Ep. 357: Render - All About The Florida Bear Hunt - Bear Grease

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
My name is Clay Nukleman. 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 Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear

(00:35):
that's designed to be as rugged as the place. As
we explore. We got an incredible podcast lined up very
We're gonna have a very interesting conversation. We're joined today
by Travis Thompson from Florida and we are going to

(00:59):
talk about Florida bears, I mean, one of our favor
no willy nilly and around here like how was your week?
What have you been doing, Josh, You've been fly fishing.
Nobody cares about your fly fishing. We are we are
getting into.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
There are a loyal few that email me and say
Clay needs to lay off the fly fishing comments and that.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
That could be me.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
I could I have alienated half of our listenership by
my by my my Adamacy talking about fly.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
And support fly fishing on the.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Well baron newcom told me we should have Dwayne Hayda
on this podcast. Wayne had would be an excellent well,
I would like to extend the formal invitation to Dwayne
Hayda on the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
If we can talk about fly Have you noticed there's
a ven diagram that is a complete overlap of fly
fishermen and then it just barely shifts in the turkey hunters.
Is that they're almost I yeah, they're the same people
that I'm telling you in Florida. They're the same people.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, they're consumed with those two practices, and those two
practices only.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
That is very interesting. I can't I can't, I don't.
I can't describe it, but I understand it.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's like CrossFit, like you go somewhere and that's all
they could talk about is fly fishing or turkey hunt
depending on the time of year. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Interesting, So Josh saved the fly fishing small talk. My
moment is here, man. There was just just to give
a small introduction of what we're going to spend the
next hour and a half talking about. Is that last
week in Florida, the Game Commission approved a Florida bear hunt,

(02:38):
which we're going to get into all the history, but
that's what we're talking about. This is major, this is significant,
and Travis was heavily involved in everything that went on
around that. Now, Travis, tell me who you work for,
what you do, kind of your history.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, so I got kind of a three throng three prong.
Who I work for? I run ironically for talking about bears.
I run the largest waterfowl hunting operation in the state
of Florida. Oh so I'm a big duck hunter. So
you're an outfitter. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll call it that
in Florida. I don't have a lodge or anything like that,
but most of what we do is by the day stuff.
And I used to be a fishing guide before I

(03:17):
got into hunting. More so, I do ducks, alligators, snipe,
and some hogs. I don't love hog hunting, but that's
a different story anyway. And then I grew up. I'm
fifth generation Florida and grew up there hunting fishing my
whole life. My dad worked for a department environmental protection,
so I kind of grew up with a dad that
was carrying a gun around and was a tree hugger,

(03:39):
so like, very heavy in the conservation space. I have
a nonprofit in Florida. It's called All Florida where we
work on issues like this. Anything Nick touches conservation, so
ag ranching, timber, prescribe fire stuff, water quality, and consumpt
of use. You know, I heard Ranella say years ago
on The Stars in the Sky that a conservation is

(04:00):
as an environmentalist with a gun. Yeah, I'm trying to
reclaim that in Florida as a conservationists environmentalist with a gun.
I like that. And then the other thing I do
kind of my day jobs. I work for a group
called the International Order Theodore Roosevelt, and we do constitutional
rights to fish and hunt in states. So I got
hooked up with those guys a couple of years back,

(04:20):
and in the state of Florida, we did a constitutional
right to fish in hunt, which like the bear hunt.
Everybody said, well, you're never going to get a bear
hunt again. Everybody said you're never going to get that passed.
We passed it with sixty seven percent, with a huge
grassroots movement in the state, and so that was a
big deal. But that's that's who I am. That's kind
of how I entered the conversation, is like, I'm passionate
about keeping Florida wild. Yeah, and I believe hunting fishing

(04:42):
are two of the most important tools on that landscape
to do it.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
So Florida, let's start off by describing Florida. I've not
spent a lot of time there, but but I'm aware
of kind of culturally, what's what's going on in that
Florida is one of the fastest growing states in the country.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yep, I don't.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
I don't know the exact stats, but but I've heard
it said that, you know, there's there's a band around
the coast of Florida of development, of massive development, massive cities,
massive development. But the interior of Florida, essentially, I mean,
I'm putting stop me and you take over this, But

(05:24):
I mean, like the interior of Florida is like the
rural rural America.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Yeah. So the joke used to be the further south
you go in Florida, the further north you get. That
used to be kind of the joke because it was
so developed, like in Miami or Fort Myers or these places.
But in reality, Florida is deep south. Like I live
in Polk County, which is the dead center of the state.
It's I mean, it's a different terrain, but it's like
driving out here, right, there's a lot of cattle a

(05:51):
lot of Florida was the first state with cattle, right,
so cattle ranching in the United States, originating cattle, and
I think it's in the top ten now still.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
For huge cattle production.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Cowboys, real cowboys. We call them cow hunters because Florida
didn't have fences until the fifties. So cattle you branded
them and just let them go and then you would
go round them up and take them sell them. So
we didn't have fences that so they called them cow hunters.
You went into this really rough stuff and rooted out
your cows. Florida's the only state you know, there's a

(06:21):
conservation easement program called in rcs they have Eastman's Florida
is the only state where you're allowed grazing on the
easements because it's such an important tool for keeping our
state wild. And about Man is probably ten years ago.
A friend of mine, a gentleman named Carlton Ward. He's
a National Geographic guy, real big in panther stuff. He
did Path of the Panther. It's on National Geographic. I
don't know if you'll ever seen that, but and Carlton

(06:44):
is a hunter, was a hunter, but he's very much
into environmental stuff. He kind of helped originate or codify
this idea of a Florida Wildlife Corridor, which was the
idea that if you took a panther and you stuck
him in Flamingo at the south end of the state,
he could walk to the Okefinoki Swamp in Georgia and
never cross the road, you know, have prey along the way,

(07:04):
and create this green infrastructure through our state. Florida's got
the most public lands, I think east of the Mississippi River.
We have seven million acres six point eight million acres
of public lands. So we've got a lot of public
land out there and a lot of that's available to hunt.
So Carlton and a team and there's an organization called
the Florida Wildlife Corridor. They went and passed a legislation

(07:28):
to codify the Florida Wildlife Corridor and create this green infrastructure.
And the animal they used was not the panther. The
animal they used was a black bear. They wanted a
black bear and to show that this black bear could
go from Big Cypress National Preserve and wander two Okala
National Forest or Appalachicola National Forest or Osciola National Forest

(07:48):
and they use that and they kind of created that
animal as at avatar. And there's days where I'm like, man,
that's a game species, so we want to make sure
we talk about it as a game species. But they
did a really good job of kind of go into ranchers,
go into private landowners, and then inter working those properties
with public lands so that we had these corridors for

(08:09):
animals to traverse. And it's not just bears, it's deer
and turkeys and quail and go for towardous and everything else.
And so the black bear has kind of become this
avatar for protecting what's wild in in Florida, in the
heartland of Florida, what we would call the heartland of Florida.
And you talk about the coast being all developed out,
and we want to grow, like there's there's places that

(08:30):
need economic development in the state, good development, and there's
good development and bad development. Right, there's some places that
need some of that, but we want to grow in
a way that allows species to thrive and work. A
friend of mine, he's a new commissioner, but he, Josh
Kellum said last week, we want to we want to
make sure conservation and development are able to work together

(08:51):
so that we have these wild places and wild things
that are able to exist a long time. So that
was a roundabout way of answering your question. But I
think yes, Florida is still real wild. Yes, we got
the oat trees with the moss growing on them. And
for us, it's it's cabbage palms. I don't know if
y'all have seen cabbage palms, but cabbage palms. They're critically
important to black bears as a forest source.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
But they're eating the leaves of them, the berries they
get berries and cabbage palms, they love them.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
And uh, we just got force of cabbage palms. You know,
have thickets of cabbage palms, and it's just a unique
landscape even to just see like silhouetted it's very different
than an oak hamick or a pine thicket or something
that you'd see someplace else. You see these cabbage palms
with their like pointy leaves and everything. It's it's a
really unique landscape. It's it's special, man, it's special.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
So this this corridor is it down to the granular
understanding where they're actually mapping like they could show on
a map. Oh, like like this property connects to this property,
which connects to this So it's not just kind of
like an arbitrary like there's like a like a bike

(09:57):
not a bike trail, but it's exactly like a map.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
The idea, and so University Florida doctor Tom Hogger at
University of Florida got involved in it, and the Corridor
Foundation itself. They've sat down and mapped it all out.
And so if you were to protect it all it
would be eighteen million acres protected lands. That's not all
public lands. That's private conservation easement sold or land put
into less than fee acquisition or whatever. But today we

(10:22):
have about ten million protected in it and the rest
isn't developed yet. So we're trying to figure out ways
that we can protect it. And Travis a guy that contends.
You know, I talk about Aldo Leopold's plow cow ax
match gun. Those are the five tools that are going
to save wildlife. We don't talk about that gun nearly enough.
And when we talk about a species like black bear
or you know, in North Florida, we got timber, heavy timber.

(10:44):
Those guys run qual hunting operations or turkey hunting operations,
and that's another revenue stream that's helping off set the
pressure because the developer is going to come in there
and offer you x thousand dollars a year to turn
this into a subdivision or a solar farm or whatever.
If you can stack some revenue streams on top of
an e has been and produced something like solar or
cattle or cross man, we can keep Florida wild for

(11:05):
a long time.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
So I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in and I'm gonna
say something that you said some good but but I've
I've kind of said the same thing, but I don't
hear it enough. And that is and it's essentially encapsulating
what you just said is that the cultural and economical

(11:26):
value of hunting in North America will be the thing
that a massive factor on saving wild places. So and
in in today's world where where expansion of civilization, roads, concrete,
urban sprawl, neighborhoods put you know, going out and being built,

(11:47):
people wanting to have five acres in a house like
all that sprawl a thing. And and and you know
how much of the percentage of America's private land, like uh,
like ninety five percent or something big at least ninety
percent of America is private land. So if you think
about wildlife conservation on this macro scale, it's actually the

(12:08):
private land that's going to be the main thing. Like
we think about public land and habitat conservation, but private
land ninety percent of the country. We we when people
are incentivized to keep their places unfragmented undeveloped because of
the hunting value of that land, we win. In fifty

(12:31):
years from now, should the earth persist, they'll be like,
thank God that there was cultural value of hunting that
kept some places wild. And I mean it's a it's
a it's an incredible point that I don't hear enough
people say, and it resonates with people when when you
say it, it's like, you know what, hunting is incentivizing

(12:53):
the keeping places wild because just like if I had
forty acres right here at Arkansas and right up against town,
and I could sell it to a developer, or I
could keep it because my kids valued hunting, my family
valued hunting, or sell it to a hunter who's going
to put little food plots on it and cameras all
over it. And I mean, like that is a win,

(13:14):
massive win for there to be a blank spot on
a map like Aldo Leopold would say.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
You know, it's funny. So I mentioned a minute ago
I worked on the right deficient hunt. And what hooked
me on that was not that I wanted to protect
the right efficient hunt, although I do, like I'm a
hunter angler, like, of course I want to protect the
right defiicient hunt. But in that we looked at language
in other states, and there's these magic words you use anyway.
We looked at language in the state of North Carolina,
and the Supreme Court in North Carolina determined that those

(13:41):
rights can't exist in the abstract, which means you have
to be able to exercise them, which means in a
state that's feeling development pressure like Florida, putting that in place.
And I think this is important to put in place
everywhere before it becomes because I when I talk to
guys in Montana, they're like, man, you never seen development
like this. I'm like, dude, come to Floria to let
me show how the big boys play. But the yeah,

(14:03):
that right can't exist in the abstract, which means the
state can't say you got the right to hunt, but
we're going to eradicate white tailed deer. You have to
be able to exercise the right, and I think that's
an important thing. So it folds into the same thing
your tastes. I think hunting is. I like to say
hunting is the tool. Maybe not everywhere I know there's
pockets where it may be timber, or it may be ranching,

(14:25):
or it may be agriculture. But those tools are going
to stave off development in this country. Those are the
tools that are going to We didn't invent that Audo
did one hundred years ago, and it's gone unchanged in
that time period. So I'm really passionate about somebody's got
to speak up and make sure this stuff's protected, because
otherwise they think nothing about shaving off places where you

(14:47):
had a hunting lease, or's places where you publicly.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
In this country my age, I'm forty five, that hasn't
lost a property to development.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
It's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
There's not a single one of them that's spent, you know,
a good chunk of their life being a hunter that
hasn't lost a property literally to development. I mean, I'm
thinking of it probably right now that is literally a
subdivision that I used to hunt.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
And so instead of demonizing the developers, what we try
to do is go sit down with them and figure out, like,
how can we develop better, how can we do redevelopment,
how can we grow up not out, how can we
protect wild lands or corridors through developments so that animals.
Then you got home owners that are able to see wildlife,
they're able to connect it and care about it, and
then you're able to continue to for me, touch it

(15:34):
in a way like I want to touch it and
need it, but there's people that just want to photograph
it or whatever.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
So one thing about the philosophy that we're just talking
about right here that I think we've got to bring
up just because it's interesting, is that inside the hunting circle,
people when they hear about cultural value and economic value
of hunting, that does mean that my forty acres that

(16:01):
I sell is going to have a higher value than
it did before because of its that is hunting, And
somebody's going to buy that, and somebody that can't afford
to buy that is going to say, well, the rich
guy's got it and they are are are pricing me
out of hunting. I mean, it's kind of a because

(16:21):
that's a narrative you hear inside the hunting circles. Oh,
we're all being priced out of hunting because it's now
becoming a rich man's sport. It's becoming like Europe. I
think that those two worlds kind of you can't have
one without the other. I mean, when I go down
the Mississippi River, me and Brent Reeves took a boat
ten or fifty miles down the Misissippi River a couple

(16:41):
of years ago. Ninety nine percent of that land is
owned and in hunting leases or specific properties made for hunting.
They've kept the riperian zone of that river in pretty
incredible shape. Really, that land is so valuable. There's no
way that a common man is going to own that land.

