Ep. 167: Kayla Ray's New THC Tune, Deadly Vegan Data, and Animal Welfare versus Animal Rights with Paul McCarney

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
I guess I grew up. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode one,
sixties seven of The Hunting Collective. Phil I've totally forgot
the episode number. We had to start over. I apologize. Yeah,
I mean that happens is probably every other episode, so
that's fine. I'm used to it. We're just talking about this.
Can I blame stuff on my kids? Or is that

(00:33):
me being a bad dad? I think using your kids
as an excuse to get out of something you don't
want to do, I think that's fine. But like they're
throwing them under the bus for your or you know,
short stupidity or irresponsibility. I think that's kind of taking
it too far. Well, they keep me up a lot.
I'm tired and I just forget things, and uh, I

(00:53):
can't blame it on them. I'm not gonna blame it
on them. Goot, wonderful little humans. We're joined by the
great and powerful Kayla rasa, Hey, Kayla, Hey, the great
and powerful. I appreciate that. Yeah, at least like the
melodic uh Kayla. However, hopefully we know you will um So,
I gotta tell you it's been about two or three

(01:15):
months that the song White Claw Wasted is stuck in
my head. I was just singing it. I just walked
into my studio here at my house and I was
just going in and going to get why. Just my
wife said, what are you singing it? Said, well, it's
a long story. Um, But I think a lot of
listeners this podcast love that song. So you gotta tell us,
tell us how you decided that was the thing to sing. Uh.

(01:37):
That that's cool. I'm having like a lot of own
influx of of your folks coming, which has been pretty
cool because of that. But I've played at a place
there's a little dog outside of Omaha, Nebraska called Books.
It's in Venice, Nebraska. It's the only I think it's
like also the post office and maybe like the town
hall of Venice, Nebraska too. But I played a gig
and I dude drove a long way to come hang

(01:59):
out for the weekend, and we all had a large time,
but he had a larger time than most. And you know,
the end of the night, everybody's you know, playing black
Hawk's greatest hits on the jukebox, you know, and they're like,
I love that, you get it. It's so great, you know,
And then this dude proceeded to fall asleep on the bar.
We gave him a hard time, but it was the
best part about is that he was drinking white clothe

(02:20):
the whole evening and so you know, we did all
like the college age things to do, like we wrote
on his face, and you know, he was he was
he was pretty sick. Anyway. I was challenged to write
a song about him being white clothe way so, but
I got to feel kind of bad about it because
we choosed him pretty good and he came a long
way to come to the show. So I thought maybe
I would do some plot that men who are secure

(02:42):
enough to drink white clothe or maybe a little more
heavily and down than others, and um, so that's I
really didn't. I love that you'll found that because it's
definitely his cell phone recording that we put on YouTube.
You can hear my dog eating food in the background.
It was it was a grown up thing. You know.
It was perfect. That's why it's perfect. And I love

(03:02):
the backstories even makes it more perfect because we you know,
I just started telling people that I like white cloe
like two summers ago. I started, you know, I can't
fire in the backyard. I drank this thing. I thought, well, this,
there's no way I can get drunk off this. I'll
have about six or eight of them. And then next thing,
you know, and I was like, Wow, it's this. Everything's
feeling great, everything's feeling good, music sounds better, the world

(03:25):
is clear. And since then, we've talked a lot about
white claw on this show. Phil thinks that natural lime
is the best flavor. Bullshit. We all know that that
it's mango. We all know that it's Mango's good. That's good. No,
that's not terrible, that's not terrible. But you appreciate a
man like me who might drink a mango flavored Seltzer

(03:48):
water drink, yeah, me and secure enough to do that,
you know, ID hurt so much. I have to drink
Jameson and water, you know, because I approved. So if
you're confident enough to walk around the white closet, that's
one way. That's very kind of you. It's a very
kind way to put it. That's very Yeah. One time
I was actually went to the Jameson Distillery one time

(04:10):
in Dublin and they were serving I was shocked that
they were serving cranberry. Jamieson's at their little bar. I thought,
what self respecting irishman walking here? They must it must
be for tourists. They must do that just for the tourists.
I'm like, what self suspecting irishman will walk in and
have a Jamieson and cranberry. That can't be a thing.

(04:31):
There's no way. That's that's the washout process, right, Like
that's how they pick off somebody that. Yeah, they would
slide that across the table and if you put your
hand towards it, they're like, oh I no, no, no,
you're out. You're just qualified, You're just qualified. All right, Well, listen,
I got we gotta explain the artistic process because what
ended up what we called it a contest in the

(04:52):
beginning to write our new theme song, but it became
kind of like an art project in a way. We
had people. I told everyone not to send me cordings
of them singing there proposed lyrics, but people did anyway,
So then I had to listen to these awful renditions
of these wonderful poems and songs that people sent in.
So we I counted we had a hundred and three

(05:14):
people submit things, which is almost as many. Kaylee, you
won't know this, but we had once had people draw
Phil's face based only on his voice. That was a contest. Yeah,
that was a contest to see. Yeah, he likes it,
He's into it. Uh, we have, we had We had
like three hundred of those that that people actually sat

(05:37):
down with their families and to draw Phil's voice face.
So we didn't quite get the three hundred, but in
terms of like people writing poetry, we got a good
track record. Ranny, right Phil, Yeah, Yeah, too many people
enter these contests. I've said it before. Yeah, he thinks
people are wasting their time, but they're not. I don't
think they're wasting their time at all. Um, So we

(05:57):
got so what Here's what I did. I read them
all and there were three or four of them that
were my favorites, and I couldn't choose between just one
of them. And even though that this might be something
that offends the artistic sensibilities of our listeners, I kind
of like Frankenstein some stuff to get to what I
sent Kayla. Then this included lyrics from Brett Russell, Ryan

