources website. So this is in the bookcliffs area.

In the bookcliffs area, they have this 50,000 acre parcel of state-owned land, but it's part of the school trust land. Okay. Historically, if you go into the eastern states where you have townships, so 36 square mile townships, like you got counties and the counties are broken up in the townships. Each township is six miles by six miles. Historically, you'd be like, well, how are we going to pay for public schooling?

Well, you'd say one section out of each township. So one square mile out of every 36 square miles will be given to the state to monetize in order to pay for public education. In the Western states, you have a similar thing, but it's not as rigid in terms of the township things, but you have what we call school trust lands. In Utah, they have this big chunk of school trust land. And the school trust program works where it needs, they have the option, they have the mandate to leverage their school trust lands for purchase or for profit, right?

What can you do to get the most money off them? but they had this chunk where there's no roads it's a roadless piece of school trust land and they realize the best way to derive value from this 50,000 acres of roadless school trust land the best way to derive value would be to sell it and then take that asset and invest it and that's going to do more than what other kind of other business you do mining logging whatever on that land so this is a weird deal of like the state moving money around so here you you have the state school trust land holds 50,000 acres. The state legislature goes and creates a pool of money.

What was the price? You see the price here? I got high. 50 million? 50 million bucks. Okay. The state legislature goes and creates a pool of money, $50 million, so that they can go pay the other state agency,

the school's trust agency, the $50 million, to then turn it into a state, game area. And they're even calling it. They're saying it'll remain a roadless state game area. So it's a really novel way. It was already public. It'll stay public.

But now you've had it that the school trust fund gets its money. So basically the Utah taxpayer just paid 50 million bucks into its own public school fund. And what they got out of it was 50,000 acres of protected habitat. a really good wildlife area. There's a hook I didn't realize. I read some ancientists in a lot of places. The hook I didn't realize is that they are not handing over mineral rights. The state is not handing off its mineral rights to this piece of land.

Trying to find this graph where it mentions this. Excuse the sloppiness. I got it highlighted there. Okay. In the press release on the DNR's own site, it says, it's important to remember that trust lands, that's capital TL, so the school trust land thing, will retain all subsurface mineral rights and the access necessary to develop those resources in the future if that option is financially viable. So they've sold the land to the Utah taxpayers They now have this land But the school trust people are saying

Unless down the road We decide to industrialize it and mine it Till then it's yours It's great It might not happen It's just an interesting little wrinkle If I was the state I would go to the state

And say Can we revisit? it the the the mineral right bit of this is this a deal killer for you like walk across the hall to that office and be like is it a deal killer if we take the subsurface rights yeah but still it's you know i still applaud the measure um because this is coming from a state where there is which has a history of being not entirely friendly to federally managed public lands so this is great a deer doesn't care if it's on state role wilderness area or federal wilderness area.

The deer doesn't care. He loves it either way. It's great. The subsurface thing is odd. We'll see if in some decades they realize that the place is full of tungsten. Yeah. The place is full of tungsten and all of a sudden they're like, hey, you know, we've got to have an awkward

conversation about that land you bought from us. You keep shooting that punt gun. They're going to need more tungsten. That was Bismuth. That was Bismuth. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, is the news show. Thanks for coming on, Jim Helfilfinger. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. Join next week. And this is the only place for you can get news. It ain't fake. That's our tagline. All right. I like it. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you.

That is why I wear first light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear. Built to perform, built to last. Whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold, and the hot or their durable outerware shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer.

Designed by hunters, four hunters, with a deep commitment to conservation and land access. No shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. This is an I-Hart podcast. Guaranteed human.