(17:04):
Incredibly valuable pretty much one hundred percent because of hunting.
And there's people that would say that was bad. I
would say, thank god, at least it's protected well. And
maybe twice in my lifetime I'll get to go over
there and hunt on the Mississippi River and it's still there.
Do you understand what I'm saying?

Speaker 3 (17:23):
And I think there's another point off of that. And
we hadn't even got a bears yet, but I think
there's another point off that, and that is, you know,
you can talk to the turkey doctors, Chamberlain or lastly
or call your any of those guys. They'll tell you
ninety five percent of turkeys are produced on private land.
But then they spread out. So it's like you and
I were talking off air where your bears came, they
were re established narkosas and then they spread it Outright,

(17:46):
I run a waterfowl hunting operational private land. We do
a lot of work to that land. There's ducks. Don't
all stay on that private land. They end up on
the Cokeachobee, they end up on the coast, on public
land where a lot of people. And so by increasing
the habitat and ensuring we want the maximum return on
this land from a from a wildlife value standpoint, whether
it's white tailed deer, turkeys or ducks or whatever, squirrels, Yeah,

(18:09):
that's going to spill out from there and hopefully spill
out into areas where the average guy is going to
be able to do. So. I'm always a big proponent
of I've heard this around ducks unlimited before. Right, Oh,
they're just locking up land and doing it for the Yeah,
but at the end of the day, they're producing more
ducks and more habitat for wildlife, which is going to
benefit everybody in the grand scheme. This is not it's
not just this local population. It's a it's a globe

(18:31):
or an international or a flyway population or whatever the
larger population's on is.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all this is so so interesting. So
let's let's go ahead and get into give me the
biography of Florida bear hunting, if it just to the
best of your knowledge. I mean, historically they were hunting bears.
They're like crazy, yep. And then when did it end?

Speaker 3 (18:59):
It did when I was in high school. So ninety
four is when they shut the hunt down completely, shut
it completely, shut it down. And if you went back historically,
and I'd encourage you, if you really wanted a deep dive,
FWC has on their website you could do google FWC
Bear Report. There's a two hundred page document that is
really good. I mean, it's if you want a history

(19:19):
of bears in Florida. I mean it goes into the
way they used to do agriculture because Florida's big in turpentine, okay,
and so they would burn forest, but they would burn
them too aggressively sometimes, and it basically wiped out the understory,
which hurt bears on forge. Now we understand burning science
a lot better, and that's an important tool. So the

(19:41):
bear population dropped into the fifties, but it seemed like
it kind of stabilized from the fifties to like the
eighties or so, and then it dropped again. And so
in the early nineteen hundreds they guessed, I'm sorry, the
early nineteen nineties, their speculation population was as low as
five hundred bear. Okay, wow. So now in white history

(20:03):
and settled history, prior to that, they guesstimated there were
eleven thousand bears in the state of Florida, in the
state of floor like pre European contre pre Hernando de
Soto or whoever it was that came there first. So
it was about eleven thousand bears in the state of Florida.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
So the sad vaka who it was, I got his
book up there. First guy, first European guy had coming
to Florida. Incredible book two years before Desta. A few
years yeah, fews before Desota.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
So we closed it down. It stayed untouched until twenty
fifteen when a hunt was brought back. There were a
couple of rules made to bear existence, like you could
shoot a bear to protect livestock. I think was a
rule that was made arow twenty ten or eleven, but
largely bears went untouched for whatever. That is twenty one years.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Only twenty one years, right, and what do we think?
The population had grown to about twenty fifteen, So.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
The state had science twenty fifteen, they believe the population
was over four thousand.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
So in in bear management, they typically say that that
an one hundred population will increase by ten percent per year.
And so I've done the math and extrapolated out like
if you have four hundred bears, and that this includes
natural mortality and recruitment ten percent per year. So if

(21:32):
you have four hundred bears year one, year two, help
me with my math, You're gonna have four hundred and forty.
The next year you're gonna have You're gonna have four
hundred and eighty four, four hundred and eighty four, the
next year you're gonna have.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Oh, this guy's a math wizard. Impressive.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
By the time you get out into decades, like decades,
you're talking about exponential growth, exponential growth, and typically populations
that are recovering where a bear has like unlimited or
the habitat is not limiting, like there's not stressed on
the habitat because of other bears, where they'll increase by

(22:15):
as much as eighteen percent per year. And so basically
a nine hundred population in twenty years can triple in size.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
That's that's pretty much. I mean, So we went from
a guestimate of five hundred to two thousand bears to
four thousand, right, So yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
It went up tenfold. Yeah, I mean about tenfold. Yeah,
five hundred to four thousand, is that right? Yeah, about
ten eight eight eightfold eightfold eightfold.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
So you got to this bear. We did a bear
hunt in twenty fifteen. Depending on what side of the
story you are about a bear hunt, it was either
an unmitigated disaster or it was a wild success. Yeah,
I'm sure you know the story. But the background on
that was they issued a number of tags based off

(23:02):
success what they believed a successful harvest would be. So
I don't remember the right number tags, but they had
a quota of three hundred and twenty bears I think
that they wanted to take. So they issued let's say
a thousand tags forty eight hours in they'd killed three
hundred five bears. Wow. So I believe we could all
sit here and say, well, that shows how many bears

(23:22):
there were, yes, how quickly they were harvested, like a
hunt needed to occur. There was so much anti hunting
pressure Florida. Hunters in Florida, and conservation in Florida does
not look like it does in other places. And I
know it's different in every place from the state, and
everybody'd say that, but man, I'm telling you all, it's
the wild West. So there was so much public pressure,

(23:46):
you know, the polling around acceptance of hunting. And you
look at a bear versus a a white tail deer,
like a bear's way lower on the list than a
white tail deer. Yes, it seemed like every one of
those people had a vocal voice that they were going
to share in that pole. So they came, and the
hunt was intended to come back to the next year,
and it did not.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
So let's stop right there a little bit, because that
twenty fifteen hunt was historic in nature. It was just
it was well, it was different in that there was
a lot of publicity about it before it happened, and
a lot of us were talking about it before, and
it was one of these deals where a new bear

(24:26):
hunt was coming on the scene in this population that
was clearly doing really well, and just a couple of
little nerd out facts. I mean, if they were wanting
to kill three hundred and twenty bears and they felt
like the population was four thousand, that's less than ten percent.
So typically in bear management, if you want to stabilize
the population, which there's a many many, many many places

(24:48):
would love to just stabilize.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Their bear population.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, zero growth, Just let's just keep it where it's at,
because human conflict is tall tolerable, habitat for bears is tolerable.
The bears are healthy, and that's what people and it's
it's so, it's so it's such a human problem. But

(25:14):
a population of bears that is not j curving in
population that's stable is really healthy. I mean, because if
I'm a mama black bear and I go any direction
a half mile and I'm in some other bears region
and there's conflict and there's there's big politian it's like
it's better when there's a there's just the right amount

(25:35):
point being Florida was that three to twenty was probably
a conservative management number because it was less than ten
percent that they were trying to take out, which probably
they were like, we really ought to kill five hundred bears,
but let's kill three twenty. So I mean it was
a probably a wise move by them to just enter
in and then the quota phils in two days and

(25:57):
the optics.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
I mean, so we had check stations where he had
to take the bears to get checked. The anti hunting
community was out in mass with photographs. Yeah, so there
were photos of a bear under a hundred pounds that
was killed. There were photos of lactating females that were killed.
Like the optics that they then used, and the grassroots

(26:19):
storm that they created on the backside of that made
it to where politically no one wanted to touch bears. Yes,
it became such a third rail to grab. No one
wanted to touch bears, and and in hallways everybody say, man,
we need to have another bear hunt for years after that.
And so it's a funny story. Clay and I we

(26:39):
reconnected the to day, and our previous correspondence was in
twenty nineteen in our text messages and he came on
my podcast. I used to have a podcast in Florida,
and we talked about the twenty nineteen bear plan on
that podcast, and we kind of candidly said, I don't
know if we'll ever see a bear hunt again. We
don't know if we'll ever hunt.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
That was interesting. He told me that today. I wouldn't
have remembered saying that, but that's that's what That's what
I said the other day in a little video I did,
I said I didn't think that it would ever come back,
but I said that in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Yeah, Like it was the public sentiment was so bad
that I look, man, I mean it really is, truly.
People love to talk conservation, but when you talk about
dead animals, Yeah, the charismatic megafauon of thing triggers and
they do not want to talk about bears yep, and
it becomes a major problem. And so that was a tactic.

(27:33):
Now we got to spend the next decade getting through, right,
Like we got to go from twenty fifteen to twenty
twenty five, and we didn't know when this would happen,
but everything from gubernatorial offices to legislators to people that
would fly out and hunt a bear somewhere else, but
they wouldn't talk about it in Florida, and I was like,

(27:54):
we've got to do something different here. And I say, I,
I want to be clear. The hunting commune d in
Florida got this done like that was that was this
was a big push from a lot of different people
and a lot of different groups. The dog hunting community
showed up in mass Wow, that is now Florida. I
grew up doll hunting for deer, right, that was my

(28:16):
that was my back. I've never I've never heard a
bear in my life, but dog hunting for deer was like,
that's how we spent our saturdays at Sundays was deer
camp and we were listening to the dogs run. There's
a strong, uh a hog dog community community in Florida.
So dog hunting in Florida is a part of the cultural,

(28:38):
like it's part of the culture.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Of long time history of Florida's hunting with dogs.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
We call people, there's not a connotation to it. We
call people from Florida crackers. The background on that was
they would crack whips.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
They were.

Speaker 3 (28:51):
The cow hunters.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
I was actually gonna say that the original crackers came
from Florida because they cow drives.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
That was the term was a cracker Florida cracker because
of the whip cracking and the palmettas and you couldn't
see the cows and that's how you got them out.
And that's still something that the cattleman like man to
this day. You go to an event and they they'll
sell whips, have crack whips like it's part of their
part of their culture. As Similarly, dog hunting in Florida
is part of the culture of if you identify as
a as a Floridian that hunts, like you've got some

(29:21):
kind of dogs. I don't dog hunt anymore, but I've
got a soft spot for dog hunting because it belongs here,
it belongs on this landscape.

