Ep. 249: BONUS Render - Save the Hunt - Bear Grease

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of
the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where
we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f h
F Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear

(00:35):
that's designed to be as rugged as the place as
we explore.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Here.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
We are on a special bear Grease droplake. We're giving
the people what they want more. I'd say, the people
say more, we give them more.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
We say how much.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, this is gonna be a good episode.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
We've got with us multiple special guests. But Dan Gates
from Colorado's for Responsible Wildlife Management, You've been on here before,
friend of ours and uh, and we're going to talk
about this Colorado Mountain Lion deal. So welcome. Sure coming
to Arkansas. Appreciate thanks for the global headquarters.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's it's amazing me. Well, everybody knows who Clay nucom
is down here.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I know that well.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
In some spots, in some places.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, I appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
He's definitely a legend here within the you know, one
hundred yard Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, we've got Baron Newcomb. Good to see you. Bear
glad to be here. Yeah, probably need a haircut, Lake
Lake pickle with on ax, moving on Lake. Tell us
what you do? I know what you do, but tell
the world what do you do for?

Speaker 5 (01:53):
So I'm like, I guess the easiest title to put
on it is, I'm like, I'm a marketing manager. I
work a lot on the waterfowl side and then work
pretty much on our social media strategy and our YouTube
and everything.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, but you're not from Missoula, Montana. I'm not. You
are from a state that starts with an M.

Speaker 5 (02:09):
Though, I think that's how I confused him. I just yeah,
it's just the M. I kind of threw them off
for a second. But yeah, no, it it's been fun.
I've been with ONEX for a little over two and
a half years now.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Okay, yep, lakes from Mississippi.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Right right in the center of it.

Speaker 5 (02:27):
I will say when I got here is the first
time I met Bear in person, and his hair over
social media it's not done justice to He's got like
a main it's.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Impressed, like a groomed lion.

Speaker 6 (02:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, I was a little envious, right man, that's impressive. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Uh, we've got josh Lanbridge filmmaker. Good to see you, Josh.
Here we got Brent Reeves. Good to see man. I
like that this country life shirt.

Speaker 7 (02:54):
I had to get up for breakfast, come up here
to day Yeah yeah, early start.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:59):
Man, these things the people really digging them. Yeah they
look good.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah. I got mine without the muscles.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
With Dan.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
I saw an interesting headline today in the New York
Times about a group of the fox hunters in in
England are petitioning the government. There's a there's a lobbyist
group of of the hunters that are fox hunters, which
fox hunting was banned in England in the early two thousands,

(03:33):
just like straight up band the wild fox hunts. Now
they they still got dogs over there, and they do
like scent drag hunts. And this is the kind of
hunt like in my picture up here on the ceiling,
you know, where they're using horses and following the dogs.
It's like very traditional European hunt and the and this
guy is building a really strong case that the world

(03:57):
is kind of perking up their ears towards about how
they are basically a cultural not an ethnic group, but
a but a but a people group that have this
deep cultural heritage that should be protected like many of
these other very protected classes of people with specific beliefs,

(04:19):
which I've actually said something similar to that for a
while that I mean like all over the world and
these modernizement we're protecting everybody. I mean, like, if you
have a belief, don't mess with me about my belief,
my my faith and whatever.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
And it's like, uh, I thought it was pretty interesting
and uh and and they didn't laugh him off the stage.
And I don't I don't know the specifics, but it
was in the New York Times recently. Have you heard
about any of that?

Speaker 3 (04:51):
I have. And there's there's been a growing enthusiasm to
be able to turn around and categorize ourselves in some
classification that you know, we are who we are from
a cultural tradition and heritage perspective. And when you start
talking about that, people start to pay attention. On some
sides of the aisle. Now that the antis are never
going to pay attention to that, you know, the extremist,

(05:13):
but other.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
They're interested in protecting everybody else exactly.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Yeah, but other groups are like I never really thought
about it like that. I didn't really understand it. It
was cultural to you that was from your background or
your your family tradition and genealogical heritage. I mean, it's
it's something to where it'd be interesting to see how
they look at it over there. I know that it
gains traction over here as soon as you start mentioning

(05:37):
a specific ethnic group. But you know, in Colorado we're
being attacked at different levels right now on what we
have a fur band that is a ballot initiative, and
the thing that's been centric to people to pay attention
is the Native American side of it. And as soon
as you mentioned Native American, they're like, don't mess with
the Native American. But when you just mentioned fur, they're like,

(05:58):
oh yeah, get rid of fur, right. And then you said,
well it has to do with cowboy hats. Well well, okay,
well there's an exception. Well it has to do with
fishing lures. We should mess with a fisherman. As soon
as you mentioned Native American, all of them are on board.
They say nobody shouldn't.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Mess with it.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Just yesterday, I was doing some research for something and
was reading a source material document by a guy named
John Lawson that was written in seventeen oh nine published
in seventeen oh nine, you know, two hundred and fifteen
years ago, and he was he was get him on

(06:37):
the podcast. He was talking about bear hunting with hounds
in Virginia. I mean, like very it was very detailed,
and I mean that was seventy years before America was America.
I mean, like there's deep, deep, deep cultural heritage for

(07:01):
hunting with hounds and hunting predators on this continent that
is undeniable. And to this day we still have all
these predators in especially in the West, with lions with
thriving numbers. I mean, I think we, I really think
that that's a direction that we should go as a

(07:22):
hunting community, and the specifics of it. We're not an
ethnic group, it's not and that's not what these guys
in Europe are trying to do, but a protected class
of people with specific beliefs that are congruent with just
their identity.

Speaker 7 (07:36):
Well, it's interesting, it's interesting that you say that about
You think about what you said, Dan, about how as
soon as Native Americans are mentioned, it's its hands off,
when one hundred years ago it wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
It wasn't like that, right, one hundred and fifty years ago,
we were they were absolutely they didn't care what they thought.

Speaker 7 (07:58):
Yeah, so there, I think there's room from what you're
talking about there, if we can get enough folks together,
maybe we can have that same level of respect. And
I'm not comparing hunters to Native Americans what happened to
them by any means. I'm just saying, obviously there is
room for change. If we can do that and see

(08:18):
Natives in a different light than what they were seeing
one hundred and fifty years ago, maybe there is.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Room for Well, look what they just did last year
in New Mexico. The New Mexico legislature banned the use
of traps on public land except for Native Americans. Now,
I mean, we're not talking about reservation land. We're not
talking about anything other than wildlife management and the opportunity
to go out and harvest game by a particular method

(08:45):
of take. When they gave an exemption to a cultural
component ethnic otherwise right, but to public land, well, the
public land is public. But to specify who can use
the public is where you know, the NTA and the
f TA and Sportsman's Alliance and those guys are looking
at lawsuits but and trying to figure out how to

(09:05):
do that. But but to your point, you know, considering
people's perceptions about the way things should be done. But
as soon as you throw in a specific culture, a
specific sector, then it starts to you know, I guess
get attention of a lot of other people out there,
and I don't see why the sportsmen and women and
hunters and anglers can't turn around and do the same thing.

Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yeah, you know, the way I think about it is
is should the earth persist? I think about generations and
new combs down the line, and it's like, could you
be could you be a new com and not have
access to the kind of hunting that we have today?

(09:47):
Like it feels like it's that important to our culture,
to my culture, you know. And I don't know. I
think I think we need something.

Speaker 4 (09:57):
It's not just a recreational issue.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
It's a life, it's it's it's what we've expressed to people.
And I've gotten on a hot mic in front of
commissions and legislators and and say it's not what I do,
it's who I am. And I live it and I
breathe it, and I eat it and I sleep it
and I drink it, and it's everything about me. That's
who I am. And when they when you say that
to them, you can see that there's a light bulb

(10:20):
that comes on and they're like they just thought it
was something you did occasionally, and it's it's we do everything.
I mean, it's look at this.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Room here, it's not playing tennis or golf. No. No, Well, the.

