Ep. 390: Special Conversation with Hal Herring of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers

This week, Cal catches up with Hal Herring at the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Rendezvous. Hal is the host of the Podcast & Blast Podcast, and he may be the only man in the country who knows as much as Cal about public lands, conservation, and what we need to do to protect the wild places we love. Give it a listen, and while you're at it, subscribe to BHAs Podcast & Blast.

This episode was recorded by the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Podcast & Blast, hosted by Hal Herring.

Connect with Cal and MeatEater

To learn more and get involved with any Cal to Action, click here.

Cal on Instagram and Twitter

MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips

Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube

Shop Cal's Week in Review Merch

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
From Meat Eaters World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
This is Cowl's Week in Review with Ryan cow Callahan.
Here's Cal. Hello, everybody, hell herring.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm at Rendezvous back Country Hunters and Anglers Rendezvous in Missoula, Montana,
June fifteenth, and I am with Ryan Callahan.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I told him I was going to say he was
a man who needs no reintroduction. He's not like a wolf.
I've been reintroduced. He's been reintroduced to his natural habitat.
I like the idea of that. And what location Where
would they put you? Yeah? I think they put me
somewhere like like down on the Tongue River. Oh thereat season.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Yeah, yeah, he goes you breeding by nightfall, and then
we may have to put some controls on him.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, stealing and breeding. Yeah kidding, we'll.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Running run a trap line.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
But yeah, man, uh so, I guess everybody knows who
you are. Introduce yourself, yeah, Ryan Callahan, Cal, uh boy,
I've been being I've been around back country hunters and
anglers for.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
A long time.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
And I am the director of conservation over at Meat
Eater host Cal's Week in Review podcast, and that director
of Conservation title allows me to spend a bunch of
time on b h A work as the North American
board chair of these days, and work with a lot

(01:53):
of other conservation groups out there, you know, working on
on the habitat issues and the access issues and the
hunting rights issues and seeing where we can help out
from the kind of meat eater awareness megaphone and try
to find some some funding and do some fundraising and

(02:16):
you know, just see see where we can help from
a from a for profit business side of things.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
And right now I don't.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
I thought it was smart, like a few months ago
when I kind of like really formally integrated my nonprofit
working with my paycheck work. And now I'm like, boy,
that's not that smart, because this ship never ends.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
How right, Well, my first question to you is, Cow,
what the heck are we gonna do? I was, and
I just remember so long ago I was doing some
lands with wilderness characteristic stuff out eastern Montana and I

(03:03):
ran into you.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Were you already working at First Light? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, and you knew exactly what I was talking about
when you and I I'm not gonna name.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
It, but chunks of BLM.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, And and I was all of a sudden, like
I got this whole insight as to where this place was.
I had been there, camped out for a few days,
and I came back. We were in great Falls at
the Sipping Dick. That's right, right, Yeah, And I mentioned
this to you, and you go, well, you go there,
so and so, and this is who owns the land
contiguous to it, remember that.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, anyway, I was highly impressed you had done some
mule deer guiding or something there.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, antalope and and then just yeah, running the bird
dog and back in those times and earlier, obviously that
was just a wild place. Like it was big high
prairie yep. And you know, nobody had a real reason

(03:59):
to go up there.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
And that was true even when I was doing that.
It was twelve maybe twenty twelve, because it was.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Just cattle country and it was full chock full antelope
in those days.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
And yeah, and that was so it might have been
before twenty eleven, then till twenty eleven.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
They went down. Then they came way back up later.
I mean it crazied.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yeah, yeah, you know the winner of twenty eleven Up
there was really wild.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
It was also like drought times and yeah, yeah, b
and and so yeah, I mean it took a certain
type of person to see the beauty in it, you.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Know, right, but it has a it's a real sage
bunch of grass ecosystem. Though.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
You get up on some of those buttes.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
When there is a little water in the ground and
you'll see you'll see what the great American prairie, sage
brush prairie looked like.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yes, exactly, yeah, yeah, and yeah yeah, like that kind
of like that sagebrush sea type of yep. Stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
But yeah, back back in those days, you know, you
had tough, tough locals who uh probably thought often that
they would rather be someplace else, yep, but didn't know
how to do that, right, And so they're just here.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Right, there's some of those, and then they're working through
the tough time, that's right, you know. Then I met
some of them that would they had gone other places
and had come back and they're never leaving again.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
That was further south though, like like down in the breaks.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, people raising their families, like in the one of
the freest places in the world, but you got to
pay because there's eight cows to a section and exactly yeah,
and then what did it make money one one out
of five years and the other before you got to carry.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
And that right there is one of the conversations I've
been having on these public land sales.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah yeah, people are like, is two million acres a lot?
Yeah yeah, let's go to that right now.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
So so this is this is you and I both
are well versed in this topic. But you you have
been front and center in this, like you tell me,
driving around with the radio off thinking about it, right,
And so there is there is a belief somehow amongst
these people who are not directly connected to this, that
there's this treasure trove of real estate just waiting to

(06:28):
be unlocked by the likes of Mike Lee or Ken Ivory,
who once said that American public lands, the privatization of
American public lands was like having your hands on the
lever of a new Louis Louisiana purchase.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
In other words, he was he was ready to take it.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
He didn't he didn't want to go to war with anybody,
which we did and paid in blood and treasure and whatever,
fifteen million dollars in gold. He's not done by that,
he was, meaning he's gonna pull the lever and it's
gonna be him and his friends taking it from us.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Right.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
That always blew my mind because when he when he
said that, he was quoted everywhere with that, and I
was like, well, we went to war as a nation,
like like they assaulted the palace at Chapultepec in Mexico City.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
For that, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:18):
I mean there was terrible, terrible attrition of both of
Ores and the Mexicans over.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
That Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Yes, and here's a guy
saying that he's just gonna take it. I was just
I've never gotten over that anyway, continue with you. We
take it because it's not doing anything. Yes, it's not
doing anything. It's just it's just uh Escalante.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Uh, it's it's just you know the sagebrush sea where
everybody antelope punts and small ranchers make their living.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah, and and folks like that looking out there and say,
these jackasses don't know how to make money.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Off of this. Right, I'll show you again. The land's
not doing anything, right, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
But to kind of go back to what you said, right,
it's like takes eight sections per colclf pair. That's something
that maybe by design people do not understand, right, what
they know is their backyard, and how do we elevate
these things to backyard issues? But you know, an acre

(08:25):
in Florida, you can raise a hell of a lot
of cattle in Florida for a reason.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
Coleman County, Alabama is probably two a u ms for acre.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
If you own a good year, right.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
That's I mean, that's a high density, high return.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
It's great.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
The Shenandoah Valley right, the west can be like that
here and there, very very small areas.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
In good years.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
But by and large, it takes a lot of space
to raise any thing, and.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
In most years you can't.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
In most years you can't. And that's why we have
biological diversity.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
It's like certain things hung out. The white tailed deer
likes to hang out in that one mile one square
mile zone. If it can, it'll do its whole life
right there. The American buffalo not the same, nope, Right,
And the American buffalo wasn't you know, thriving in fringe

(09:32):
habitat around you know, the capital of the United States.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
So when people are like, Okay, how do I contextualize
this sale?