Speaker 1 (29:29):
And so man, when you when you when you get
into places as thick as Florida, like literally vegetatively thick
as Florida, people that don't have never been around dogs
and be like, why would you need a dog to
shoot a deer? Why would you need a dog to
shoot a bear? They've never been to Florida, they've never
been to South Arkansas that you know. I mean, it's

(29:51):
a it's a highly functional way to hunt because animals
live in stuff that you literally can't see for the
length of your arm in some places.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Oh am, I right, it's nasty.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
It's so you send some dogs in there and you
get that game moving, and I mean that's the way
you hunt.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Yeah, I mean there's some stuff you don't want to
go through. I mean, you, I'm in decent shape. You're
three hundred yards in your watch is like are you
working out? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, And it's like, man, congratulations, Yeah,
you just completed your exercise goal for the day and
you've gone you can still see the truck. It's like,
what is happening here? Like it's hard hunting. It's hard
hunting in period. It's just a harsh environment. So we

(30:34):
come out of twenty fifteen, the bear hunt gets or
the bear plan gets released to twenty nineteen. That's when
you and I first talked and constantly. And I'm gonna
give credit to an old gentleman. He runs an organization
called United Waterfowlers of Florida. There's this guy named Newton
Earl Cook, and Newton is I think he's in his eighties.
But every commission meeting we'd have a thing called items
Not on the Agenda and our Commission moves around the state,

(30:57):
so Florida to drive from one end to the others,
like sixteen hours from like Pensacola to Key West, and
our Commission meeting moves to make it more convenient for
so it's not always where everybody has to drive. Right.
Newton would show up at every single Commission meeting and
then his items on on the agenda. He'd say he's
got this old Tennessee voice. He says, it's time for
us to bring back a bear hunt. And he would

(31:17):
he would do this to the point where you almost
rolled drys at some point, but he just stayed on
it and stayed on and stayed on it. And we'd
have conversations in the hallway, and there were a lot
of folks in the Honey community having those conversations. But
we have a conversations all the way of.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Like, look, what was the guys the old guy's name Newton,
Earl Cook. Newton Earl Cook. That's a great name, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Soon we're gonna make a bronze statue in him and
being erected in Florida.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
When we just gave him an award at the Commission meeting,
not the most reasonab one before that. But anyway, he'd
bring it up in the public record over and over
and over again. And I didn't want to go dial
on that hill over and over again because you get
death threats and everything else every time you bring it up.
So but we'd start having these conversations off to the
side of like, what's it gonna take to get a
bear hunt back? What's it gonna take to get the

(31:59):
bear hunt back? Can you talk in the hunting community,
especially your guys that have feeders on their property. Man,
it's a mess out there, Like the way that the
ingenuity that's going on to protect your deer feeder from
bears has gotten outlandish to where they're like they're put
hard tops on their can ams and a ladder on

(32:19):
top of that so that they can get to the
winch so they can lower the feeder down to keep
the bear out of it. And I mean, it's just
this ongoing engineering battle between black bears and land.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
And corn feeders.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
I mean it's bad. Yeah, I'm sure you've seen it,
but it's yes, it's.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
They're destructive on corn feeders, and you almost can't beat
them unless you've got it, you know, on a wire
and a pulley system.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
But then they had to move the pulleys up because
that's there's one engineer start he figured out how to
break the pulley and it was just like you'd walk
out there and he's like, man, is that you know
you got tree cover and you'd see these feet It's like,
is that a radio tower? And then you walk out
from under the trees and it's a feeder that's twenty
five feet up in the air because they've they've just
re engineered at these you.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Know, I got I gotta interrupt you. This is such
so interesting in some of the research I'm doing for
my book that black bears have been academically documented as
the most curious animal in North America. Really like in
in in controlled tests where they've been able to test

(33:28):
animal curiosity, the American black bear is the most curious.
And they tested weasels and raccoons and we call smart yeah,
polar bears. I don't know that they tested any ungulates
or something, because they knew that they're not going to
be curious like that. But the cats, uh more than bobcats.

(33:51):
Like in the way they tested them, it was really interesting.
They were they were confined animals, and they would put
they would put objects all in the in the space
and just turn an animal loose and observe them for
hours and watch and document every single thing that they
did with the little trinkets that were in the in

(34:12):
the place, and the black bear like blew them all out.

Speaker 3 (34:17):
Of the water because you just examined everything.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Yeah, black bear was like picking up chains and laying
on its back and like playing the chains in the air.
Point being a black bear will figure out how to
get anything it wants if it's physically possible. Yas Boutell

(34:39):
has told me, he described a scene of watching a
bear get a beaver carcass that they had hung fifteen
feet in the air and like ten or twelve feet
out from any tree. Like basically, there's this hanging beaver
carcass that's like, let's say it's twelve feet in the air,
I mean just out of a black bear can't jump

(35:00):
like a mountain lion son, and it's ten feet at
least from any tree. And basically, he said, he watched
this bear for an hour climb up every tree within reach,
you know, within side just range of that deal the bear,
did you know tried to climb out, and finally the

(35:21):
bear realized that if it grabbed the pulley rope and
walked back and dropped it, that that it would cause
that beaver to move. And before long he had pulled
it so many times and dropped it that the beaver
carcass went to the ground. Took him an hour, and
basically no other animal in the world would have got
that beaver carcass.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
I mean, think about how many times they just tear
came I mean he can't tear cameras off the trees.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, oh yeah, well, and it's it's then the point
of all that. People might be like, well, yeah, bears
are notoriously curious, and it just kind of like glaze
over it. Like they tear up your cameras, they to
up your four wheeler seats, they get into your feeders.
That's why bears are successful.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
And they're intelligent. They're not just curious.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Well curiosity is it correlates with intelligence? I mean, that's
what we would say. But that's why they're so successful.
That's why they're thriving in Florida because they can eat anything,
and they they are they are generalists. They're the world's
greatest generalist omnivore and they will do anything to get food. Yeah,

(36:28):
it's pretty it's brilliant.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
Really, it's funny because bears, and maybe you may know
more about this than I do, but bears seem to
exist in Florida, in the wild bear population and the
urbanized bear population that very much like are different. I
think we spent at the time of that bear report
I've read we'd spent two and a half million dollars
on bear proofing trash cans and municipalities trying to cop

(36:52):
out of garbage because they just My photographer lives, my
videographer photographer that we use a lot. He lives like
I'll say, six streets from the woods, like cross streets,
and it's in a neighborhood and bears are in his yard.
I mean, he can go get a bear photo for
me anytime he wants with the right, like you can
distort the background and take a picture of a bear
because they're always in the front yard eating his mom's plants. Wow,

(37:13):
and yes, those are bears that go back into the
Wikaiva forest, but they're not I mean they're they're not
just coming into the yard on the edge. They're getting
they're coming six. Yeah, they're actually taking an uber Yeah,
like they're in the neighborhood and they're not like just
on it. You know, it's not a common in the
every lage you're on the edge of. They're swamp behind
you in a panther walks through your backyard, but you

(37:35):
don't see one five streets over unless you've got a
cat that's outside. But the bears are just like they're
happily existing there.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, Like they have an incredible awareness about them, and
a lot of wildlife does inside of these urban settings,
you know, like deer know that they can they're okay
in your yard. But typically the big predators don't. They
get shine usually aware of I am perfectly safe right here.

(38:04):
And they then they turned to anthropogenic foods big term
from human foods.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
I guess in twenty twenty three is when we started
having some serious conversations about, Okay, what would a hunt
look like if it came back, Like what what do
we need to change from the last time we did
a hunt to get it right, And that was presented
in May of this year. So in May that was
brought back to the Commission and my opinion. They got

(38:42):
it right. Now, I want to say something. FWC is
one of the leading agencies Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission,
one of the leading agencies in the country on social science,
and we as hunters, we love to say, man, I
want biological science to drive everything, not social science. But
the end of the day, that's a factor. Social science
is playing, man, it's playing, and so to ignore it

(39:05):
as a tool in the toolbox, I'm telling you this
is a guy that's going out there and saying, Man,
I don't want to use social science. Like I've said
that on the record at podiums and stuff before. I'm like,
science should drive this, and I'm talking about biology. Social
science is gonna play. They did an incredible job of
meeting with stakeholders and figuring out what the concerns were
with the last hunt and addressing those with this hunt

(39:28):
and so kind of one of the dominant things they
heard was selectivity in sex in harvest. I think in
the last hunt, sixty percent of the bears that were
taking were soals. Okay, And as I mentioned earlier, that
was a quota that was issued and then you went

(39:48):
out if you didn't kill your bear like you checked in, Like,
if you didn't kill your bear and they called the
hunt off, you didn't get to fill your task. And
that's things. Yes, So what they've brought back is a
hunt that is one hundred and eighty seven hard tacks.
It's either I think it's a hundred and eighty seven.
It's either one eighty six or eighty seven.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Can I stop you because I feel I think we're
gonna go over it and I'm gonna forget to say it. Sure,
these quota hunts where the hunt ends at a quota
caught and you insinuated it, but we didn't say it,
it causes people to be highly unselective.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
It is selectivity because it is if you kill the
first bear. Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Oklahoma, Oklahoma. Well, I don't know the details on it.
Oklahoma had a similar thing where they where they had
a quota and the quota wasn't even being met, but
the very nature of the quota caused people to be unselective.
And I'm pretty sure they took the quota off and
they never went over it and people were a lot

(40:46):
more selective. Yeah, if you think the hunt's gonna end tomorrow,
you're gonna shoot the first bearer that you see, and
oftentimes that's the juvenile or female.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Which could force and it's on the hunter, right, the
hunter should be a better hunter. But oftentimes, you know,
we've all done it with a deer or something. You're like, man,
that deer was way bigger when I looked through the
scope than he was when I got up to it. Right.
The so things they addressed they addressed selectivity with that,
that's good. They also address selectivity by allowing bait stations

(41:16):
and and dogs, because you know as well as I
do that both of those things are going to give
you time to say, hey, is that a sal? Hey
does she have cubs with her? How big are the cubs?
Like you can look and study this situation. Yes, and
you're gonna have camera set up on your bait station, yes,
to where you're gonna know the bears that are coming
in and out and be like, oh, that's a sal
but I got a bore over here, like that's that's

(41:37):
what I'm gonna And it allows people, all of us
as hunters, we're in it for everything, right, the meat,
the hide, the fat that like we want to but
the end of the day, we'd like to take the
biggest thing we can or the best thing we can,
and in this case, removing that that urgency allows for

(41:57):
us to have way more selectivity in this hunt. And
to me, the agency got that exactly right. The anti
hunters will tell you, and I don't. I live in
a world where I have to deal with them. I
will tell you I don't necessarily care what they say.
I do I pay attention to it. The anti hangers
will tell you, well, these are barbaric methods. This, that,
and the other. These methods are because you guys wanted

(42:19):
better selectivity in the hunt. Yes, it was nothing wrong
with the first hunt, but we've changed it based off
your feedback, and these are the methods that we've allowed
to get into it.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Right, man, that I can't believe you're saying this with
such clarity, because I think ten years ago the articulation
of that idea just wasn't widely known inside of bear hunting.
These these these methods allow hunters to be selective. And
you could say that that is just big talk and

(42:50):
that actually doesn't happen in the field, but it does.
I mean, hound hunters let way more bears go they
than they harvest even in play is where they could.
I mean they're being selective, not everyone. I mean sometimes
you got a kid with you and it's their first bear,
and you let them shoot a dry sow sometimes. I mean,

(43:10):
I'm not saying juveniles and souths don't get harvested sometimes,
but in general, hound hunters are trying to be selective
for older age class males period baiting bears. The cameras, man,
I am the most selective period when I'm baiting a bear,
because I know every bear that's coming in there, and

(43:32):
it's very difficult to kill that older age male, and
it becomes a challenge, it becomes it's what makes it
enjoyable and fun to try to kill a big bear
over bait, which is actually quite difficult.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
And anybody who says that that hunting bears over bait
is unethical and easy has never baited for bears.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
Talk to me about that for a minute. Sure, this
is one of the things old explain fair chase and baiting. Yeah, like,
can you can you do that? Can you just tell
me that jump in.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Like to me, when you describe fair chase, you know
you're you're capitalizing on that. Bears natural tendency for hyperphagia
in the fall. I mean you're you're capitalizing on a
biological process inside of that animal to hyper fixate on
a food source, just like they would an acorn flat

(44:23):
or a cabbage palm flat, or berries in the summer,
or a salmon stream in the Northwest. So you're capitalizing
on something this animal is doing naturally.

Speaker 3 (44:31):
Number one.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Number two, if if you have this North American idea
of taking an older age class male, that animal is
incredibly intelligent, intelligent acts completely different than juveniles and females.
And it's very difficult to kill over bait because when
you're hunting over bait, you have a stationary bait. A

(44:55):
human has got to be within a bow shot distance
of that if you're hunting with a bow, which most
baiting six bears is archery hunting. And that big bear
knows he is made a living with his nose, and
he knows when you're there, and he knows when you leave,
and you got to kill him while you're there. You
can't not be there and kill him. And killing a

(45:16):
large I'm talking like a ten plus year old boar
bear over bait anywhere in the country is as hard
as just about as hard as any big game hunt
you would ever have. And so the hunter that's sitting
there that kills a big bear, he has let go
a bunch of animals that came in before it. And
that's just what people wouldn't understand or see why I.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Would to ask you. As a beer hunting expert, I
can see this, but you.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
Well, you're so you've got to practice a high level
of selection. And basically to me, when I think about
fair chase and ethics and just kind of this big
North American model, when you understand that baiting or and
we can talk about hounds too, where baiting is a
cool for selection, it's like that makes it ethical just

(46:05):
in its own sense. If we could even just go
in and extract a mail easily, that would make it
worth it.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
But we can't. But we can't.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Mails are very hard to get to come into a
bait like that. And so to me, it it completely
fits the idea of of of fair chase three components.
You're you're capitalizing on an animal's natural tendency, just like
it would in the wild. Your your you've got to
be in very close proximity and you cannot hide from bear.

