The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 915: Dan Moultrie on the History and Ethics of Trail Cameras and Other Thorny Issues of Wildlife Management

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with Dan Moutrie about: the first trail camera; the evolution of trail cameras; fair chase standards; game management and quality deer management; drones and hunting; chronic wasting disease; the evolution of hunting technology; and more. Find our favorite trail cameras and hunting products at www.moultrie.com Find our favorite ATVs, SxS, and Utility Vehicles at www.can-am.brp.com 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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That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. All right, join today by Dan Moultrie. Thanks for coming, Dan. Dan is an outdoorsman, entrepreneur, conservationist, best known as the founder of Moultrie, pioneering commercial trail cameras and feeders. He served 12 years as chairman of Alabama's Department of Natural Resources, earned wildlife conservationists of the year from the state of Alabama,

guided big game in Alaska for many years and remains very active in wildlife conservation. The first thing I want to ask is I have to ask you a solution to a problem I have. Yes. We were down in Texas at my buddy's ranch, okay? and he's got oscillots on his ranch. And these researchers were in, and they had these little areas where there was oscillate activity.

So we picked an area that we knew there was oscillates hanging around and went in and hung a camera. But had a last-minute mind change. So we made a pin ahead of time, being like, we're going to go put a camera at this pin, but then got there and didn't like, it and wandered off and set a camera.

Mm-hmm. We haven't got an Oslo yet, but every morning I wake up and I look at, we got amazing things like all the time. Big buck yesterday, amazing things all the time, but my buddy was out there. This is way down in Texas. My buddy's there. I'm like, hey, go to this pin and find the camera. He can't find the camera.

You can't locate it again. I'm like, there's a bush. There's a lot of bushes. There's a lot of bushes. So he's, and then. this, dude, this camera is just plugging away, doing its job. It's still running. Is it a solar, so it'll continue running?

No, I didn't put a solar on it. Oh, no. I didn't put a solar on it, but it's like, it's become a joke. We're me and the guys that I said it with, I just constantly, every day, I'm like, oh, here's what happened in front of the camera. I would get to multiple teams to go find that. That's apparently a really good spot. No, it's a great spot, but no one knows where it is.

is like how do I find it? I don't like to be tough. I don't know if we got those guys. An equivalent of find my phone. I never thought that some idiot would put one and not remember where he put it. Oh, that's a great question. That's good. That's good.

We'll propose that. It's performing away. I mean, I got pictures this morning. I got a big old nil guy walking past this morning. It's a great spot if I knew where it was. So it's on a. So we hung it like when we hung it up, we hung. bird wings

from monofilment i put all kinds of i made a tree and i put all kinds of bobcat lure and bobcat piss we scattered feathers everywhere and just tried to make it like the oscillates like dream location and at first it was coyotes coming in all the time

the oscillates never shown but it's it's like how about the greatest hot spot no no it wasn't a feline spot i have the bob can't see him. The feather is so funny because that camera keeps like doing

his job. The feathers are all gone. Nothing smells the tree anymore. But yeah, I can't locate it. I don't know. Y'all just going to have to go find it again. So I thought maybe you'd have a tip on how to find your camera. Go back and look. What's the funniest part is, as he's

wandering all over looking for it, I told him, I said, man, I didn't get a picture you looking for it. So you weren't in the right area. Because you think at least I'd have got a shot of you walking around trying to find it. So this camera's gone. It even be better if you had a picture of him looking for it. You say, I'll give you your warm, your warm.

Yeah. So all we know is wherever you went ain't the right area. That is great. So there might be one of your cameras is out there somewhere cranking away, but I can't recall. I'll check with the guys, the engineers, and see if there's any way we can zoom down, find that exact one. Oh, I would love if you could even get me a pointer. Like I kind of like it's so funny because the three of us that said it We're like yeah, I don't really remember what we were thinking by remember we wandered off

You know there's so many and just like y'all doing that You can't believe the calls just like the calls you get from all your stuff Hey guess what we're doing with the camera here's what we did and it goes from a 40 year old woman putting it out that you see what time her kids come in from dating who she drags in with them Oh that's good to to a to a to oscillates, to everything. And that's been one of the neatest deals. I know at your Christmas event,

we had talked about how many pictures we were holding in the clouds and in the billions and billions of pictures. It's been made. A lot of those are hunting. A lot of them are wildlife. A lot of them are security. But it's the entire gambit to see what that product has been used for. Yeah.

It's off the spectrum. It's great. When you go into my buddy's hunting shack, he's just got it's just sitting on the counter yeah just a camera sitting on the counter and he's got a note on the door says your photo was already on my phone that's exactly right that's exactly right so he's like turn around turn around and go out i almost in today with all the different camera companies and even just the numbers we put out but you combine all the camera companies you're out somewhere you better know you're pretty good at odds you're getting your picture taken the

yeah a lot of the stuff the guy who in colorado that it killed the girl years ago that they found in florida found her off a picture off multery camera is that right yeah well that dude there's that guy i can't remember if it was wisconsin or minnesota that killed a state representative and her husband they were doing a big manhunt for him it was a hunter yeah a hunter called in had him on the camera And he says, I got that guy right now on my property. And they came out and apprehended him. Yeah. It's been a neat deal to see it from emphasis until now.

It's been neat. What, like, what, I can't even remember. Like, I remember it all coming to be, but what, if you had to go back to, like, what is the genesis in your, like, what is the genesis of the trail cam as we know it? Jimmy, like, how did it, where did it even come from? I can tell you mine and hours, and I think we were, you know, there probably were some people working on it after the time. But in the early 80s, we were carrying, here's where mine came from. We were carrying customers to Canada, black bear hunting. Okay.

Really into it. And everybody, and you've carried enough people hunting, and you say, hey, what have you taken? Now I've taken a black one with a Chevron. got this and that. And if you got color phase bears, which we did, a guy always say, boy, I'd like a cinnamon bear. They always want a cinnamon. Oh, I take a red one.

They always did that. And we were trying to find out what bears were on what bates to color if we had somebody that significantly wanted that color. Yeah. Those earliest days, we would take big fish hooks, like tuna hooks, dull them down, weld them on the barrel. And at some point, that bear's going to rub his arm across it, and it's going to collect hair.

we would get that hair and if you saw the color phase you knew you didn't know if he was locked in on it but you knew one had been by there so and we were getting into that well you know that bear that comes by he's a cinnamon but he's a big old male

but he's he's nocturnal so you had to figure out time first in the early days there was a little it looked like a wristwatch there was a little clot and it when the string got pulled when a bear broke a string, it would pull a plastic sliver out of that watch, and it would stop the watch. And so you'd go stick the plastic sliver.

This is in 79, 80, 81, and you'd slip it back in. 3M companies who ended up making that in earliest days and probably was used for something construction. It probably wouldn't even design for hunting. Back then, everything was taking ideas from other stuff. But you'd plug the plastic back in and it would start blinking the time that it went off. So you would have... Oh, Homer.

They were making it for what purpose? I don't know if it was for construction, for security, or something like that, but you would know what time that had been broken. So you'd go back, and this is the earliest days of bear baits and people doing that. I mean, when it seemed like it was taking off when that side of honey. You'd put it back in, you'd have the time, so you'd say, okay, the first bear broke string at 4.30 in the afternoon, typical bear feeding pattern coming in late afternoon. you could get the time.

We had two deals. We wanted to know the times and we wanted to know the color face. And I've always been a Rue Goldberg kind of guy building stuff, most of our products, especially the early days came from me going down the shot, welding it up,

building it, getting it right, trashing it starting again. Yeah. And making what we want. And I got a camera. I found one that had a, and you're old enough to remember the days of film cameras.

And a lot of these folks now, like, huh, film? What are you talking about? Oh, yeah. When I'm talking about stuff like this, my kids, man, they're kind of like, they don't, yeah. 12 pictures and your choices were 12, 24 and 36 pictures. Go down like the drug store. Or Walmart, whoever had them, you know? The biggest problem with all that going away is you don't have those containers

anymore. Everybody used to consent. That was a great container for everything. All your fishing hooks, fishing sinkers. And I'll still say to my kids, I'll still talk to them about. Like, I'll be like. I'll still describe, but you know, you know, like a 35 millimeter film canister. And they're going, huh?

Those are good containers. But there was a camera that had a single shot, and you're probably only enough, and then you had to hand roll it. But you got one shot. Yeah. I took a camera, you go like, whitch. Yeah, yeah. I took one of those Victor, those biggest rat traps, Victor made, not the little mouse traps,

but the rat traps. I don't know. Because the treadle on it would move. And I built it on a frame, and I despringed it, because if it hit it at the power, it is, it would have crushed the camera. But where it just had a nice to it. Like you weaken the spring.

Yes. And I lined it up with that button on the camera. And so first spring, first spring I took it up there. Not like through a string. So it would literally hit the button. It would hit the button, but it had to where the bait goes, the string tied. And I'm going to tell you that the stuff that... I don't want to act like I understand.

Tell me about the string. The string went from where the bait, like if you'd put cheese on the rat trap... Yeah, the bait holder. That's what holds the arm that trips that lets the treadle fall. Yeah, I got it, yeah. So the string would go to that. And trap and lingo would call the dog. So the bear would hit that, pulls it, it trips.

So you're running like a piece of mono... A piece of mono. Over to the bait area. Right. anywhere around there. Yeah. Just working on the main trail. You know, they're always used the same. Like the chest high, so little things aren't tripping.

So it trips it. Yeah, so it trips it. And hit that rat trap. One picture. First time I go into the bait and I go in and see. How are you holding the camera still? Camera. Camera was mounted.

It's just the same way almost today. I put it on a strap right there where the treadle was. So it was pointed at the bait. And you've secured it to a tree or whatever you had around there. Bear comes down, trips it. It's gone. it turns on. We go in to check it the next morning. I go in and all this neat stuff, like I was telling you about, the number of pictures and what multery's grown to into

billions and billions and billions of pictures. Never has it been better. I walked in and saw that mono down and that treadle on top of that camera deal. First picture ever. I take it out, go to the deal. We're up in Tomogamy, I mean, Canada. I carried it to the drug store and, you know, They go, you want one hour or three days? I said, I'll take one hour or this one. And we get that very first picture. Every bit of it came from that and after that. When you were doing that, did you think about, you were just trying to hunt bears?

All we were doing was hunting bears. In fact, really and truly probably I was more interested in the hunting side like you would have been than I was the business side of it. And for years, we had it. And one of the moguls in our industry, got named Ray Murksky, I don't know if you knew Ray out of Texas, just, I mean, a mogul in the hunting industry. The hunting industry wouldn't be where it was today if it wasn't for Ray.

And he and I hunted together all the time, and he saw that, and I showed him some of those pictures, and he goes, what do you have? And I was telling him how it works. And he said, you've got to develop that for, he said, you know how good that would be? And I said, you really think that'd sell that well? He said, Maltery.