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Like what does it mean? Right? And let's tell what
we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
So Senator Mike Lee has shoehorned a is it a rider?

Speaker 2 (09:55):
It's not. I mean, it's just the language that is
in in the big beautiful bit budget bill.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, and so yeah, he's the chair of the Senate
UH Natural Resources and Energy Committee, and he's this inenerger
from U dah.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
The way these things come together is everybody breaks off
into their committees, they write their portion, those committees reconvene,
and all of those portions written in committee come together
to create the final bill. And lo and behold, here

(10:30):
comes the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committees language. And
there is a mandated with a timestamp five years mandated
UH sale of both US Forest Service and BLM land
I think in eleven states, Montana magically being excluded.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
We can talk about that.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Later, which also is a red flag as as to
the integrity of this plan.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yes, yeah, yep, because it almost says, well, it's not
that necessary.

Speaker 2 (11:11):
It does, and it also says I want some support.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
And there's two people here who could lose support if
we force it into Montana because Montanas don't want to
give up any public land.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
We already we've got We're doing good. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
It is and you know where we're at. We are
front and center. And I'm not excluding other Western states
you see this too, but we are front and center
with we see year round now, not seasonally. We see
year round the amount of people who want access to

(11:49):
public land, yep. And they're not just coming from Utah, right,
A lot of them come from Utah, but they're coming
from every other state and multiple countries in this world.
And they're they're flying here, they're driving here, they're renting houses,
they're they're camping, and they are coming here for access

(12:13):
to public land.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
They're coming here for freedom. I mean, that's that's public
freedom is.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
It's it's a weird thing because we've been living it,
I know, for a long time and taking it for
granted for a long time, right to a degree. Right,
But you know, I can't say I'm growing up, but
it's taking me a while to get to where I
am right now.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
The scales have fallen from our eyes. I think a
lot of this in.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Biblical terms, you know, because the the you know, the
Bible is such chronicle like like human conflict as well
as as the beautiful like sermon on the mountain stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
And I think of it.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
As like people prostrate on the ultar of Mammon, where
you can can't see anything but the gold, but the
potential gold.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Right.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
You know, you can't see freedom, You can't see water, watersheds,
you know, the beauty of say that great basin country,
the beauty of this scante canyons.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
You know, you just see gold. And that's very very
biblical to me. You can't.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
It's it's blinding, yes, And and I think blinding is
a great term, right, like if unless you have a
connection to it, and sometimes when when you do too,
but or when you don't. But unless you have a
connection to it, you don't see the value of that landscape,

(13:46):
the what it is providing. You only see what you
could do with it, right.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
Or they don't care, Like I told you, I was
reading that post on Instagram with that guy in Iowa.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
He said, I'm from Iowa.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Do I care what they do in Utah selling off
some land I'm never gonna see. I was blown away
by that because it just it's a direct, like cannon
shot into the United States of America, where what befalls
people in Utah befalls me and and you know, and
I'm so I miss so much that that not not

(14:24):
the cliche, silly part, the powerful part of the United
States of America where we all believe in something.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Right and then we get told like we have been right,
and these horrible lines get brought up over and over again.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
You know, a couple of months ago, there was that
article saying talking about the potential for public land sales
before it was even brought up in the House, and
it's like, but not Montana. Montana's just different, right, And
I'm like, gang, if if this were a Montana centric ideal,
we would not have public land right now. No, like,

(15:07):
this is an American ideal. It's something people love, and
there are way more passionate people there. I mean there
were people telling me, well, you better enjoy it. Well,
Alas who were from states like uh, you know, Michigan, Virginia.

(15:28):
You know, it's like brother, we know.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
I mean I think of I think of Alabama without
the bankhead, the Talladega, the Connecca.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Right, and just like oh my lord, you know yeah,
and and and we don't talk about the water component too.
But when I go eastward or to any coastal place,
I'm like, thank God for the ocean.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Thank God for the river, the lake.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
This is the equivalent of stepping out on National Forest
or BLM land.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
Right because you can go there without anybody attacking you
and are calling this sheriff and you get some space. Yeah,
right right, at the end of the day, people need space,
just some people do. There are other people maybe are
so domesticated. I mean, I think of this public land
fight sometimes as a product if I didn't know some
of the people who were like, I don't care about

(16:23):
the Feds, I hate them, I want to get rid
of everything, and I don't you know that's like that
guy in that cartoon whos at Yosemite Sam that blows
his on it off because he's so angry, isn't that him?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah, he shoots, He's.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Always shooting the pistols he sees. He's a rage of holic,
right right, So the rage of hoolics are always with
us as well. But but there's other people I think
are so domesticated that they can't imagine going across the
Bob Marshall Wilderness, or or going hiking down the Boulder
Male Road, you know, outside of Boulder, Utah, or you
can go all for days on the rock.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
And they don't understand and their food system right, or
their water system or their water system, and that there
are so many of these issues that when you travel
back to d C or go even to your state legislature,
you're like, oh my gosh, you guys don't understand, as

(17:19):
we used to say out in that big eastern Montana country,
why the price of beef is the way it is
right right right, I'm like, this is not easy, right,
this is dangerous.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
And that's why the reason it's public is because you
couldn't put enough pounds on beef to pay up an
acre a land tax, that's right.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
So they left it unclaimed.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
I mean, and that's what all this stuff, the two
point three million or three million acres that he wants like, like,
that's it's not inhabited now because it couldn't be. We
gave away everything that people wanted. The Homestead Acts went crazy.
We incentivized, we incentivised, had taken, and the railroads got