(46:37):
Everybody in the planet, every white tail hunting of the
planet that thinks that they can hide from a black
bear over bait using all the different scent control products
has never done it because you cannot. Period A thousand
years from now, they're going to replay this and they're
gonna say that old Hillbuilding was right because technology has
never become good enough for us to eat a black

(47:00):
bear's nose. It is supernatural. When you see a bear's
nose flexing like this in the wind, he literally is
talking to God. Not literally, that's a metaphor.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
He is.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
It is a super it is it's so powerful, it's
almost supernatural.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
That's my point, John Well.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
And and then and then the third prong of the
fair chase component to me is that it's a powerful
management tool to be selective period done over and out
bear hunting with bait.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Well and and what like what we experienced last year,
you know you can have you can have great bears
coming into your bait because that's what they want. And
then you're playing this this match with nature and just
because you've got all this high fat, delicious bait. As
soon as those acrons start falling.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
And they would they would rather eat natural food than
any I mean, they've been built for one point five
million years off eating natural food, and here in the
last you know, one hundred years, we would put out
anthiprogenet food for them, that would that they would be
attracted to. They want to go back to natural food

(48:12):
anywhere in the country.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
So it's interesting you say that. So in Florida we're
not allowed we're allowing basic I don't know why we're
calling them bait stations. They're feeders. We're not allowing donuts
or or like we're not allowing it's corn or sort
like it can be like it's natural, it's what it's
what we put in at feed Yeah, it's And so

(48:36):
this conversation has gotten high. I think it's a bad marketing.
I think the agency did a bad marketing job and
the anti honey community grabbed onto it because we talked
about bait and then they go get pictures of a
grizzly bear eating donuts or something, and it's like, that's
not what we're talking about here. We're talking about trying
to get a bear to come to a corn feeder. Yeah,
and especially in an okaymic, this's got just a huge mast.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Here like well, and and the other thing too is
that you can get a bear to come to corn
and grain and all this stuff during the summer very
easily in the fall, which I would assume the despair
hound's going to be taking place in what's in December.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
So the first year is a three week in December. Okay,
after that it'll extend out.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
But go ahead, well, just just like right now in Arkansas,
you get every bear in the country to come to
a pile of corn. A month from now, when the
acorns start to trickle down, you will have a very
difficult time getting a bear to come to a pilot
corn at the point being in December. The effectiveness of
using this kind of natural more natural food for a

(49:40):
bear is probably not going to be great.

Speaker 3 (49:43):
And that's what That's a harder nuanced conversation to have,
right That's why I wanted to have it with you.
It's a nuanced conversation that gets missed yea by the
general public. And I'm hoping a lot of them will
watch this and say, oh, well, that makes way more sense.
You're not putting a feeder out there and saying I'm
gonna roll out here about eleven to shoot a bear
by eleven thirty because he's going to be on that

(50:03):
feeder eating.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Well, right, that's what was going and that's probably why
people here as they hear, well, they're tearing down corn feeders.
You can't keep my bears off corn. You know, this
is just gonna be so easy. But in December it's different.
And now I've never been around bears in Florida, it's
possible there's a slight different everywhere they're a little different,
but in general, I guarantee you that getting them to

(50:28):
come to that in December is going to be different
than getting to come to that in August during a
stress period in August, probably when they're mainly hurting people's
feeders and whatnot.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Yeah, let me just throw this out there for color
has nothing to do with bears, but it talks about Florida.
Our south is on Archery opens in July, does it really?
Because the rut is so early and then we have
zones No that you can't hunt the key here. But
this is like Everglades, like Big Cyprus and south of
seventy It opens in July. Archery opens like this year,

(50:58):
I think it was July twenty eighth night. So you
want to talk about fun sitting in that in a tree,
like you'll strip down to your underwear. It's bad out here,
Moisquita is just going, but you.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Just put and then we have fan all over your
whole body and set up their naked.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
I am an hour and a half north of that
road and the wa closest to me their rut is
in February. Wow. So so just the way that landscape
is is so and we have different zones around this.
I think we have five different zones for deer because
they rud at different times and everything. So I think
we will begin to figure that out with bear as
well over time of when they do feed heavier when

(51:37):
they don't. And I think that's I think our agency
has probably already looked at that, but they'll continue to
look at that and study it as we see hunter success.
So hunter success is a thing when we're talking about
the number of permits they're issue in one hundred and
eighty seven. Have you ever done a sight tag like
a like a like an alligator hunt, like we have
to put a tag, a hard tag in the gator.

(51:57):
You get those two tags if you don't harvest, you
send them back. At the end of the year, you
gotta return them. The bear hunt's gonna be the same.
It's not Siety's tag, but it's it's gonna be the
same kind of way where you're issued a hard tag
and when you take that bear, you've got to report
it immediately. It's no longer checkstations. So we're not gonna
give the antis, you know, this place where you just
set up their cameras and harass hunters and then you've

(52:19):
got to put that tag into the bear, or if
you don't harvest, you're gonna return it. So the agency
set the threshold for harvest. If one hundred percent of
those tags are females and one hundred percent of them
are successful, the population will grow zero. It will not decline.
It'll it'll be at least a zero percent growth zero

(52:40):
or greater. Then, so that's not gonna hurt the popular
There is no mortality that's gonna cause it to go
down from hunting. Yes, So it's really interesting in the
court of public opinion, people are like, well, they're doing
this because we've got too many bears. This isn't really
gonna change how many bears we have, it's gonna be
at least the same number of bears. We have, probably
a slow growth because you know as well as I do.

(53:02):
What is the I'm putting you all on the spot.
What's the average success rate for a bear hunter? Sixty
forty percent? Like, I don't know than that. That would
be my guest too. One hundred and eighty seven tags,
we could do some math real quick. Fifty of them
get filled, one hundred of them get filled would be.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Well, right, if you're talking about in general, like in
North America, I would say way less than that. In
a hunt like this this news, I wouldn't be surprised
if they didn't fill ninety percent of them.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
It may be the first year. Yeah. The other side
of that is we've put tools in place that are
given a selectivity. So again that's based on new population growth.
If you have harvest only soals and one hundred percent success, yeah,
we know we're not gonna have one hundred percent success,
and we know given selectivity, right.

Speaker 1 (53:43):
So like you're gonna choose the board worst possible scenario.
It still doesn't hurt anything, does it change anything?

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Yeah? So I've heard so much pushback about it and
They're like, how can you support this. I'm like, well,
this is conservation man. Yeah, absolutely, I've got this sustainable
resource that I can take. And I've said this for
I've said this for a long time. In twenty sixteen,
there were some number of bears we could take that
did not matter five thirty seventy five. I don't know
the number. I'm not a scientist, but there were some
number of bears that would have fallen under compensatory mortality

(54:12):
in the state. Yes, that could have been taken. Continually,
we fell into a social science trap, a little bit
of we should not hunt this charismatic megafauna. Now we
are back to where we have turned on this hunt,
and this hunt should stay on for forever as long
as the population is say the population is not going
to decline because of hunting, yes, but if a disease
came in or whatever, and we could turn the hunt off.

(54:35):
But the hunt is now on. We're not going to
have to go through this iteration year after year after year.
It'll be up to the agency to look at the
population and say, well, we had this much success rate
last year, we had this much harvest rate on boors
versus south and we're going to issue three hundred tags
this year instead of one hundred and eighty seven, or
we're going to issue a hundred tags this year instead
one hundred and eighty seven. Like the agency's going to

(54:57):
be able to follow adaptive management is what we call it,
going to use that to set the threshold for how
many bears can be taken, and then they're gonna have
a three month span in the fall. I think it's October, November,
December that will be open for hunting. So this first year,
no dogs in year one. I think actually dogs are
on until twenty seven because it's kind of a staggered approach.

(55:20):
I think you told me this a long time ago.
I vaguely remember somebody telling me this long term, to
hunt bears, you're gonna have to use dogs to have
any measure of success, right, Like dogs are not sure
I've said that, but I'm paraphrasing. Maybe, but like, dogs
are one of the most effective ways to hunt bears. Yeah,
but initially with this bear population, they haven't been hunted,

(55:40):
so we'll probably have a higher success rate initially for
a couple of years. Then we're going to need some
other tools to move these bears around and run them
out and have success because you're not going to be
able to just pop one at your deer feeder. They're
going to get conditioned pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
They will, they will, they'll they'll they'll learn, they'll adapt,
and they'll they will get harder to hunt over time.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
And dogs are going to be critical to being able
to hunt them. Yes, that's yes. So that's where we're
at today. It's going to be five dollars for a
tag to apply and then if you get issue only residents, no,
it's resident and non resident are it's one hundred dollars
for resident, three hundred dollars for a non resident if
you get if you get drawn.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
Wow, So I could apply for attack.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
I hope you do.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Don't tell them, Josh, edit this out.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
I love it. Man. And so the anti hunting community do.
Their new movement is they're trying to get everyone to
apply for as many tags as they can afford and
buy a honey license. Oh. I am thrilled with this.
Just stef Wire, I'm over the moon.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Wow, they're going to contribute to this thing.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
They're contributing to conservation.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
I've had I had a thought, and I think I'm
changing on this and it's not a conscious change, but
it's my my attitudes towards towards anti hunters and some
of the expressed truly ignorance. I don't mean that word drivetory,
but in the truest nature sense of the nature that

(57:03):
the ignorance oftentimes of anti hunting community, just in their
lack of knowledge of conservation, why we do what we do,
hunting culture, historic use practices, you know, has has caused
my blood pressure to go up, and I would I
would probably have been a little more like, I don't

(57:24):
care what you think, this is who we are, kind
of make it like a tribal identity thing in a way,
like just personally, maybe me in the in the claw,
you know, in a in private setting. I really feel
like the wind is for us as a community to
become a much much more understanding of people's ignorance, ignorance

(57:48):
and be a little more merciful. Most people. There's probably
three percent of the anti hunting community that are just jackwagons.
Oh yeah, that are that are like not interested in changing,
not interested in the facts, are just interested in causing trouble.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
They're probably and they're probably ugly too.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
They're probably ugly, yes, but most of them probably just
have never set with somebody that they could make eye
contact with and they could go, this is a real
human I want to hear their story, and they hear
about my life and eating bear and my family and

(58:30):
me taking my kids and us literally preserving land for
bear hunting, and when they hear about some of the
deep history of bear hunting, and when they hear what me,
you and I were talking about earlier about the eight
bear species on planet Earth. They are twice as many
American black bears as of all other species combined. This
is a massive success story. I mean, if I sat

(58:52):
with or you sat with, or anybody of us set
with somebody, most of those anti hunters would go, you
know what, I didn't know that. I mean, most people
would probably be a little bit reasonable. And I think
that's the play is not because right now in the country,
the political the political atmosphere is to just like be
vehemently opposed to your enemies, just smack them in the

(59:17):
mouth with this is who we are. I mean, it's
just all over from both sides and every side, and
that just doesn't it just creates bigger enemies and I
just feel like we need to and that the practical
solutions and way to do this. It's hard to say,
but just like a grassroots tenor change of us being like, hey,

(59:40):
we're all on the same team. We want bears on
the landscape.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
And and.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
It's okay. I understand why you might be concerned.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
You said it earlier in your statement. I think you
said the word tribal. Yeah, it's demystifying the badge that
you wear, right, Like it's easy for me to go
outside and say man, meat eater man. But then you
sit down and talk to Clay or you talk to
another you talk to like you get to know these
people and it's like, well, wait a second, they're all
really good guy, you know, like I'm using it as
as an avatar for this conversation, but that we see

(01:00:14):
that a lot. We hate the Wildlife Agency, but you
sit down and talk to this scientist or that scientist
or whatever, and it's like, man, they really are looking
out for our best interest, the wildlife's best interest, to
making decisions that are looking at everybody broadly. I have
gotten personally docked multiple times over this issue, like address name,

(01:00:35):
phone number put on the internet, we pray nothing bad
happens to this guy, and then my picture Remember the
that actually happened to you? Oh, it's happened multiple Remember
the would you rather encounter a man or a bear
in the wild thing that was kind of going out
on the internet. There was like this whole thing where
women were like, we'd rather encounter a bear in the
wild than a man in the woods. They actually took

(01:00:57):
my picture and put it next to a bear and
like plastered it everywhere, And there were people coming and say, well,
if we're going to open a season, we want to
open them on this guy, and like they were, it's
easy for me to just get defensive over that, right,
It's easy for me to there's a handful of people
five seven nine that are responsible for that. The vast
majority of the people even commenting on it don't understand,

(01:01:20):
don't know the nuance. And if they walked in this room,
first off, they wouldn't be that aggressive. And second off,
if they sat here and talked to me for a minute,
they'd realize I care. Just as the presupposition is that
I don't want wild Florida to exist, Dude, I want
wild Florida exists. Way more than you do. I want
black bears everywhere. I want ducks everywhere. I want turkeys

(01:01:40):
to wear our trip over them like I want. I
want cabbage palms at oak trees and cows. That's what
I want. I don't want concrete jungles. And the way
I'm going to do it, I've got a solution to
do it that I'm working on right here. I don't
know what your plan is other than demonizing me, Like
I'm on your team trying to fix this thing. And
I don't say that in a defense way. I like,

(01:02:01):
I'm pretty cavalier about I'll just sit down with anybody'd
have that conversation, which is exactly what you're talking about. Like,
let's get to it, man, Yeah, get to us the
way through it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
People are capitalizing on our desire to strike an enemy,
and we're letting the five percent get it so riled
up that we become we become radicals. Oh yeah, you know,
I mean and and and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
There's a game theory If you ever get a free time,
there's a you can read about game theory stuff. And
there's the thing called an Overton window in the middle
of like a number line, and you're trying to shift
that overton window your way. And so if you looked
at the I'm backwards to the camera. But this is
the far right, this is the far left, and and
you try to fire up your base, and it pulls
people this way because the people in the middle don't

(01:02:58):
have a choice. They're like, well, I've got to v
this way or I got to vote that way. And
so you don't go to the middle, you go to
the edges, okay, and you create this thing called an
over the window that you're trying to shift your way
on this number line.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
That's what touches people to be radical.