(06:17):
Savie and Costa Gus Phote m D always want to
see if I'm saying that wrong. But Gus who writes
it all the time, who wrote who wrote basically the
bones of this doctor guess Dr guess Um. And so
that's how we got here. I took all these lyrics
and I sent it to Kayla, and Kayla, when you
first read this, you thought these guys are idiots or

(06:40):
possibly geniuses underappreciated in their time. What did you what?
Do you feel absolutely that they're either idiots are possibly
your genius geniuses that are underappreciated in their time. That
was exactly it. Yep, it's good. Yeah, we're driving all right,
And so you spent some time over the weekend putting
it to a melody? Did you? Did you not? I

(07:01):
did I tread? I had, I have to say that
I did have. I called my my dad, and then
our buddy Josh Nimar, who's like an avid listener, because
I just really don't want to come on here and
sound like a chump, so ahead him like back check me,
you know, on a couple of couple of rearrangements here.
So you know, yeah, well that's goods. It's good that
you have somebody, uh in our little cult here that

(07:23):
like can inform me what it's like to be around. Um,
all right, well, unless you do you want to give
us any any thoughts prior or just plays a song
Because Phil, he's can He's been texting me about all
week and he can barely contain himself to hear this.
Well yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, I hit my data cap. Uh.

(07:44):
I want to hear the song, but also, Ben, I
kind of want to do a rewind after we hear
the song and hear about Kayla's origins and stuff. I
want to know her story. I don't know anything about
Kayla Ray. I think it my sterious. I think we
should keep it. I mean, it's up to you, Phil,
it's your show. But truth, I feel like the story
about White Claw Wasted is enough to keep me. All

(08:05):
I need to need to do is now know like
what the tour schedule is, and then that's all I
need to know, trust to you. Uh. Well, let's let's
hear the track. Let's hear it if kaylea if he
was ready, right, let's see. I'll try so there are
lots of like hmm, same here, you know with the

(08:26):
pickup note, so we'll see. Okay, this is like I've
been in I've been in the industry for ten years
and this is like a culmination of ten years of
work to get to this point. So no pressure, thank
you pressure, appreciate it right, all right, your gun, Junior Mo.

(08:53):
We're glad to show Colin Hunters new and no we're
not on collective show working pick and shovel working, paining
and hand We congregate nows lovers over, I play with focus.
We're just living for the search, dreaming on the fire
with salted deil burn. Ain't come back and till it's

(09:17):
golden lane. Taking in slow so we can shoote straight,
clean your gun, jing your bowl. We're done galact to
show calling Hunter's new and old lane. No cold, I'm toll.
We're knowing to you good. We're all good enough. We
got filthy engineer calling any shooters blow. Are times I'm

(09:39):
calling and bitter begins crying. Just remember there's always been
ruling barries. Are gonna let the taking it in slow
so we can shoote stream ah, jan your gun, Janior B.
We're gleected show call and Hunters now and oh ain't

(10:01):
no where fans or facs and opinions are subjective. You're
listening then, Oh yeah we did it? Phil, Are you clapping. Oh,
I'm clapping yeah. And then I just like to point
out that we didn't do anything. That was all Kayla

(10:21):
Ray and and our listeners. So I that was that
was that's too good for this show, right, that is
way too good. I was thinking that too. I'm like,
this is too good for this show, and maybe we
all get famous together. I don't, I don't. I mean,
it could have happened, Kayla, Kayla, that was bad. That
was bad. Yeah, I'm glad. I knew. I wanted to

(10:49):
give you no instruction, just to Gonta let you. Let
you play it now, Phil, Phil thinks that's too long
to play at the beginning of every show. I don't
think it's too I think people will listen to all
however long that is, Phil, I was going to agree
with you. I think that they are like some potential
for like some little like a you know, like the
out of time tagline or like just like a hook
or something. But you know what do I know? I

(11:11):
don't know, No, you know a lot. So we got
a workshop this Phil, Uh, here's the here's my idea.
I think we put some in the beginning of the show,
some at the end, and then a little interstitial. That's good. Yeah,
we could do like the first verse, the first verse
in the in the beginning, and maybe the second in
the for the out trail or something. Yeah, well, we'll
work on it. We've got plenty of options. Caleb, I

(11:32):
just wanted this badass is the only thing I was
thinking when you were As I was dancing and clapping,
I was thinking, this is the most badest thing that
ever happened to me. Uh, I've done some some particularly
badass things. So thank you. And please tell people where
they can find your music, where they can see you.
I know you said you were like back to torn
Live when when the world uh well, I guess now

(11:54):
and then also when the world gets back to normal.
But tell people where they can. They've already found you
up by searching White Glove Waiste that I think probably
on YouTube. Where else can they find you? Yeah, my
YouTube present Sacket's six. I really gotta work on that.
This was a good awareness of that. But kaylor Ray
music dot Com is the website and that's where most
of the tour and stuff is. And you know, Facebook

(12:17):
and Instagram and all that, but it's all under kaylor
Ray Music, Apple Music, Amazon, the Audiota all of it. Phil,
I think I'll let you will close out. You can
ask a few origin story questions since you're you're so interesting.
I don't want to. I don't want to leave that
off the table. No, I'm just curious because you're talking
about touring. Clearly you've been doing this for a while.
When did you get started? How did you get started?