(18:07):
I don't know how many millions acres. Yeah, but the
nineteen on, you know, John Wesley Powell was out there
going please not the nineteen oh nine Homestead Act but
there was a lot of unrest in America at the time,
with the labor cry struggles and immigration coming in hard,
and that railroads wanted people out on the prairie.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
So we passed the nineteen oh nine, which gave away.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Land that you couldn't live on if on the best
raineous year of history.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Right, And nine percent of those homesteads, Uh, World War
one hit and people were so happy to get out
of there goodbye.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Right and then yeah, and then and like in Montanna,
we have Bankhead Jones lands, right, those are the ones
abandoned by those homesteaders, and they were so destroyed by
by people trying to make a living in that in
that dust that the federal government took them over. It's
restored them at packs taxpayer expense. This is another element
here I'm watching and now, and then leased them for grazing.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
The money went to the education. M say. And it's
a great idea, bank Kid.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
Jones, senator from Alabama, right, I mean it's Senator bank
Kidd Tulula Bankheads to add the actress all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
I love this history, man.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Oh yeah, And the history points to you that you
don't want to give Mike Lee three million acres for
him to do the same dang thing we did in
the homestead at wrecked the place and then leave us
on the hook.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Well, it's in incredibly short sighted, incredibly And the return
is that Mike Lee gets to live his dream yep,
which is the divestment of federally managed public lands.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
That's it, like they go away, that is his dream
yep uh.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
And he's a true believer in this and that that
is the win here. And should every city in the
United States forfeit what we have so this one person
can live his dream because the return to the treasury
is not going to make a not going to be

(20:14):
felt by any single person, not any single person or
the collective citizens of the United States, right, and that
is what we have it.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
We have.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Some elected officials right now that like they have gone rogue,
that is, that is what is happening, and like we
can't call them back, and we need to get people
on these committees to understand, like they've lost the plot, right,

(20:49):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well they're also what's happening.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
I guess they're assuming that we're going to lay down
for this as well, which and I think that's a
very dangerous assumption. I think I think it's you and
I were talking before we started recording those.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
In the Path of Least Resistance, man, like people want
the easy button every day. I'm sure you make some
decisions where you're like, I probably should have done it
that way. I was tinkering on on my place, you
know that I've remodeled here and there and stuff like that,
and hell, man, just so damn embarrassed. I'd get to

(21:23):
some conundrum on something that I noticed and I'd be.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Like, what jackass did that that way?

Speaker 3 (21:29):
And it was me, Yeah, because it was just easier
and faster at the time, right, right, Yeah. I always
think about shoveling a truck out of snow, and a
friend of mine pointed out many years ago, he said,
you know, if you just do the whole job, you'll
get out, but if you if you half asset, you
just get stuck again. Right, you have to take your

(21:51):
shovels and spend the time to completely shovel out the exit,
because if you think you're gonna get a little speed
up and then ram through because you don't want to shovel,
you're you're a nal.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
You're in right yep, And so yeah, and you.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Just left your work behind where you got to shovel
out a whole pickup's length again again.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
That right, exactly, you're going in the hole doing the
rest of the half.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's it, right, that's it.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
And like ran Randy Newberg says, and I repeat this
over and over, but Randy always says, let's just face it,
conservation is not convenient. Yeah, you know, the convenient thing
is not going to dude, it doesn't work for you
in your personal life. If you take the convenient way,
you sit on the couch and watch football all day,
you're not going to be hiking up the mountain looking

(22:39):
for ilk.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
It just doesn't work. It just doesn't work. No, it doesn't.
But and this apathy. I think we were doing a
podcast or we were at least talking, and you know,
it's like, well, what's the single biggest threat to conservation,
to hunting and fishing?

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Like it's it's apathy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Like, we are fat and sassy American citizens, right. We
enjoy unbelievable liberties that a lot of people on this
planet cannot fathom. And our job as citizens is to
hold our elected officials accountable do the best job we

(23:21):
can electing the right ones regardless of who gets in office,
we hold those people accountable.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Right it does.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. That's the whole contract. And
man like there's people are not doing their their job
because it's inconvenient.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
It takes time. It's it's a job, which means it's hard.
That's right.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
And like you were saying, it's just not that much fun.
It's like joab, it's work being a citizen. Yes, it
may have its it may have its its joys and rewards.
But the but the basic practice of citizenry is showing
up at meetings and telling elected officials that they can't. No,
they can't, No, they can't sell thefer under our house
like I had.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
Now, no you can't.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
I voted for you, but I didn't vote for you
to take the aquifer out from under my house and
leave my place valueless.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
That's not going to happen. And then you got to
keep doing it right. You know, the thing is.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Well meaning not well meaning, like they put a proposal
proposal out there and people don't comment, they go, well.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Must be okay, okay, right. Also, it's easier for me
just to do it right. I want to ask you
to a couple of questions to come up all the time.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
So I'm living ala, I live in Iowa. That's that's
the one I keep going back to. I've never been
to Utah. I don't care. I don't think the federal
gunmasould own all that land in Utah. They ought to
do whatever they want.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
What do you say?

Speaker 1 (24:53):
I said, if you're concerned about Iowa issues, the whole
nation's going to have to support you to get the
Iowa issues where you need them to be.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Like I e.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
The farm bill right right, right, Like Iowa is a
great state. The farm Bill, that piece of legislation, which
is federal legislation, has a giant.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Impact on Iowa.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Right, So if you want Iowa to be healthy, you
need people to give a shit about the farm bill,
not just in Iowa, but in all fifty states. I yes,
that's the federal government for sure, But for God's sakes,
can we remember that it's a government of the people.

(25:46):
We the people like we are the federal government. And
this is a frustrating thing to me, right because people
want that degree of separation. If we can create that
degree of separation, that means I don't have to do
shit my ass and point fingers. Right, but let's take
some ownership back here and say, nope, we are the government, right, We're.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Not somebody else is, buddy, exactly.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Exactly, And and and we enjoy a lot of the
things that this government provides. We may enjoy cutting them
down and knocking them down verbally as often as we want.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
It's fun. I've done it myself.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah, right, but you know we we are we are
the government, right, So we're and we're citizens of this government,
and we are not subjects.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
We are not subjects.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
But buddy, if you want to be a subject, I
bet there's some people that would make that happen because
it seems like it's an easier path, right, get in line.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Yeah, from freedom into what's that? You probably don't rate this.
I'm older than you.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
But Jerry Spence, the attorney in Wyoming, he wrote a
great book called from Freedom into Slavery or Freedom into
serf Them, and it's just a great it's just a
really fun book to read. He's he's like a brilliant
sort of he's a lawyer. You know, he's not Antigo,
but he's he's Jerry Spence.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Look it up. It's great, great book to the.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Gentleman in Iowa. Yeah right, It's like you may not
use it, should it matter to you that you know
millions of people do, of your fellow Americans, of your
fellow Americans. And it's like I will never visit your house.
I will likely never drive by your house. I don't

(27:46):
derive any benefit that I can feel from the fact
that you have a house, or a lawn or a car.
I'm not ever going to tell somebody to take that
away from you.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Right. In fact, if.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
It comes a time where it's like, oh my god,
the federal government's trying to steal this guy's house, I'm
gonna write in and be like, what the heck's going on.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
I'm gonna help you out, even if I don't know you, right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
Right, Because if they can take that, they can take
my house, that's right. And if they can take these
acres today, what are they gonna take tomorrow? And again,
we're not going to see the benefit of this sale.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Right, So okay, that believes am not the next question?