Speaker 5 (10:33):
Way the way that I think about it is is
like a lot of those species, especially game animals, the
reason that they persist today is because of the sustainable
practices that were put in place. And now you look
at something that threatens it, looks at sustainable hunting as
a reason that it's going to get wiped out. It's
just not doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, they just hadn't done their homework. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
It's hard. It's hard for me to sit and try
to not argue, but educate a specific sector of our
population that is not familiar with our lifestyle, and I
say our lifestyle as consumer sportsmen, I mean anymore, to
be legal in the United States, you have to buy
a license to be able to go do something. But
that's the funding component of the North American model of

(11:18):
wildlife conservation, and every game agency has that component available
to them. The average person, that middle of the road sector,
that eighty percent, some of them don't even realize that
we have to purchase licenses, that we have to have
hundred education, that they're special permits and their special seasons
and methods of take and quotas and restrictions, and a
lot of they just don't realize because they've been force

(11:41):
fed this lies and these fallacies in this smoke and
mirror game. We are the enemy, We're the evil. We're
out there just creating vast destruction on the landscape and
landscape and extra paytent every species become in contact with.
At the late eighteen hunters, early nineteen hundreds, that was
the case, but that wasn't a regulated hunting structure. That
was individuals trying to supply a market. Hence one of

(12:03):
the tenants of them clearly, yeah, and that was for
a food source to be able to turn around and
supply food to the general public. With a vast expansion
to the west, the general public. That eighty percent sometimes
don't realize that, and if they do, they don't fully
comprehend it because they don't understand. One hundred and twenty
five years to get to where we're at, right now,
and the transition to be able.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
To do that, and that transition is one of the
most remarkable things for sure in terms of animal management
on planet Earth since time began. Because usually when people
make big mistakes, they never recover from it. I mean,
you look at the other continents and you look in
other places that one hundred and twenty five years of

(12:44):
conservation where we absolutely turn the tables on market hunting
over extension of killing animals, habitat destruction, I mean, like
the voracious appetite of America for westward expansion. Yeah, if
that was still going on, that's bad. But but that
that switch, and I think that's something that most most people,

(13:07):
most hunters don't realize, is that for human nature to
be able to revert and fix some of these big
time errors that we've had as civilizational errors is so incredible.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
I mean, it's just it's it's a story.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
It's a story that ought to be celebrated by by
all and now you know the thing, the component of
that story that is hard for people is the killing
of animals, right, I mean, that's just it. It's like
and but again that goes back to just golly, I mean,
there is a movement I think in the world today

(13:45):
where even non hunting, non rural, urban people are beginning
to understand, you know, where meat comes from, that animals
have to be farmed, animals have to be killed. You know,
there's so there, there is, there's logic and reason behind
what we're doing. And I mean, I think we've got

(14:06):
a leg up in society, maybe more than we ever have,
and it just feels like we've just got to keep
telling a people story that shows a culture. Like that's
a deep passion of mind inside of what I do
with the Bear Grease podcasts, a it's a people podcast really.
I mean, it's this overlap of humans and wild places
and wildlife and rural living, and it's like telling this

(14:28):
story of yeah, this is a deep, deep culture that
is positive, you know, and it's powerful stuff to me.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well, when you can look back, you know, one hundred
and twenty five years at the beginning of the early
nineteen hundreds and look at just a human population and
then you know, fast forward to now and look at
the amount of people on the landscape, the way cities
are growing that you know, the urban rural divide, the
habitat loss and we still have more wildlife now and

(14:59):
better manager wildlife than what we did as we started.
Then some of that was from the decimation of the
western expansion, but if you look at what we've accumulated
and what we've accomplished Canada and the United States combined,
the North American model, I mean it wants to be
emulated around the world. You know, other organizations and other
countries and other provinces are trying to do something in

(15:21):
different capacities. But we have the best model and it
has worked so efficiently and effectively that if you could
just get that point across to what we have now
is a lot better than what it was, and it's
continually getting better with less and less habitat, more and
more restrictions and prohibitions on the landscape, and more people.

(15:41):
We're not going to keep breed, We're not going to
quit reading as far as people, but we still have
the wildlife resources that we didn't have. But the Roosevelts
and those guys trive to turn around and recover.

Speaker 7 (15:52):
Yeah, what's been your biggest what is do you have
three points that have been the biggest hurdles to overcome
and explaining getting somebody a non hunter or somebody that's
not familiar with our way of life or our culture
to get them to understand the importance of it. Can
is there anything that you could name that would this

(16:15):
may be too It may I may yeah, well no,
it may I may need to narrow it down some
What questions or what concerns do you get the most
from people who are against it? Is it the idea
that we're killing animals? Or is it this is not
culturally important enough? They don't see it the way we

(16:36):
see it.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
I think that the biggest and I appreciate that question
because so many questions that we asked from the media
and from some of our opposition and some of the
unknowing general public. But a lot of times one of
their biggest questions is or statements and then a question, right,
we don't need to be barbaric any longer we've gotten

(16:57):
out of that culture. Well, depending on how you look
at it, whether it's from domestic or wild, there's a
component of ignorance from the general public because they weren't
raised around it. I don't know if you guys know
a gentleman by the name of Craig O'Gorman. He's a
big trapper in eastern Montana o' gorman enterprises, and Craig
has a different philosophy, and I really appreciate his perspective

(17:20):
on things, but looking from a trapping side and the
predator hunting and the fur harvesting side of things. You know,
Craig mentioned the difference the way society changed from the
Great Depression into World War Two and then how it
started to expand out from the industrialized side of things,
the recreationalized side of things, the entertainment side of things,
and it became more politically oriented about nineteen fifty to

(17:43):
you know, nineteen seventy, and then it just expanded on
all levels. The average person that went to war in
World War Two, they remember, if they weren't intimately involved,
they went to Grandma's house on Sunday and they went outside,
grabbed a chicken and they killed it for dinner. They
went out and grabbed the eggs, they milked the cows.

(18:03):
There was still this connection point when you got out
of World War Two. There was still a hunting deal.
But that's when like your sport's a field, outdoor life,
fur fishing, game field and stream magazines came out and
become more of a recreational deal. When you started taking
the life side out of these components of daily life,
like living breathing life out of daily life, you started

(18:24):
to see a cultural change. With the way Craig explained
it to me, and this is probably fifteen years ago,
the average person before World War Two understood death for
human subsistence and destruction. I mean, our lives depended on
destroying something else so we could survive off of it,
whether it's a cow or a chicken, or a pig,

(18:47):
or a deer or a turkey. By the time you
got into the seventies and then you had the Vietnam
War that most of those guys that were involved, the
first thing that they ever had to do with death
is a person standing in front of them. They didn't
know a lot of that stuff that was going on.
And then there's our population. Our human population grew substantially
by the time you get into the eighties and nineties.

(19:07):
And we talked about this the last time I was
here in June that in nineteen hundred, there was ninety
percent of the population that lived rural landscape type of life,
ten percent lived in the city. By nineteen fifty, it
was a fifty to fifty split, and by the year
two thousand, ninety percent of the people turn around and
live in the city and ten percent live in the countryside.

(19:30):
When you talk about a food source, whether it's for
somewhat recreational but lifestyle living what we do, or you
talk about domestic side of it, that's a big In
one hundred years, that's a major change in philosophy about
where your food comes from and how you supply something.
Because people can't connect the dots. We have people that
move into Colorado, for instance, which you know, Colorado has

(19:52):
expanded from two point nine million people the last time
we had a ballot initiative that took anything away to
five point nine million people this go around. Don't understand
that without snow, we have no water. We don't drill wells.
It all comes from the top, not from the bottom.
And they say, well, you have all these water commissions
and these water boards and water rights, and you fight
over water and there's water courtners all of this. It's

(20:14):
because water is a valuable resource. In other parts of
the country is just as valuable, but people just take
it for granted because you don't get snow where it
comes off or something. You actually get it out of
the ground, or it comes down from some river from
some other place that likely had snow. The same with
our food source. The general public doesn't fully comprehend holistically,
not just where domestic food comes from, but they darn't

(20:35):
sure don't understand it where wild food comes from.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:40):
Yeah, I think it's interesting too that it's mentioned. You know,
we don't we don't have to be barbaric anymore. Take
someone to a slaughterhouse, yeah, I mean, take someone to
the stockyard and say, you know, this isn't barbaric.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Chicken slaughter plant.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Yeah, foods is up here.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 7 (20:58):
They don't take them to a farm where they're spraying
for bugs. I mean they're killing millions every day.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Dan, give us a give us an intro to what
just a lot of people that would be watching this
would know it, but some don't like what's going on
in Colorado with this?