(12:39):
I've been at it about ten years, like as a
grown up, you know, Um, I'm really dig it. I
grew up in White Coo, Texas, and I got a
gig pretty early on, and I was already playing and
writing and stuff, but tour manage them for a guy
named Jason Eaty. So I was slefting deer and running
around and just learning. Really, I mean, I didn't know
it at all what I was doing. He just really

(12:59):
through me a bone. But um, he produced my first
two records and I've just been at it, at it
ever since. I really I did it. I wouldn't trade it.
It's crazy, but I would. I wouldn't trade it. Great. Yeah,
that's awesome. We'll get back to my kids. When I
think of like what I want him to be, I
think of man musician as crazy as it would be
as hard as to succeed as a musician. It's just

(13:22):
I'm gonna I'm gonna suggest for both of them, like
try to find a way to get your art out
on that you know, and that's in that setting, because man,
it's great. Tell him to stay in school and like
do everything. But like this shot, I shouldn't have said
that word. Sorry, guard your credit, scool, don't be ridiculous
for your growing up, like all the things. If they

(13:42):
were my children, I would tell them the opposite. But
I appreciate you. Say do your taxes. Yeah, I'm with you.
I feel you well, Kayla. We appreciate it. This is
a life change for us. I'll have Phil connect with
you and get all the particulars on the music and
if if you don't mind, we'll use that every time
we post a show from now until they cancel us. Yeah,

(14:03):
thank you for that. I'll have to record a version
of it that doesn't have all a bunch of blips
in it. But I appreciate you a lot. This is fun. No,
this is so good. I appreciate I had at least
three or four listeners email me. The link to White
Claw wasist and I'm glad they did. I'm glad we
can connect with you, and we'll have to have you
back on or Be and Phil I have to come
to one of your live shows. You every close around

(14:25):
uh Montaney for sure. Hey, I would love to do that.
I get up to Bozeman putting often. I used to,
so I'm ill let the killer you let us know. Alright,
Kayla appreciate it. Alright, thanks, thank you, Philip T. Engineer.
That was awesome. Dude, I keep saying awesome and badass.
I don't. I can't really articulate how excited I am stupendous.

(14:50):
I just don't. I felt like I was even bumbling
over my words with Kayleb because I was a little
bit starstruck by her awesomeness. Yeah, it's it's I gotta say.
It's very cool for her to agree to do this.
And I was telling you when we were off Mike
that you were it was the right call to to
follow up with her after we heard that White Claw song. Well,
that White Claw song has been embedded in my psyche

(15:10):
for about three months. Every time I pop open a
white Claw, I like I sing a little little little
bit of it. But yeah, I was I was a
little for clemmed. I was so excited to hear that
song and talked to Kayla. I don't apologies, I felt. Yeah,
I gotta say I also did not expect such a
great origin story for the song too. I thought it
was yeah, I know that's I mean, the whole thing, man,

(15:33):
the whole thing is exciting. Um. Well, again, thank you
to Kayla ray go check her out, man follow her.
She's done something for our show that she didn't have
to do. And I am a little bit taken back
by how great that song wasn't And I can't wait
to have you guys, force you guys to listen to
it before you get to the podcast forever and ever

(15:53):
and ever. Um. But you know, we've got a lot
to get to. But I will say, of all of
you that wrote in that, thank you for writing in
the The poetry and lyrical abilities of our listeners are
I would say, unmatched in the hunting podcast space. I
feel like our listeners are the best lyrical artists of

(16:14):
any of the many thousands of podcasts in our category.
So thank you for that. Specifically thanks to Dr Gus
Ryan everybody that that I'll be saying you guys an
email specifically, but we'll be calling you out in every episode.
Thank you for that song, and also thank Kayla Ready
for putting into music. So another wonderful, beautiful chapter of

(16:36):
t C. Let's come to a close down. We have
a theme song. Let's say it this way, Phil, I
think we're the first Mediator Network podcast to have its
own theme song. Can we say that that's a fact?
You can say that many will copy us after this,
but none will be able specifically. I think Bent will
copy us after this, but none of the other podcasts

(16:56):
are as cool as us. I think this cements it.
If you didn't already know we are are the best.
So we got some stuff to get to today's podcast.
If we didn't fill you in at the end of
the last week show, well enough. There's a little bit
of a response to I mean, I want to say
responses it's been a while, but a continuation of the
conversation and a little more clarification of the conversation around

(17:19):
animal rights and the conversation we had with Paul Basher.
So if you haven't listened to that Paul ba Sheeter episode,
head back and do that now, and we're back. Thank you.
For spending that time doing that. Uh. And we're gonna
go through a little bit of of what happened in
that conversation and explore a little bit more about animal rights,

(17:40):
animal welfare, all those things in this episode with our
favorite non beatle, Paul McCartney. Paul McCarney. Phil, Yes, he's
he's one letter away from being one of the most
prolific songwriters of our generation. And what I didn't know
that Phil was telling me about before this, and I've
founded it this out as I was googling Paul McCartney

(18:02):
to read his articles, is that Paul McCartney is an
avid uh vegan and anti hunter. Yeah. I don't know.
I mean you would assume because he's such an outspoken vegan,
he's probably an anti hunter. I don't know about the
anti hunting thing though. I I just know that he
does not eat meat and is very he likes to
tell people about it. Um. But yeah, there there there

(18:23):
was a rumor. I think this is true. Good fact
check me. Uh. Weird Al Yankovic um wanted to do
a parody of Live and Let Die the Paul McCartney
James Bond song and call it Chicken Pot pie and
Paul McCartney did not give him permission because he did
not want to have a song about meat consumption, even

(18:46):
though it was a complete parody. And I don't know
if it was actually endorsing eating chicken pot pie, but
I can tell you that I endorse it, if that
means anything. Yeah, how about wild turkey pot pie once
we get this going. But so you're saying that Paul
McCartney is a rabbit anti hunter, calling him out rabbit
anti hunter famous Beatle did not say that, but living

(19:10):
legends possibly. Well, if you're if he's listening to this,
you're welcome on the show. We'll give you the we'll
give you the Paul A Sheer treatment. And yes, please please,
Paul McCartney, if you're listening, I'd love to have a chat.
Big fan. I've seen him in concert multiple times, have you?
Oh yeah, oh wow, I didn't know that. I could
have guessed. I could have guessed video games, beatles, it's

(19:31):
all that's all together, Yeah, it's all at all tracks. Hey, Phil,
you know last week you made a mistake, a big mistake.
And yeah, I know you did. Yeah you said that
you were making you said sarcastically, I think I think
it was sarcastically. I'm not sure that you were making

(19:53):
membership cards to the THHD cult. I said that it
was sarcastic. I aggrestion. You did receive several notes from
people asking you where here's my address? Please get the
card in the mail. I'd like it to be laminated.
This is true. And did you reply to those people?