Speaker 3 (28:30):
So the federal government, I'm gonna be the devil's advocate
the federal government.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
The country is broke, we are so in debt.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
We cannot even manage our own We don't can't afford
to manage natural resources anymore.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
We can't afford this land cal and say, well, that's
not true. This land does pay for itself. On top
of that, every person who visits this land pays into
communities all along the way. Plus they paid taxes for

(29:04):
the management of it.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Plus they pay taxes for the management of it. Like,
if you don't think you're doing a good job, let's
find some ways to improve, right, Yeah, Like but this,
I mean, how many times over do you think this
stuff has paid out for the American.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
People over the years.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Right, It's like that if you have stocks and a
dividend kicks out, Like that's what's happening. Like, and these
lands have paid over and over and over again. I
just did this West Virginia Turkey hunt with the West
Virginia Chapter BHA. Right, and you're in the New River
Gorge floating in that stuff. Oh, unbelievable and incredible for us. Right,

(29:49):
and every square inch of that place has just been
strip mined, like it was denuded of all vegetation other
than what folks could kind of scratch out and try
to plant to feed themselves, right, yeah, and you know
it's a gorgeous forest. I'm sure it's not exactly where

(30:10):
it needs to be, but we're hiking it, we're picking ramps,
we're trying to kill turkeys, looking at buck tracks, thinking, boy,
I got to come back here next to your type
of thing and having a hell of an adventure. Right,
And that land is still producing for us. It is
still producing for us.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Plus it's protecting the headwaters the New River or the
New Yes, yeah, yeah, now it is yeah, all down
in North Carolina, right right, And they look at that,
like they look at the White Mountains National Forest that
was so denuded of all timber that some of that
legacy settlement is down in those rivers today they couldn't

(30:53):
even navigate the rivers so much dirt came off of
those after they logged it and left at bye now
with scorched earth, right, they logged, lugged it and left,
But that became White Mountain, White Mountain National Forest, which
which the Piska same Pisca natural forest, same Anongo Halo,
same Allegany.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Same and nobody's out there right now being like this
place is worthless.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Right, Well, if they sail off this two to three million. Yeah,
you can't tell me that the Daniel Boone and the
Mark Quain National Forests like in Missouri sitting back.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Can you believe the condos? Yeah? Can you? Why are
we just letting its sit there? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (31:30):
I can have the suite of vrbos out there, so
and then yeah, I do think it's important to talk
about like the characteristics of the land sales right now,
because the language is very precise and very broad. So
only lands adjacent to existing infrastructure may be considered. And

(31:55):
then you get down to point number seven, bullet point
number seven, and it's lands that are deemed too far
away and too expensive to manage may be considered.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Right, that's all of them, right in between the nearest
and the furthest right. That's kind of right. That's kind
of everything.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
And then you know, like we' one of the biggest
heroes we have walking around b h A rendezvous, Right
is Eric Hanson, a guy motivated enough to use his
skills to write two amicus briefs for the Corner Crossing
Case Wyoming Corner Crossing Case. He spends his personal time

(32:45):
researching his law firms behind him in San Francisco, for
God's sakes, right, and this Iron Bar Holdings is has
got an extension to file and take the corner crossing
case to the Supreme Court of the United States, the

(33:06):
highest law in the land.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Well, guess what like if this is voted on and
goes through, all Iron Bar Holdings will be enabled to
purchase all of their checkerboard land. Now, if you and
I are interested in buy in federal land, the way
it's written in this, we're limited to one one sale

(33:36):
as an individual. But if you happen to be a
landowner within the checkerboard, you have unlimited purchasing option.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
So does that sound like an opportunity for the citizens
of the United States?

Speaker 2 (33:55):
No?

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Or does that sound like opportunities for individuals who quite
possibly are already known right and.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Here holding an awful lot of land already? Yes? Yeah, yeah,
So again, like you want to talk about this, we
have a mechanism to talk about it.

Speaker 3 (34:18):
Let's do talk about this, because we both know you're
you right in right to the first of our conversation.
Federal and here we are in the weeds. Everybody nobody
wants to go there, but that's where the that's the
devil's in.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
The details, yeah, and the reality is in the weeds.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
And one of the realities is the Federal Land Land
Policy in Management Act of nineteen seventy six.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Which is that word flipm that people talk about.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
And then the Southern Nevada Land Public Land Management Act
of nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Both of these.

Speaker 3 (34:50):
Are mechanisms for selling, divesting, or trading public federally managed
public lands to two communities that need.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Expansion or infrastructure the MECAN.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
The Congress passed them both, which means it is a
voter approved yes.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
And somehow Senator Lee has decided to shoehorn in a
very strange thing that that because they don't want to
use these mechanisms.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Can you talk about that? Yeah? So yeah, so talk
about leading up a question.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Yeah, but budget reconciliation where we're at now in the Senate,
So it's it's past the House. We there was land
sale language in the House. We got that removed. Big
community effort. But you know, I think in three days
the BHA community got in fourteen thousand phone calls. Yep,

(35:46):
in three days. I did it to moves. The neo man,
it moves, and they keep it up friends and neighbors,
and we should talk about some strategy there too. And
then so now it's it's in the Senate, like we
talked about committee language. You got submitted last minute submission
in that committee. Holy shit, I mean, this guy can't

(36:07):
leave it alone. Nor could be upwards of three million
acres depending on on how those percentages are exercised in
the language. As I like to say, don't believe me.
You can look this stuff up. Go to the Federal
Register dot g ov.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
You can. You can search for it.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
It's there, out of the mouth mouths of our elected
It's it's right there.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
It's source material in it, you know. So the.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
In the reconciliation process, it also takes a smaller amount
of votes, I think, because you know, it's kind of
like one party has the majority.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
And anything done through this process goes directly to the Treasury,
So it circumvents the FLIPMA and the Southern Neva.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Yeah, and so dig this.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
That means that that those two laws were passed so
that the American taxpayers get fair value for the lands
that are sold that are needed by communities for or infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
And then and also just don't sit in page document.
FLIPMA is a four page document.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yep, you can read it. Yeah, I mean yeah, you
can't like most of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
If you want to know, there's not a lot of
excuse not to know these days, right, that's great. So yeah,
so the fair value thing is super important. It It
literally is a document that says, survey the land, so
we know what we're giving up, right, So so the