Speaker 3 (21:25):
With this?

Speaker 1 (21:25):
Uh, just just give like something like we didn't even
know it even existed. Surprised, Just hold on, you'll be
right there.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
Uh. The the current the current issue is Initiative ninety one, which,
as I preface this in the earlier conversation. It won't
be this in several weeks. By the time this ERRS
hopefully will have a number from the Secretary of State,
it'll be propositions something or other. But we're reading for
the Secretary of State to give a number. But what
it is, it's an attempt to ban the harvest of

(21:58):
Mountlon's bobcats and land and links are federally in state protective,
so you can't kill them anyway. But they threw that
in there is a cats phrase as a talking point
to make sure and as they said in their testimony
during the Supreme Court hearing, if links ever become delisted
and harvestable, we don't want them to. And so they're
already preemptively thinking down the road if they were, which

(22:20):
they probably won't. But it's an attempt to ban the harvest. Now,
when we've started this process, it was a trophy hunting ban,
but we got trophy hunting out of it, because trophy
hunting is defined in the measure as intentionally killing, wounding, stalking, pursuing,
or entrapping a mountain lion, bob, ket or links. Well,
intentionally killing, wounding, stalking, pursuing. I don't know anybody that

(22:41):
wound hunting. Yeah, it's hunting. That's the definition of hunting.
That's what pursuing wild game is. But they defined it
in the measure, but we did get it taken out
of the title itself. So in several weeks, about seventy
five days, the general public will vote on a hunting ban,
and it is a total hunting ban. The caveat to
that is to get people to understand because it is

(23:02):
a hunting ban and because of the statutory definition and
the precedent the case law it could set, you could
take mountain lions and bobcats out, put mallard ducks and
elk in because of the previous court rulings or applications
of the language. Those are the things that we're trying
to convince the general public about that whether you're a
bird hunter, you should not vote for this, whether you're

(23:25):
a deer hunter, you should not vote for this. And
even if you're a non hunter, you shouldn't vote for
this because it's not about mountain lions and bobcats. It's
about seventy eight game species in the state of Colorado
and most other states that can turn around and have
interpretation of that law, and we're fearful that if it passes,
it'll be the catalyst or a preemptive strike from the

(23:46):
opposition to go, well, we got it over here. How
they're going to argue it over here, because there's no
way they can, because we already set the precedent. We
already made our preemptive strike. The ballot. The election is
November fifth. If it goes into effect, which we're trying
diligently to make sure it doesn't, but if it goes
into effect January first, everything will be banned in the

(24:09):
state of Colorado when it comes to mountain lions and bobcats.
There's been language within the legislature that we've already defeated
multiple levels at the Colorida General Assembly and the Colorida
Parks and Wildlife Commission. But some of those legislators that
we've defeated previously said on a hot mic that if
this goes through, it's our opportunity to turn around and

(24:31):
try to do something legislatively as well. And what they've mentioned,
although there's not been a bill drafted as of yet
to the best of our knowledge, what they've mentioned is
maybe we should go after the banning of cow elk
and doe deer because of the potential orphaning of calves
and fawns, because that language is in this measure about
how we're orphaning kittens and cubs and mountain lions and bobcats.

(24:53):
It's a camel nosed under the tent, is what it is.
And once you explain a lot of these caveats and
new to the general sportsmen because they think, well, already
you know gates, already, I already harvested my mountain land,
or I don't want to harvest a mountainline, or I
don't think you should harvest a mountain land. Whatever they
might be. These are licensed buying women and men and
women sportsmen. But when you explain and say, just read

(25:16):
this read about the dogs. It doesn't say hounds. It
talks about electronic collars, tracking devices, gps is. They don't
want you to use any of it. Those are things
that people don't read into it because they see the title.
But then they get into the two and a half
page language in the measure, and it's easily decipherable that
you could take any one of those things out and
put it into some other category, just like what those

(25:37):
legislators are talking about now for Kyle Elkin.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Do deer.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
What I'm trying to put this into context for myself
just to understand, because what remains a mystery is how
to really engage and uh get other people interested in
stuff that's not directly, directly first hand applicable to them. Uh,

(26:09):
you know, like like how do we get how do
we truly unite the sportsmen of America, Guys that will
never mountain lion hunt in Colorado? How do we get
them to be you know, engaged in this? And Bear,
I'm sitting here looking at my son Bear Bear, what
if they what if there was right now a ban
on hunting squirrels with dogs in Arkansas or or coon

(26:33):
hunting And here we have built all this and and
and it's just something we love. And it's like, literally,
on January first, we may never be able to do
this again the rest of our life legally. I mean,
it's like that to me just feels like it just
culturally it would be a butcher knife to the to

(26:56):
the lineage of something. And it's just I mean obviously
that we think that because we love these things, but
I mean, I just I implore all of us to
like think about like what this would be like, because
I mean every you look generationally and every generation has

(27:17):
had stuff taken away, and I mean there's a lot
of stuff that you could it's it's time just rolls
by and we don't realize what we've lost.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
But unfortunately that the folks that are hearing this, the
people that are against it, they this.

Speaker 7 (27:35):
Is not going to We're not to the choir. We're
not going to tell them. But the folks that can
do something are the folks that are hearing this that haven't.
That's where it's got to come from. It's got to
come from. I may be the only guy in here
that plays softball. Nobody else plays softball, but they're fixing
the band softball with all you guys like sports, you

(27:55):
like to watch it, like should I get involved or
should not? Shall I help him out? Because y'all like soccer,
which I'm pretty sure you do, but.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Weirdough But just by looking at you, just by looking
at him.

Speaker 7 (28:11):
But I mean, it's all the same thing. We all
got to do it. It's like squirrel hunting and in
mountain lion hunting. It's hunting and if they can ban one,
they can get the other. But if all of us
get together, the folks that are listening, like, well, that
really don't affect me because I live in Louisiana and
I'm not going to be able to hunt mountain lines.

(28:31):
Or I live in Arkansas where I live and I'm
not gonna be able to hunt mountain lines. It will
affect you eventually down the road. It's the low hanging
fruit thing. Ye.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Well, and there's two organizations so cats aren't trophies. Is
the state organization, it's the State Issues Committee, but it
was formulated by out of states non residents. But the
two national organizations that are supportive of this, that are

(29:01):
both run by former hs US Humane Society of the
United States Wayne Piselli. The one is Animal Welfare Action,
which is a five oh one C four, which is
just like our organization, the Colorado's for Responsible Widlife Management.
But then the Center Few for a Humane Economy is
their five oh one C three. Those are based out
of Maryland. They are they are national, but they went

(29:25):
to Colorado because the legislative and political landscape is more favorable.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
They're looking for a crack in the armor where they
can put their tentacles in that they'd come here if
they could.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Oh yeah, and they.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Can probe my five squirrel dogs out of my cold.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Put that on our T shirt, Stave Ranella. But that's
the thing. People say, well, who are these people? Well,
they're all out of staters, they're all non residents because
they have a favorable landscape in our state to be
able to turn around and try to move maneuver through
the minutia and get what they want. People don't realize

(30:02):
that this is not anything other than a national movement,
and when you get the former hs US CEO, who
for a variety of reasons is no longer there with HSUS.
This is an attack that they can gain ground, gain
significant relevance, potentially gain a victory, gain some funding, and

(30:25):
move to the next level. Now is the next level
in New Mexico, we don't know yet, or is it Iowa,
or is it Montana. But they have sectors placed in
every one of these states, building a repertoire up in
some street cred and they're just trying to figure out
how they can manipulate it enough to where they get
a victory and then they turn around and continue moving
forward and maybe Colorado's again on the shopping block but

(30:48):
they build strength in numbers and money with the success,
and then they move to the next level.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Well what gets me is that this is a business.
And I don't even know specifically about this group, but
in general, I mean it's not even I mean, there's
some of these people, these anti hunters that that probably
truly are passionate and are working from a position that

(31:13):
they really believe in their mission. I mean, I assume
a lot of them. But at the same time, it's
a very profitable business to be in the game of
being anti hunting. Oh yeah, I mean, it's an incredible
way to tap into you know, to expel, you know,
expose a philosophy about and it's just it's so trendy

(31:36):
to be on that bandwagon and to get people's money.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Well, it's easy for them to do because they lie.
If you say enough lies, people start to believe it
because they didn't hear anything else. When it's like in
our case and in most cases with the State Game
Management Agency, you know, people are griping and complaining why
didn't Clorida Parks and Wildlife coming out. It's because they
work at the pleasure of the governor, and the governor
is an animal rights extremists, and he said, don't say anything.