He said, it'll be off the chart. I'll swing back to another comment here in a minute that proves Ray was smart about what he did. So we started developing. Came up with one. Came up with that. That was heat, heat censored or motion censored, had our very first camera that we got, go to see the buyers, our traditional buyers that were selling feeders and management stuff all over. I got hit with,

you really think somebody's wife's going to let them put a $300-something dollar camera out in the woods, Maltry? I said, yeah. I think so. Had trouble getting it, it didn't take legs. And today, probably besides, I don't know what, I think cameras may be part of the best selling item in our industry right now. The, the,

Ray Mursky comes back in. I'd been to Walmart and showed it to the buyer. It's just a little outside our deal. Ray was on a sporting good board so far. He got in front of those people, went back, and he said, guys, let me tell you all, I've been around this as long as anybody, and Ray was so well respected, one of Sam Walton's closest friends. And he said, if y'all put this in, he said,

I think it'll be one of the biggest items ever in the hunting and fishing category. He foresaw that 40 years ago. But what, by that point, I mean, the rat trap contraption. We had gone by that and had an infrared switch on it down, infrared and motion switch. When it first came,

when first you'd go by a trail cameras, infrared motion. First one by it was infrared motion. Which is the same thing that trips your garage door. Yeah, absolutely. How did that work? It weren't really good. Did you guys, was it all contained by that point?

It was all contained. Only, you know, I always viewed being in our industry, the sales and the marketing was the side. I never patented anything. All our stuff, I never patented. It's up. It's up.

We were so on the front edge of the trail camera deal. I thought, you know what? It's going to be out in the weather. Nothing envisioned of where it's going to, it is now. I thought the secret to this is going to be protecting it from the weather. And we had like a baseball cap hat over the camera box. And it protected it. And we patented that.

Only patent I've ever held. And, is that right? But who knows? After they got sealed up, it was a useless deal and didn't, you know,

but I thought it would protect it. But that's kind of where it evolved. In fact, I had several guys that was testing. They go, man, we sprayed it with water and all went all in the front. I said, yeah,

that's protecting it from this way water, not that way water. But all that has developed from there. But so then we got, you know, that first generation turned into second generation, second generation to third generation, taking it from an infrared motion switch off a film camera.

Remember, every bit of this film. So you had to have massive battery draw. So those early ones were filmed. Oh, every one of them. The early commercially available. Every ones that we sold, the earliest ones, were all film-based. See, that's funny you bring that up because, like, I'm trying to match up sort of my own awareness. And I have no...

recollection of seeing a film one. But here's what I do remember. I remember that you'd go out fishing, trolling salmon. Yeah. And you'd come home with a big scroll of paper. Yes. Because your sonar, your fish finder,

that's exactly right. Had a scroll of paper and a pencil. Right. And you're fine in those spots. And people would be walking around with those rolls of paper in their pocket. Yeah. And they'd open them up and show you fish marks. Mm-hmm.

and you'd carry it around like that. I remember that, but I have no recollection of there being a trail camera with film in it. Do you remember at the earliest days of the shot show? I mean, this is back when... I didn't know shots show exists until I was about 40. Steve, when we got into it, there was the Browning and Remington's and Winchesters, and we were so early in it. I mean, we're coming up on 50 years in it.

There'd be like maybe Baker Tree Stans and some old, old, old categories. And but every year when you would meet in those earliest shot shows and you'd go to the show and of course now, just like this morning, like me showing you the airheads earlier, everybody whips out the phone and whips to them, you would carry packs of photos that you had enlarged or, and you'd be at the show and people are whipping those out and got the got the photos. And it's the trail camp photos. They're the trail camp photos. Like what year would that have been? You put a roll of film and a camera and hung it on a treat. That was in the 80s. That was in the 80s because when we developed digital, we were the

first in digital. We were all the way through, I think it's first cellular. And all that development came from everybody when digital cameras came. Everybody, and you were old enough to remember this, everybody had cameras and they were all film. Digital comes out and they're like, you mean I don't have to buy more film? Sure, man. But the problem with digital, this was a, this, this, this, this light to have got us. This worked us to death figuring this out. For a digital camera to work, it has to be on. Because I don't know if you remember the digitals, when they would warm up, you'd hear it. And they'd warm up.

So by the time they warm up, the game had already gone by or it spooked. That's a good point. I kind of forgot about that noise. They would make you turn to mind. So when we were doing all the early prototypes and testing, we had car batteries out there and they were draining car batteries down because it had to stay on the entire time you didn't have the time you know how one of the the selling items on cameras now camera or camera or shutter speed yeah yeah there was no shutter speed if you had to wait on that camera to warm up everything

would have been by but got it once we got that figured out then the digital came that that because you do but you guys knew you guys knew that the film thing was done it oh yeah Because like if can't like if people are done buying film for their normal cameras, they're not going to be putting them in trail cameras. No. Like film is over. One of the deals that we would go by and I was talking with one of your guys this morning about it, you see so much item.

If you go to any sporting goods store, any of the national chains, you see 60 feet of an item they're selling. They're selling quite a bit of those. You judge by square footage of the store. Yeah. You go in Walmart. The impulse buyer for Walmart at that time was. a guy named Clifford Young, and he was telling me how much, if you go by the checkout at Walmart. His title was Impulse buyer?

Impulse buyer. And Clifford's probably retired now, but he was in overall impulse items. When you went through the checkout, and if you think about what was there, there was film, he had all three film. They had Morris Candy bars. They had actually Combs was on there. Items that somebody's going to pick up that they would go, oh, yeah, I need to get that right there. and he told me back then when I was showing him and he and I'd hunt together about the cameras he said film's dead maltry he said our sales on film is going like that oh no kidding and so that

forced that and that guaranteed and the same deal you see that shell space gone at all at Walmart I guarantee it's changing hey your neighbor you know that guy your neighbor he's been out there all summer he's hanging cameras he's watching the photos roll in he knows where that buck is bedding he's feeding. He's pinpointing where he needs to be on opening day. You've seen the pictures and you know the deer is there. The question isn't whether that buck gets shot this fall. The question

is whether it's your story or his. So tip the odds in your favor with the Anex Hunt app. Trail, camera analysis, hyper local wind and weather forecasts and the insights to act on what you're seeing. Don't show up to opening day empty handed.

Bring Anex Hunt. Get Bell, Pure Fiber, internet with craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here at long last. After fighting and yelling and fighting some more,

Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together. Not just any work bibs. We're talking the bare grease bibs. from Clay. Now I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants, pretending to be work bibs, and boy, he did not. These are Clay's invention for things like breaking mules, rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt. I'm going to use them all the time, trap and working, fixing stuff. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable,

comfortable bibs, these are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton. They got briar-proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now.

But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck. And they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater store.com. I just want to go back to the call to impulse buyer because you know all like in fishing you had bobbers. And fly fishermen wanted to feel special. So they named them strike indicators, right? Because they just wanted, they couldn't handle it.

It seems that the dude that's the impulse buyer would want to rebrand his position. Because most people have, like I have a perception that an impulse buyer is impulsive. No, no, they saw the way around. It's the customer not the bottom. Did you think they'd call him like the, I don't know, man, like the last minute. thing you forgot you needed buyer. Because you'd be like, dude, I don't want to be an impulse buyer. Like, I don't want to make an impulse purchase.

That's, that's impulsive. Walmart had a deal. And we learned so much from every category, every, whether it was the Cabellas, whether it was done, where it was whatever in the industry and 50 years of learning and working with all the merchants and everything's different. Walmart had a deal. And I don't know how many people knew about it. but it was, and we learned about it from the impulse guy.

They had an item every year they called the VPI item. You ever heard of that? What was this? Volume producing item. Oh, VP. VP. VPI, volume producing item. They would pick one item a year.

It was crank and volume. That was cranking volume. If you, you'll remember this, you go through the checkout at Walmart. They had a huge drum, probably a 30-gallon drum, ring pops. Remember when all those kids had? Yeah. VPI item. Got it. The only sporting good item that ever made it that I know of, we had a mulberry item as a VPI. Well, what was it? It was a, when we came out with the demand feeders for the,

the, for that the deer would come up and activate it. Yeah. And it qualified because at low price point, high volume, lot people, people that won't pay $500 for a feeder. If they pick, and I forgot, what the retail was it on $15, $17, it fit that. And it, and it was, it was unbelievable. That's crazy. But just, so we learned that from them. And, and, and that volume that you could reach with that, we knew the cameras, we were on to something, but we had to go through the generations of it.

Just what you were talking about. Yeah, hit me, but hit me with that thing, because I kind of got you derailed a little bit when I was on the film thing. But like, if you, when you, if, if people knew film, and I don't even remember, putting film on a trail camera. But what wound up being the solve for having a, but I'm saying for having a digital camera hanging on a tree that's just on all the time? And you got a couple of those batteries in there and they're going to smoke through in two days.

The solve was finding enough battery power to keep that digital camera on, but finding a digital camera that didn't use much battery power. And finally, that we found those and got the two of those to meet. So there would be for a while that was like powered by car batteries. All our testing was done with car batteries. And it's draining them like there's no more than all. In those days, I didn't think we'd get over that hump.

That was a very tough hump in trail cameras to get over. Yeah. Now with the like when you look at the solar stuff coming in, what do you think is the lag? Okay. If you go like if I'm thinking in my mind, mind like when you first started seeing solar become popularized right what do you feel is the lag where like a thing will happen like battery technology rechargeable battery lithium solar right what is the

lag between some user group somewhere identifying solar and then being like I'm probably going to need to figure out how to bake that into a camera do you know what like what is the delay like We stay, and I don't think I'm telling any trade secrets here that you're not hadn't discussed or that you don't know. We stay about at least three years out on what we're developing. Okay. The stuff we got coming in three years is going to, you're not going to, I mean, Steve, it's unbelievable. We just introduced the solar edge four. The technology on it, it should be undrainable.

you ought to be able to put it out and don't ever touch it. Yeah. I already got that with one of the external solar panels. Yeah. The problem is it's, it's, it's, um, bears love those things. Oh, yeah. I used to, I used to joke with a lot of people. It's hard to teach those bears to tear up all that.

So we'd sell more, but no. I got it. So I'll tell you about that, a funny situation. I put one on a, I put one on a, a trail. Mm-hmm. You know, and, um, the first, I'm not. kidding you the first image i got the first image i got is a bear coming down the trail right the second image i got is that camera aimed at the sky he'd always roll the second image i got is that

camera aimed off of one part of the woods the third image i got is that camera aimed off another part of the woods and then from there it was just but like what's funny is once he does that he's done with it yeah oh yeah he's like okay i'm done with that now. And then he put it back and he just walks by it and walks back. But the first time he's like, what in the world is that? Because he didn't find the tree. I know you've done as much black bear baiting probably as anybody. Oh, no, this is not where this was. This bear has no idea. But there's still, but he could smell your handprints on that. And these people that run them where they're bait sites. And you see the, I see the shows on TV, the bear climbing. And then the guy goes,

oh, look at the bear coming up. That bear's not going up that stand to get that guy. He's smells where those hands were on that day old donut and that he's falling up that trail to find the tree at the end of the trail. That's why that bear's going up. There's no doubt. There's no doubt. That's why they go and tear up the cameras. That's why we made boxes.