(20:14):
Nod them. I forwarded them on to you. I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna apply to your emails, Phil, I mean, listen,
I was mostly offended that this person somehow found my email.
I mean, it's not like it's that hard to figure out.
I'm not going to say it on the air right now,
but but I was mostly just buddy, now you're opening

(20:34):
it up. He just just caught off guard, being like,
who is this schmuck? And how did he find out
my email address? People are right now thinking in their minds,
what is Phil's email and how could I figure it out.
I'm not going to help him because I can get
in trouble. But I know you're thinking about it now,
and you're thinking about sending him an email. Uh, And

(20:56):
I'm not I'm not going to dissuade you from thinking
about it actually do in it. That's up to you.
Let me just say that sending me any an email
will not get you a th HC membership card. So
you're not making just just as like a public service
and as when you're not making th HC membership cards
at all. No, unless you allow me to design them
in any way I want you get no notes, no

(21:17):
no no fit, no feedback, no feedback. Uh, and then
I can send them out to whomever I want. All right,
we can do it. It's fine. I'm so desperate to
be liked. Um. All right, well we're gonna get into
the animal rights anim welfare. But with the other mistake
we made last week is we mentioned that our Blue
Ridge contingent that's all going to take out our our

(21:40):
new Hunter uh, could be the first regional chapter. And
so lots of people wrote in that they want to
also take part in regional chapters and their neck of
the woods. Um, specifically Ben, our buddy will just say
his full name, Ben Upton, who has written in before.
He and he said, uh, but when you and Phil

(22:02):
were talking about it, you somewhat jokingly mentioned there would
be a regional chapters of the cult, and even though
you weren't necessarily serious, I think that this could be
kind of cool. I moved to Denver in September, and
since moving I've had a really, really, really hard time
meaning anyone to hunt because of COVID. In fact, the
only new person I meant to hunt was Hayes Hile,
who I found through the podcast if you'll remember back

(22:24):
in November. I am so passionate about hunting, and I'm
the type of hunter that wants to work hard, hike far,
and really get a good suffering before it's all said
and done. He likes to hunt turkeys, elk, mule, deer, grouse,
but the idea of going into these places alone is
a bit intimidating. So it's been pretty frustrating to not
have meant anyone that wants to go do these things

(22:45):
with me, especially because I know there are plenty of
folks that like those things around here. I think having
some way for cult members to reach out and find
each other will be really cool way for people to
find hunting partners in the times of COVID, even if
it's a forum or Facebook page or something like that. Um,
I'm fairly confident that most of the people that listen

(23:07):
to your podcast, especially the ones that would email honestly,
would be interested in regional chapters. And I got pretty
excited myself as the possibility of having a way to
meet like minded people to hunt without there. Okay, Phil,
what do we what do we do? Do you have
the time to manage this program? If I do not
have the time to make ten thousand laminated membership cards,

(23:30):
I don't think I have the time to to somehow
oversee this, uh this expansion of the THHC coult. But
I think that's why we have Barry Gilbert on the board,
right or not? Barry Gilberts excuse me? Wow? Wow, you
may want to cut that. Eric All may never listen again.
Uh yeah, we may have to approach Air Call about this.

(23:52):
See if he's got any extra time on his hands. Um,
I I gotta tell you, guys, I got absolutely no
extra time with my answer to run something like this.
But what I will do for all of you out there,
just very quickly, is if you email me and you're
in the situation where you'd like to meet new hunters,
we will put you, We will read, you will do
a little segment on the show, and we'll read your

(24:12):
name and where you live, and we'll ask people to
email in and I'll do and I'll make sure I
connect you. This is in the short term to solve
the problem with the t HD CALT. I don't want
people to think that I don't care. I certainly do care,
but it's cool to see it go this way. And
we want to help guys like Ben and our emergent
hunter from a couple of weeks ago find people that
go hunting in the field just like we do. So, UM,

(24:34):
if you're desperate out there and you need a little help,
email us and we will help of that, I can
promise you. Um, I think we've got in our in
our Blue Ridge Chapter, Phil our our in inaugural Blue
Ridge Chapter of the th HD colt at least at
this point fifteen people in that little bucket. So I'm
excited about that, and also excited to talk to Paul

(24:57):
McCartney again, the most unfortunate name in Googling history, Paul McCartney,
who is out of Newfoundland. He's a PhD up there
and done a lot of conservation work and writes very
beautifully about the issues in the Hunting Space. I wanted
to have him on to talk about a specific article
he wrote. That's the point of that of the conversation

(25:20):
with Paul McCartney. Appreciating nuance. That's what hooked me at
The type of the sub is appreciating nuance, and I'm like, oh,
that gets I'm done. I gotta read it now. The
difference between animal rights and animal welfare. Now, this goes
back to our conversation with Paul Sheer, but it's it's
interesting to think of hunters possibly as animal where welfarrests

(25:42):
rather than um. The opposition is animal rights folks, and
so in this in this article, Paul sets it up
this way. He quotes David Peterson from Heart's Blood, a
wonderful book if you haven't read it. Animal welfare quote
supports the humane treatment and responsible care of animals that

(26:02):
ensures comfort and freedom from unnecessary pain and suffering. By contrast,
the animal rights movement dictates that the use of animals
by any human for any purpose is wrong. So as
we go through this conversation with Paul McCarney, you'll you'll
want to key in on that. We get get to
that down the road in the conversation. But that's that's

(26:24):
really kind of the point that I wanted to get
to as we move away from you know, the Paul
but Sheer conversation last year and start to think about
this critically. The other point um from that Paul Bisher
episode that came up was was large scale agriculture, plant
based agriculture, and how much death can be applied to

(26:44):
that actual activity. Now, that is a hard thing to
pin down on a large scale. On a macro scale,
it might it might be easier on a micro scale.
Certainly when you're talking about this tangential or empirical evidence,
we can find a lot I've seen a lot of
vultures hovering over combines and harvesters across the Midwestern in
my travel, So we can put the empirical evidence around

(27:08):
the fact that large scale agriculture, planned variety kills a
lot of things. They're just not the things were used
to see and die. So but we've had what really
kicked all of this offer me was a fellow named
Jack Henry reached out to me online and he is
a biological science student at California Polytech San Luis Obispo

(27:31):
SO at California Biology student, and he does some of
this work for a living. He's he recently graduated. He
says this summer and into December that he worked at
a biological consulting firm in Bakersfield, California, which performed biota
surveys pre construction surveys on some of these large scale farms.