(32:00):
I mean, that's the way most states operate. They're not
independent entities that they can turn around and just say
what they want, no matter if they have the facts
or not. They've got a plethora of different studies that
have come out, They've got a ton of different information.
And if you look at the first documents that came
out ten months ago versus the documents that are out now,
the agency changed those documents because the governor's office, the

(32:23):
administration said, cross this, strike this, put this in. Don't
get rid of the science, but the perception or the
opinion you can alter that. You don't have those opinions,
and that's why they forced them to take no position,
not a neutral position, no position. So there's no pro
no con no, none of that. And the average person
doesn't fully understand the manipulation that happens from the top

(32:45):
to the bottom. And then when you turn around and
throw in special interest groups and so forth, it makes
it a lot easier for them to accomplish what they
want to go go with because they got people on
their side helping them run the government side of it,
not color to parks of wildlife. But through the Department
Announced Resources and through the governor's administration and cabinet. Those
are how they get so much significant traction because we

(33:07):
don't have anybody to turn around and say anything unless
we're going to say it to ourselves or every other
conservation group is going to do it.

Speaker 7 (33:12):
Well, it's Colorado. Were they the perfect storm. We're having
a liberal administration as far as the governor's views on
hunting and the huge influx of people that were.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
Not new people to Colorado.

Speaker 7 (33:29):
Yeah, they moving into Colorado that had no idea of
the culture or the legacy or his.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah, and we're starting to see a little bit of
a change of that. But Colorado is one hundred percent
blue state. I mean, you know, we're out numbered in
the legislature as far as Democrats and Republicans forty nine
to sixteen in the House and twenty three to twelve
in the Senate. Every elected office is blue unless it
happens to be a county commission somewhere. But the governor's
appointments to different commissions and boards and stuff are ninety

(33:55):
nine percent. I mean, he might pick somebody that's more pink,
purple or red on one side, but knowing full well
they don't have a voice because they're one of ten,
or they're one of eleven or whatever, and so there's
a statutory obligation that they have to adhere to. But
it's gotten to the point where you just look at
who they pick to make sure they always have the
balance of power or at least perception. And those are

(34:17):
things that other states need to recognize. I mean, I've
got guys at Wyoming and Montana and Idaho going, you know,
it can never happen here. This is what they said
ten years ago. Now they're looking and going, you know,
we got more Democrats moving into the state than we
ever thought we would. And if you look at the
makeup some of those states, it wouldn't take very much
to change them, just because of the population breakup and
the dynamics of different states. I mean, Wyoming's got six

(34:39):
hundred and sixty thousand people. Look at representation for the
state of Wyoming, specific sectors or districts would not be
hard to change just because of the population makeup. Look
at the amount of people moving out of Colorado or
to go across the border to Cheyenne. They're still Democrats.
They're still more liberally minded, but they got away from
this because it was just so progressive. But they take

(34:59):
those ideologies and values into Wyoming, even though they're living
there and working in the Colorado. It's a hard thing
that we're going to have to deal with in some
capacity nationwide, and I honestly believe that sportsmen and women
are up to the task if they pay attention, if
they understand the intricacies of what it takes to manage
our wildlife resources and the general public that eighty percent

(35:21):
in the middle they care deeply about it. They just
don't know, so they're more likely to check a box
when it's the wrong box is supposed to be an
educated to check the right box.

Speaker 4 (35:29):
The problem is is that that it feels like the
key players in this thing are making decisions based out
of preference and opinion, not based on science. No, it's
because I mean, you think about if you're going to
ban predator hunting, what happens to the predators. I mean,
it's just basic, But that's what they want logic, yeah,
they I mean, look at our wolf introduction. I mean,

(35:51):
we just put wolves on the ground last December. They
voted on it in November of twenty twenty, and it
was fifty point nine percent that they ended up winning by.
I mean it was fifty point nine to forty nine
point one. I mean that that's a good math.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
I'm following you. I was already sitting here math like.

Speaker 5 (36:11):
That acts and not without a calculator.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
But no, we we lost that Wolf deal by such
a minimal margin. It was something like thirty three thousand
votes in the state that's got five point nine million people.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
So there's some there's some people there that are voting.
I mean, there's a there's a yeah, there's a chunk
of people there that.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
Like this is eighty to twenty or anything. I mean,
this is this is very very close. But the funny
thing that I see, Clay, is if you look at
most national elections pertaining anything, unless it just happens to
be so right or so left one way or the other,
there's a lot of fifty two forty eights and fifty
three forty seven's and forty nine to fifty one. So
there's a lot of that. I mean, we are divided

(36:53):
as a country, and it's not because it's republican Democrat.
It's because it's republican independent, and Democrat and the registered
Independence are growing substantially because they don't want to be
affiliated with the wackos on the left or the idiots
on the right. They just want to have their own group.
But they still lean one way or the other. We
call them the end the wind crowd. They just blow
around like packeting peanuts and the windstorm, and they're trying

(37:14):
to catch up with the catcher's myth. I mean, they
just listen to the first guy. They just listen to
the first guy that resonates with them, or they listen
to the lie after lie after lie after lie because
they don't hear any rebuttals. And when you have game
management agencies that don't rebut because they're told not to,
that's hard to realize and justify that. That's science, that's

(37:39):
expert data collection. That's twenty five fifty one hundred years
of compilation of studies and information.

Speaker 7 (37:45):
It's so easy to find something that you agree with.
If you don't like a news story, if you don't
like a slant on the news story, change the channel.
Somebody else will tell you the same story, and they'll
tell it the way you want to.

Speaker 5 (37:57):
Hear it to your point. So I'm sure you've seen
it already, but I saw it circulating around. There was
a like CBS Colorado and there's a study that came out.
Have y'all seen this The study that came out that
said that potentially they're basically saying the premise that study
was that mountain lion hunting was excelling the spread of
CWD in Colorado.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yes, and that just came out, and that's and actually
that study was done by the Animal Welfare Action and
the Center for a Humane Economy. By the by the.

Speaker 7 (38:29):
Two groups explained what were the findings of the I mean.

Speaker 5 (38:34):
So CWD and it's so basically it was like if
you kill mountain lions, mountain lions are predatory animals, and
so you're taking out predators, so they're killing less of
your elk and deer and so it's.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
It's a legitimate scientific stuff that.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Was done by those two groups that are that are
running this catch trophy.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (38:50):
So my question was, is, like, I know, the research
I had done, is there's been a regular, you know,
a regulated mountain lion hunt in Colorado since like nineteen
sixty five, Yes, it was. Is the population since then grown?
Is it stays thirty thirty times, so it's grown thirty times.
So it was regulated, honey. So the point is like,
how in the world is it excelling the spread of

(39:11):
CWD if the population of mountain lions is grown?

Speaker 2 (39:14):
What you bring common sense into the sargeant? How dare
you like? Well?

Speaker 3 (39:20):
And I think that that's you know that that you'
And that's one of our our biggest concerns. As you
start to see more and more lies and shell games
and smoking mirrors and I and I see it in
other states as well. And I'm sitting there going to somebody.
Somebody needs to turn around and come up with something,
but they're not on the ballot.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
We need our own lies, Dan, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
We got to get that's your job. You start seeing.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
Stuff, fight lies with lies.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Dan.