He's more drawn to the smell of it than just the look of it. He smells where those people. You know how good a bear's nose is. If that guy had been over there refreshing his bait barrel and then he goes, let's put up a camera. There's no way. If a bloodhound can smell a human in 14 days track, you think that bear can't smell where somebody had had their hands in jelly donuts and then moved it to the camera, that's why they're going to it.

Yeah. In my mind, and I don't know why, in my mind, he was like visually, I don't know what he, I wasn't able to interview him. In my mind, he's like, what is that? Yeah. When they first see it, that is. But there still could have had your human sin on it that him saying, I wonder what that is. Yeah.

No, I hadn't thought of that. Yeah. So you feel that I was going to say is it's already kind of there because I've had camera. I've had, I've had your cameras with the solar, with your external solar that you can kind of move up the tree. I've had them run for years. But the new stuff is so, it, in fact, Ashley was asking me, I was trying to upgrade my camera supply because I ought to be out to running our newest stuff and getting, and I was trying

to count up how many cameras we got everywhere. And I mean, it's a bunch of job. Everybody always says, how many are you running? It's a bunch. But to get all the new edge stuff, the different in technology every year, right now, Steve, is off the chart difference. Our new stuff eclipses the old stuff. But it's just like anything. That's what's new.

That's what's come. That's what's been research. So we finally find the best of the best in the world solar deal. we finally got engineers that figure out a better diagram of schematic to make it do this. It's improving every year. It's beyond where I ever imagine, and it's beyond where most people is, but the technology on it, don't mistake, the technology put behind these cameras. It's a force.

The team we've had there is off, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of people working on the technology out. Trying to bring that stuff into it. Oh, the new stuff's off. It's great. And it didn't, this is no selling deal. This is, it's just evolving now. Yeah. We're right in the evolution of that getting to the best, to the best of the bad.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's all these, it makes sense because you're dealing in, you're using technologies that are of significance, like, like of significance to aerospace, of significance to defense, of, of significance to security. Exactly. It's like, so you have a. a million, not a million, but a bunch of different industries being like, how do you make smaller batteries that last longer? How do you do, how do you use renewable, right? So just all these inputs

of like of things, you know. And it comes from different areas. There's, there's inputs we get from law enforcement. There's inputs we get from military applications that's been done. Look at, uh, fishing. If somebody's fishing and GPS is taking them to their spot where they've built a reef, that wasn't available to military discounted that GPS and for, you know, and went to newer technology where they can put a missile through a window at a thousand miles away. A lot of that's coming through our industry. You get that. We had a military guy approach us.

We went and so he said, what if I could show you that if there was fog or, you know, when you get camera pictures early in the morning and late in the afternoon, there's fog or rain. And he said, we've got the technology. And this was a military guy application. He said it'll shoot through the fog. You'll never have another fogged out picture. And so that's, because you know, like range finders. Yeah.

They hate the fog, man. Yes. Oh, and they hate the fog and the bright. I have the problem. You're trying to get an animal. You know you might have, what, 15 seconds. You're trying to get a range, especially if you're bow hunting and that sun's reflecting. And you can't get that.

to bounce back off that reflection and you're just like, oh gosh, I need to know the range on it. But same down there. And so that technology is out there and it's coming to our industry really well. When I think about the history

of the history of trail cameras and like the impact, the trail cams, and I know in my notes, I know that you brought it up as well, is that it introduced this whole world of, finding out that something existed that you didn't know existed.

I mean, if you were going to look like, deer in particular, okay? Yes. If you were going to look at like, what is, if you said like, well, it's changed everything, it's changed like home security, it's changed everything.

But you're going to be like, but let's think of like discrete single things that happened. It would be that it introduced the conversation of, I got a buck on camera. Right? That you would all of a sudden,

But it didn't have to be that you had to be present to see it. And all of a sudden, people were aware that this stuff is going on that you didn't know what's going on. I made in my notes when I was coming out, we were flying out and I was looking through the items I saw that you all wanted to talk about. And the same deal, identified that. The one thing I saw the camera do that I think some people might have missed, you didn't because you just talked about it. But especially in the southeast, those big deer. out west animals aren't harassed as much as they are in the southeast our populations are higher they've been hunted longer they're harder to have people and we talked about when you came down for the

christmas show in alabama the level you all may have a lot of 160 deer running around here they're not running around the south like that when we came out with that camera i can't tell you how many trade shows i went to and i'd have a guy came up and he goes oh my gosh we're never going to not use your stuff, Maltry, said, you can't imagine this. I got a picture of a 150 on my property or 140 or whatever size. He said, I never have seen, we've never killed a deer that big. You know what it gave them? And especially for the QDMA side of managing property, Steve, it gave them hope.

They had no idea those deer were there. But you know what? Dogs running them, people hunting them, those deer go purely nocturnal. They don't get seen. Guess what that camera did. Hey, you're holding a deer this size. Yeah. Where people had no idea there were deer that size, they finally started.

Yes, we do have them. That was one of the neatest deals about it. And that was multiple people telling me that. Yeah. Yeah. That was the impactful thing to be that. And it's kind of this thing you always run in your head. Remember I was talking about son iron for a minute with fish finders?

So it just brings up this interesting conversation. where these competing views of looking at this stuff, where no doubt, like every piece of technology that comes out, there will always be a person that bemoans the technology. Yes. And then you always kind of, you always look, meaning that they feel that something is dying with the technology. Right.

Some skill is lost or some aspect of the experience is dying. I am, there's no doubt that the bolt action, rifle at the time had us detractors, right? Those pencil fish finders where there's like the piece of lead, there's no doubt. There's no doubt they had their detractors. But you look and you think of the ways in which the human mind, like the ways in which it changed your understanding of what's going on. meaning take sonar, fish finders. You're out on a lake.

You're never quite clear of the contours of the bottom, of features of the bottom, that there's like an old shipwreck down there, where fish like to sit, that fish sit oftentimes fish are 10 feet below the surface. You always visualize fish on the bottom. And so it's like a technology, and someone's going to go like,

oh, it's a crutch. But you'd also go, but I didn't understand the area. And now I have all this added understanding of the intricacies of what's going on there. And that makes the experience more valuable. Another example is we have a fish place in Alaska. We fish there all the time. We used to fish off charts, nautical charts that just had no contours. The ocean was a blank.

And on that blank was just fathom numbers. No lines between fathom markers. was just fathom numbers interspersed. And we were under the belief that in our area, we were like, we knew there to the west of us, but we were under the belief that we did not have link hot. Maybe now and in somewhere to get a link. We were like, there's no link on around.

Then out came like sophisticated GPS mapping systems with very detailed hydrographical. markings and all of a sudden then it was like Lingad Bonanza. Yeah. Because they like a very specific thing. And so your view of the ocean went from being that it was sort of this unknown basin like thing that you only experience from the surface to being like oh, right? It's like looking at a mountain. Stuff travels

the ridges like deer like the benches and all of a sudden you understood underwater in this same way. And it heightened to your appreciation for the ocean, made you more effective, but sort of like gave you more info. That is, and that's like a thing about cameras is like, you're all of a sudden like,

oh, I had no idea. I have a picture. I have a picture where I had no idea there around. There's a place I hang out. We camp there all the time. I had no idea there around. There's a Wolverine that lives there.

And he comes through now and in. I would not know. I would not know. If you didn't have a camera. That that Wolverine comes through there had I not hung a camera there. So I'm like, so is it bad that I know? It was it good that I know.

I love knowing that it's there. You know, a lot of our stuff, we've worked with different state agency, state gaming fish agencies. There was one of the states that was having to spend too much overtime on their wardens or biologists to check traps. And so we worked with them and put cameras on them. If a wolf got in a trap, it would go to the notification would go to the woman or man that was on dispatch.

Sure. Dispatch could call whoever was on duty. They were able to continue the program because they were eating up all their money they had allocated for payroll to do that. And it worked great. You know, a lot of the states have 24-hour check passes. You've got to set a foothold trap and check it within 24-hour. hours. I like putting a camera on it because you're going to know within seconds that you have that. That's funny because that's something that's not clearly articulated. You'll see regulations like in states that have check laws. I think that you'll see how they term it. Do they term it visually inspect? Like, yes. It's a thing that needs to be clarified. Yes. Like what what inspection looks like. But all that and and to what you were saying about fish finders, one of the items right now that's in the marine and fishing industry that's bringing up I'm talking about it.

You're talking about it. This Springs game and fish meetings of all the states. Yeah, live. Live scope. Yeah. Oh, my God. We cover it. We cover the Live Scope conversation.

And it's a classic example. It's a classic example of two wildly different views. And like, I'm of the age, I guess, where I look at live, I look at Live scope, even though I got buddies, I've fished. I got buddies to fish it. There's young guys running around this office that they're like, they don't want to fish without it. Yes.

But I'm like, I mean, I don't know. You and I are on exactly the same page. I don't have one on my boats. I don't fish with the lives coat, but I've fished with guys that have it. And it's incredibly effective.

But I had one of the guys off late Martin down there and tremendous croppy lakes. And he said, Mr. Moultrie, he said, I need to talk to you. He said, if you all don't do something at gaming fish about livescoat,

he said, there are going to be no croppy left. He said, it's that effective. It's heavily being discussed. and again, where's that point? I don't know. It's, I don't know where the point is.

There's a huge age element to it. There's also, there's an age element to it and there's also like a short memory element to it. Meaning why is it so acceptable for me to use a fish finder? Right? I'm totally like, I use a fish, When I'm out running, I got a chart. I got a split screen.

I got a chart. I toggle between different fish finder views. But then for some reason, I feel it's okay to question the validity of a, of a one that's a little better, or a lot better. But I'm saying, like, what about the guy that, when fish finders came out? What about the guy that's like, that's not fair? He's forgotten now. Yeah. We constantly reset the clock.

We are. And the technology and age and technology has come so fast, so far now. I mean, I'm from the group there. When we had the great big giant cell phones in that age group and now you've got them. And if you don't have something operating from your cell phone. So all that's changing. But, you know, I think you have to have something that benefits the resource. but doesn't abuse the resource.

I think that's key in that. Now, where is abuse of the resource? That's where the biologist or whoever for each state have to decide. But that's one of the keys to me is, does it benefit the resource? And everything had to me when we were in all those years in gaming fish, is it databaseed and does it benefit the resource? Got it. Yeah.

That's where it's got to come from. Hey, there's a version of hunting where you just show up, you sit in a tree, you stand, you hope something happens, and then you go home. A lot of people hunt that way. And every once in a while, it'll work out. Then there's the version where you've done the reading before the test. You've got the on-X hunt app with cameras integrated on your map, a tailored deer movement forecast to help you make the most of your days in the woods and precise weather

predictions. So when a buck starts showing up, you already know where he's coming from and where he's going. Most of us don't have unlimited days in the field. We've got a week, maybe a little more. And every hunt that doesn't produce because you were in the wrong spot, that's a cost you can't get back. Build a real plan before opening day with the on-X hunt app because hope is not a strategy. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit.

Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here at long last. After fighting and yelling and fighting some more, Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together. Not just any work bibs. We're talking the bare grease bibs from Clay.

Now, I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants, pretending to be work bibs, and boy, he did not. These are Clay's invention for things like breaking mules, rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt. I'm going to use them all the time. Trapping, working, fixing stuff. It doesn't matter.

If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, these are your bibs made from tough, stretch, duck cotton. They got briar-proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now.

but you can bet your ass I got them in my truck and they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater store.com let me lay out for you I'd like to get your opinion on this because let me lay out for you just we're sitting in the state of Montana right now so the state of Montana has been

we have a great agency we have a great agency our fishing game agency um like there's some agencies around the country where i think that that the hunters anglers they become suspicious of their agency they maybe feel that their agency doesn't have their best interests of mind right their agency perhaps like like is happening in colorado like is happening in washington the agency can become hijacked by people who are sort of adversarial to a natural resources perspective on fishing game management they're uncomfortable with the idea of people

viewing wildlife as a resource, right? And so they lose the respect, but like we have a great agency. And I feel that they sort of operate with what I imagine to be generally operate with the best interest of hunters and anglers in mind. Like they make, they do a good job. They have jumped around on what are we going to do about trail cameras? What's the appropriate use of trail cameras? What's not?

So it changes. There's been some changing and direction around two-way communications as that's come in, right? So where we sit now is we sit that I can, I'm a trap. I'm a fur trapper, just recreational hobby, fur trapper. I saw your show in the deal on stretching coyotes and grading them. Oh, it was fantastic. Yeah, yeah. I'm not doing it, but that was fantastic.

Love that stuff. And we're allowed, so, because it's non. So we can't. we can't currently use a what's the best way to describe like a digital but but sends to your like what's the best terminology for one to sense to your phone you'd call it a cellular oh that's cellular phone but soon it'll be satellite and then we'll have a different word for it but for what now is cellular network automatically that you don't have to retrieve it yourself from the woods so currently cellular which is the current way that it's transmitted so we can't

use a cellular camera for hunting games animals you can use a but I can use a cellular camera um for whatever like I can put it on a beaver like a crossing and watch otters go by I use it all the time I'll put it on a set right I'll set a spot waiting for an otter to come through or something I'll put a camera on it I know exactly what's going on right um that's permissible like as someone in the trail cam industry and a pioneer in the trail cam industry how do you think about what goes to your mind when you look at states particularly in the west making regulations that kind of like that that impact your products and impact innovations

you work on do you do you just do you sit back and watch it happen do you try to be responsive to it do you weigh in on it like what is your view on it it's you know whole But I've got a lifetime of sitting on the hunting and fishing side. I've got 40, 35 years gaming fish side. Yeah. So, yeah, you were in game fishing. You were on the commission for 12 years. Yeah.

So I'm on both sides of it. Yeah. And I'm going to tell you, when we first started reviewing stuff like that, whether it be go to the most controversial issues, go to that are, in almost all the states, go to high fences, go to dog hunting, go to anything that tests the theory of what we just talked about, where is it the deal? I want to add to that list, maybe we'll talk about it.

I think that right now the hot one is going to be drones. It is drones that will remain drones. And I'm glad you're asking because I've got a lot of, I got a lot of thoughts on my, but you have to set the bar. And again, the job is to. protect the resource. I don't care what anyone else said. That's the job.

And so how do you equate if something is good or bad with it? I always kind of define it as does the animal have a fair chance of escape? You look at almost any issue. Does that animal have a fair chance of escape? Let's say there's a water hole in Montana that there's no water for 100 miles and there's 80 cameras on it that we've heard these stories about that. And everybody's finding the exact times they come. Does Anna animal have a fair chance to escape?

Probably not. I'll agree with that. If I was on that commission, I'd vote. Absolutely not. Got it. If I'm using it to find out research to know if we've got the correct age class of almost everybody's managing by age class now on deer and elk and everything else herds, am I managing it right?

Do I see two-year-olds, three-year-olds, four-year-olds? Do you have the bell curve for that? yeah, that's using it responsibly. So there's a line in there, but I always, too, said, so GM makes automobiles, somebody's mad and got road rage and run somebody down. Is that using that responsibly? Yeah, no understand.

Was that intended to be used for that? There's a lot of things product gets used for that's not intended. So let's go back to does the animal have a fair chance for escape? That's kind of a good place to start. Yeah. The one thing I learned that I didn't know about it, I was not, I'd never been in politics, full with politics, done anything in politics. Do not mistake.

And it's in every phase of even game and fish where it shouldn't be. It used to make me mad. Man, this is game and fish. We've got to make sure the resources protected. And you see a group come in and I always called them political footballs. Mm-hmm. that drone, that camera, that whatever, hey, they've got five other issues that they promised their membership

that they want to try to get pushed through. Let's pick up a political football and play. We don't care if we lose or gain that, but if we do that and attach to the legislation this other, we may can approve this. If you look what gets to attach to legislation versus what the legislation was intended for, that's the way that stuff slips in. So, and I guess this is,

bad to say, but I'd warn everybody who's watching issues, watch out for what's being slipped in and watch out for what's being attached. They may not, they may seem like they're more worried about your drone issue than anybody, when in reality they know it's going to come and go. Let's attack. It's a political football. So that has to be looked at. Now all that mixed up is going to make a cake somewhere down the road.

Yeah. But it has to go through all that. I used to always say somebody would bring us. an issue the gaming fish that needed to be voted on by the advisory board. And somebody told it to me early on, but it's true. You push one cork under the water, four more pop back up. And I don't care what the issue, it may seem like the greatest idea that's ever been, you voted in, 50% going to like it, 50% not going to like it.

Oh, yeah. Every time. I mean, it doesn't matter if you're helping little old ladies across street, Somebody's going to say, oh, I don't like that. Oh, yeah, no, I understand what you mean. Yeah. You know, on that point, how did you want to be in, how did you want to, like, what is the process of being a game commissioner? How did that happen for you?

I had always been interested in it. We had just done our partnership with EBSCO, and the largest probably held company in the state Alabama. They were very backing in that they wanted people to be involved in their. industries and Governor Riley was just coming in, running for, he was a U.S. congressman coming in, going to run for the governor Alabama and he said, he said, would you be interested in chairing our game and fish?

And I said, absolutely, I would. But again, these are six-year term appointments in our state, and they're different in different states, but ours are six-year terms on that chair position. And I said, I'd love to. I got with them, and I said, hey, this is going to take a lot of time. And these are our non-paid positions. These are total volunteer positions.

Number one requested in the state of Alabama, number one requested appointment is that appointment. Even more than the judge. People want that one. Even more than the judge ships. Huh. Really? Oh yeah.

And you've been down to Alabama. Because people have been hunting fish in their whole lives and they want to get in there. They want to get in there and make some change. Three things matter in Alabama that will get somebody elected to governor or not. And of course, religion is always one of them. but hunting, fishing, and college football. And our area of the country, and it changes different. You better be in line on those.

Or you're going to lose a lot of votes. And so, Governor Riley was generous enough to consider me. We had backing from a lot of people saying, hey, I think they do a good job. I felt qualified for it. I've been all over to every state nearby in the United States hunting, had been involved in one of the neatest deals about, evolving the feeders and cameras and all the other sondria products we did, people would say,

Steve Renella would call and say, hey, fly out here to my ranch. Let me show you how we're going to be using this. And everybody, all these ranches, we got to go visit, everybody's got good ideas.

Nobody has the lock on all the good ideas. And so the secret is to go take some of those good ideas and bring them back and combine them all. Got it. Yeah. In game management to get to be a total game management, a company like Maltry has that's where that came from I didn't come up with all those ideas yeah no way all that from going and see what people are doing so so we did that and we I remember

the very first day Barnett Lolly was our commissioner and it was commissioner and commissioner and governor and I would work very close together and governor Riley told me he said look in this deal I know y'all haven't been in the political circle he said just remember this do the right thing I got your back and I thought this is great that was the direction yeah this is this is great. I'd do that. I always try to do that. Got it. Boy, you have no idea how many skeletons in the closet with knives coming out to cut your throat. You know, when you, when you mess with their little

sandbox, it's different. So there's a lot to be done with that. That probably the biggest deal we did now. When you say when you mess their sandbox, you mean like different user groups. Like you mentioned, you mentioned like dog hunters, right? Oh, the dog hunters are, I don't want to say, I don't want to degrade any thing and say like, well, not even them. It's clicky. It's beyond.

There's like, there's like clicks. So you got guys that like to whatever, you got guys like to set line catfish. And then the minute you poke into their world, they're fired up. Yeah. Oh, you knock it hornet nest out of the tree. Yeah. And one of the biggest items we did and it needed and I was happy to see it be one of the very first items. And I don't know if you remember this.

I remember you told me you'd been to Alabama some. Our quality of deer had eroded to almost nothing. You could kill legally in the state Alabama $117 per year. Yeah, I remember. Now, what that resulted in, it was hard to get good numbers. I worked closely with Dr. Ditchcock at Auburn University and their deer labs and all the, and we would get good data input from all the different people that we could find that were professionals or experts in that group the best we could figure

was that 85% of the deer killed bucks killed in the state of Alabama at that time were a year and a half old our braille curve was out of whack about that totally because and and the viewpoint back then was people would go and they'd see a four point walk out and i think colorado's going through this same deal with their mule deer right now but they'd see and they'd see and they'd think, I'm going to shoot it today. I'll kill the big one tomorrow. Guess what? There are no big ones.

Yeah. There was very, very few in the bill curve of the age class that would hit what people perceive as mature now, five and a half, six and a half, almost none. Yeah. We go in, we start to change that. If as a group of people in a state, if somebody has given them for the last 40 or 50 years that Alabama had, you can hunt every day of the season, you can kill $117 a year,

and all of a sudden we're going to say, no, you know what, we'd probably like to change that to one or two. You think there was any pushback? Oh, my God. Oh, it was unbelievable. We had the database, and I was looking at quick. Oh, people ready to hang you.

Oh, beyond hang you. I was looking at what Kentucky had gone and what happened in Kansas, and factual things that happened in states and how Kentucky had improved their herd, then you could go to the state of whoever or whichever commissioner, and you could say, hey, I think I could up our tourism in our state

if we had a better state for viable trophy deer, so there was different areas you had to reach to to get them backing you also. Got it. But I had settled on two. was where I thought that should be and the groups and the people that we had working on that. Like lowering the

annual limit from 120 bucks? 117 to 2. Now, so we're sitting up, we're over the gaming fish building and commissioner Lolly called me. He said, Moultry, come on, Governor wants us over the state house and sees, he wants to talk to us. And I'm thinking, oh, great, no telling

what this is, but I knew what I thought it was. We go in and go to Raleigh, a big Alabama guy. He had a football. He was pitching He was sitting at his desk pitching it up and down. He pitches it to me when I walk in. He goes, here y'all are fishing change our deer limit. And I said, yes, sir. He said, what do you think it's going to be?