(27:53):
And although he said he's by no means an expert,
he said, it gave me a solemn understanding the mortality
that results from construct and agricultural efforts. Eventually, I quit
this job due to some ethical concerns of the biological
consulting industry in which we were recouraged to break the
law to make developers happy during monitoring of endangered threatened species.

(28:14):
That's not good. But then he goes on to explain
what he learned there. He says, whenever you have a
plot of land, almost anywhere you can think of, there's
a sensitive micro climate of animals living underground. I'll try
to simplify some of these animals to specific population densities,
to individual acres. Voles, moles, gophers, kangaroo, rats, mice, rats, fence, lizards, snakes,

(28:37):
and much more may lay underground at any point. For example,
one acre of land may contain up to eight to
twenty individual pocket gophers. A typical meadow vole populations are
regularly between fifteen to forty five per acre in old
field habitat. Deer mice population densities regularly occur up to

(28:58):
fifteen mice per acre, and according to Fish and Wildlife Service,
the agency responsible for listing Threatening and dangerous species, estimates
kangaroo rat densities in some grasslands from two point five
to two point seven five individuals per acre. Reptiles, on
the other hand, might even be harder to qualify because
their metal metal box needs and the detection probability involved

(29:20):
with detect detecting accurate densities are more rare. It's really
really hard, he says, to visualize these densities because so
many of these species are nocturnal. Unfortunately, people care much
less about these individuals since they are not charismatic megafauna
that opponents of a carnivore diet care about. It's much
easier for people to care about large animals like elk

(29:43):
or deer. Prior to construction of a building or conversion
of a lot to agriculture, a field will be disc
during disking, animals in a given area do not flee.
Usually generally, the noise of attractor performing the disking will
drive rodents back into their burrows, where they eight will
be inevitably killed. The aforementioned animals will be deleted from

(30:04):
the landscape, either by the blunt force that occurs by
suffocation and collapse burrows. It doesn't take a mathematicition to
quantify the death per acre individual animals into the hundreds
or thousands. Of course, that brings us to the ethical
considerations of whether or not large charismatic animals are worth
more in the eyes of vegetarians or vegans than the

(30:25):
sheer number of small animals slaughtered, many of which may
be classified as protected by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
There's also a dangerous chain of events that occurs when
all life is simply deleted from the landscape. For example,
many eagles, hawks, falcons, coyotes, foxes, weasels that relied on
this source of food have now lost an important part
of their diet and are now displaced. Some raptors may

(30:48):
make do and predate on the land, but most will
never be the same. He goes on to say, I
think it's important to come to terms with mortality involved
with development, agriculture and even livestock, because of course livestock
feed requires agriculture, and my position, it's hard to come
to any conclusion other than that hunting being the most
ethical choice people may make to do the calorie content

(31:11):
equivalent per individual. Although I haven't had the chance to
hunt during the Corona pandemic, your podcast has encouraged me
for my close friends to get our hunter education classes
done and get our hunting licenses, which we all have now. Unfortunately,
it's really hard to scale up. Hunting is a feasible
way for the majority of American to get fed, but
it's important to understand the course of agriculture and livestock.

(31:35):
At the same time, it casts a great shadow of
doubt over the ethics of veganism versus the ethics of
eating meat. I know that was very long, but thank
you Jack Henry for that. What Jack is sharing really
it has some concretion to it has some data and
really also personal experience as to how much death goes
into large scale agriculture, and that was really the crust

(31:57):
of the situation. And Paul but Sheer, the other crux
of it is what we just talked about animal writs
an animal welfare. So we're gonna get you in to
this conversation with Paul McCartney right now in JI, Paul,

(32:19):
how are you, sir? Doing very well? How are you good?
I cannot complain. I wanted to first address something with
you that we hadn't talked about previously. When I try
to google your name, Google really wants me to watch
Paul McCartney videos and listen to man. I could do
anything I want, and I'm anonymous on the internet. Yeah,

(32:39):
there's there's no way to find you. I put like
Paul McCartney hunting and conservation, and it was like, did
you mean Paul McCartney. Well, and what's great about that
is the kind of stuff that comes up. You're like, oh,
hell no, no, no, I didn't mean that because he uh,
we do not share Paul McCartney and I do not
share similar perspectives on hunting and especially It's sort of

(33:02):
funny because I did my I studied seals for my
PhD and spent a lot of time in the North
studying and well eating and hunting seals. So it's it's
actually it was a good icebreaker when I would get
to communities and introduce myself and kind of go, no,
not that one, not that one. He'd be here for
a different reason. Yea. But yeah, if you if you
put in Paul McCartney hunting, it comes up with all

(33:25):
of the anti hunting quotes from Paul McCartney. Able to compete. Yeah,
until then, you're just kind of in a weird internet
search paradox, which actually probably benefits you. As you mentioned there,
it's good. I actually don't mind being well, tell people
a little bit about your background. I already already learned

(33:45):
something I didn't know about that your PhD work with
seals and seal hunting. But give people, uh a little
bit of the background where you grew up, how you
got into this and and you know how you got
into more of the scholarly work and writing and and
things that you do. Right now. Yeah, so cut me
off when I'm when I'm going on too long, Let
me just tell you that was like an eight part question.