Speaker 5 (39:57):
I want to ask you a question earlier when you
were talking you refer to you basical said that the
eighty percent left of the general public that's more likely
to check no than yes. Why do you think that
that is? Why do you think that they're more tending
to go the wrong direction of what you're.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Wanting a lot of times historically on when ballots come
up and there's either too much on the ballot, too
much information for the one person to decipher. They either
check the wrong box because they assume that that's the
right way. They have to have some time to be
able to educate themselves and to check the right box,
which in our case would be to vote no, not

(40:32):
vote yes. Most of those people don't do their homework
until they open up the ballot and they go yes, no, yes, oh, Trump, Biden, Harris, whatever,
and they jump on the key phrases, the stuff that
they haven't paid attention to. They just don't pay attention to.
And I think that that's a detriment to us. Is

(40:52):
a you know, a republic, a democracy that is available
to us to be able to turn around and say
we're going to vote, and we're going to vote the
right way. The blue Book the last language of the
blue Book, which is I think in Arkansas's ProAb of
the same way, but you get a book that explains
all the measures or the judges or the ballot. We
just went through the final draft of the blue Book

(41:13):
last week and that was sent to the Secretary of
State through the Legislative Council Legislative Draft analysis. The language
that's in there is available to anybody to read. But
it's a two and a half page synopsis for the
general public to be able to decipher about this specific measure.
Two and a half pages.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Five percent of people are going to read that, yeah,
if not less exactly.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
And so when you're looking at states, and that's a
great point, Clay, when you when you look at states
that are fifty one to forty nine or fifty three
to forty seven, that five percent that you give them
the facts that they really want to sit down and
get into the nut cutting on stuff and make sure
that they know exactly why and how to do it.

(41:57):
Those are the five percent that we're really concerned about
because they could sway this half a point or a
whole point one way or the other. That they just
educate themselves and look at the facts.

Speaker 7 (42:05):
When you only got thirty three thousand and I had
a five million plus voting too, I mean there's and
there is a sea of folks to educate your.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
Well, and we've had we've had a tremendous amount of
people because of the Wolf deal. And one thing that's
going in our favor, even with all the lives and
the fallacies and falsehoods out there. There's a significant amount
of buyer's remorse on what they did on the wolf deal.
Everybody thought that, oh, it'd be cool to hear a wolf.
I heard a wolf and Yellowstone. I didn't know it
was going to be on my back porch and eat
my neighbor's calves. But yeah, so they turn around and voted,

(42:39):
but they didn't vote very much fifty point nine percent.
And so there's a certain amount of buyer's remorse because
wolves are in the news every single day in Colorado,
that they're creating more depredation, they're creating more instances of havoc.
CPW can't do what they want to do at this
point in time. They can't talk about it unless it
happens to be able the science that the governor who's
agreed with with the governor's spouse, the first gentleman. They

(43:03):
can't they can't do what they need to do to
get the point out. I mean, CBW didn't want wolves.
It's just that the voters voted on wolves, and CPW
has to uphold the law what the voters want, and
then the governor helps accentuate and enhance that position. But
the buyer's remorse is another component on top of that
five percent to read the blue book that you look
at and go, well, if you get a tenth of

(43:23):
these guys and two tents of those guys, and maybe
we actually make a point and get two tents of
these guys. Pretty soon we're to present ourselves and the
voters of people. The people of Colorado would have spoken
at that point in time, because that's all we've heard
for the last four years. The people have spoken, and
it's like, you know, not all of them did.

Speaker 7 (43:40):
And what.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Can we what would be a meaningful thing that people
can do? Because all this stuff I think part of
the gap between action and inaction with people that aren't
in Colorado. Like if I lived in Colorado, I know
what I could do. I could vote right, I could
talk to my friends. Yep, we can't vote there. What
is really meaningful that we could do?

Speaker 3 (44:05):
I think the thing that we're trying to do. And
I've been working with Charles and Mike at how for
a Wildlife. You know, I've been on this is my
seventy second, seventy sixth podcast since January first, and you
guys have allowed me to come on twice. I was
on Metiater guys twice the message. The reason that we're
talking to the choir to the general public, sportsmen and women,

(44:28):
is because it's coming to your state. We need your
help to help defeat it there. And to do that,
the biggest thing people can do is to get online
and share the message. You know, when we get something
that Cameron Haynes comes to our event and does something
and there's one hundred and eight thousand people that watch
it in three days, and there's twenty seven people that
share it. But the message that he said, they all

(44:49):
listened to it, but they didn't expand it out. We
have the power of social media before us to be
able to get people to understand this isn't about Colorado,
not just about mountain lines and Bobcats. I don't know
anybody body in the country has been dumb enough the
last ten months to turn around and run around and
try to dedicate their life to podcasts. I mean, or really,
that's my son. I've got better things to do because

(45:10):
of our business. But we needed to be able to
get the message. We need to be able to feed
off of everybody else's coattails, and we need the help
to be able to expand that message, because I would
venture to say that there's a large percentage of every
one of those podcast listeners that either hunt or apply
to hunt in the state of Colorado. So you've got
skin in the game. What are you going to do?

(45:32):
You can You probably know people in Colorado, just like
you're talking about Johnny Hamilton, which all asked Johnny to
give me a plug when he comes on sometime. But
there's an opportunity there to continue message building, continue ambassadorship,
to make sure that we are part of the solution
and not part of the problem. If you ignore it,
I don't care if you're an Arkansas or Michigan or Maryland.

(45:52):
If you ignore it, you're part of the problem. And
the more states that they knock off for, the more
groups that they knock off for, the more individuals that
they get to be done trodden and just say I'm
not doing it anymore. Pretty soon our rank and file
on our forces become smaller and smaller and smaller. We
have a message capability in our social media outreach and
the branding that we've got and the visualization and the

(46:13):
optics that we've created in a hunting and fishing community
to build something that is the most epic, monumental anti
anti hunting component you could possibly get, but we don't
do it very well. A lot of people want to
grip in grand they want to show their white tail,
they want to show their big fish. People share that
all over the place. If I was a really good
looking that nineteen year old girl and had peanut butter
in my belly button, the dog was looking it out,

(46:34):
there'd be nine million people sharing that damn thing. But
they're not going to do it for me. But they're
not going to do it with me because I'm an
old white guy who's trying to profess about hunting, trapping,
heritage tradition, and it's the livelihood of what we all
believe in. But it's a lot harder for somebody to

(46:55):
turn around to make a comment or to share on
top of that the biggest trials and tribulations that we've had,
even though it's been monumental as fundraising, you have to
be able to fight the antis lies dollar for dollar,
punch for punch, and tit for tat, And to be
able to do that, people have come out of the woodwork.
I mean, I told you guys in June fifty States

(47:16):
We've gotten contributions and donations from We've got organizations and
entities and businesses that are building up either T shirt
sales or knife sales. You saw the thing that outdoor
EDGs did for us. I mean, I mean they sold out.
They're reordering because the general public said I want to
do that. Now they get a knife in return for it.
But they can be part of the solution as opposed

(47:36):
to be part of the problem. If you know people
in Colorado, talk to them, because there's a we got
five point nine million people in the state of Colorado,
eighty four million annual visitors. The majority of people that
are listening to this have been or know somebody in Colorado,
or they hunt, are they vacation, or they do business,
or they have a second home, or they ski. Even

(47:57):
though you can't vote somewhere, do a little bit of
effort and just say, hey, Joe, you live in Longmont,
what do you think about this mount?