And I said, well, we're looking at, and all this is database. We've got data out to gazang, but probably two deer. And I see him look down. And he looks up and says, and he's such a great guy. He goes, do you know what y'all are doing? me politically changing the deer limit from 117 to 2. And I said, well, it's all data-driven. It makes us a better state.

It makes the deer herd better. Everything about it's going to be better if we get from over-utilization of the resource to what can be managed for a reoccurring base on the resource. And he said, he listened to the whole spill, and he said, you know what, that's good. I've got to have three. And I thought, I'm going to hold my ground. I thought, you know, I really wanted to, I went to the other way. I said, I really wanted to see it go to one.

And he said, I already compromised. He said, no, no, three. That's why today, and this is all was discussed that afternoon. It, um, that's why today in Alabama, you kill two bucks per year of your choice. One deer has to have more than four points off one. me. That was because where we were, and I said, look, let's do this. And that's how we got to the deer that had to have a little more requirement for it. But since that time, here's the coolest deal, the research that came out of Auburn and the universities and the biologists that were

studying in. When we passed that, Steve, Steve, I remember growing up, there people never he hadn't seen a mature deer in Alabama. And they thought through the studies that we were say 50,000 bucks a year's life by passing that legislation. How long does it take to refill that curve? And you're talking about that whole group that was against you, and they go out and they see deer now that they've never seen. We're putting deer in the book. That never happened in Alabama.

This deer regularly kill 160s, 170, 180s now in Alabama. That's changed because it's got a healthy bell curve. now those people are behind it. By golly, we know you won't change this. Isn't it funny? Remember I was talking about short memories? Like people in wildlife, they've had short memories. Imagine if now a commissioner came in and he said,

I'm thinking about bumping the deer limit to 117. People, you know what I mean? The same people would lose their mind that would have lost their mind when you went, you know what I'm saying? But people get used to the thing normal. But I want to tell you my kind of main Alabama hunting story. from years ago. It has a lot to do with Forkeys.

So my brother, Danny, he was studying aquatic entomology. He's a fisheries biologist. So he went to graduate school at Auburn. And he grew up in Michigan, which is a one buck state. I mean, you get excited if you draw a do tag in Michigan. One buck state. I, when he was down there at Auburn, I was in Montana. And Montana remains a one buck state.

it wasn't one buck state then and he moves down to Auburn he's shooting all these deer man he's like I kill five bucks he goes you killed deer a day yeah so four of us well three three of us three of buddies right we go down to hunt we go down to Auburn to hunt I think it's between Christmas and New Year's and we just go out to Tuskegee National Forest I mean just wander out into the woods dude and set up on trails and I remember hanging a tree stand

in a magnolian thing that was the weirdest thing in the world you know and so like one day the next day the next day the next day we all got bucks and um i thought it was the greatest thing in the world but my buck i always like tell the story when i cut the cap when i cut the skull cap off my buck and trimmed it down i flew home with it this is not a joke i flew home with it in my shirt pocket it had two little devil horns yeah and i trimmed that bone played up and i was carrying around in my pocket. But it was just, he was killing, he was killing a lot of bucks, but it's just all just dinky little bucks.

That was that 85%. Yeah. Imagine. But we still, I mean, not to discredit that, but we still had the time of our lives. Oh, yeah. No. And the same deal. There was a lot of, don't think there wasn't a lot of people that was enjoying that.

But we only killed, we only killed, but just to be clear, we only got one, one each. But it was just like, I blew my mind after living in the north, it blew my mind that there be such a thing is that that you can just kill a deer a day. Oh, and one of the most controversial areas in those first years were going in was the dog deer hunting. Okay. And because it's been so, and this is exactly like the drone issue. Where do you draw the line? If somebody wants to use a drone for animal recovery, somebody wants to use a dog for animal recovery.

Are there people that abuse that is their dog deer hunting? Our state allows dog like deer hunting. It is an old hundreds of. year old tradition in the southeast for dog deer hunts, one of the most expensive lodges to join that's probably over half million a year to get in this place. They do dog deer hunts. And it's well received. But all that ties back to of what you were talking about at the drone, you get a guy,

Steve Ronella, and it's different. Out west, there's a lot of federal property in Texas, Alabama, some of the southern States is probably 98 99% private property. Yeah. So if Steve Ronella spends a half million dollars a year developing his property, would it be legal or would it be responsible for somebody to be able to lease 20 acres next to you and release 20 dogs every weekend over that they know they're going off there for 20 acres and go on your deal?

So all the states have had to fight that. Hey, there's a version of hunting where you just show up, you sit in a tree stand, you hope something happens and then you go home. A lot of people hunt that way. And every once in a while it'll work out. Then there's the version where you've done the reading before the test. You've got the OnX hunt app with cameras integrated on your map, a tailored deer movement forecast to help you make the most of your days in the woods

and precise weather predictions. So when a buck starts showing up, you already know where he's coming from and where he's going. Most of us don't have unlimited days in the field. We've got a week, maybe a little more. And every hunt that doesn't produce because you were in the wrong spot, that's a cost you can't get back. Build a real plan before opening day with the on-X hunt app because hope is not a strategy. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month.

Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here. At long last, after fighting and yelling and fighting some more, Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together. Not just any work bibs.

We're talking the bare grease bibs from Clay. Now, I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants, pretending to be work bibs, and boy, he did not. These are Clay's invention for things like breaking mules, rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt. I'm going to use them all the time, trapping, working, fixing stuff. It doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs,

these are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton. They got briar-proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on, you don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck.

and they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater's store.com. I want to talk about dogs. I'd love to talk about it because I don't have familiarity. I want to talk about drones and I want to talk about dogs, but the fundamental difference between drones and dogs is one's like a historical, is a traditional use practice. My granddad did it. My great granddad is the same deal where that's the story that gets brought to you.

And that's what you hear. Like, I'm totally unfamiliar. I've never hunted deer. I've hunted a lot of stuff behind dogs. I've never hunted deer. behind in front of dogs. But that's one of those issues, and I'd love to hear your perspective on it, is it's one of those issues where people point to, it's not what's okay, it's what is naturally going to come

from that. That's right. Meaning, meaning you doing dogs on your property is one thing, but it becomes that it just doesn't work for you to keep them off your neighbor's property. And so when people criticize it, they're not criticizing the act. Some people are. But generally, they're not criticizing the act in and of itself. They're criticizing what they know will come with it.

And I used to, in the early dog day arguments, go back to the resource again. And I came up with it. One of the meetings I said, and the people always bring in the ethics. Is it ethical to have that camera on that waterhole with that? 80s deal is it ethical to do this or that i i would ask the question in the meeting steve is it more ethical to to push a deer or to pull a deer you see what i'm saying sure if i'm going to plant a greenfield and i'm bringing them to me a guy's got an argument well that's unnatural they're not green fields naturally for deer and they're going to come so you're pulling them with that dog you're

pushing them you know you're driving them yeah we're sorry that's why that's why i don't want to stray too far there's a concept there's a concept that's interesting in these discussions and i can't i wish i could remember the name of the guy that i first heard but who brought it up but the argument would be stop calling it stop talking about fair chase okay i'm sympathetic to this viewpoint it's got problems but fair talking about fair chase has problems because you're like is is it fair like is it fair to create an they like? Yes.

Or is it more fair to have a thing that like repels them and you pursue them? Right. But like he's, this guy proposed, um, let's start talking about fair share. Mm-hmm. And we look at, we have a, we have, we're dealing in wildlife management, fisheries management, we're dealing at a finite resource. It's just, there's numbers to it. There, there are X numbers of halibut.

There are X numbers of crop. There are X numbers of deer, right? there's a finite resource. What is an individual's share? And within that, meaning also, what is your impact on the share? It's just, it's a, it's like, it's a concept that I think is worth thinking about. Because it's like, like, what is your, what impact are your activities having on the share? And you could look in this, in this viewpoint, you could look at a land manager who's doing

habitat work, putting in food plots, leaving quail habitat, whatever, doing improvements, okay, putting in nest boxes and wrapping the tree and sheet metal, okay? It's like, this dude is growing the share. So if we're talking about fair share, it changes the dynamic. If he's also got a camera out, does that mean he's, like, is he, is he negatively impacting the share? That's right. Do you know, but if you have, but if you have a, if you have a use practice that is, hazing animals off good habitat, you know, having, having like, you know, negative impacts on neighboring hunters impacting their ability to get their share. Like, maybe that's a better way of talking about this whole thing. And I'm not saying I advocate one over the other, but it's just an interesting perspective.

It's very controversial and there's always a difference of opinions. When we were researching, I tried to get every bit of, you know how you own the argument and you know this from being an author. If you own the research, you own the argument. You know more about it. You've got it. I pulled every state's legislation on dog, dog hunting, whatnot during those days. Texas defined theirs and some of the research I had pulled, they had defined that they thought it took 10,000 acres to run dogs. So they go in and say, okay, if you own more than this, then you could run that amount of dogs.

Because it was at least plausible for you to do it. Oh, yeah. Don't worry. I had one of the senators come up. He said, look, I'm with y'all on what your beliefs are. He said, but every person that puts me in office has the most popular size track in the state of Alabama was just 40 acres and under. You're going to hold a pack of Walker Hounds on 40 acres? That'll keep busy for about 90 seconds.

Yeah, they're gone. So all that has to be and find the correct. Is there their ways and that it will work? Yeah. And the other deal that I probably said more at any meeting, both groups, I mean, people are to fist the cuffs in this deal, Steve.

And I would say, you know what, we got to learn guys. And this is the thousand people in the audience. We got, we got to learn to be good neighbors. Yeah. Let's remember that.

Yeah. Because you're always going to join somebody. And just because you like bo hunting, they may be avid gun hunter. Yeah. We've got to be good neighbors. Everybody has their, their way of doing it.

I got a buddy that hates the coyote dog guys. I'm like, what's so bad about that? He's like, what's bad about it is I can't be in my tree with a damn dogs coming to my place. Because it's not the thing. It's like, just stop,

don't hunt my place. When I'm hunting my place. Hunters hating hunting. May not be their deal. You know, I never got it. I kept thinking, we're going to pass some bow hunting legislation.

And when we pass crossbows, everybody that gets older, have bad shoulders, they get doctors excused to get crossbows. And the bow hunters called it ex-bows at that time, you know, for crossbows. And when they were illegal before, we passed them to be hunted with responsibly, I had a guy that worked for me. And it never clicked with me.

And he said, I hear y'all going to pass some crossbow legislation. I said, possibly. I said, depends what the board's viewpoint, what items get brought up. I said, but it's a possibility. He said, they may be, and they'll never be true bow hunters. it hit me then. That's an ego deal. That's a group that they wear that badge of honor.

By golly, I'm a bow hunter. Oh, yeah. And I told him, I said, look, you better know this was at that time. I said, less than 7% of the people in the United States hunt. I said, it's going down. It went down to about three and a half percent. I said, you better embrace every person there is that will hunt with a bow, no matter if you like the type bow or whatnot,

so we can get those user numbers back up. Thank goodness that's been turned around and brought back the other way a little bit. But in our sport, especially, Steve, it's a little bitty sport. Everybody knows everybody and everybody knows, hey, I'm hunting White Mountain this weekend. And he's at the best place to the best. It's a small sport. Better be good neighbors. You better get along.