(37:55):
American people, that's the we know what what that land
sale entails, what we're giving up, and what we're going
to get in return, right, so that community.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
An often used example would be like a water.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Plant, right, like water you know, wastewater management facility that that.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Gets used a lot.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
I've seen going through the federal register, like some land
sales that were like a chunk of BLM inside the
municipal airport. You know, it's like, yeah, we the people
don't need to own that chunk at this point, right.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
But you it just as if you did own it
as a as a as an individual private citizen. You
need to know where it is and how much money
you're going to get for.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
It exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
And then the back end of this is once that
sale goes through the revenue generated from that sale then
gets put in a separate bucket that is used to
find a land of greater I think strategic value.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
So that could be.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
If we gave up some mental resources, well we got
a chunk that's got better mineral resources. But often I
think it's more like ecological value.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
It could be ecologically or could be access like on
the river or access.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
And so I mean we this this thing we're talking
about circumvents that process.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Yeah, the voter approoved process.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah, And and I would I would, I'd refer some
folks to google up like the Nevada up state land sales,
which they sailed so all of the federally granted lands
upon statehood.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, they got there down had some real guardrails around it.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Yeah, and they are down to abound three thousand acres
left over. And that was called like an or of corruption.
And this is this is the precedent we have. It
is and you know it's like back then, not all
that long ago. Like the need was affordable housing, right,
everybody knows, like affordable to who is a great question.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
I know.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
The last round in the bat of sales, they used
the word accessible housing. But it's the same accessible.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
To who that was under the nineteen ninety eight yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Right right, And like you pointed out earlier, like this
land wasn't valuable enough for people to immediately seize upon it.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
It would have been offered under all the Homestead Acts.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yeah, I mean, if you could have occupied it in
nineteen oh nine, it would long be gone up to
nineteen seventy six actually, And so I mean what we're
talking about. Remember I told you that radio show I
was listening to, and a gal from some kind of
order management I don't know who these were.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
They were.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
They were complaining about federal land hemming in Las Vegas.
And and it wasn't because you could you could buy
and sell it, right, But she just said, well, we've
never had the water to supply the kind of sprawl
that you might have in Washington, d C. Or Boston. Right,
you don't have it. There's I don't know if the

(41:25):
lake mead, you're not getting anymore. And so to encourage
sprawl in Saint George, Utah, is to indulge in. It
might work, somebody would make some money, but you're also
indulging in a little bit of magical thinking about the
availability of water and other infrastructure that yeah, I mean,
mean what happens I don't, I don't.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
We can't go and listen whether that happens those sales
happen under under flip my right or in this big
beautiful bill right, Like don't you think the American people
should hold people accountable and say, okay, you're going to

(42:07):
fix affordable housing, the affordable housing crisis in America, Like,
let's let's not you know, pay attention to the fact
that out of the last six tracks that were sold
under the Biden administration, those tracks never got a bid.
But there's a crisis, which you would think crisis means demand,

(42:32):
like that stuff would have got snapped up right away.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
Again, Federal Register dot gov got you, right. So, but
it's also like implies that there's like this uniformity to
the land, which we touched on earlier, like how many
calcav paars can you run on an acre?

Speaker 3 (42:52):
Right?

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Well, there's a wide variability there. So under Lee's situation,
he's just saying, this is the time we got to
get this out the door. If we can't sell land
right now in this moment, well, I'm never going to
be able to do it. I got to realize my dream.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
And so.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
It's there's these pieces that I think a lot of
people would be like, yeah, I'd rather not have another
house there, or a strip mall or.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Whatever they're or one hundred trailers on dust, yeah, with
no water.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
But I can see how we could let this chunk go, right.
But there's all these other chunks that are you know,
they're the front country. They're the places where we're stuck
here in Missoula.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
It's Friday.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
We got to get the hell out of here for
a little bit before we return to our responsibilities. And
we zip out and there's probably some other folks out
there and they're running their dogs, but I got to
get my bird dogs exercise. Or uh, it's that chunk
of blm where it's not the place that I'm gonna

(44:03):
go hike on the weekend, but I can darn sure
rip out here, set up some paper sight in my
rifle and be ready for the weekend. It's these accessible
places and sometimes that sam chunk has a covey of
hons on there, Like those are the places, right, And

(44:23):
if you're a turkey hunter, you don't need a lot
of acreage. If you're an antelope hunter, you need a
lot of anchorage. If you are a white tail hunter,
you don't need a lot of acreage. But these are
these accessible places that you know, the weekend warrior where
it's like, I got all my checklists done, all my
responsibilities done on Saturday.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
It took all day.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
I got someday to hunt fish clear my head, Like,
that's probably the place that you're using, right, So this.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Is it's also the place that gave us the feeling
that America has. Like I've heard this so many times
from people who come here from foreign countries and stuff,
the space and the and the the life, like the
like the space.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
The freedom. Yep.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Yeah, and that's just really I have a good friend
who worked all over the world is construction, International construction,
and uh, he's he lives in our town and he
just said, man, you can hike in Estonia. He worked
in hat too, which really really crowded, you know, and
and he was like, there's just nothing like this anywhere

(45:33):
else in the world. And he's like super hardcore public
lands advocate. He's retired, and he just said, it's just
it doesn't exist. Sorry, you can't. You can't if you
give it away and make it like everywhere else. You know, Yeah,
I'm not doing that, not on my watch.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
And on my watch man, no, And and I mean
you just gotta you gotta keep trying. And we do
need to get into like the proper advocacy, So we should.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Get into that now and while we still got some time.
But the last thing before we go there is just you.
You've really built You've really made a line in the
sand here, like you've been. You've been front and center
in this thing for the last three months or something.
I mean you've been in for ever known you, but
three months, I mean you have been the man in

(46:20):
here doing this.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
You believe in.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
It, if that's what you want to call it. Sure,
it's just it's got to be said. And we got
to get other people aware that this is happening, like
they they right, Like it is a small group of
people who have their own ideals and they are willing

(46:45):
to take as much as we're willing to give, right
And if you're not speaking, you are willingly giving this
stuff away. So yeah, the calling showing up in person
and everybody's got the ability to do this call email,
show up in person.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Call email, show up in person. Who. Well, where I'm
letting you do.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Ten times what I've got in here, Senators and and
and congress people, your representatives, and then you can reach
out to members of these committees and and right now,
you know Steve Daines here in Montana, You've got to
call that office. And if you call the first time,
say hey, this is where I'm from. I love public lands.

(47:34):
Please stand up to Mike Lee and tell him not
to sell this stuff.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
And do we tell him not to take it out
of the big beautiful bill.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
That's the thing is, tell tell him to this stuff
is not for sale under reconciliation. And let's start there, right,
Let's get it out of the budget process. No public
lands in the budget process.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
There you go. We can have the discussion. I can
understand that. By the way. That's that's okay. So let's
say it again. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Hey, my name is Ryan Callahan. I'm from Bozeman, Montana.
I hate saying I'm from Bozeman, Montana, but I live
in Bozman, Montana, and you're my representative or my senator
in this case. I love public lands.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
That's all. I do.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
Uh, It's why I'm here, That's why I pay my
taxes here. You cannot allow public lands to be included
in the budget process. No public land sales in the
budget process. Thank you very much. Okay, I call again,
say it and and this is good stuff for people listening.