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Yeah? I know some people. I know some people. I'll
tell them, yeah, I mean, but.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
It's are there any Are there any scheduled events coming
up this fall, like public events.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
The biggest ones we've got actually coming up this week,
and it'll be it'll be I guess a week and
a half or two weeks before this actually airs. Where's
where in Denver and Robbie Kroger with Blood Orgs is
premiering the Lionheart documentary about hound hunting, and that's at
the Paramount Theater in downtown Denver.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Really yeah and tell yeah, tell us about that.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
Yeah, so that so that, So that would be a
couple couple of days a week before this actually airs.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Shoot.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
Yeah, but it's it's something. Those are the type of
things Robbie went out on a limb, turns around and
gets the Paramount Theater has twelve or fifteen hundred tickets available.
That's a red carpet deal. The media is supposed to
be there. They're feeding Wild Game as a as like
an order of deal, and there's going to be some
silent bus and stuff. But that shows part of what
I'm trying to talk about as far as.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
We should go to that brand.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah for real.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
I like Robbie, it's a community building and messaging and
ambassadorship to say it's not my fight unless it's your fight.
And if it's your fight, it better darncher be your
fight and be your fight because they're going to do it.
It's some look. They're going after lead weights on fishing,
they're going after lead shot on shotguns. They're going after

(49:26):
pinned bird hunts. For training your dogs. They're trying to
get you not to be able to use tools to
train your dogs. They're trying to get you to be
It doesn't matter what it is. It's just that whatever
they can get at whatever level they find the weakest
chink in the armor in any single state, in any
single level, that's what they go after. And that's the
hardest thing to get people to understand is just step up.

(49:47):
Just do something. Write a letter. If you read an
op ed instead of turning around in which people get
like you was talking about the New York Times, the
Wall Street Journal. People see something and they don't agree
with it. Just try john a note to the editor
instead of saying did you see that? And they talk
about it for twenty, you know, twenty minutes or ten
different people. Just jot a note down. See if you're

(50:08):
going to do this, you know, very unbiased. Make sure
you cover both sides of the story, and you don't
take a study from the people who are trying to
take away the hunting who are who's that's the team
of the study. There's there's tools available to us, and
I don't think that we've done a very good job
even though we've got the tools available now.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
What has happened though, has been pretty remarkable. Yeah, with
the support that you guys have had, led by you
one hundred percent and others too. But I mean, I
think this is the first time in the last last
decade at least, that I've seen the eyes of the

(50:51):
hunting community really pop open about a predator issue, which
I think is incredible, at least at this level.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Do you agree with Yeah, it's it's something to where
you know, I mentioned the guys at Howl for Wildlife
and when I when I and a friend of mine
started this organization CROWM in twenty sixteen, we did it
with the idea that we were probably going to get
a very unfavorable gubernatorial administration in twenty eighteen, just the

(51:19):
way the makeup of the land was. We didn't know
we were going to get you know, the anti the
anti hunter supreme. But starting starting preemptively at that point
in time is the only thing that got us to
the level to where we can be today. And seeing
the support and seeing the outreach and seeing the messaging

(51:40):
and seeing the funding and seeing what people are trying
to do at every single level. It's inspirational. It's admirable.
I mean, and I know that we're carrying a lot
of the heat on that, but I mean still, you've
got to be able to motivate people to be able
to turn around and do it well enough. And I
don't care if it's a hounds organization in Ohio or
Michigan or somebody in Arizona or in California. They're all contributing.

(52:04):
I don't care if it's a trappers association where they're at.
I don't care if it's a bow hunter association, fishing associations,
individual businesses, you know, tackle shops, kids would lemonade stands.
I mean, I mean, there's not an exaggeration, but ninety
eight hundred individual contributions this year, not counting what we
did latter part of last year and September through December.

(52:24):
I mean, that's a lot, especially when you start talking
some of those are one hundred thousand dollars and some
of them are twenty dollars. It takes millions of dollars
to fight extremism. You can't do it cheap, and you
darn sure can't do it on a presidential election year
when everybody else is buying this for fifty dollars and normally,
well you could buy it for twenty five. Now it

(52:44):
cost you one hundred and fifty because of the political scale,
and so it cost you more money to be able
to do it. But the more negativity And you mentioned CBS,
so a CBS in Denver that covered it on that
study with a chronic waste and disease, they won't sell
the advertising that we need unless it's at a very
higher premium because the yep, because they see election exactly.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
So there's there's so many moving parts of this whole thing, Clay,
that that the average guy doesn't understand because it's not
in their wheelhouse.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
I mean, just like you were talking about, you know, softball.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
Harris and Trump both wanted to be here today and
I told them no because we only had six hook
upside on this one.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
He won't let anybody else sit on his saddle.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
We put either one of them right there. Do you
have any questions?

Speaker 6 (53:41):
Do you do?

Speaker 7 (53:42):
So?

Speaker 6 (53:44):
What do they need for the mountain lion Man to
go into effect? Is it votes or signatures?

Speaker 3 (53:49):
They need votes At this point in time, they turned
in the appropriate amount of signatures, even with our decline
to sign campaign. But they turned into the signatures July third,
they were certified on July thirtieth, and now we've been
in that weight game of waiting for a number to
come up. And so it's going to be on the ballot.
We just don't know exactly what number. And by the

(54:09):
time that this podcast airs will probably have an idea,
if not no specifically what ballot number it is.

Speaker 6 (54:15):
Okay, so what are like, how many do you have
an idea of how many votes they would need for
it to go into effect.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Well, depends on the registered voters. But if you go
anything off the Wolf deal from twenty twenty, you figure
that I mean, you're fighting for you're fighting for hair
on the on somebody's chin at this point in time,
or maybe hair on their head, depending on you in
your case, but you you're fighting for very few follicles

(54:44):
of hair. Because when you start talking about thirty three
thousand out of five point nine million with four point
one million registered voters, it doesn't take long to say
this is not insurmountable. Yeah, it's just that you have
to have the people show up. And we've heard stories
from around the country, not just in Colorado, but two thousand,
for instance, that two thousand and twenty twenty two, from

(55:07):
two thousand to twenty twenty, that the sportsmen and women
vote has declined almost fifteen percent. That's not because they've declined,
it's just that they opted not to pull the trigger.
They opted not to vote. So from twenty twenty to
twenty two that stayed pretty close. If we have fifteen
percent of the sportsmen and women in the country that
are really not voting at all because they don't think

(55:28):
it's worth it, well, how does that, especially when you're
losing by a half a percent or a percent, If
you get those fifteen percent just to show up, even
if they didn't all vote the same way, because they'd
all see the same thing.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
A call.

Speaker 7 (55:42):
When you call somebody to action, they say, especially digitally,
you go past one or two pokes with your finger
and you've lost everybody. Yep, they're not going to go
beyond that. I'm talking to everybody out there and everybody
in this room except Dan, because I know you're going
to do it. But we got to just decide we're
going to put in the effort and take this thing

(56:04):
back because it's laying there.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
We could do it.

Speaker 7 (56:07):
It could be an absolute overwhelming smash by our side
to take this back, if enough folks would just take
get the gumption to get up off the couch and
get it done, take the initiative.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
I had more people in twenty twenty that have told
me since then that they didn't vote in twenty twenty. Ranchers, farmers, outfitters.
You got to stop and think about two things that
our side doesn't think about often. And November fifth is
right in the middle hunting season. It's right middle of

(56:38):
shipping season for cattle. It's getting out of high country
and going to the low country, and it's getting ready
for winter. And it's too it And I had and
in Colorado, you don't go to the pole. It's a
mail end ballot. It's sent to you. All you got
to do is fill it out and put it in.
You don't have to drop it off anywhere. It doesn't
cost you anything to be able to turn around to
do it. But I had many many people since that
time that said, yeah, if I know it was going

(57:01):
to be that close, I would have voted, and you
know how hard it is for me not to turn
around and grab somebody by the neck. And but you
hear that over and over and over, and you're thinking,
if that's just the people I'm hearing it from, how
many people actually didn't do it? Because I'm not talking
to everybody, but I understand how busy people can get
or I forgot or I just didn't get to it,

(57:21):
or I was waiting for my wife to bring it out,
or we were going to sit at the table and
then something came up. I tell you what. Those are
the things that the opposition, the extremists are capitalizing on
because they know that we're not as concerned about it
as as what we allude and we're not going to
turn around and step out and gripe and complained about
it until it's done it over with.