(34:08):
Just start at the beginning. We'll work from there. So,
um yeah, So I grew up in Ontario, just outside Toronto,
um so you know, suburbia. Um So, and this is
I'll kind of dropped this as a bit of an
maybe easter to the later conversation, but definitely did. I
did not grow up in a hunting household. No one
I no one I knew hunted except for you know,

(34:29):
one person at school UM, and had no exposure to it.
I mean spend a lot of time outdoors UM and
got into you know, backcountry canoe tripping and hiking and
things like that, but um, never with a gun in
my hand. UM. And sort of came to as I

(34:50):
was going through university, came to uh studying and being
being very really directly involved in a lot of environmental
movements and environmental UM issues UM So things around resource
extraction UM and major hydro electric dams and sort of
movements and issues like that. UM and sort of started

(35:15):
studying ecology and wildlife science and biology UM. And that's
what really brought me around to the hunting world. I
mean I had fished growing up, UM, but never but
never put it together as as a type of UM
that as a type of activity that was part of um,

(35:35):
you know, consumption and and kind of hunting and angling.
It was just you know, kind of going fishing sort
of thing. M UM. So as I started to really
I So I really kind of came to hunting and
sort of through a lot of the academic and post
secondary work I was doing UM and had a couple
of really great mentors at the university who who hunted

(35:58):
and sort of I mean into it that way and
from the sense of really wanting to get a more
personal understanding and connection with some of the stuff I
was studying UM and connect to it on on you know,
on a different level. When I say connected, I mean
you know, collegy and natural processes and wildlife and things.
So that's so that was what really, UM, what was

(36:20):
really what brought me to it is it started out
as a as a way to kind of put into
practice for myself personally what had really solidified as a
as a moral and ethical and kind of academic passion. UM. Yeah.
So and then and then then that's that led me
to it, UM to a PhD on UM and I
and I, you know, I worked with a really great

(36:42):
guy at York University studies polar bears and seals UM,
and so that was sort of a perfect world for
me to be in because UM, it was hunting, hunting
and fishing and biology in that sense were inseparable. Um,
they were all part of something, part of it together.
So UM was super I was really drawn to that. Yeah,
I mean I think of your writing. You know, what

(37:04):
brought me to to want to chat with you was
some of the writings of yours that I've read. You
don't necessarily remember where I was keyed onto it, but
I was, and I started reading and you could just tell, um,
I love to just explore different people's perspectives and approaches
and connections with hunting, and I could tell yours was
you know, at least maybe had its origins in academia,

(37:26):
and it kind of have kind of splintered out into
different subject matter in different ways to approach things. But
you know, a lot of these tough topics we get
into are are a lot easier to understand when they're taking,
you know, from an academic perspective or broken down using
no dog about no emotion, just trying to get to

(37:48):
the heart of the matter. So I did. I did
appreciate I think that last point, like getting to the
heart of the matter. I think some of the tough
topics that we've really delved into on this show. Um,
You're writing kind of gets to the heart of them
in a really pragmatic way. So I give you that.
I guess that to to butter you up right right out. Okay, man, Well,
thank you, and I mean that was I think that

(38:10):
was I appreciate that because I think I'm would I'm
drawn to writing much more around um. I mean, I
like absolutely and fascinated by the scientific topics and academic
kind of digging and around these things. But putting it
into him when we were talking about this earlier, putting
it into a way that is written for a more

(38:33):
kind of popular consumption and discussion is what really interests me.
And that's where you know, we were talking about valarious
guys who took his science writing and kind of deliberately
tried to force himself to to write for a more
popular audience. And I think that it was absolute success.
So it's people like that that that really kind of
I go, you know, there is a way to do this.
There is a way to like take a real academic

(38:55):
obsession but make it hopefully something that is useful. Yeah,
And an academic world, I mean in conservation really embodies
that in a lot of ways, right. I Mean I
was read an article that I just pulled up that
you that I had read and you led me back
to that was it's called the companies we keep politics
and inclusion and hunting. And I know you know are

(39:15):
at least aware of Lydia and Jimmy from Hunters of Color.
You know, we had them on last week and went
went through what they do and what they believe is
kind of like the pathway to reel and lasting diversity.
Um and you touched on that in this article a
little bit. But I think it's also a crossroads of
what you just mentioned where we're able to then take

(39:37):
a look at at hunting and I'll just read you
a little bit of what you what's your road back
in September. Hunting is wonderfully complex. It is a social
activity that brings us together with friends and family. Hunting
is also deeply embedded in conservation politics. I think that
point right there is is kind of how that academia

(39:57):
and even the social aspects of hunting kind of cons
vation needs all that stuff to work, right. I mean,
it really needs um each approach and it needs so
I think where you come in like a good understanding
of the two things of how the scientific and academic
studies work and how that relates to the more social
and even political side of things. Yeah, I totally agree,

(40:18):
And um, you know that's that piece was something that
I had that had been the idea had been sort
of just sitting in my head since, you know, since
I started hunting, But I did not think of it
as a as a topic deliberately to write about, because
I know, I mentioned I kind of came to hunting
through some of my own like being involved in environmental

(40:39):
movements and things, and before that, I was I grew
up like this thing, like you know, in the Toronto
punk rock scene, and that scene is completely embedded in
in you know, movements around social justice. So that was
where I kind of came from, was that world. So
when I came to hunting, it was really about, um,
those two worlds around social justice and political justice and

(41:04):
environmental justice and then bring it into hunting was sort
of a seamless transition for me, and they've always been
together in my head, but I didn't I hadn't sort
of found a way to express them that way. And
one of the and one of the ways that I
that I started to think about was was in the
same way that we that I think about companies and

(41:26):
purchases and that I make in my everyday life, which is,
what are the companies that I'm wearing and purchasing and supporting,
what are the values that they promote? And what are
they doing to make the hunting world um better, more
and more just um and And so I you know,
I came to and I didn't really I didn't really
think that there were a lot to be honest, and