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
It pushes people to be radical because that's where you're
going to raise money, that's where you're gonna raise support,
and that's where you're gonna fire up your base.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
But what if radical was just reasonable?

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
And I think that's the conversation that I try to
change every day, is like, what if radical didn't exist?
What if we just took a common sense approach to conversation,
to conservation. You know, what if we I'll go back
to development in Florida, people say all the time, I'm
anti development. You gotta stop, dude. Do you know how
many people in Florida make their living off building houses
or and then and then you're a fishing guide or

(01:03:42):
a hunting guy, like do you check W two's for
people when they get on your boat, like that they
work for a fertilizer company, or they work for the
like they're all connected to it somehow. Like economic growth
is economic growth. I'm not anti development. I'm pro smart growth, Like,
let's sit down and figure out ways forward that take
care of my natural resources in your financial needs or
economic needs, your tax base is what's going to grow

(01:04:04):
your economy. I just think we get into these binaries.
You have to stop growing, you have to grow at
all costs. Dude, most of us are right here at
some game. Most it's not binary, right, It's most of
us sit somewhere here in the middle. And I think
there's a whole lot of good conservation that is missed

(01:04:24):
because we spend time in this fight and in this fight,
and that's not the fight. The conversations right here in
the middle where we can move it forward. And I
think this whole thing, I think bears perfect example of that.
Because I said earlier, the agency went and addressed these
concerns over here were we never want to hunt. But
their reasons were because you killed too many sous and

(01:04:45):
he killed them. It was a blood bath. It was
too fast, and the hunters could have been over here
said well, we did it right the first time. And
I could make the argument that quote a hunt was
handled right the first time. The hunters could get over
here and in turn and say, well, we're going to
do it this way. By golly, we're not changing with
the agency did a really good job, and the sportsman's
community did a really good job was coming up with
a solution that really did address their concerns. Yes, now

(01:05:07):
they don't want any hunting to take place, we're not
going to move there, but they did address their concerns
with selectivity, with season and everything else. Man, that's what
conservation is supposed to look like. I believe that in
my heart that's what conservation is supposed to look like.
And now we have the sustainable renewable resource that is
a game species. By the way, you you're the best

(01:05:29):
bear guy that I know. Why are bears considered a
game species? Can you can you talk about that for me?
Because that's a question I get all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
What Lets let me put a pause right there on
that question, because I want to say one thing and
then I want to go to that right there. If
the reason bears are so important is if we can
win on bears, we can win on anything.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
Guard the gate.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Is what you've said so to me, and we've said
this for a decade, is that when you look at
the whole of North American hunting, if we can protect
the thing that's the gate for you know, the lowest
hanging fruit, which is always going to be predators, I
mean everything above it is safe essentially, you know, deer.

(01:06:17):
I mean people, people aren't as going to be as
concerned about if we're talking about actually legislatively hunting opportunities
being taken away. I mean, when I think about bears
in Florida, it's almost it's almost like the bear being
the keystone species biologically, Like if you have bears, then
you probably got good turkey habitat, and good deer habitat,

(01:06:38):
and good habitat and good gopher gopher shorts habitat. In
a way, if you've got a bear hunt in your state,
you probably got a lot of things in order to
even legislatively And that's why I've always said that I
feel like bear hunting is probably as critical a topic

(01:06:58):
of discussion and interest for us to understand and be
able to articulate and talk through. Because if you can
explain bear hunting to somebody that's starting from zero and
get them to go, you know what, I kind of
understand why you'd hunt a bear now, man, you have one,
You're the hero, And I just think bears are really important.

(01:07:21):
It's critically important.

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
I'm a guy that's never hunted a bear spending a
lot of time with bears because of because I think
it is. I think it's crucial to saving what matters
in my state, yes, And I think it's crucial to
saving this tool that matters in my state, yes, right,
Like it's critical to keeping the wild places wild, but
it's also critical to saving hunting, which is going to

(01:07:43):
help keep the wild police as wild. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
I think it's so cool that you're such an advocate
for it, and I love it that you say you've
never hunted a bear. I mean, we don't need everybody
to go hunt a bear. I mean they can that
there's plenty of opportunity to, but it's like people getting
involved in something bigger than them themselves. Is important right
now in this time, is.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
It matters a great deal? Your question? Let me ask
you again because this is and I'm asking you. I
know how to answer this, but I'm asking you. Is
the bear hunting experted guy, Yeah, he's the guy. Sister.
I get asked all the time, why do we consider

(01:08:26):
bear game species?

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
Now?

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
This is being asked by Florida environmentalist primary and I
was like, let me ask Clay.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Like, well, I think I think that there's two might
be two ways to view that. Like in the past,
a lot of game agencies managed bears as as a
as a vermin, essentially managed them from a as a
nuisance species as a nuisance species because they wanted them
off the landscape. I mean that's that's actually I mean,

(01:08:55):
just in the last thirty years, I think have all
the states now made bear black bears a game species,
which game species meaning that what that translates to, it's
gonna have a lot more protection, it's gonna have science
based studies going into how many are there, how many
are taken? Like when an animal comes a game species

(01:09:15):
all of a sudden, it's getting a lot more attention,
a lot more regulation, And it's good now I think
what an anti hunter and Florida might The tunnel that
their question is coming from is why are we even
hunting them? This shouldn't be an animal that we even hunt,

(01:09:36):
so like they're not saying, let's manage it as a
vermin or a nuisance animal. Am I right?

Speaker 3 (01:09:40):
You know you're exactly right, But I want you to
talk about the well bears are the species we do
the most with, right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
The historic historic practice on this continent is humans on
this place have been hunting bears since the since the
time they set their feet on this continent, long deep,
deep history. Utilization of BlackBerry in this continent. I mean
we talk about utilization of wild game, like we kill

(01:10:07):
a deer and we want to eat all the meat
and you know, save the horns for a memory.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
Black bears. We use more of a black bear than
any other big game species that we harvest. How many
deer hides do you have hanging in your house? Okay,
bear hides on a black bear? You eat the meat.
I would say eighty percent of blackberries. Their hides are
tanned when people harvest them, and we render the fat,

(01:10:34):
which is something that's revival. There's a bear fat revival
in this country, and guys are starting to harvest fat
from their animals and rendered into bear grease, so historic use.
Native Americans use bear like crazy. They're incredible table fare.
I mean, in the frontier days, people killed deer for
their skins and bear for the meat. I mean, it

(01:10:56):
was crazy to think about eating deer. Guys were the
the long hunters were shooting deer and leaving the carcasses
on the ground and killing bears for food. So essentially,
the answer to your question would be they're an incredible
animal for eating and for for utilizing for bear fat.
I mean, you could go into all the things you

(01:11:16):
do with bear fat. But uh, I mean does that
does that answer your question?

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
I think that is the That's what I have said
to people, But I'm not a bear hunter, so it
rings hollow when I say it. I'm asking you the
bear expert, like, this is the animal right I.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Mean, is if a white tailed deer is a game animal,
manages a game animal because we eat it. A bear
is managed as a game animal because it's better than
a white tailed.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
Deer, that's the answer.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
I mean, it's just true. And and uh, and we've
got that that deep historical data that that that says
that you know, I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
Well, I'd eat a bear burger any day over just
about any other meat.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
What did you say. You've had two bear burgers in
my house in the last month.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
They are the best that you can eat.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
Anybody that I don't know. Three out of ten guys
I talked to, go man, I don't like bear meat.
I had at once and it was tasted to a man.
I have no idea what people are doing if they
have any meat that tastes bad delicious. Yeah, I mean,
I don't know. I don't know what to tell them.
It's it's really great meat.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
I've never had a bear burger. I've had a I've
had roast. I've had a bunch of roast, but never
had a burger.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
I wish I would have cooked you one if you
were here long.

Speaker 3 (01:12:30):
Well, we'll have to do Florida. Come to Florida Harvest
Bear and then we.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
Can if I draw one of those tags. But we're
not going to tell them that no non residents can't.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
Yeah, yeah, there's no way that a non resident could
ever get a Florida bear tag.

Speaker 3 (01:12:46):
Really neat, that was a joke. Really neat thing they're
doing too, is they wanted to make sure private lands
were in corporated, because obviously you can't have a feeder
on public land. We can use dogs on a lot
of public land. We have a lot of National Force billowed,
but not in this season, in this this first year, right,
but not the second one. It'd be twenty seven before

(01:13:06):
dogs were used. Okay, dogs would utilize but we'll see. Oh,
so the private landowner will be able to apply for
tags and those tags would come out of the whole quota,
which you could argue, well, that's less opportunities for me,
But I think it's a really good management tool, and.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
I think landowner isn't it has a better chance of
getting the tag.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
Is that what you're saying? No, But if they apply,
they could get those tags taken out of the one
hundred and eighty seven. So if you have three thousand
acres in North Florida and you got bears all over it,
you can apply for the private landowner tags now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:42):
But they wouldn't go in the draw.

Speaker 3 (01:13:44):
They would have to is it their own draw?

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:13:48):
I think they still have to go through the draw process.
But if they got drawn, it would come out of that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
But I mean, I'm not understanding. I feel like there's
something else you're saying. Because if me and a landowner
with ten thousand acres put in, I would have the
same odds as drawn as him.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
That's the way I understand it work. But I can
get you a clarification on that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Yeah, I mean I thought maybe you were saying there
with those guys were given a preference.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
No, they're not giving a preference. They're not giving a preference.
But I think what will happen is we'll see that
program grow out over the time and so this first
year we may see someone in a private landowners take
some of those on hundred and eighty seven tacks as
through an application process. I would think arguably they're going
to have a higher success rate because they got feeders
and they've got private land. This man is different. You

(01:14:31):
don't have the romping stamp of people like driving their
cheeks and riding horses. But then long term, I think
we'll see a private land program.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
Man, I'm all for it. See anybody that is like man,
the private land guys getting any kind of a preference
over non private land, I'm not for it. And I
don't own big properties.

Speaker 3 (01:14:51):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
But if I owned four thousand acres in Florida and
I got bear, it's just crawling with bears. Give me
an incentive exactly to not gut shoot those bears with
a twenty two rifle, which that's very crass and I
don't even.

Speaker 3 (01:15:07):
Like to say, but it's a shut up, right, Like, Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
It happens all the time in places where there's no
season and there's no outlet for.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
Management of that species. That's right. And oh, you've got
an animal that's destructive. You said he's curious. He's destructive
to I don't know that they would take a cap,
but I know they take goats and cheap and things
like that. Like they will opportunistically take livestock. They'll destroy
fences and sheds and barns and like they just we
had our first fatality from a bear.

Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
I was going to bring that up. Do you think
that was part of the what helped push this hunt over?
You don't think you had anything they had anything to
do with it. Tell me about that fatality.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
When was it? This was in May so so the
commission meeting, I don't remember the dates. May was kind
of a blurb. But the commission meeting, it was like
two weeks before the FBC Commission meeting, we had we
had a guy. He lives in the Everglades and the bear.
The details have not been released fully so so the
report's not out there yet. But the agency calls it
a predatory attack. Wow. So it's a really sad situation.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
And was it was it in his neighborhood or was
it out in the wild.

Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
It was he kind of lived remotely, so uh, he
lived in like a like a for lack of a
better term, I called an in holding, like like he
lived in the woods. It killed his dog and it
killed him. They and the agency ended up killing three
bears in reaction to that, to that attack, and it
was it was there. I have heard it is some

(01:16:33):
of the grizzliest stuff that people have ever seen. Wow,
like really yeah, unsettling. The photos and the I haven't
seen them, but it was unsettling.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
So black bear, it's pretty it's pretty interesting. On average,
like one American gets killed a year by black bear.

Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
Really on average, I.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
Want to say three or four on average get killed
by grizzlies, which is super interesting because the grizzly home
the range of grizzlies is three percent of what the
range of black bears is. On average, reported black bear

(01:17:17):
attacks over the last like sixty years, there's like thirteen
documented black bear what they would consider an attack on humans.
So and this is general data. One death, thirteen attacks. Wow,
a lot of stuff doesn't go reported. Like my friend
Moe Shepherd who got charged by salve black bear and

(01:17:41):
punched it in the face with his bow and kicked
it in the teeth, and like it didn't hurt him,
Like that wasn't considered an attack.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
It wasn't.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
It didn't counted like if it's if there's contact, Well
there was contact in that one, but point bing. There's
a lot more skirmishes that happen, but actual attacks where
somebody gets malled. Statistically, the people that get attacked are
people that have dogs because they go for the dog. Well,
the dog goes for the bear. If you've got a

(01:18:13):
leash dog, it's actually better. But if you have an
unleashed dog, like I don't want to say the percentage,
but a vast a lot of those thirteen attacks that
are going to happen by a dog is running loose.
You're just walking down a trail. Your dog sees the
bear before you goes in barks at the bear. The

(01:18:35):
bear turns on the dog, and the dog goes, oh crap.
The dog runs back to you. The bear follows the
dog right back to you and attacks you. Yep, So
the the consistent theme inside of attacks is dogs, which
people actually usually would think a dog would be protecting

(01:18:57):
them from the bear. Right, But that's why people are
getting attacked. And then, but the most deaths are from
predatory attacks, usually juvenile males, and they literally are when
a bear is stalking people. You know, there's a way
that they categorize a predatory attack. It's not like a surprise.

(01:19:18):
It's not a salad defending her cubs. Salad defending her
cubs is not gonna kill you. She's just gonna eradicate
those you're sure in the threat, in the threat, and
as soon as she can get away from it, she's
going to So you're gonna get whooped on a little bit,
but you very unlikely she's gonna kill you. The one
that's gonna kill you is a three year old male

(01:19:39):
that you're walking down a trail and all of a
sudden you look back thirty yards and he's following you,
just like walking, looking at you, making an eye contact,
lowered head, and you start walking faster and he starts
walking faster, and I mean that that's a bear that
will kill you. And what happens. It's happened several times, uh,

(01:20:01):
where basically a bear starts coming around somebody's house, like
an inn holding where they're you know, just like this
lone house out in the woods somewhere, and a bear
just starts coming around, coming around, getting more more familiar
with who's there, what's going on, and pretty soon that
bear has killed somebody. There was a story, uh believe

(01:20:21):
in California a couple of years ago, I mean in
modern times, in the last decade, where a bear was
just coming around this lady's house. She she called it
the she she actually called it the big old B
A S T A R D. That's what she called it.
I don't want to say the word. Uh did I

(01:20:42):
spell it right?

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:20:43):
Yeah, y'all looking at you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:45):
We're gonna have a caption on the bottom.

Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
She called she called 's what she called it. All
her family knew, you know, he's here, the big B word.
That's like her broken her window ate that woman in
her house. Oh my, yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (01:21:03):
Very rare.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
I mean, yeah, you've got a much You shouldn't be
afraid of black bears. You really shouldn't, but it does happen.
Right anyway, I was going to ask you about that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
You give them a name like that, If you give
it a name like that, just expect to get attacked.

Speaker 3 (01:21:20):
Yeah, be more respectful of your names. Right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
Another dynamic of the black bear situation in America, and
it's happening in Florida, is never before in history has
there been so much overlap with black bears and humans.
Never in history. We've got more black bears today that
we've had in the last two hundred years. And what
was the American population two hundred years ago, I mean

(01:21:52):
probably like ten million, twenty million, maybe today we've got
three in a thirty million. And it's like j curving,
you know, the so never before in history. So this
idea that you'd think, like the American bear story is
kind of this old like Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett deal,
you know, those are the guys that you know, had

(01:22:13):
these overlaps with bears. They didn't have nothing compared to
what we got today.

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
You know, it's funny you say that too. I want
to not to hijack where you're going there, but going
back to like the conservation success, like you said, when
when vodka got there, De Soto got there, there were
probably eleven thousand bears prior to that. Then we went
into this massive slump. And now we have twenty two
and a half million people in this state, and we

(01:22:41):
got over four thousand bears.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
You got almost a third of them.

Speaker 3 (01:22:44):
We have not half of We're almost back to where
like and we've grown and I mean none of what's
in Florida existed when they set foot there, right, And
we've the species and so we talk about what's wrong
in conservation all the time. Leopold talked about the world
of wounds that we live in. You see all the
problems in reality, that's pretty good, man, Like the species
has been restored to such a place that we could

(01:23:06):
take some of them as a sustainable, renewable, yeah resource,
and they likely are continuing to grow. We're continuing to
study them. Like that's yes.

Speaker 1 (01:23:14):
If one hundred years ago you you you said, okay,
one day there's gonna be twenty two million people in Florida.
All these people are gonna have a place to live,
All these resources are gonna be extracted. There's gonna be roads.
You don't know much about roads two hundred years ago,
but there's gonna be pavement on them. Let's pavement, right.

Speaker 3 (01:23:28):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
And you would have said, what's gonna happen to the bears.

Speaker 3 (01:23:33):
They're gonna be gone.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
You would think they're gonna be completely gone. And it
is still a little bit of a mystery how bears
have done so well. I mean, we do know that
the magic that populations, I mean, it's it's like white
tailed deer, like disturbed landscapes produce more more vegetation, more feed,

(01:24:00):
potentially more cover even at times than undisturbed landscapes. So
just like white tailed deer, there there are twice as
many white tailed deer today in America as there was
pre European settlement. I mean, they say, and I don't
know what the new numbers.

Speaker 3 (01:24:13):
Are, because they thrive with disturbance ecology.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
One hundred percent. And they're they're they're animals of the edges,
and so we've created exponential amounts of edges compared to
what would have been here pre European settlements, so white
tailed deer have gone. Bear kind of fit into that
same category. They're not quite like deer. They don't cone
in on the ecological niches. But disturbance to the landscape
has has produced success. And the thing that a bear

(01:24:39):
can do that a deer can't is bears have learned
how to use anthrogenic foods to their advantage. So in
these urban centers and and even even in rural places
like Arkansas, bears are capitalizing on some man made food
and agricultural areas. Their man made food is skyrocketing and
so it but it's still kind of a history. It's

(01:25:00):
still like, wait a minute, why are bears doing so well?
And this is a stat that's in the academic literature
and has been for a decade plus, is that every
research population of bears in North America is increasing or
stable period. I mean, what other population of hunted animals,

(01:25:26):
big game animals could you say that about. I mean,
there's plenty of things that are doing well. I'm not
but every population study, and the reason they say studied
population is because they haven't really studied every population to
the extent of others. Because if you have a limited
amount of resources in your game agency. And there are

(01:25:48):
bears everywhere, and you got you know, the bob black
quail that's about to struggling kick the bucket, like you're
putting a lot of energy towards here. They're kind of
like this is particularly what I There is a lot
of bear research that goes on in Canada, but it's
almost like, hey, the bears are fine, let's study caribou.
Do you kind of see what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:26:08):
Yeah, So like I gotta put your money where you
think it's gonna.

Speaker 1 (01:26:11):
And and and bears are one of the most research
big game animals in North America, if not the most
researched animal in North America. I mean, like incredible amount
of research. But all that to say they're thriving.

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
You said something else a minute ago too that as
you're talking now, reminded me you talked about them being
a game species when I asked you that question, and
that we fund research. We I've run through this. In
Florida a few years back, they wanted to close a
fishing pier over pelicans on it, and I said, well,
what's our what's our mortality rate on pelicans? What's compenstory.
What's additive, Like I'm I'm I'm a I'm a hunter,

(01:26:45):
Like we should know these well, we don't have the
money to study them like that because they're not a
game species. They're not they're not regulated in that way,
they're not managed that way. We're versus game species. We
know those details inside and out. Like I can go
down the list of ducks and turkeys and yeah, I
mean we can get into it on what really is
happening with those species. Bear fit into that, and that's

(01:27:06):
where hunters fit into this conversation. Right. We've been paying
for that for a long long time and we're going
to continue to pay for it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:12):
Yeah, So Walk may ride up to last week when
this is hot off the press, Walk may ride up
to the commission meeting and tell me what happened.

Speaker 3 (01:27:25):
Yeah, so we The commission meeting was in a little
town called Havana, Florida. You ever heard of Havana. I've
heard of Havana, Cuba. It's not near that. It's about
twenty minutes outside of Tallahassee. It is where the one
thing f to BC does I've alluded to this early
they moved around the state, so that it's not it's
not always in Orlando, and you got to go there.
It's not always in Tallhassee and you got to go there. Havana.

(01:27:48):
The facility didn't cost taxpayer much because it's the law
enforcement training facility, so we had a kind of a
cheap facility to use there. We coordinated in advance. A
lot of the hunting groups ordated in advance of Hey,
we need to make sure we packed this room. I
don't love that game because I don't think that should matter.
How many people are in attendance in their area should

(01:28:08):
not matter. Science should drive wild like Paulic. But there's
a social science game a foot there. And so we
showed up in mass Like I mentioned earlier, the dog
hunting community. That's obviously a dog hunting stronghold the North
Florida world, but we had folks drive from South Florida.
I mean there were guys there from around the state.
The dog hunters largely wore orange. So when you looked

(01:28:30):
at the room, like, I can send you some pictures,
but when you look at the room like, it's just
a sea of orange in that room. Wow, Sierra Club
bust people in. They had three bus locations around the state.
One I think in Daytona, one in Tampa, and one
somewhere south, and they bust people to the event to
speak in opposition to the to the hunt and staff

(01:28:51):
came up there, gave presentation. It was the same presentation
they had in May. And because they bring it, they
bring it to May for approval as a draft, and
then they give some time for people to kind of
and we had one no vote in May who flipped
devoted just this time. One commister voted no in May
and he flipped and voted yes this time. He didn't
understand think it was dogs was one of his concerned
dogs in bait. So we got to we got to

(01:29:14):
you know, the staff did the presentation. Then they allow
public comment and bye. By rule they say they're going
to allow two hours for public comments and you typically
get three minutes per person. Well, we had one hundred
and seventy people sign up, so what are you gonna do.
What they did is they gave every person a minute. See,
I mean it's hard, you got to consolidate your three
minutes down to a minute, but you get to go

(01:29:35):
up there say your piece. And they made sure every
person got to speak in that room. Really. Oh yeah,
and I get that recorded. It is, it is, it'd
be an interesting thing. It is because I learned some
things one minute to speak man. I learned some things there.
That you could kill bears just by staring at him.
I did not know that that was. That was what
one of the anti hunters said. And I was like,

(01:29:56):
in DDE, now don't look at me, like that's dangerous
what you doing right now? Like they a lady walked
up there and she was determined that you could kill bears.
She could scare them to death just by staring at them.
We had another woman proposed that we that we hunt
white tail deer granted coon out of a tree, right,
so who knows? I'm interested in digging into that. Would

(01:30:17):
another person say that we could we should look at
a honety white tail deer. We've checked that box already.
Another woman offered to give money to the Wildlife Commission
directly if they would instead of a bear hunt, fund
a python hunt, which you can hunt pythons anytime in Florida.

Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
Oh yeah, there's been massive mass so like there was
just like people just didn't know.

Speaker 3 (01:30:41):
It was just a detachment from reality. That was fostered
in and it's it's the people we were talking about
a minute ago. I don't think those people, Like I'm
kind of poking fun out, but I don't think those
people are probably bad people. If you could sit down
and have a conversation and be like the eye lady,
I'm not sure how to even start that one, But
like the other ones, I'm like, man, we hunt white
tail deer. That's a game species that we've hunted for

(01:31:02):
since we've been hunting. Yeah, it's just like a detachment.
And so they're picking up on a narrative. And I
sat next to a girl. It was from Sierra Club
and she said, can I ask you some questions? I
said sure, And she said, this is a trophy hunt, right,
And I'm like, well, no, it's not a trophy hunt.
I said, trophy hunting is like a missed omer. Secondly,

(01:31:23):
no one trophy hunts anything in Florida. Like we have
wanting waste balls and everything else. Like, you're not coming
here to trophy hunt a deer. You know you're coming
here because you want to hunt, you taking the meat
and everything else. I was like, this is not a
trophy hunt. You could just tell she'd kind of been misled.
She had a tender heart for bears. She probably is
never going to go hunt. But you know, I don't
know if I changed her mind or anything else, but

(01:31:43):
it was it was the conversation you're talking about, right,
And I looked around the room and you see people
around the room having those conversations where people are sitting
next to you.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
You feel like the guys in Orange did a good
job of interacting with the Sierra, and I realized that
there was some that didn't didn't Probably.

Speaker 3 (01:31:59):
I'm gonna say that this is a Polk County redneck.
There is the Pole County redneck, and then the probably
the conservationist hunter. That's a little more some of the
Pole County redneck types maybe not so much. But I
was really proud of how the hunting community showed up
and conducted themselves. When you got one minute on a subject,

(01:32:19):
that spend this teased out for this long. Like those
commissioners are briefed like they are in Florida. The commissioners
are appointed by the governor. They oversee the they vote
on the rules. The scientists present the rules, so the
science are saying, here, here's what we think the hunt
can be. The commission asked questions and dig into it
a little bit, but they vote on whether or not

(01:32:39):
we approve this recommendation. So seven of them man to
stay engaged that long for three hours, listening to person
after person is tough.