Speaker 5 (57:42):
So going into this one at this point, just talking
about you know, the residents of Colorado, do you how
do you feel about it? I mean, do you are
you seeing still some apathy? Do you think they're motivated?
What are you feeling around home?

Speaker 3 (57:55):
I'm going to give you some statistics you because I
like statistics. But I'll tell you back and back in
twenty twenty, the first pole that came out on the
Wolf issue, there was a sixty eight percent favorability rating
that the Wolf issue was going to pass by the
time that the company that we've hired now actually went
through the trials and tribulations of that whole campaign with

(58:16):
their poles and everything, and they finally went to the ballot,
they knocked off seventeen points, so it went from sixty
eight percent to fifty one percent, and that's exactly where
it ended up as fifty point nine. The biggest problem
is they didn't have enough money from the sportsman community
and that were agriculture community descend it across the finish line.
They just ran out of money. We've raised three and

(58:36):
a half times more money to date than both of
those anti wolf campaigns did combine in the entire time
that they were doing stuff. That's a giant win for us.
But if you remember sixty eight percent to start with
on that pole, the pole that we did on this
last November when we started this campaign was fifty four
percent favorability rating, fourteen points different than what the Wolf

(58:58):
deal first came out at the poll that we got
back two weeks ago indicated that it's forty five four
forty four against and twelve points undecided. That's a that's
a major hit on the opposition. It's a major gain
on our part because there's so that twelve percent is
what we're looking at right now. We know that there's
forty five to forty four. We're looking at that twelve,

(59:21):
but we don't we don't need all twelve. We need.
All we need is seven of the twelve, and so
that's more math.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Just you know, you guys are killing all.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Right, I'll mess up somewhere.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
Do you think about me and Brent on the freeway
in Denver with big.

Speaker 4 (59:39):
Signs, sandwich boards on the street.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
I'll get I'll get you a room. You tell me
when you want to be there.

Speaker 1 (59:50):
Dude, we should do a live podcast from the freeway
the state capitol holding our signs, I.

Speaker 3 (59:59):
Mean live Mountain Lion on a chain. Brent's kind that
sign around like, yeah, yeah, we should have we should
have had.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Mountain Lion hide laid out here. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
We just we need as much help as we can
get from people that don't think that they can do anything,
and just because you don't vote in Colorado, and is.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
It not it's not too late. This is coming out
in September night, Like these last two months are really.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
Critical actually because we haven't had a number that's being
given to us. You can't tell people to vote knowing
whatever it is, because we don't have a number, even
though people are still using the ninety one. It was
Initiative ninety one. But once it becomes a proposition, that
number will change. So that's why you haven't seen any
direct advertising, subliminal message in on our part, you know,
don't allow the hunting band to happen. Make sure you

(01:00:50):
support you know, science based wildlife management and the North
American model. But that's still for the most part, talking
to our audience. Once they start seeing the negative and
the display of the lives and the falsehoods from the opposition,
and then we come up with the science based stuff
and you know, the lions attacking dogs and the lions
attacking people, and the lions decimating deer and elk populations

(01:01:10):
and not just taking the sick CWD deer out. Oh
you know, I mean it's like they just pick them out.
I mean it's like it's like that one right there,
let me swap your nose. I mean, you know, and
I always I always wonder, I said, and of course
I'm in so darned many meetings anymore, but I always
wonder that that what if they what if they run

(01:01:31):
out of chronic waste of disease deer, I mean, what
they don't eat?

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
No, then they're eating toddlers.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
Yeah, you know, I mean you know, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Uh a point that's just as strong. And again we're
preaching to the choir. But but I think about this
with with predator hunting issues, is that like, yeah, you
can make a case of all the negative stuff that
lions are doing, you know, predating upond livestock and all
this different stuff. But to me, the most positive argument

(01:02:03):
is that we've been hunting them pretty hard for fifty
sixty years and the populations are still very strong. So
the the you know, sport hunting is really pretty inconsequential
to uh, you know, thriving mountain lion populations. Now, I mean,

(01:02:24):
would you agree.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
With that, well, yeah, one hundred percent, because when when
if you listen to some of the oppositions spokespeople, if
we keep and I've got recordings of it, it's on
some of our social media stuff. If we keep hunting
mountain lands at this rate, they're going to become extinct. Okay, well,
we've been hunting that at this rate since the last
fifty five sixty years and we've we've increased our populations thirty.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Fold, and so so that's the message.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Yeah, we ain't keeping in check or dumb people.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
Well then okay, you don't want to come to Colorado
with a sign, then we're just we're we're up against
the wall. To the point of the last sixty five
seventy five days of this campaign, that's when it's really
going to get into the weeds. You're going to see
a lot of name calling from both sides, and you're

(01:03:17):
going to see a lot of facts from our side,
a lot of data from our side, a lot of
criticism from our side, and just lies in fallacies and
falsehoods from the opposition. That's just that's the way they play,
and they play it. It doesn't matter whether you want
to talk about raccoon hunting in Pennsylvania or you want
to talk about coops deer hunting in Arizona. That's the
way they play. Every single level of it. It's and

(01:03:38):
they always come out with something that is more sensationalized
than the last time that they did it, because they
realize that their supporter is the one that turns around,
doesn't know, has no clue whatsoever. And as I've often said,
if you've got ten percent on the top that support
hunting avid hunters, and you've got ten percent that are
avid anti extremists, you don't need to convince that eighty percent.

(01:04:02):
You need to convince forty one of that eighty that's it,
because you're just trying to get to fifty one. It's
fifty plus one or fifty point, you know, fifty plus
point one or whatever. The average person doesn't understand just
the intricacies of wildlife management. And I don't know what
you got in Arkansas, but in Colorado we've got nine
hundred and sixty one species of wildlife and seventy eight

(01:04:23):
of those are game species. Those are so well appropriately managed.
And have been saying that again, nine hundred and sixty
one species of wildlife and seventy eight game species. Now
that's that's toads and salamanders, everything, that's seventy eight game species.
So you figured, you know, ducks and squirrels and fur
bearing animals and big game in small game, and all

(01:04:45):
the stuff that's combined. Seventy eight of those species, the
licenses and the permits that go along with them, pay
for the management of nine hundred and sixty one other species,
including the flipping wolf. I mean, you know, yeah, I'm

(01:05:05):
trying to be politically, is okay?

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
I guess, yeah, I think, I think and this is
kind of a broader appeal, which I think is a
narrative that's stronger now in the hunting community that it's
ever been. But there is a real need for for
hunters to be evangelical in a sense of just like

(01:05:30):
think about if if if every hunter was sharing wild
game with their non hunting friends and neighbors that wanted meat,
and and all of a sudden, these eight or ten
people have a totally different opinion about hunters than they
ever had before when they when they understand that their

(01:05:50):
neighbor is a hunter and how they're using this meat
and how how wonderful it is, and uh, you know,
there's there's groups of people today, groups of hunters today
that talk about how that you know this, uh you
know that we shouldn't be trying to spread hunting. We
shouldn't be trying to to grow the hunting community. We're

(01:06:11):
putting excess, excess stress on the resource and stuff. And
I just think it's just so that is a perfect
way for hunting to be dead in a generation. Oh yeah,
it's it's for us to all to you know, to
hunt quietly.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
And and.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
I just I respect the passion that that group has.
I just think it's dead wrong. And I and I
think about like even in the future as we continue,
and this won't go away. I mean, like if we
beat this, it's like the next thing is going to
come around. It's like this, this is a way of life.

(01:06:49):
If we want to maintain this way of life in
North America, we have to build a fighting culture.