And that's what was driving that. It's their group. They're proud of it. Oh, yeah. But I mean, like, 90% of it is just in good humor. But there is like a tribalism. And we like all around our office, like we engage in it all the time. It's like, you know, what that's kind of like basically is like what you're into is dumb.

See, I'm going to. It's like is the general joke. This is absolutely gospel truth. We got in and I don't know if you met them down there. It's a popular national radio show Rick and Bubba. Yeah. Nationwide. Yeah.

We did that show. We had every two weeks a segment on, we did the outdoor show. Yeah, I remember it. For 20-something years. Yeah. We got into one of the guys, Bubba on that deal, they had three million estimated audience.

And so we were going at all the, you know, there wasn't that many in Anchorage, Alaska, but they still listened in Anchorage, Alaska. And we, he said, hey, I saw a Black Panther this weekend. He said, what do you think about that? And I said, I don't think you saw a Black Panther. He said, oh, I did. absolutely this is what started this whole deal oh I did I said no I said there's there's first

there's no melanistic phase of Panther you know I said secondly there's no breeding population I've explained this all thousand times there's the closest panther to us is Florida Panthers there's not but estimated 200 and the herd they estimate how many get there's 20 killed a year 10% the herd is at 200 I said they travel sometimes come up there's no way first there's no such thing as a Black Panther. And if there was, you're talking about kicking over an ant bed. This deal goes,

it becomes number one segment on this show. Number one, every week the phones are, you can't get a spot on the phone line in. And so we start picking at him. I bring in the top gaming the fish guys, the top research biologists

and everyone on said, there's no way on it. And people start calling in those things. Hey, I don't appreciate it at all what y'all are saying about this. I'm at a wedding. A buddy of mine is getting married. And I have a guy coming up. There's probably 300 people at the wedding, Steve.

This is how it gets. And so all this, I bring this back when I tell you the story, to all this has to be taken in when honey and fishing laws and rules are made. And he comes up and shoves my shoulder. And he said, I tell you, I don't like it. I go, what do you? What are you talking about? He goes about the Black Panthers.

I said, what are you? What are you talking? We're at this guy's wedding. I said, what are you talking about? He said, y'all making fun of that. I said, have you seen, I'm trying to figure out now where he's coming from. He said, you think my mamma and my great Pam Paul would have lied to me about sick?

They told me they saw him all the time. You're calling my family liars. And I said, well, the research, but they don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear any of that. They don't. They've been told that story. They've been there the entire time. You're never ever in a million years will change their mindset of what is there or what wasn't there.

I know it's y'all at gaming fish. Y'all don't want all the hunters in the state and know there's black panthers out there. They'd start. No, we keep really close detail. Every investigation goes that comes back from. You're not going to change that. We make a hat that's got a black panther on. just says believer on it for all those Black Panther believers out there.

You know what's funny about this, like this conversation in trail cams too, though, is like the Bigfoot people. Yeah. Oh, where? Which you're like, I don't, I don't put Black Panther people in big, they're different buckets. There's like Black Panther people are like people of the woods. Bigfoot people are kind of like, there's like a real kind of hippie element to Bigfoot people.

And there's like a backwoods quality to a Black Panther guy. There's just like different kind of guys. Totally different. But when you say to the Bigfoot guys, where's all the trail camp pictures of Bigfoot's? They got, oh, they can detect them. They're in another dimension. And trail cameras can't capture that dimension that Bigfoot's living.

But everybody's going to find a way to get around it. When the Black Panther argument was there, and I said, let me, I can define that for you immediately and have an absolute evidence that there's not one of the largest sports down south is raccoon hunting at night with dogs exactly you you've cat hunting cat hunted all over exactly the same dog you hunt raccoons with that you hunt lines yeah why in the last 30 years have we never treat a line oh that's different wait a minute wait minute where's that different what we're talking about they discounted but but

so all that when you were asking that first deal about with the gaming fish and how we operate and all that all that's got to be taken into account yeah yeah because you you you got to make public hacking you got a guard resource all that so all that ties back in but that i'm glad you saw some of that that it's going on too oh yeah i love but i love that stuff yeah i want i want to ask you something and uh it's fair to call you a technologist i mean you're technologist in some in some respect yeah give me your take on like um give me your take on drones Like, because, let me just to set that up for listeners a little bit, is when drones, like, very early in the drone thing, like, right when it became that you could get a drone, I remember, I think it was one year, I might be off by a state or two, but it was within a 12-month window that 13 states came out and just very clearly, very early said that drones are not allowed in big game hunting applications. They all defined it in their own way, but basically it was like,

couldn't use drones for big game hunting. Then there came a question, what about retrieval? Okay, so imagine you go out at, you know, you go out at dusk, you hit a deer, you can't find blood, it's real thick, well, just like how great would it be while that thing's still holding some body heat to put up a drone with thermal, fly it over the, you know, fly it over some crazy briar patch, and there's a little heat spot and boom. Like who wouldn't want a guy to get to recover their deer? Right.

What's ethical on recovery? Yeah. So it'll be like, yeah, man. Like once a deer's wounded, it should be all in. Everybody in. Like, if you can get it, get it. I don't care if you do like an act of God. Like, get the deer and get it.

So, but then people would be like, but how do you unsee when you're doing that, how do you unsee what you see? Where you're like, oh, that's for that big buck bets. That's where he's bad. And if he's bedded there tonight, and if he's bedded there tonight, in the morning i know he's definitely gonna go north out of there and right and so then you you don't unsee it right um i had a simple just just to further paint that picture for you i had a similar thing like we're allowed we're allowed to third we can thermal hunt for coyotes

there's no off time i remember one time during deer season me and my buddy are out thermal hunting coyotes at night and i'm seeing box dude and i'm like is it supposed to you know what i mean it's do i unsee that? That's right. You know, we weren't actively deer hunting, but I could just say like, oh, no, I'm hunting coyotes. Yeah. But I can't unsee what I saw. I was seeing bucks that I would not know they were there. Okay. So as I, I'm just setting this all up to say like, as someone who deals in emerging technologies, employs emerging technologies, has been in the seat of needing to give legal guidance on emerging technologies. Like, yes. Give me your drone spiel. Right. Right. You ready?

Yeah. I think the question has been solved for years. Okay. You know who has the question? To me, this is kind of where I think the drone needs to go. I'm not going to tell you the answer yet. I had a call from a guy several years ago. He said, hey, he said, what should I do?

Do I need to call a game warden? Do I need to call what? I've got a drone on my greenfield, and it's come up to looking in the window of my shooting house. And I said, do you know who's? it is. Not. He just sees the drone. He's got the drone.

It's not his drone, not his people. Come to find out, it was a neighbor's drone. Huh. That neighbor was flying his greenfields pushing the deer off his greenfield. Oh, you're kidding me. No, I'm telling you straight as a rope. So that, that goes on. You have drones.

Hey, let's see what he's doing over here. And they fly in unencumbered space, whether it's their property or not, property. And I think there's some legal aspirations to airspace. Sure. And what goes on. Here's what I think. My wife walked out there a day. She was, she was come running in the house. We still know we'll never find out who was. Someone had one above our house. Yes. She said, what does that? And they want to see Steve and I said, I'm going to shoot it. And then by the time I got out there, it was gone, you know. When I called one of my buddy, the director game fish, I said, hey, here's what's going on.

This track. He goes, does he have a clear shot? Tell him put it on the ground. Oh, really? The drunk. And like, we'll find out. out whose it is. But, but, but here's where I think a good answer may lay, is, and you and I in our very first meeting talked about both of us were sucked into Alaska all those times.

Let me tell you, fly, let's look at flying shoot laws in Alaska. You fly, you don't hunt for 24 hours afterwards. You fly that drone, you don't hunt for 24 hours afterwards. You are somebody who's in control of that information of that drone, go back to the true. of what defines ethics. Does the animal have a reasonable chance for escape?

Yeah, you got 24 hours separated that animal man moved on. Yeah, same is flying. Yeah, same is flying in plane. Again, do you unsee that? No. But does that give it,

when you fly a float plane into camp and you see through bull moose in the bottom, you didn't choose the way. That piloted that that float plane did. Yeah. Y'all land 10 miles from there. Y'all hike back. did did did you do that no did you unsee that no yeah did you know moves we're in the

bottom yeah they're going to be in those bottoms every time you go in there oh so that's a great place i have many times literally been in the situation is you're flying in on a normal route and you're coming like oh my god a bull yeah that's it's like a bull or look at that bear on that kill or what it's like you can say what you want to say no guy is going to be well let's pretend that bull's not there so we'll wait our day yeah but when i wait my day yeah but when i wait my I know that that bulls here. So I would believe if we protect the resource with the drums, careful with the legislation, and make it as a drone usable to recover an animal that's been shot, I'm a thousand percent behind that.

Okay. Is that legal to push animals off somebody else's property? I'm not legal with that. Let's protect people's rights. Let's be good neighbors and let's use it ethically. But go back to the flying shoot. you have that drone up a quick place to land on that until you could define legislation you fly that drone you don't hunt for 24 hours yeah exactly like alaska's flying shoot yeah i like that yeah i wish there was a way and i don't even know the ramifications of this because it's like a huge legal conundrum and you wouldn't you wouldn't be able to answer it any better than probably anybody in the country because it's totally novel ground was um i wish there was a way that it would be You can fly it above ground that you have permission to fly it above.

Yeah. But that brings in, because this is FAA stuff. All right. So that brings in this huge thing of like manned and unmanned, because of course you can't say to a plane that you can't fly over land you don't own. So how do you come in and say with a drone, like you can fly a drone over land that you have permission to fly it over? Like that to me would be so simple and easy, but impossible, probably. I'm guessing from a legal standpoint.

sure there'll be court cases and whatnot that helps to find that of what can be legal and not legal on that. But I agree with you. That's kicking over huge ant-hill. But again, is it, is what you're doing, ethical, helping you, does that give you a better edge over killing that animal than it is ethically bound for you to take that animal? Yeah. Does, hey, the switching on that spotlight at night off the side of the road when there's eight mule deer down the road here and the guy that kills that? Yeah. He violated those animals' rights of fair chase.

Does the guy that see him in his headlights going home and goes back the next day because he knows those deer in that field? Yeah. I don't see anything wrong with seeing them, but using it to tape that animal in an ass that way. That's not right. Absolutely not. Hey, your neighbor, you know that guy your neighbor? He's been out there all summer. He's hanging cameras.