Speaker 2 (01:32:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:32:49):
What we did as a honey community is we went
to it and everybody did this. We went to our
people and said, look, if you're here and you're representing
meat eater, you're here and you represent BHA or whatever,
sure go up there and fly the flag. But if
you got fifteen people here, have the other fourteen of
them just stand up and say I wave and support.
There's no reason to labor this. Yes. Yes, So the
one hundred and seventy comments probably became one hundred and

(01:33:11):
twenty people going to a microphone, which also it did
force that number that time limit down. That wasn't intentional,
but it did force that time limit down because those
people all waved in support of this hunt. Really proud
of how that was handled, and it was handled in
a very organic I don't know everybody in the hunting community.
You know, you go to the girls were there from

(01:33:33):
American Daughters Conservations, this group we have down there of women, hunters, fishermen.
They showed up in mass They made sure that everybody
they talked to they went and said, hey, make sure
you wave and support if you don't want to go
to the microphone, and so you just stand up where
you worry. You didn't even go to the mic and record,
like your name's already up there, literally your hands, Hey,
I wave and support, sit back down. And that was
really well received I think by the Commission because it

(01:33:54):
was respectful of their time. We had a long day.
We had a lot of stuff to work on. I mean,
there were other conservation issues we had to tackle besides bears.
And that the next day, you and I played fone
tag because I was I was in and out working
on oysters and shrimp and bonefish and stuff that day.
The hunting community, that was a high point. I mean,
it was a really proud moment for me. Yeah, And

(01:34:16):
it was a really proud moment for me because I
look at I look at the broader hunting conservation world.
And in the last year, we beat back Prop one
twenty seven in Colorado, we beat back this Mike Lee
public land sale. We passed the right to fish and
hunting in Florida, which no one thought we would do.
We just re established a bear hunt in Florida. What
was it two years ago? They re established a bear hunt.

(01:34:38):
Louisian like. It's easy for us to sit back and say, man,
we are getting our butts whooked, but in fact we're
drawing some pretty strong lines in the sand and saying
we're reclaiming some of this ground for conservation, not just hunting.
I don't talk about hunting as much as I talk
about conservation. That's the verb that I use, or the
now that I used to describe it, because that's the

(01:34:59):
that's the activity that I care the most about, is
conserving wildlife and conserving these things. I just happen to
want to do it with shotgun. So really a high
water moment. The commissioners, I think they asked good questions
about they'll call staff back up at the end and
they'll dig in, you know, clarify what dogs mean, clarify

(01:35:21):
and sometimes it's something that maybe even somedd they've heard
from an anti hunter and they're like, she doesn't understand
it or he doesn't understand it. I want to ask
a question to clarify it so that it's on the
record as weird. People say, these dogs are going to
go in there and attack the bears and kill them.
That's not how this works. That's not the intention of
dog hunting. People say, because you if you get a

(01:35:41):
permit and you want a dog hunt, you're allowed to
bring nine people with you. They believe that all nine
people are going to or all ten people are going
to shoot at the same time. That's not how it's
going to work. Like you heard that over and over
again in comments. It's like, this is going to be
a firing squad on this bear. No, you guys know this,
but like that's and so the commissioners will tease out
those questions and asks like so what does this mean?

(01:36:02):
What does that mean? And some of it they really
were asking, and some of it they were asking to
clarify for the other side. Get done, and Commissioner Gary
Lester called for a vote. I think Commissioner Josh Kellum,
who's our new commissioner, he seconded it, and they said
let's vote, and it passed unanimously. All five of them
went for it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:22):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:36:22):
So and man, I command the courage of all five
of those commissioners in Florida for doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:36:29):
You know, it's sad to me that we've gotten to
a societal place where these groups, these anti hunting groups
have targeted their businesses because this is not their job.
They're by vocational right. They don't get paid at all,
they get reimbursed for travel. It's a huge job to
be are and so ten days a year, eight days
a year, they have to sit there and listen to again,

(01:36:50):
not just bears, not the sexy stuff. We spent two
hours on oysters the next day at how many we
could harvest in a bucket or something like. It's not
all the fun sexy stuff I love to eat ois.
But they sit there and they participate and they engage
well on it, and then we go and demonize them.
And there's two sides of that too, right, Like that's
another thing out of coming out of this is we

(01:37:11):
left that meeting and I heard people in the honey
community say, well, it was only one hundred and eighty
seven and it was only these zones, and we need
more and there's ten thousand bears, and say, guys, there's
a way that this works. And we're working really hard
to get as many bear permits as we can in
a sustainable way, like just check yourself where you wreck
yourself a little bit here, because we really are trying
to navigate these things that are hard to get them

(01:37:33):
done so that we can go out there and enjoy
the resources that we love and experience. For me, it's
never about killing an animal. It's about sitting in a
stand and watching the world wake up, or being with
my daughter, my son, or whoever you know. It's about
the camaraderie. And yeah, I love to hang stuff on
the wall and I love to eat the meat, but
it's really about the time that I get to spend outdoors,

(01:37:54):
and that's how I enter and exit it. It's carrying
a rifle or carrying a shotgun or carrying a fishing ball.
That's how I get in and out of it. So
it was a watermark moment. I was really proud of
those guys for standing strong. But there's people who have
targeted their businesses. They are protesting. There's one who owns
a car a lot in Tampa, So if you need
a car, go to buy one from him, because he
owns a car a lot in Tampa and he there's

(01:38:15):
people protesting in front of his business targeting him specifically.
And this is a guy that cares deeply about wildlife. Man,
did they are.

Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
There any other species that people are doing that in Florida?
I mean like protesting in the street. They're not worried
about oysters, They're not worried about white tailed they're.

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
Just bear bears. We get a lot of protests about developments.
People don't have a real good understanding of private property
rights and how that works in Florida, So we get
a lot of protests about developments. And then we see
a lot of protests around manatees.

Speaker 1 (01:38:46):
But I mean, nobody's you can't hunt.

Speaker 3 (01:38:48):
Manatees, it's not a thing, but it's a water quality manatees.
That's a whole other thing. But manatees are a large
grazing animal, Like there's a probably a carrying capacity for
how many of them can exist in this state. And
then we create more water discharges and we feed them
let us and we kind of artificially inflate it. And
you can get into some ecology of that. But there's
a lot of protests about manatees when they die off

(01:39:09):
and stuff like that, But bears are pretty much yet
and the same anti honey community. What we've seen them
move on now is archery. They've determined that archery is
is inhumane and so we should not be allowed to
archery hunt anymore. That's their next kind of ill to
die on. There's no traction there. We're talking about a
very small but very noisy, but very small group of people.

(01:39:29):
And then they've also started dabbling into coyote honeting. They
don't want. They don't want coyote honey. I don't know why.
Coyote's pretty sustainable resource. We got plenty of them, and
I'm not huge coyote hunter, but I've killed plenty of them.
From a predator management standpoint for turkeys or whatever. It
was a win.

Speaker 1 (01:39:57):
Should we expect more turbulence? Was there any thing legally
about this hunt that sets it in perpetuity for a
period of time.

Speaker 3 (01:40:04):
Nope, So it does not need to come back to
the commission.

Speaker 1 (01:40:06):
But I mean, are they gonna last time in fifteen
when we had a hunt, it was shut down the
next year because of public opinion and all the stuff
that happened after the hunt. Do you I don't think
that to happen again. Are we kind of over it?

Speaker 3 (01:40:20):
You're asking Travis's opinion, I'd say I think we're going
to be fine moving forward. Okay, I do think. Okay,
so they do, and you know more about this than
I do, but they do bear Den studies on a
on a generational cycle, right something to this effect, so
that every ten years they'll have new updated data. So
twenty twenty nine is when they'll have the latest real

(01:40:42):
population estimate for the state. We know that there's at
least four thousand bears in Florida, and we also know
that no matter what, this hunt's not going to change
that population, right right, Like this goes back to what
I said real early it could be five, could be
twenty five, or you remember when they re established ELK
in Tennessee, or they allowed seven to be taken, like

(01:41:03):
it could be like that. The one hundred and eighty
seven is such a it's a rounding error like it
is nothing. So we're gonna see bear populations continue to thrive,
and over time we're going to get better and better
data to go with that because we don't not have data.
We've got hair corral data and things like that. We
know in different they call them BMus Bear Management units.

(01:41:27):
In different BMus we know like some level of how
many bears are using a particular fence line or whatever,
so we know that that population is going to continue
to grow. We know that the hunt is going to
be very different from how it was last time, just
from the removal of check stations, doing digital check in,
doing the hard tag, allowing for selectivity, not forcing everybody

(01:41:48):
to hunt all at once. We know that those factors,
there's so many have changed. It's going to look very
different coming out of it. And then we do know
too that a lawsuit has already been filed by the
anti honeting world, but it got dismissed out right in
twenty fifteen, like they were sued at twenty fifteen for
the hunt and the case was dismissed. So I don't

(01:42:09):
want to be flipping about anything because you never know
what's going to happen on any given day. But I
just don't see any merit to that suit. Like FBC
is a not to get too far in the policy weeds,
but in most states you have a legislatively created body,
a statutorily created body, where I think Arkansas is actually
constitutionally as well. In Florida, FWBC was created by the constitution,

(01:42:32):
so they're almost like a de facto fourth You got
the executive, legislative, judicial, and a conservation branch. Now is
the crossover with the governor appointees and stuff. Sure there is,
And the legislature controls their budget, so they can force
them budgetarily to do certain things. But the end of
the day, FBC is an isolated body that's able to
kind of make their own determinations on this stuff. I

(01:42:54):
don't see how you win a lawsuit because they're constitutionally
in powered to manage fish and wildlife. Like if you
sue and say they breach their duty, well, their constitutional
duties to manage fish and wildlife, and it's a pretty
broad purview it's given to them. I just don't I
don't see that.

Speaker 2 (01:43:10):
Holy merit.

Speaker 3 (01:43:11):
Maybe you get the right judge and the right jurisdiction,
but I just don't see that.

Speaker 1 (01:43:14):
You know, when you when we talk about I think
I think the the narrative, the way that we speak
about hunting is important, and oftentimes you hear like there's
a bear population in Florida, there's a new bear hunt.
There's an expanding population, we're hunting them to control the population.
Like that's what people will say, But that's that's actually

(01:43:37):
not true because because the amount of bears that we're
taking out of Florida is basically going to be ecologically inconsequential,
it's insignificant. So what it comes down to really the
what people like us that love wildlife and love wild
places and love to eat wild game, what we believe

(01:43:59):
is that, I mean, the philosophy is that a hunter
should be able to take from the surplus of a
of a healthy population of animals and use that resource
from traditional use practice. I'm an American, I'm a eighth
ninth generation American. My family has been hunting for a

(01:44:23):
long time. I mean that, you know, there's all these
reasons why it's like you ought to be able to
hunt if it's not hurting anything. I mean, that's kind
of the philosophy. And that is absolutely the doctrine is like, hey,
if I can go out in my backyard and kill
a couple of deer and feed my family and it's
actually not hurting the population, I have the right to

(01:44:44):
do that. And and and that's what we're saying. Even
with bears, they're a game animal, they're they're an animal
that we eat. Animal that we utilize heavily a animal
that we have all this historic documentation on this continent.
Since we got here, we've been hunting bears. They're still here.
They're they're they're they're able to withstand human honting when
it's done in the right way, which clearly this is

(01:45:06):
a way that that is being done. So so could
could the volume be turned up, Could the throttle be
turned up to where the hunt actually did manage population numbers?
It could, and in many states it does.

Speaker 3 (01:45:21):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:45:22):
I mean there's there's lots of states where thousands of
bears are being killed and they're they're they're they're taken
them out of the population because that populations are that
big that you can't take a token one hundred and
eighty seven bearers out of Wisconsin and expect the population
to remain stable. I mean they're killing I want to say,

(01:45:42):
in some of those those those states, they're killing four
thousand bears a year. In Arkansas we're taking about five
hundred bears, uh, which is not very many. Really a
lot of a lot of Appalachian states they harvest a
lot of bears. But point being, I think it's important

(01:46:02):
that we be honest. I hear Rannelli's say this, and
it's I like it. He's like, we shouldn't say things
that aren't true, that make us that created a false narrative.
I mean, could we make the Florida bear hunt actually
affect the population? You absolutely could, you know, But this
is not that.