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
When I first got into the national bear hunting scene
in twenty thirteen, uh, growing up in a in a
state that's very favorable to hunting and rural culture and living. Uh,
I was exposed to the Michigan Bear Hunters Association of
the Michigan and went up there and did a film
with them, Like I made a film for them, and man,

(01:07:19):
they raise their whole just inside their hunting culture. If
you're a bear hunter, you're politically politically active, and you're
a fighter. Like that, those two things go hand in hand.
You're you're a member. There's multiple great bear hunting organizations
up there, and uh, it's just part of the culture.
I mean, their kids grow up knowing that, Yep, we're

(01:07:39):
bear hunters, we're members of the association, we go to
the banquet, we vote, and uh, that has to become
something that's stronger everywhere, not just in places, and in
Michigan specifically, it's a you know, they have a referendum
government where you can just with the amount of signatures,
like Colorado, you can get stuff on the ballot. That's

(01:07:59):
not an every state. And they just know that they
have to fight, they have to raise money and so powerful.
And I just think about how just as we continue
to go forward, you know, we just have to be
and I think evangelical is the right word, stealing that
term from you know, like in a religious sense.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
But you also have to be you also have to
be meticulously calculated on how you do that. And I
say that because from twenty nineteen, twenty and twenty one,
we beat these attempts to take away the pursuit and
the harvest of these animals through the Colorida Parks and
Wildlife Commission. We beat them unanimously with this Governor's Commission,

(01:08:44):
and in twenty twenty two they went to the General
Assembly for the voter for the legislature to turn around
and vote on it, and we beat them there. So
we beat them in all forms of government. This is now.
They didn't like the former government side, so now they
turn around and go to the general public side, thinking
that they can, you know, be fuddle and blindfold the
general public to override two different entities of the government government,

(01:09:05):
one from the governor's particular appointments and one from a
very democratic blue side of the legislature. If you're out
numbered with those colors twenty three to twelve in the
Senate and forty nine to sixteen like I mentioned, and
you still win four to one in the committee, you
won with those Democrats, and then at the commission you

(01:09:26):
beat them eleven zero eleven to zero eleven zero. They
didn't like those things, so now they're turn around and
going this way. That's part of the fight that the
general public needs to be aware of because in twenty
six states where you do have the ballot initiative capabilities
like what we have in Colorado, and some of that's good.
It just that there has to be some sideboards and
blinders put on it. But you can't have you know,

(01:09:47):
I don't want the general public voting on brain surgery.
I don't want them, you know, I just you know,
I just don't think that that would be a good idea.
And we're talking about science, and to me, wild life
management is just like brain serve. You have to have experts.
And we've got three hundred and fifty bonified scientists out
of twelve hundred employees in our Game and Fish parts

(01:10:07):
of wallet department. Three hundred and fifty scientists, not some
lunatics that just turn around and did a study for
the Animal Action Institute or Animal Wellness Action and the
Center for Humane Economy. We can all commit if we're
going to do that, we can all sit around here
and do a report and study on our own and
then turn around and release that and we should be
the experts on it. Well maybe we would be, but

(01:10:29):
I don't think that that's the case. When we're turned
around and trying to take things away, and I think
that that shows that shows the deceit and the lives
of the opposition. We don't like the experts that are
doing this stuff, so we're just going to turn around
and come up with our own stuff. Although we have
no backing, no money, no science to turn around and
do it. We just say it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
We just come up with a bunch of stuff and
say it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Then, should people give money to the Colorado's for responsible
wildlife management?

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
You've got two options that they can do it. And
because in Colorado you have to have an issues committee formulated,
which we've done. The issues committee which is actually running
the grassroots part of the campaign is Colorado Wildlife Deserve Better.
They can go to Wildlife Deserve beetter dot com. They
can donate there while Life Deserve Better dot com. Yeah,

(01:11:13):
And then if they don't want to do that, and
they're already used to doing the save the Hunt side
of things for the Colorado It's responsible wildlife management, then
they can go to Save the Hunt Colorado dot com
and donate there.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Now you said the other one first, is the other
one better?

Speaker 3 (01:11:25):
The other one, the other one is the one that
has to do every single thing over the next seventy
five days. The crowm save the hunt is the one
that supports and creates all the working nuances. I mean,
that's the one that paid for me to turn around
and come here. That's the one that turn around and
does the outside messaging primarily to the stakeholder, to talking
to the choir. The Wildlife Deserve Better is the one

(01:11:46):
that we have to have to be able to talk.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
To the That's where we want to direct people to
go Life Deserve Better. Wildlife Deserve Better dot com. Okay, okay,
Wildlife Deserve Better dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):
Man go in.

Speaker 7 (01:12:00):
First person that sends me proof they donated one thousand dollars,
what are you gonna do for them?

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
I'm gonna send them a case pocket knife.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
No way under more than fifty bucks though, First person to.

Speaker 7 (01:12:10):
Send a receipt that they gave a thousand I'm gonna
send a case pocket knife.

Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
Did you hear that?

Speaker 4 (01:12:16):
Folks with an autograph letter of authenticity?

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Sure, first person that proves the Brent Reeves that they
donated one thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:12:26):
Two wildlife.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
Dot com gonna get a case knife from Brent Reeves.

Speaker 5 (01:12:36):
So then one quick question other than the donation, is
there any like a short list of things of say,
like a guy like me and Mississippi or somebody that's not.
Is there a short list of actionable things somebody could
do that's not living in Colorado that could be impactful.

Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
I think the biggest thing that I can see is
if you're following us on Instagram or Facebook, or you're
seeing comments from other forums and other venues on any
one of that social media outlets, is as opposed to
just reading it and going on and scrolling through it,
look at look at what it is, and if you

(01:13:11):
believe in that, then turn around and make a comment
and share it and try to repost share it online. Yeah,
it has to be. It has to be more expansive.
It's got to be more institutional. It's got to be
more in our community that I heard what Lake said
or I heard what Clay said, and I'm going to
turn around and try to promote that message. I mean,

(01:13:32):
if if a tornado is coming and you know that
the neighbors down the road, I can speak about this
in Arkansas.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
I guess our language.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
Yeah, if the language.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
Exactly if you if a tornado's coming and you hear
the siren and you know the guy down the road
can't hear the siren. Because he's deaf, you're just going
to watch his house blow away. I think that's where
a lot of sportsmen and women are deaf.

Speaker 2 (01:13:53):
Do we like that fellow down the road? Yeah? It
shouldn't make a difference, and in any case, it didn't,
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
I think I think that we're to a point to
where it's upon ourselves to make sure that we lock arms.
I mean, you know, we talk about a well regulated militia.
We talk about you know, seeing an eye to eye
and making sure we support our neighbor and stuff. That's
what we've been doing. It's just that I think we've
got away from a lot of that because it's easy,
because you can click a button, you don't have to
worry about it. It's more important now to make sure

(01:14:20):
that we're all we're all part of one community, and
that's the sportsmen and women community to support hunting and
fishing and conservation and the science based wildlife management.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
M hm, that's good.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
Thanks for coming down man. Your I commend your energy
and your just all the work you've done last years.
It's inspirational to us, inspirational to me to see somebody
that's putting their life behind their words. You know you're
out there doing it and so yeah, man, I just

(01:14:57):
want us to find tangible ways to support and help
this thing because it is bigger in Colorado.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
When we win.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):
On November fifth, the thing that I'm already been asked
by different groups and organizations is will you come speak
here and will you come present here different conventions or shows.
When we win, it'll be a culmination of a playbook
and a roadmap that was created from some guys in
California with hol for Wildlife and ourselves and creating a

(01:15:26):
bond and then outreach into every single person that we
could possibly outreach too that has a voice and a message,
and that'll create the playbook on funding, on messaging, on outreach,
on networking, on strategy building, the legal side of things,
the logistical side of things. And that's something that we've
missed from a nationwide perspective. Some states have been able

(01:15:48):
to fight some of this stuff off. But when we win,
we want to be able to turn around and take
that playbook and hand it to somebody else in Arkansas
or Washington and say this is what worked, and it
didn't work on just a state level, worked on a
national level, on the regional level, on the local level,
and this is how you can build an armament to
future victories.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
It's good.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Great Blake, thanks for coming up from Mississippi.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
Thanks for having me here.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Yep, appreciate it. Everybody else, thanks for being here. And
don't forget about Brent's case knife, going out to going
out to the Thanks guys, very much.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Appreciate it. Thanks

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Ep. 249: BONUS Render - Save the Hunt

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 249: BONUS Render - Save the Hunt