He's watching the photos roll in. He knows where that buck is bedding, where he's feeding. He's pinpointing where he needs to be on opening day. You've seen the pictures, and you know the deer is there. The question isn't whether that buck gets shot this fall. The question is whether it's your story or his. So tip the odds in your favor with the on-x hunt app. Trail camera analysis, hyper-local,

wind and weather forecasts and the insights to act on what you're seeing. Don't show up to opening day empty-handed. Bring on X-Hunt. Get Bell, Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Good Lord, they're finally here at long last after fighting and yelling.

and fighting some more. Clay Newcomb and First Light have done it. They have built a pair of work bibs together. Not just any work bibs. We're talking the bare grease bibs from Clay. Now, I've watched Clay work long enough to know that he wasn't going to put his name on a pair of hunting pants, pretending to be work bibs, and boy, he did not. These are Clay's invention for things like breaking mules, rendering grease, kneeling in the dirt.

I'm going to use them all the time, trapping, working, fixing stuff. doesn't matter. If you want good, durable, comfortable bibs, these are your bibs made from tough stretch duck cotton. They got briar-proof chaps that run from cuff to thigh. They got pockets damn near everywhere. Again, comfortable and durable. Put them on. You don't need to worry about having anything go bad. If it wasn't so hot right now outside, I'd be wearing them right now. But you can bet your ass I got them in my truck. And they are up at the meat eater store right now at the meat eater store.com. Let me ask you this one.

And I'm not, and not this is a promise to listeners. I'm going to ask you a question. I'm not even going to bore you with what I think about the whole thing. Right. Where do you sit right now? What's your take on CWD? Like where do you sit right now?

You know, that was in the, the emphasis of that being followed when we were in office. And first you got to believe, at first I'm going to tell you, I'm a believer, CWD can be a political football. And I'm talking about from the federal all the way down to the state to the individual

user groups. Do you believe starting out, and you're probably a lot more up to date on it than I am, even though I've followed it pretty good, there's a point for our industry that I'm going to bring up in a second with you that has to be looked at if you're in our industry. but do you think DWD was started at a at a sheep pen in Colorado where they put mule deer in after known scrapee's sheep had been in that pen is that what started it? I don't believe so. That's what gets the rap of starting. I believe it was identified there.

I honestly, I follow this closely. I don't know where it came from. But that gets that's kind of where everybody goes. to where it started. And if you look at the map of how I see WD spread, that looks like. Okay. I'm not saying I'm a believer in that. That sure. Again, I watch for political. I want to hear people's takes. So you just get out, like I said, I'm not going to do the whole deal where I give my take. Okay. But I mean, I want your take on one part of it. Okay. So if you look, you got mad cow

disease. You got Crutchfield Jaterson and humans. You got scrapies and sheep. You got when the people when you used to hear about moose having circling disease and they talk about circling that's c wd okay do you believe c wd is naturally occurring or do was that did that come from something like the colorado do that that that's a question that has to be decided you asked me that question yeah this is one thing this is this is this is one of the things i wish i knew most and it would be um there's no way well i shouldn't say there's no way it feels to me improbable that they actually found the first case like what are the odds that you found the first case so it was identified and on a captive deer in Colorado was identified did they find the first one no right

because just what are the odds they found the first one if you if I could have one of the many questions about cWD is I wish there was some way that you could go in to museum collections of any servids any north american service from museum collections and you can go back to like archaic period whatever early modern and you could go in and take all these servid bones and if there was some way to definitively not the technology i don't believe is there but there's some way to go in and say we've checked all these bones and all these museum collections it's not there like it's not there we've checked thousands of bones it wasn't there it wasn't there wasn't there and someone could definitively say that it would change how I view it

where I'm sitting if I had to do I always like to play this game like you you you're asked a question by an omniscient being you're asked a question by like a godlike being who knows the truth and there's no bullshit it's just you got to answer the question one way and they're like has it always has it been here for hundreds of years or has it been here for decades that's where I'm sitting right now if I really have had to get it right or I die okay yeah I would go I don't like it that you're putting me in this position but I'm going to go with hundreds of years yeah that's what I would say but and then I'd be like am I right so so that's in that that's one of the questions I think

that needs to be studied in answer it changes everything it changes everything uh-huh the now let's go back to our industry that we love the hunting and fishing. I don't care if you're a bird watcher. I don't care if you're a wildlife watcher that would never shoot an animal if you had to. You have equity in that the deer are healthy, the moose are healthy, any sort of it is healthy.

Okay. So the nuclear bomb that destroys what we and any nature person loves, you know what I view that is do I know what the nuclear bomb is the nuclear bomb is if if hunters kill servitids that transfer to humans

that it's proven that that and that ends that game that's a nuclear bomb for our oh I think that that that moment should it come and I don't think again if I was in a situation I don't think it's coming I don't know.

I'm just a guy sitting here. You or I, with information to the public, that there'll be a million people listen to your stuff, I can't tell them to, if I thought it was coming, then I'm wrong in telling them and leading them to something dangerous. I don't see it coming either. I don't think it's going. I dread that it came,

and I think that the minute the hunting public, the wildlife viewing public, the wildlife managers, the minute a deer is no longer a symbol of wildness and natural beauty and natural heritage. And a deer is a symbol of like a deadly disease factor, which is already happening with ticks a little bit, but then it would be like a carrier of, of, um, you know, this terrible dementia, early death, you know, Alzheimer's. similarity type catastrophe. Right.

And the deer's saddle with that. Yeah, that changes deer hunting in America. It changes everything. Completely. Everything. Serend management period has changed. But again, if I had to sit here and guess

and like as someone that follows the news and follows the science, if I was forced into making a guess, I don't think it's coming. And we had something not only, that level that and I've told a lot of people about this in a gaming fish me we're with the Department of Agriculture people and been a lot of cases we studied wildhogs and one of the detriments to landowners and hunting people is the hog populations billions and billions of dollars in damage every year everybody's

coming up with the way they think they control pigs I don't think that since the Spaniards let them out in the 1500s. I don't think there's a way to control bees because you can't get ahead of them breeding that I see state. It's going to be extremely hard to do it. But we were sitting in that meeting and they said, hey, we tested our, this is Alabama's wildhog population. And they tested.

And they said 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100% of the halls killed tested positive for Bruce Loses. So we're sitting in a little wildlife and. and ag and I said, well, I've been around this all my life. I said, tell me about brucellosis and this. And they said, well, here's what happens. And here's the way you get. I said, no, tell me the way you get it.

And they said, it's not from the blood. They said it's in the genitals of the animal. And there's a little clear liquid or something that when you cut that, if you've got to cut on your hand, you're getting bruselosis. How do you fight that? It's got to, you're going to have to have a battery of dioxide. And you start seeing these people then that do a lot of this hog hunting. Oh, yeah, I had that.

I went to the doctor and had that and the disease. And I asked the question. I said, do we communicate that to the public? Coach Dye used to tell me right, Auburn football, when he came in and his assistant coaches, he said he could tell when there was an issue that he didn't want to talk about because he looked and every coach looked down at the table. I saw it that same day. Is that right?

And I said, I said, what are we doing on this? And that's when Alabama, we came out with, Commissioner Lolly came out and said, not only do we suggest being careful when you dress the wildhog, but we suggest you wear thick rubber gloves. The second state in the nation that, right? Texas had already put that in their rugs.

They said rubber gloves. We said thick rubber gloves. But to communicate how it's transferred, but here we go back and it's the same with deer and we go back to the political issue what's the political football you think the guys with the insurance commissions and the Department of Transportation

want any more deer car collisions do you think they want any more hog car collisions you think they want anybody to quit shooting deer or hogs that were reduces those things. Yeah, yeah. That goes to every state, every state in the nation, every, every commission like that in the nation,

all that's got to be looked at. And a lot of people will get on that issue and say, oh, they just don't like us doing that. Buddy, there's a lot. That's a lot deeper well than you think you're deep, a different one out of them. Yeah. I saw the, I saw the dumbest headline this morning in Wired, Wired Magazine. It was, um, Florida Panthers, reduced deer. car collisions because there's some some some genius as like well they eat deer so they

reduced deer car collisions i'm like you could have written that article long time ago wrote hunters on top of that what's those 200 florida panthers going to do with that's what i was laughing at the bottom oh my god man you could write a way better article and just change the first word to hunters you'd have a way bigger impact but he's this is way off what we've been top of it. This is the thing that I noticed a thing you guys did at Mulchie

that I don't get. Maybe you can explain how this works. You know, you used to have to buy, like if you, let's say you have a Verizon phone. Yeah. Okay. You'd go and you'd get a camera and you'd get like a Verizon camera or a whatever camera. But now your cameras just do whatever signals best.

Okay. So for instance, we keep, we one in our fish shack in Alaska just so we can see who's coming and going I got it on a tree and like if you come up on our beach and go toward our shop it's got you right yeah like I already got your picture yeah but um that's a there's no Verizon signals it's AT&T so all of a sudden you can be hang a camera up and it just grabs whatever signals available is that like do you arrange do you have to arrange all that with AT&T and Verizon like how's that whole thing work like why is why is a your phone not that way all that has to be negotiated and done but i don't understand

i understand it from a business standpoint if you got your turf if your podcasts are protected and you're only showed and nobody can come into your turf unless they sign up for your podcast or listen to them that's your turf yeah think about verizon probably had spent billions of dollars protecting their turf. Yeah, building it and protecting it. You think they want to be taken out by automated choice of an item? What if every cell phone did that? Yeah, but how are you guys there? How are you able to do it? I mean, it was great because it solved a huge problem, but how is it okay to, how were you able to do it? You know what? I believe probably, and I don't know this. This is my guess. There's a lot of people.

Let me tell you, everybody in Maltry's smarter now. They're smart. We got the smartest team. They're smart, smart folks. How they get that done? I don't know, but I think that probably somebody powers it be thought, that's not going to change. A little old cell can. There's not. How many of them are out there? Got it. They didn't know.

At Christmas last year, we were holding 18 billion pictures in the cloud. No telling us what that. That's probably double or triple that now. Now they're finding that out. I don't know, but I would like, would you not want a cell phone that it was like a satellite phone that anywhere you went at, Well, the best signal. So I on here, I used to carry, I used to have two because AT&T is great in Alaska. So I used to carry on two phones.

I called it my regular phone and then my AT&T phone. Now I just pay two monthly things, which are not cheap. Right? Right. And I have them both because I have two SIM cards. Right. But then on the camera, I used to not put one up in AT&T areas because I got to go buy it. Like, whatever.

And then all of a sudden I saw you guys stuff that it like doesn't matter. Just grabs the best signal. That's great. Best things. But I was like, well, how come. Baren't phones that way. Same deal. And think about Steve.

Everybody thinks, oh, we're just U.S. We're worldwide. I mean, you look, we go into Mexico or Canada. We have to be able to grab different signals. Yeah. We don't know what cell bases are there. Oh, I got it. But what was it when it had to, what was it, whatever years ago?

You would send people up and find out the, major, you look to the carrier maps. You know the map that Verizon always shows when they are T-Mobile. Use us and it shows all the red is where you can get their signal on the So that's what you know to send where. You go find out. You find out what the biggest base was and that's the one you had to be a customer to. Or you find out if you had a, if the, let's say, tractor supply in your area was

you're going to be your biggest vendor there or Walmart or whoever, you find out who they had relationships with and that's probably who you went with. But it was controlled by area size. And then one day, boom, it doesn't matter. Look at it this way. If Walmart is selling cameras and there's a carrier that only had, if AT&T doesn't have a 2% and Verizon has 98% coverage, which camera, which, which phone you think Walmart's going to sell? They got to go with the better coverage.