(48:43):
Get people's names, these staffers that are answering the phone,
you can wake them up, but be like, oh, Jason,
I talked to you yesterday. This is Ryan Callahan. I
just wanted to call back and make sure that my
message was heard. This is who I am, this is
where I'm from. This is how much public lands mean
to me. I appreciate the Senator's stance on this, but

(49:07):
right now it's not enough. I need his leadership. Please
ask him to contact Senator Crapo, Senator Rish and Idaho
Senator Thune in South Dakota and make sure that they
know how much public lands mean to me and they
cannot be included in the budget reconciliation process. No public

(49:31):
land sales in the budget process.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
Okay, that's very clear, right.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
I can act on that and get those names and
have that repertoire and get people not just reporting what
you're saying but advocating for you. And if they're they're like, well, god,
this guy took the time to just know my name,
and they're being polite, and they're obviously passionate about this

(50:02):
that I mean, they're people like it makes an impact
and they get it over and over and over again,
and this is like the simplest thing you can do.
And then you know, identify these groups that are doing
the work as well. I think b h A Congressional
Sportsman's Foundation, National Wildlife Federation is doing a great job.

(50:25):
Right now, we're seeing some good movement. I think p
f q F has done a great job. And you
know they're not they're not.

Speaker 3 (50:32):
A Chris Wood had a great, great, very short concise piece,
let's let's not do this.

Speaker 2 (50:42):
Thank you for bringing that up. Is doing a great job. Well,
just sign message. I was just looking at it just
to just today.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeah, and and you know, sign on to those letters
if you can throw some cash to the organizations that
you think are doing this this right because that's going
to enable those organizations to get the messages to the
people that need to read this stuff. And you know,

(51:09):
there's strength in numbers, is what I would say. Right So,
when BHA can say, hey, our membership has grown from
thirty thousand to fifty thousand because of your stance on
public land sales. We have fifty thousand people that are
aligned and signed on to this message. And they come

(51:31):
from these states and these counties. Like people pay attention
to that stuff, right, So it does matter. And like
we said earlier, it's your job. So it's not necessarily
going to be fun every day, but it's just what
you gotta do. You got to punch the time clock

(51:52):
on this one.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
So well, it's a participatory democratic republic and that means
you've got to participate.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
You have the.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Option, yeah, right, right, which is wonderful, right, Like, like
if this was going on in some other country like Mexico,
it would just be sold off. Yeah, I mean, I mean,
and there's not I like Mexico, right, but that anybody
would say that the federal government of Mexico is not
particularly effective, not really representative of some of the folks

(52:23):
out in the country.

Speaker 2 (52:25):
And I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
See that here, No, man, I don't want to see
this is this is not this ain't right, you know.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
I was talking with our Armed Forces initiative this morning.
The and we have a meet up here at bh
A now. And man, if you think you and I
care about these places, right, I mean there's there's guys
involved there who are like, h this is literally life

(52:56):
threatening right, like the way like because of the trauma,
uh that we've experienced. This is where we have the
solace and the mental space and like you don't understand,
like if it goes away for you, it might be

(53:16):
a little bit different than than me, right right, yep,
So yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
I just.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
Yeah, yeah, And those guys have been incredible voices. I mean,
I just that's one of my, uh, one of b
h a's great successes is the Armed Forces Initiative. I
went on that trip with Trevor Hubbs when he was
starting out or working in.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
That, and uh I did. It's just it's one of
our one of the great strengths here absolutely, you know.
And it's uh.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
That AFI program literally grew because we were welcoming and
gave people the space and.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Had a place to take everybody, you know, like come home, man,
come on, let's don't do this.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
I thought. So I keep I keep coming.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Back to that, like let's look and you and I
were talking about social contract you know earlier, and you
could you can hate that if you want to say
that's academic and all that stuff. But part of my
contract with with my country is that I have these
public lands and and so it's what Teddy Roosevelt said.
He said, it has to work on some level for

(54:24):
all of us in order for it to work on
any level for.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
Any of us.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
And that was like the basis of what was he
the Square deal or was that fdr.

Speaker 2 (54:35):
No, Teddy was he was the Square Yeah?

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Yeah, So the Square deal was that we don't you
don't take our lands.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
That we we enjoy, that.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Protect our watersheds, that that have wildlife that we get
to hunt and get to shoot. I mean, shooting has
been such a huge part of my life and I
don't have any place to go except public lands. And
that's been true to itself. Was nine nine years old,
and I, you know, we would try to We finally lived.
We lived out in the country, so I had a
place to shoot. Other people didn't. And I was at

(55:06):
the Uchi Shooting Range on the Tuskie National Forest last winter,
winter before last, and that's like the only place to
have to shoot, like for Auburn, I mean, you.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Know, yeah, well, I mean that's not just true for you, right,
Like the National Shooting Sports Foundation. I keep meaning to
reach back out to them because they had such good
data on recreational shooting YEP and its ties to public lands,
and they could extrapolate that and say, Okay, public lands

(55:39):
go away, We're going to see a reduction in firearm ownership.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
You have to in the United States.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
You would definitely have to let alone the amount of
ammunition used and numbers of recreational shooters, you know, right,
So the shooting sports, the shooting sports, right, yeah, all of.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
That, all of this ties in.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
I'm gonna get abstractor now, but all this ties into.
I remember I did a story at film stream about
when the military had the two Fat to Fight campaign
and that was when the it's particularly the basic trainers
like thing was a Marine Corps. First they said, well,
we can't we can't give you a soldier in in
basic training right now. We can't get them into shape,

(56:24):
into combats ready shape because they're coming from this sedentary lifestyle.
And I would I would extrapolate that to lack of
you know, I mean LWCF Landing Water Conservation Fund that
had swimming pools funded for great planes, little towns.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
That was because they wanted kids to be strong so
you could you could actually defend the nation.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
It was a huge part of this weird what you
would call holistic view of America and public lands, public parks,
ballparks where people could run right and get fit, be strong.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Yeah, all of it.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
All of it was a vision of America where it
was a social contract. The poorest people had the chance
to go climb a mountain and walk outside of town,
like out of Albuquerque or wherever, right on Blm Land
and become strong and fit. And and this is like,
this is a societal sanity, right, it's a social contract.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
And I would I would, you know, I would indicate.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
To look at what we've lost because people don't know
where their food comes from.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
Yep. Abstraction. Yeah, degrees of separation.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Right, Like like we have hard, bizarre conversations these days
because you can't just start, you can't assume that somebody knows.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Right, You're like, okay, yeah, let's see. Let's see big cow.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Of reproductive size right falls in with the boycot we
call that a bull. And then right, it's like and
it's and there's people out there that steward these animals, right,
and believe it or not, they have to do this
year after year after year after year. So the land

(58:18):
that those animals occupy has to be healthy too in
order to do that. And so they have to figure
out the you know, and on and on and on,
and that's the foundation and that I needed to lay
it to tell you that these lands are valuable, right right,
It's like that's a long way.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
It's a long it's a long way.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
And and people in the west, well, one of the
things in Montana, uh particular, understood people who hunt.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
They understood winter range pretty quick.