(41:46):
I came. I came to find companies like Hunt to
Eat for example, who um, in my mind, are just
are sort of forging the way in that way and
bringing having these discussions and really meaningfully and directly saying,
you know, hunting is part of all these other discussions.
It's embedded in these and vice versa, and we need

(42:07):
to we need to explore them, and we need to
have those conversations and and do what we can. And
so that was where that one came from, was I
kind of finally I sort of found a company then
that thought, well, you know they are doing that. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean I think you're right in here. We are actively,
we are active on important conservation issues while allowing passive
passificity around social issues. Right, we are passive in the

(42:31):
social sense and active in the conservation sense. But again
they're connected. Um and we I said last episode that
when it comes to you know, most people hear the
word social justice these days and they go running for
the hills or they have up baked in thought that
you know, sometimes it becomes this, um, you know, very
imperiled way of seeing the world. But I don't, I

(42:53):
don't necessarily look at it that. I think it's pretty simple, um,
that what you said is true. That are social The
way we socially relate to hunting, our society and both
how we relate to each other can be improved and
can be communicated in the same way as to relate
to the ecosystems and habitats and manage wildlife. So it's

(43:14):
those things have to be connected, right, I mean you
feel like they're you know, where I came from was
different than you. Um, those things were never connected until
I actively connected them myself. Um. And I think a
lot of people are hungry for to just explore that
where it hasn't been explored in the past. Yeah, I
think so too, And I think I think in a
lot of cases what it is also is a m

(43:36):
It's it's sort of pulling the covers back on some
of the narratives that we're um, that are that are
popular in the hunting conservation world and seeing that there
are that there are historical corners of this narrative and
this history of hunting that in which these things have
always existed where um, you know, I think I talked

(43:57):
about in that one that you know, we like they
wouldn't have the water fowl populations we do today without
the without women activists at that time, UM, and um,
you know, we we wouldn't have I mean, people can
sort of disagree on the political movements that are going on,
but we wouldn't know and think the way we do
in a lot of cases about about certain environmental and

(44:19):
conservation issues and things without um, many indigenous leaders and
thinkers throughout history. UM. And so I think that these
things have been there, but we you know, UM, they
kind of get missed, and in some cases they kind
of they get deliberately missed. UM. But yeah, I know
I agree, people kind of go running for the hills

(44:40):
and I and I and that's something that um that
I also tried to kind of confront and challenge is
is is the kind of the cliches and stereotypes within
the hunting community that I think we do more damage
to ourselves with UM then then anti hunters could ever
do to us. Where we we divide and we we put,

(45:02):
we categorize, and we compartmentalize our lives and our thinking,
and we kind of create more division within UM. Yeah,
I say that all the time. And when I get
into conversation with people about anti hunting, and we're gonna
we're gonna break into a conversation here, We're gonna go
as deep as we possibly can go on animal rights
and here in a minute. But part of what people

(45:25):
often say to me is that it's it's this anti
hunter you must defend yourself against. It's it's this like
you need to build a partition between you and them.
And I often say I get less divisive commentary from
anti hunters than I do from hunters. It's almost it's
like one, if I'm being honest, I get yeah, absolutely, man,

(45:48):
I get um. I get that, I get called all
kinds of things about about being a lefty and a
social justice war and all of that stuff, And it's
it's it's people it's from in the hunting community. Um
and uh, And I say, like, you know, you're I
am being You're accusing me what of being willing to
think about these things and being willing to do into them?

(46:11):
And I mean guilty? Then you know, yeah, me too.
That's that's a good way to put it. I think
a lot of people listening hopefully can agree that, like
if it's if willingness to look at these things objectively
and then also look at him personally to be like,
you know, what do I believe? Well? But what I
what do I think it objectively is good for the community? Um,
I think that those two things are are integraling and

(46:32):
to not be too you know, to avert about this
each You have some examples in this article about companies
and how they express their value systems. Right, So if
you were to if you were to take justice, environmental justice,
social justice, the hunting community does this and signals this
in many ways. You give examples of for example to you, right,

(46:54):
and they they have they put sheet back on the mountain,
and do you think when they put sheet back on
the mountain they don't talk about that is like a
part of the shared set of values that we have
in the hunting community. UM First Light talks about sporting heritage,
they talk about UM public lands, they talk about UH,
they have a women's line. You know. All these companies,

(47:14):
Sitka they do the same thing. They have a grant
system for the outdoors where they talk about funding really
important habitat work and ecosystem work and things of that nature.
And so exactly all these companies are taking part in
some sort of value based activity that we can all
agree on. And yeah, and that's exactly, and I think

(47:34):
it's that's then that's where I kind of then go, Okay,
now what's the next step. And I you know, I
saw as an example, you know, UM, when Sitka came
out last year and said, you know that they that
they do not support UM, you know, opening out the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. You know, it was
like they're kind of that that was an environmental issue

(47:57):
for sure, but they knew full well that they were
going to be taken a lot of political heat from that,
you know. UM. And I saw and I kind of
mentioned it in there as well that I UM in
June when the continent really started to talk in a
very UM in in a really real way about racial justice.
And I and I sort of looked to the hunting

(48:18):
community and saw where do I see this leadership? And
I didn't own anything by hunt to Eat before then, Um,
and I bought a T shirt that day when I
when I saw them come out and say, you know,
we're gonna be We're doing better, We're going to do
better for this and and so yeah, exactly, I kind
of look um to to our community just to say,
you know, um, how are we going to infuse are

(48:41):
the things that we already know how to do because
we've been doing them for so long around wildlife and conservation,
how are we going to do those socially as well? Yeah?
And it's like I said, it's like the well has
been poisoned by our politics. But if you just say,
look at look at the look at the way that
people on social media, as hunters is influencers and companies

(49:03):
that are influential, like leading members of our community speak
about conservation and how to work in it and live
the life of it, um, you know, and and to
add to the experience of hunting through you know, making
sure there's healthy wildlife. I think it's it's as simple
as saying, we want to make a diverse you know,

(49:25):
we want to make this a diverse community with that
is inclusive and welcoming and understands that it needs that
to thrive because hunting, because I'm sure you probably agree,
and needs social acceptance to thrive, you know, just you know,
and social acceptance requires acceptance from lots of perspectives, communities
and races and creeds. So to me, it's just like

(49:48):
an objective thing. But I know you're just like me.
When I try to just make it objective, it becomes
it kind of gets a little bit pulled decoupled from
that when you get yeah, and it and it is objective.
But I also think, like nothing could be more personal
either than hunt than than hunting, And I think, so
I think, and this is then, this is why, this
is why when I when I came to hunting in

(50:09):
my twenties, it just consumed me because it it um
to me there's no other part of my life that
so fully exists in in the most personal way and
also in the most intellectual kind of objective academic way. Um,
and that space right there is what is what I
find so compelling and consuming about it, Because yeah, You're right.