So you study that and do that, but it's sure a lot better being able to do it. I wish I could take credit for that. That wasn't me. Steve did that, but it was somebody smart and multery. Oh, it was a good. Yeah, I just want to,

well, when you find out, I'll let you talk to you guys and find out, tell him that I, that I took notice. I will get that for you. Yeah. That's good. That was a great development.

Yeah. Oh, that was huge. You know, I get asked a lot in a lot of the podcast and stuff. And being in the commercial side of selling the hunting, being hunting and fishing my whole life, but the commercial side, right at 50 years.

What's the big. change you saw. I always thought it was the compound bow. Being able to see it come from recurve to long bow or long bow to recurve to compound bow round wheels 65% let off. Yeah. Hoping young boone and crocky if you don't shoot it with you can't go over this let off then you got some bows 100% let off and it goes everywhere across the board. Boy, look how many bow hunters there are now from the Fred Bear days. And I thought, you know, that may have been to, it's one of the biggest changes. That's interesting.

I keep, yeah, that's what I truly believed. You know, I was watching that the entire term of my industry involvement. I get pointed out, it may be that the camera's right there. Yeah. Sometimes to be cute. Yeah. I'll say another one. Yeah.

And it's not just to be cute. There's an argument to we made. I'll say the digital range finder. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because the old days are like, well, if I zero my gun, three inches high at a hundred, you know, and like, and then, I mean, for archery too. Yeah.

How many caddies on golf courses or golfers are using that rangefinder to finder to find the distance to the pen and they're supposed to be or not supposed to be? Yeah, like the whole thing, oh, it's a good flat shooting rifle. Like all that goes out the window. Oh, yeah. No, I'll tell you exactly where the bullet's going to be. Like, it can arc all at once. I'll tell you right where it's going to be. I'm going to tell you that the, the, and we used to call them, um, um, I said,

I was saying digital, not digital laser range fighters. Yeah, right. Laser. Sorry. Um, we used to, to call the hunts where you could show up for a hunt and just pack a bag and just suitcase hunts where you didn't have to take a gun, but nobody ever trusted the guns. Mm-hmm. You go now, these guides and outfitters, they got nice of firearms and anybody.

and they know every concept of minute of angle, velocity, what the bullet does. They know how to their binoculars are talking to their scope and all that. That has changed the distance that people harvest game. I think this is in the last five year deal is off the chart now. I think there, what do you think? I think there's a lot more animals shot at further distances than they used to be. Yeah. That technology is on the charts.

It's going to wind up playing in. It'll wind up playing into what I talked about when I talked about the fair share discussion. You knew where I was going to Steve. I just like yesterday, I had a text exchange of a friend of mine that I'm going to bow on elk with this fall. And he says, man, I feel great out to 60. But a lot of guys are saying 70 to 80. And I'm like, man, just shoot all you want at 70, 80, but we're going to rain it back when we're out there, man. So I'm like, I'll tell you something that's not fun.

chase a wounded elk and they can take a hit you know we make them when we bring them out to bar and i first thing they shoot we want to see them shoot you you watch how they handle you know all this you watch how they handle the bow you look to their nervouses can they handle the crowd watching them does that get them shook up if that shakes them off that elk bugling in their face is going to shake them oh that's a good indicator and you look at that indicator then you look at the guy that stacks them and you know all the guides will be out there there'll be six of us out there and everybody's like, I'm taking him. You know, they know the guy can shoot.

The deal that I went to a PSC, we went to a PSC antelope hunt one year, and they had some tremendous long-range shooter. This is 30 years ago. And we were talking about hunting Caribou, and we were making those long shots. And they said, how do you train for that? And I said, I go to that target and shoot that distance, and I'll shoot 60 or 80 errors a day right before I go, you know, just to make sure it's dead.

And the guy told me, and this is really good advice, he said, if you want to shoot 60, shoot 100. Yeah. And you back back up. And I tell most of our hunters are coming in. If you want to get proficient at 50, shoot 70. Yeah. And that target gets a lot easier to hit when you back it up like that. But besides that, besides repetition and doing it, I don't know if any of you got it.

And it's no different than y'all's weight room down there. Some of those guys can bench press 380. most of them can't some of those archers can can make 70 yard shots exactly most of them can yeah there's guys out there that can shoot 70 better and you can shoot 30 go back to the ethical yeah but there's a lot of guys I know and like I've been guilty I've been guilty this with my kids and whatever like situations where the longest shot they ever took yeah the longest shot they ever took was that a deer right so yeah it's like what you trained for what you're back as for how comfortable you are.

You can't, yeah, you could never come in and say, hereby I declare that people can't shoot more than blank yards because it's different for everybody. And if, let's say you're in the 20th day of September, the elk are rutting so hard there in your face, you deprive the guy of hunting because he can't shoot 40, but you're going to shoot one at 10 yards that day. Every,

every situation's different. Yeah, yeah. You've got to be comfortable. Yeah. And I think the astute guy watches that and keeps a guy within his comfort. Right. Yeah. And again, all that being said on the ethical side of take care of that.

Yeah. Well, Dan Moultry, thanks for joining, man. It's great talking about it. I love, I have so much fun. I wake out in the morning, I mean, every morning. I wake up in the morning and I open my Moultry app. I see what's going on with that camera. I can't find.

We got, I got just, I got little projects going on. My friends all laugh because I got a camera called the Beaver Cam, and it's a camera that sits between a creek and a pond and there's like a slide. Are you watching them coming down to slide? Dude, I have every animal on the planet that walks through that, that walks to it. I just love it, man. I love finding out what's going on out there, you know. How many guys, and especially in our industry, but I always wonder any industry,

we'll be in a meeting somewhere, and you'll see guys and you know they're hunting. They're kickback and they're looking at the phone and paying attention to what they're saying, but they're looking, how many of those guys you think are looking at their, moultry up looking at his camera there's a bunch of them buddy yeah my friend like I take my kids every spring to hunt um I take my kids every spring to hunt turkeys in Wisconsin for the youth turkey season anyways my buddy out there uh what what month is it what right now it's August early August he he took a he took a break you know from May but it's early August it's already started he's like rope dragger rope dragger texting me

images because we're like we're already thinking about next spring you know and it's just funny because like like through that i'll kind of live you know like through those pictures and stuff we'll kind of like live this long fun kind of thing you know what i mean you get to watch some progress it just brings it's like it brings a lot of i mean it's great because it tells you what's out but it just brings a lot of enjoyment it brings a lot of enjoyment sharing the just sharing the pictures man i want you to at some point if you can do it we we almost everybody i think in the hunting industry. One of our biggest achievements we've done at the state of Alabama is we have the governor's

turkey hunt every year. At one time, I think it was probably the biggest hunting event in the nation. I'd hunted on the governor's hunting for antelope hunt. Oh, the one shot? Yeah, I hunted a one shot. The Wyoming?

Yeah. You know what was made about that? I got the hunt with Charlie Daniels for those five days. Oh, it was just, it was the greatest five days. It was for unbelievable good. I was on, when I did it, I was on the actual governor's deal. So I was like hunting with the governors, you know?

I was on the sportsman's center when we did it there. But we do the governor's hunt. We raise all our money for all our hunters helping to hungry, the, getting women into hunting. We have the largest two scholarships and wildlife at all the state universities at Auburn and Alabama, even though we like Auburn a little more to Alabama. I didn't say that, but you saw some of that when you were down there. But I want you to come hunt that hunt with us. The governor's hunt. We hunt the governor's hunt every year.

Well, how many, there must be a bunch of participating landowners. A lot of participants. We'll run up to, I think, probably the highest, 130 or 140 farms in the state. Really? But it's quite the, every farm, what we learned in growing that as a fundraiser was every person that owns a farm is proud of what they do. Got it. And they want to show off those farms.

And they want to show they were the best game managers. And they do such a good job. And let me tell you, that's been the best. I did a segment on CNBC about how successful it was because they all want to, the best stewards and the best people in the state to talk about how great wildlife is in the state were the ones that had their farms giving away their hunts for this hunt with everybody that had come in. But a lot, a lot of people, you need to come hunt that one with this one year. What do you guys do?

Is it April? What is it? Yeah, it's usually the second, third weekend of the season, but. Okay. And tell me again, the orgs you guys raise money for it? We raised money for hunters helping the hungry. Anything that when we came in the game and fish almost always that had been in the red, we put it in the black with the governor's turkey.

Was that right? Yes. That's how big a fundraiser it is. And a huge deal in Alabama. And successive governors pick it up? Yes, successive governors pick it up. It was so successful at getting it. people participating.

One of the governors came in and said, everybody we go to raise money, y'all have already hit them for donating money to be in this deal. Why don't we do that every other year so it doesn't fall on a year that the governor's going to be elected when they're raising money for the... Oh, yeah, yeah. That's high effective. Yeah, yeah. People are like, I already gave, man.

I gave for the turkeys. But I want you to come down and be my guess and we'll make a run at winning it. And it's a really good event. I'm awful. I think and of seeing all the different game and fish agencies coming from where we were to where it is. I think Alabama has done just a tremendous job. Our game and fish department is off the chart good. From our Red Sniper programs to our wildlife programs, a lot of them could pay attention to what we've done.

I like to hear that, man. like you heard me earlier you know acknowledging the work yeah the state agency i feel that those guys a lot of those agencies i mean especially you know even the very well-intentioned very effective ones it's people's favorite thing to like trash on yeah but a lot of times they're trashing on it without having any idea of the complexities and what goes into doing that's that work man absolutely you know if they got the if they got the right motivations and you feel that they're that they're looking out for the best interests of outdoorsmen and land users and managers. It's like, give them a shout, you know, if they're doing good job.

Yeah. Yeah. It's good to hear you compliment them because I feel like those guys get beat up. Oh, they get beat up and blame for everything, but they do. They just, from the biology side all the way down to the guys that work, the state properties to the wardens, they do a fantastic job. really, really do a good job. And a lot of the states really, really do. There's some that politics, as we've talked about, ease into.

But you know what? That may change to them. Well, again, Dan Moultrie. Thanks for coming on, man. It really, really enjoyed it. Getting out here, I told you the very first time I met you, and this is a huge compliment to you, listening to you talk about Alaska hunting,

anybody that has done Alaska hunting, it's a different hunting, and it's easy to tell a prod. Oh. You know what I'm talking about. In five seconds, you know if they're full of crap or not. You speak from the heart.

You speak from what you know about, and it's a joy to watch your show when you're giving those shows. Oh, thank you, man. Appreciate it. Absolutely is. We'll keep them coming. Yeah, absolutely.

Hey, don't forget Airhead hunting. I think I may have got to be a good. your attention earlier before you show. I'm in. Next time you come on, we're going to talk, but we're going to show the arrowhead. We're going to bore everybody to show Arrowhead pictures. I bet we can, I bet we can roll with that. We do good.

Thanks, man. Thank you. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.