Speaker 3 (58:50):
And that's why we had like the Rocky Mountain Elk
Foundation working on private lands easemus right, because we knew
that the yelk lived in the mountains in the summer,
but they couldn't live there in the winter.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
They had to go down.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
All the all the good stuff was homestead It is
private whoever owns it now.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
All the good stuff was homestead, right.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
The stuff that we couldn't inhabit is what we left
left in the public estate.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
That's public lands.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
And I had a guy from the east was telling
me that he couldn't understand why what is it? Seventy
percent of seventy three percent of Nevada was federal public land.
And I said, have you ever been there? And he
said he had been to Vegas And I said, well
that if you take a drive from say, down where
the Bundanes live gold. But it's a pretty ury, really

(59:36):
interesting country. There's no water in there. Virgin River is
like by the Bundy's place, and uh, really low and
that's like mead, right, But anyway, there's no water, dude,
That's why it's That's why people didn't take it over
and like build like happy neighborhoods with little kids and
playing tennis.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Right, there's none. And wherever there is.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Water, ever, you've been there a lot, right, So you
got your on X map or your Avinza maps, and
you'll look and there'll be a little green spot down
there where like an arroyo comes down and it and
it dumps into a place you can't get out of.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
And you'll look on your map. That's private.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
It was homesteaded and it is in the private domain
because people knew if they control the water there, then
you didn't need to own the sage brush. And what's
now cheat grass.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
That's right. So that's right. So we gave.

Speaker 3 (01:00:31):
Away everything that you could use and we have this left.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
And I'm sorry, but that's that's the line. It is.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
I don't and also it's it's okay, it's good the
way it is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
This is the thing. When did we get this this message?

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
All? So, I've been in Montown thirty five years and
from the people have complained about federal land management from
the moment I got to the bitter roots, I really
do it wrong. And you do that, federal group, you
can't do nothing right. And I'd go up in the
bitter roots and get a get a bull which I did.

(01:01:12):
It was it was thirty three percent for me, and
I'd like, what, I think they're doing pretty good?

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Right right, you're like the experience that I personally just have, yes,
and and all of my firewood.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
And I went down to uh, the fores service guy,
I want to say his name, he's gone. Now got
a posting polesale because I needed to build some fence boom.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
I went and got a trailer and went up in
the Sapphires and did my own little posting polesale. Now
would he give me five thousand acres of posting poles.
I don't know, maybe not, And then I could go
I just don't get nothing from it, right, I could
be dissatisfied.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
But I have watched federal land management feel conflict.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Just like anything where you have a wonderful asset that
everybody's going to argue over.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
They should.

Speaker 3 (01:02:02):
Yeah, that doesn't mean you give it away. No, don't
mean you let somebody take it from.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
You, especially it's making money, right, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
Making money, but it doesn't make enough money. We all
have to share in the management costs. If it made money,
somebody would be out there owning it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I mean, I mean, you know, like like that. That's
just the truth of it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
The value has increased exponentially, the value of that open space.
That's right, and it will it will be the greatest
asset the United States House.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
That's right, and you better choose if you want to
keep it. That's right, because that that's in a nutshell.
The population in the United States has doubled in my lifetime.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
People can understand right now in many areas of the
country the value of open space, right, and it's way
different than it was when they were a kid, yep, right,
and this stuff is going to continue to double, triple,
quadruple in value. And people in Western States got the

(01:03:08):
shock of a lifetime when COVID hit and all of
a sudden, everybody wanted to have their own space. And
we were like, oh my god, I thought that land
was expensive before, but turns out, in comparison to the
rest of the country, we didn't know the true value.
It's right, five times yeah what it was priced before

(01:03:31):
all you ding dong showed up. Yeah right, right, shame
on it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
And that's just to be in a proximity to it, right, yeah, exactly.
I guess the shock of my life.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):
When by this was when the Wilkes brothers bought the
three hundred and thirty thousand in Montana, which was some
of the most arid Missouri breaks.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Gumbo country in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
You know, like really it was no homestead or could
ever like they nobody had made it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Their anchor ranch. All that country.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
It's beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it was hard
to make a living in there, and that's why it
was that for sale. So they when that purchase went down,
and then I had a guy bought one hundred and
sixty five thousand near me, all these these huge landscapes
were changing hands. I was like that that means that

(01:04:21):
that can you imagine what they'd pay for the Lewis
and Clark National Forest, right? Can you imagine what they
pay for the contiguous BLM lands that we were talking
about today this morning?

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Yep, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
It's not about putting pounds on cows anymore. It's about
controlling huge things of open space and hunting and having
your own like kingdom in a time where the population
is doubling and people are living harder.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
So again, if that stuff wasn't of value, right, yeah,
why is it being snatched up?

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Record crisis? Right? So that's well.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
I think the other threat that I just want to
hit before we take off here, this is because we've
got to get back to rendezvousing is aside from apathy.
It's like, understand what your goal is and be willing
to leave your baggage at the door to hit that goal.

(01:05:23):
Make that less abstract for me. Tell my goal is
public lands. I want no public lands in this budget sale.
I want the same amount, if not more, and I
want those lands to be in better shape when I

(01:05:44):
hopefully I'm underneath them, meaning I want to leave it
better than I found, you know, That's that's my goal.
And I want people to understand that they have the
opportunities that I had. They don't need to take them,
but they need to ununderstand that they have those opportunities.
You know that adventures out there for you too. Yep,

(01:06:04):
should you so choose?

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
Should you so choose?

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
You can wake up tomorrow and go do it or not?
And I want to win this thing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Yeah, And I do not care who you voted for,
what all your other personal ideals are. But if you
want access to public lands and you want to see
those things.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Thrive, then yeah, then you're on my team. Yep, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
And I'll tell you what we will make this great
because I would say I believe that we're We needed
to be asked this question. A lot of people were
telling me, they were going, can you believe this is happening?
Can you believe this happening? It was like, wait, it's
been happening for fifty years, but it hasn't happened in
your face, like like they've been kind of throwing the

(01:06:51):
left jab, this is the overhand right right, and and
I believe that in a good strong overhand right to
a person who ain't paying attention is not a bad thing. Now,
you know you're in a fight, right, We've been in
a fight for fifty years over Colonel.