Speaker 3 (01:46:23):
This is not even that, And it's not to say
that they never because if you look at the BMU distribution,
there are BMus that have way more bears and BMus
that have way less bears. You want those BMus with
way less bears to continue to grow their population, while
you want to manage it in some of these others.
But I also think over time, we will begin to
apply more data to this and say, hey, we've got

(01:46:46):
more human bear conflicts in this BMU, or we're seeing
more interactions negatively in that BMU, Like we'll begin to
distribute the hunt differently to maybe address this. Maybe we
do want this this BMU to always be at a
thousand bears or whatever the thing is. And the other
thing that I heard you say that kind of stuck
would be something I say all the time. This is

(01:47:06):
truly and I can't stress this enough. I've said it
a couple of times, but this is truly conservation. Like
I say, conservation is seeking the proper use of a resource.
It's utilizing a resource correctly. We are about to utilize
a resource correctly that we haven't tapped into for a
long time for various reasons. And now I like to
say preservation is for delicious JEMs and jellies. That's nothing

(01:47:27):
to do with conservation. Give me a tool that we
use in certain situations, but by and large, conservation is
seeking how to use it correctly. That's everything we've talked
about here today, and that's everything we're talking about in general.
That's everything you talk about on every episode. You do
right ultimately, like you can get into the weeds, the
nuts and bolts of Turkey Juton or duck hunt or whatever,
but the end of the day, I want to make

(01:47:48):
sure that this resource is long term, sustainably able to
be used. And I'm really proud of wear Florida landed
on this, and I'm really proud of everybody that worked
on it because it is a I don't think people
outside the bear world understand how big of a movement
this was to get this done.

Speaker 1 (01:48:06):
Yeah, yeah, man, that's so cool. You said something there
we hadn't talked about. And I've got a data point
on bear human conflict. I remember in the last year
reading that there was and I'm going to say a
number and at for about six months. I could quote

(01:48:28):
the exact number. I've forgotten the exact number, but I'm
going to quote a number. Five thousand, nine hundred and
sixty six bear calls the state of Florida received in
baar nuisance complaints in a single year. Wow, like in
twenty three, yeah, or twenty two back, but it was

(01:48:50):
somewhere in the fifty nine hundred range.

Speaker 3 (01:48:52):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:48:53):
And I did the math on it, and that's one
bear call for every fifteen minutes of a working day.

Speaker 3 (01:49:02):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:49:03):
And basically the state of Florida. And I don't I
don't know that all those calls go into the same place,
but theoretically they would, they would, They could hire one
person that as a full time All they did every
day for a forty hour work week, from the time
they got there to the time they left, was field

(01:49:25):
calls of people saying, A bears in my trash can,
A bears eating my flowers, A bear killed chase my dog,
A bear did this or that. I mean in Arkansas,
I want to say we're getting like under two hundred
conuisance bear calls a year. Wow, Florida pushing six thousand. Yeah,

(01:49:51):
it has to do with the population. There's twenty two
million people there. Yeah, people, right, and there's that much,
that many roads, that many people, A burgeoning bear population.
I bet there's I bet they're right on there's more
than four thousand bears if you were waging I bet
it's more.

Speaker 3 (01:50:08):
I read. I read in the twenty nineteen report we
euthanize forty a year. Okay, so one percent of the
population we kill a year, just as nuisance bears. And
that's on average.

Speaker 1 (01:50:21):
I bet, I bet there's I bet there's a lot
more than that. And what I learned I've just seen
this with bear bare numbers is that the agencies are
usually pretty conservative on bearers, conservative very so they're there
if they say there's four thousand, there's probably more than that,
but if they don't have the actual data, Like so,

(01:50:41):
the way that they're doing bear population studies today is yeah,
they're using bear bears, hair snares Josh to put up
a bait station, put barbed wire up about twenty inches
or however long, put it around so a bear has
either step over it or crawl under it, and there's
barbed wire and it catches hair. And basically they do

(01:51:05):
they'll take like a grid of habitat let's say ten
square miles, and they'll put five bear hair snare traps
in that ten square miles. They will take all the
hair samples genetically analyze it to understand exactly how many

(01:51:26):
individual bears came to those traps in that ten square miles.
Then they will analyze the habitat in that ten square miles.
This is a generalization of how they do this. And
they'll say, well, we have a thousand other ten square
mile blocks that the habitat is similar, and we know

(01:51:46):
there's bears there. We're going to extrapolate it. And they
do this like checkerboarded across the bear habitat and they go, well,
in this ten square block ten square miles, we've got
seventeen bears, We've got this many soals and this many cubs.
And then the block twenty seven miles away has the

(01:52:06):
same numbers, and they go every block in between there
probably has the same. Basically, they get a really good.

Speaker 3 (01:52:13):
Look at.

Speaker 1 (01:52:15):
How bad you know, population dynamics of bears. Yes, that's
how they do it now. Used two they were doing
like they were using hunter harvest, not necessarily in Florida,
but another place they were using hunter harvest numbers. I
told the story, Well they covered it on the Medior podcast,
but in California for years they used hunter harvest numbers

(01:52:38):
to decide the population. Basically, they were like, whatever the
hunters kill, we've probably got x number more bears than that,
and so as long as we're killing two thousand bears
a year, we probably got twenty thousand bears and we're okay.
Well then they they gutted the management practices of Californias bait.

Speaker 3 (01:53:00):
Yeah, and so all you could do is like.

Speaker 1 (01:53:02):
Spotting stock bears, which is very difficult. And so they
started killing like a thousand bears a year in California.
And then the anti hunting community, god bless them, they
were like, the bears are in crisis because we tell
our numbers of bears about how many bears are killing,
they're not killing very many. Oh, we got to shut
the whole hunt down. Yeah, this is not a joke.

(01:53:24):
This happened and then the game and fish is like,
oh my gosh, this is not true. This is crazy.
We got to do a real study. They do a
hair they do a modern hair, simple study, and they
find out that there's between sixty and eighty thousand bears
in California. I mean, it's a wild story, but uh

(01:53:45):
but yeah, just it'll be interesting to see the numbers
in Florida.

Speaker 3 (01:53:49):
It'll be really interesting to see the numbers in Florida.
And I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm a Florida boy through
and through. So I think, Man, I think our wildlife
agency is top notch and I really trust them implicitly.
Like bears weren't under We have a we have an
HGM Hunting and Game Management Division, and then we have
Habitat and Species Conservation, which is not honting. That's all

(01:54:12):
non game and lands. Bears were under HSC and now
it's becoming a it's going back under hunting. So but
that HSC division, like that team has just they're incredible,
Like I trust them implicitly with the science that they
produced and the science that will continue to produce, They're
going to get it right. And there's nobody in Florida

(01:54:32):
that's affiliated with this, that that wants to see bear
numbers decline at this point, like we want to see
them survive and thrive. This is a win, dude, this
is where we want to be. Yeah, so I'm I'm
over the moon where we're at.

Speaker 1 (01:54:50):
I think it's the longest burgers we were had.

Speaker 3 (01:54:52):
I think.

Speaker 1 (01:54:53):
So we've been talking for two hours. No, that's been
I've loved Memphis.

Speaker 2 (01:54:58):
Everything about this is moment.

Speaker 1 (01:55:00):
Yeah, no, this this is really really great. Well, man,
is there anything we've not covered you want to cover?

Speaker 3 (01:55:08):
No? I think I think we can we How can
we help you?

Speaker 1 (01:55:10):
Guys?

Speaker 3 (01:55:10):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:55:10):
Who should we? What? Is there a call to action
for for us outside of Florida?

Speaker 3 (01:55:15):
Not not right now, there's not.

Speaker 2 (01:55:17):
I mean we send anybody a thank you card.

Speaker 3 (01:55:19):
The Honey community writ large like whoever, whoever it is
you love in the Honey community that I don't I
don't care what group it is. They all like showed
up and showed out on this.

Speaker 1 (01:55:30):
I would I would like to when I think about
a hunt and in these hunters who I considered my brothers,
going out and going to harvest one hundred and eighty
seven bears.

Speaker 3 (01:55:41):
This fall.

Speaker 1 (01:55:42):
Man, I I just want I just hope everybody's just
like the culture is just on their best behavior.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
Do your best yea, yeah, you know your best.

Speaker 1 (01:55:52):
And and I think I think that as as a
hunting culture and as a as a as kind of
a tribe, that we can we can ask that of people,
and and I and and you know specifics would be like,
you know, be tasteful and respectful on social media when
you're posting these pictures. And in in somebody listened to

(01:56:15):
this podcast, maybe maybe they learned something. I learned something.
But man, for for for us to be able to
for a hunter to kill a bear and him to
actually understand bear management, understand a little bit about bears,
understand some of the things we've talked about today goes
a long ways. Like even in a social media post,
to be like, man, I got this bear, and and

(01:56:37):
and I love posting pictures on social media.

Speaker 2 (01:56:39):
I do.

Speaker 1 (01:56:40):
There's been times when we'd be like, don't put any
gripping grins on man, I still do. No, we own
what we do, and but but to to be able
to to have the words, to be able to articulate
the philosophy of why we do what we do with
the tenor of respect to that animal, to wild places
to conserve, and even inside in a set in a

(01:57:03):
tone that would be sympathetic to someone who wouldn't understand. Now,
And I'm not saying you know, change who you are.
It's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying, we can't
be mad at somebody for not knowing. We can't be
mad at somebody. And I'm speaking to myself, Yeah, I can't.
I can't be upset with that person because they just

(01:57:24):
don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:57:26):
It is critical how we handle this. Florida hunters, how
they handle this, or out of state hunters if they come,
how we how we present this will determine what future
rhetoric looks like. Right, and hunting is not the mainstream
thing it once was. You guys immediator have talked about
this for a long time, but it's not the mainstream.

(01:57:48):
I mean again, I'll refer back to stars in the Sky.
I think Riddella said that in the fifties, like four
percent of America hunted, or it was, it was a
high number. In Florida, we got twenty two andred million
people in two hundred and fifty thousand Honting mices. I mean,
that's a fingernail on that state, which is why the
right to fish and hunt was so important to us
to protect that. But that's just a backstop, like how

(01:58:08):
we conduct ourselves, how we behave in this world. And
again I'm not saying I'm saying the same thing you are.
I'm not saying you don't post a dead animal. I'm
not saying you don't. But the way you talk about
it and the way you post it, the way you
present it, I'll say, selfishly makes my job way harder
to go into rooms and try to move needles on
getting things like this reopened. Man, it could be a

(01:58:31):
tremendous help. And and again the honey community has handled
themselves beautifully through this entire process, Like they've done it.
If I'd have asked for them to do it, if
I could have just gone to everyone, I'm gon said
hit this out, wants you to do it, this is
how they would have done it. So I'm really proud
of where we are. We continue that going. There's no
telling what else we can get done, and not just
in Florida, but but Nashally. I think there's a whole

(01:58:54):
lot of stuff we can get done. That is hunting,
pro hunting, but pro concert. That's gonna it's gonna help
keep this stuff that we care about.

Speaker 1 (01:59:02):
While Yeah, well Travis, thank you so much for coming.
Travis had like three when do we talk Friday?

Speaker 3 (01:59:09):
Uh yeah, Thursday, Friday, Thursday, it was it was maybe
Thursday afternoon.

Speaker 1 (01:59:13):
Oh yeah, Travis came here and just like super short notice.
So thanks a ton man, Thanks for all your work.

Speaker 3 (01:59:18):
For real.

Speaker 1 (01:59:19):
I know you guys probably don't get a lot of
pats on the back, but you should. I mean, often
the thank yous goes to people that didn't have anything
to do with it, like people that you know are
are I just think about I had nothing to do
with this.

Speaker 3 (01:59:34):
Well this this has something to do with it, and
we appreciate it. But there, like I said, there was
nobody that didn't. It's like you look at a football team.
I'll watch sports football team. He pay praise a wide receiver,
the quarterback, running back, whatever. That guy's not snapping the
ball in the middle, or that right guards not holding
the blindman off like nothing's happening. The defense didn't come

(01:59:54):
out there and play special team like it takes a
complete team to get this stuff done. Everything that we
get done, it takes a complete team, so every everybody
gets to play a part, and it's it's just an
honor to be on that team.

Speaker 1 (02:00:04):
What's the name of your your organization all Florida. So
it's A L L F L A dot O. That's
your that's just your organization US.

Speaker 3 (02:00:13):
Yeah. Yeah. And but then you work for International Order
of Theodore Roosevelt. Okay, so that's t DASH Roosevelt dot org.
I believe, is there, Carol. So those are great organizations
that that I'm really proud of. And in Florida, there's
not a room that we're not in when it comes
to hunting, fishing, conservation stuff like like we are. We
have somebody in just about every room that's that's incredible.

(02:00:34):
So we're we're really proud of that and we love
we love that place. So hopefully you guys will come
down here. Man, I bear Turkey, really dear to my heart,
come hunted duck. But we can figure it out.

Speaker 1 (02:00:46):
Yeah, we appreciated, man, Josh, come down there, fly fishing brother.
Ah Well, I'm in thank you all for having me
keep the wild place as wild because that's where the
bears Living. We need a big corridor right through floor.

Speaker 3 (02:01:00):
That's right

All Episodes

Ep. 357: Render - All About The Florida Bear Hunt

Episode Transcript

Host

Clay Newcomb

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.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. 357: Render - All About The Florida Bear Hunt