Speaker 1 (01:07:07):
Abel says, did he nothing? Nothing gets you woken up
like a good fight.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
And and finally you can drop the the the baggage,
the silliness, the nonsense, right and and and address the opponent.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
And that's what we're doing here, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
And dude, I believe that once woken up from the
from the trance of apathy, I believe we're gonna have
land management. I believe we're gonna come. Here's what I think.
I think we're gonna keep the public lands. I think
we're gonna win this one. I think we're gonna have
fuels reduction projects, watershed hunting, habitat management. I think we're

(01:07:49):
gonna prioritize public lands after this because we're gonna be awakened.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
And before that there was too easy to go like,
you know, I don't like blam. You go what would
you rather have?

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
And they go, I don't know, but I don't like them,
And he goes, what do they do that you don't like,
and they'll have like a laundry list of small things
and he goes, you know, dude, how important is that
when it comes to like not having this ever ever?

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
And in Montana, the BLM doesne.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Uh private land work like they they implement all the
federal uh funding. Yeah yeah, to help improve rangeland gotcha
the private landowners use right right right, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
Right right yeah? Or I got I went, I went
packing for ILK, I got the mules out of counting,
you know, like I'm at a class of young people
who are uh. Is another controversy over like Native American
to get the lands back, right, They're gonna they're gonna

(01:09:02):
give the Lewis and Clark National Forest back to I came.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Not the black Feet. I don't know, I can't. It was.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
It was very strange, but anyway, and they told me
they've had the same idea.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
They said, it's all been mismanaged.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
It's been mismanaged to the point where we might as
well give it away. And I and we were up
on the front and I said, can you ride with me?

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
Take a take a walk, ride with me to the trail.
I said, show me, show me the mismanagement there you
would find.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
Some if you if you spent the rest of your
life going over to the Custer National Forest, you say, well,
some of this is overgrazed, right, Does that mean that
means we're gonna get rid of if.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
You had the background and noxious weeds, and I think
you don't, and then you could look at things and.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
You know what, you'd say, we need more work on
this noxious weed problem exactly. And that's exactly what we've
been doing on Blm Lands with the sagebrush effort through
Mule Deer Foundation. Yeah, and it's been it's really great.
I just indeed, you gotta get over. I love that
Nietzsche quote. You said, I am a ya sayer that

(01:10:13):
from us, that spake Sarah Thustra, you know then Nietzsche
philoph of German philosopher. Well, I am a ya sayer.
I'm not here to be negative with you. I'm gonna
I'm a ya sayer man, and we're gonna keep this.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
We're gonna win this. Oh, I think I think we're
gonna win this one man.

Speaker 1 (01:10:30):
And and like we we may or may not have
talked about on the podcast here, right, it's like man
tough times make great people, yep. And you see the
people who have been doing lip service during the easy times, yep,
cowering and and moving further and further to the back yep. Right,

(01:10:51):
And don't worry, once we win this thing, they'll be
right back up to the front.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Probably just before right, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
Right, Yeah, they have an innate ability to smell success
and a part of it, right, But so it does
does excite me, right, And I think we've been talking
about BHA, right Like, BHA is kind of like a
few the proud organization, right Like, we're not one of

(01:11:19):
the biggest ones out there by far, but when our
membership gets active, they outperform bigger memberships who have been
trained to not do stuff. Give money, sit back, we'll
take care of it. Well, right now, we need all
the above, right, So, our membership is punching so far

(01:11:43):
above its weight class because they're willing to show up,
show up at a rally, show up at a committee meeting.
They're willing to testify, They're willing to pick up the phone,
they're willing to make the emails. They're willing to tell
their friends to do the same darn thing. Right, They're
willing to throw in a couple of bucks and sign

(01:12:04):
on to the the group letters, right, like they're they're
doing the work because like uh, Katie Morrison one of her.

Speaker 2 (01:12:13):
Night, Yeah, fantastic person.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
She's like, because we know the value right, right, and
unfortunately that's that's like a responsibility on our shoulders, right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
It's huge.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
I mean I think it's a beautiful burden. Yeah, Like
like I just I welcome this. I think this is
BHA's moment like never before. I mean, if it's not, well,
when would be right? I mean, I mean it is
the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
It is the moment and all it is.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
I was talking with Jim Taylor from Arkansas last night
and he said, he said, we've been. He's a old
probably my age, you know, and he said, I've been.
This is my moment, this is this is it, this
is I've been preparing for this my whole life.

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
Yeah, by being a conservationist in a public lands hunter
and being in the Delta Arkansas and the National Wildlife
Refuge is oh man, come on, come on, Cash River,
White River, you know, you know US Fish and Wildlife Service,
Like like nobody in the world's ever done what we've done.

(01:13:16):
Let's don't don't break, don't wreck this boat.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
That's what kills me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
How is I I do stuff that I post on
Instagram and the podcast and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
The international people's the darn foreigners.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
Yeah, they write in all the time and say, are
you guys really gonna fuck this up?

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Yeah? Yes, they're like, are you really gonna? Like do
you not know what you have? Right? And it's like, no,
some of these people do not know, but what we
have they don't and and right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:49):
And then the fact that somebody doesn't care about something
doesn't mean it's not important, you know, that's right. I
mean the fact that somebody's gonna turn on the water
at their house and drink the water and say they
don't won't Clean Water Act or whatever, that's a minority
of folks. It's we're gonna have to leave you behind.
We're gonna we're gonna have a couple of coffee later. Yeah,
right now, we're gonna we're busy.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
You know, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
Like you were saying, with all these other issues, to
tell that one, that was an awesome one. Because we've
been at Rendezvoue where there's a lot of issues there
as a lot of trouble in the world, right there are, yeah,
but this one, this particular land sale I described like
this right, this is happening right now, It's gonna happen
within the next two weeks.

Speaker 1 (01:14:33):
There's a raging fire on your front door. It's about
to consume the house. It's maybe even taking down your
neighbor's house already. There's a bucket brigade running water to
the front door to put out this fire, and you're
grabbing people out of that bucket brigade to tell them
about what's going on with the back lawn.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
You're right on.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Right, listen, the back lawn. We love it, everybody loves it. Yeah,
but we're gonna put this fire out and then we're
gonna talk about the back line. Okay, And until then,
grab a fucking bucket or a minimum.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
Quit pulling people out of the

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
Line right over, man, I'm gonna leave it right there,
all right, buddy,