(50:35):
It's like it's it just seems so self evident what
we need to do. Um, and at the same time
that it can be there's nothing more personal that we
could do than than then take this activity that is
that is so meaningful to us and and kind of
be critically reflective about it, you know. Yeah, And I think, yeah, fortunately, um,

(50:55):
because I before the Black Lives Matter riot's really last
summer kind of got fired up. The previous November, we
had done a podcast on the subject of diversity and
hunting and how to really look at it critically, and
I got a lot of pushback, more than I expected,
and a more just vera like verocity, like people just

(51:17):
the people that didn't like it just couldn't understand why
I would even entertain such an idea. And then as
time went on, um, even just you know last week's
episode with with Lydia and Jimmy from Hunters of Color,
it was almost like a non issue. It is almost
like everyone that didn't run for the Hills back then
that hung on sees this just as something we talk about.

(51:40):
It's not something you know, there are little intricacies that
people disagreed with in a very constructive way. But there
wasn't any inflammatory hate hate speaks around you know what
we talked about. And so that's movement. Man, We'll get
movement on this, UM. But it's just you know, keep
talking about it, and you know it's from you to
be you know, growing up in the different country, in

(52:01):
a different you know, pretty far away from where I
grew up. Um, to come to that same kind of idea.
I think it's in and of itself kind of analogy
for where we got to do for the rest of
them totally. And and these and these connections, I mean, um,
you know, I've chatted with Jimmy since they first launched
Hunters of Color and it's like, you know, I didn't
even know where he lived at the time. And then

(52:22):
then you find out that people are now connected on this,
their their platform has connected people across the entire continent
around this, and it's and you realize, this is not
a this is this is a topic that UM is
not as loud as others, but it's not niche. It's
not it's not sort of tucked away in the corner somewhere.
And I think, like what I try to get it

(52:45):
across to other hunt hunters I talked to, and you know,
when I try to kind of get across and writing
is these things are tough, they're complicated, they're frightening, um,
and that is something. Those are things, and those are feelings,
and those are challenges that the hunting community and hunters
and conservationists have dealt with since the beginning. Nothing that
we no success that we've ache has not been heretical

(53:09):
at the time. I mean like did you like, do
you think do you take these big stories that um,
and you think when people wanted to stop market hunting
in the early that that was a popular opinion among hunters. Like,
so it doesn't at all concern me. It concerns me
greatly that that we have people as part of a

(53:29):
community that I'm part of that don't feel that everyone
belongs here. That that that concerns me greatly. But it doesn't.
It doesn't deter me because I think that we just
know that we're onto something. You know well, and if
you it's funny how this works too, because you go
back to like when they had the first ever National
Wildlife Conference, When you start looking at the who was there,

(53:53):
who was really the gathering around conservation? There was garden clubs.
There was a much more I guess you could say diverse,
but much more varied stakeholder group back then. It seems, um.
And maybe it's just how politics and our society and
sociology has moved, but it just kind of seemed back

(54:13):
then that there was you know, there was there was
John Muir hanging out with Teddy Roosevelt like that. That
that did happen, um, and it even back then was
very publicized. So well, yeah, and I mean this is
I think, you know, you know, Ralph Waldo Emerson was
you know, eventually spoke out against hunting, and we see

(54:36):
him as one of the great naturalists, right, we see um, sorry,
I'm sorry, Henry David Threau. Rather and you know, we
see we see Walden as um as one of the
greatest environmental texts and that that taught us so much
about how to think about living with nature. And in
that book it speaks out against eating meat, and it
it it doesn't seem to take away from what we've

(54:56):
learned from him in terms of relating to the environment
and being steward of the land. Um, because he didn't
do it in a way that was meant to polar eyes.
He didn't talk about it, he didn't demonize and villainize people. Um.
It was still towards the same the same goal, the
same kind of thing that we that we all agreed on. Um.
And so I think that's instructive just and how, you know,

(55:19):
how we interpret things now and how we how we
don't see things or how we do see things from
the past, and we kind of when we kind of
question that, we realize there are some lessons there, you know,
and how we maybe should be doing things differently. Yeah,
I always I'm telling you, I look back at that,
you know, FDR and that Wildlife conference back in I've

(55:40):
studied that and kind of read some of the reports
that came out of that, and you get this idea
and maybe it's maybe it's idealistic. Maybe I don't. If
I was there, I wouldn't feel this way. But I
when I look back at that that you know, two
thousand conservationists. There was farmers, hunters, anglers, like I said,
garden club members, outdoor enthusiasts. There was a General Wildlife
fetter Acian idea, and also a group called the General

(56:03):
Wildlife Federation, which changed two years Two years later, to
the National Wildlife Federation. Um, that that really felt like that,
you know, because there was so much of a threat
out there, such a general threat to wildlife and wild lands,
and just kind of our ability to go there, um,
that we could gather around that. So I think we're

(56:23):
there now too. I mean we're there now too. I
think if we just look hard and dig into it. Um.
But yeah, I appreciate. I appreciate where you are on that.
I really do. Yeah. Thanks, I'm glad. Yeah, it's cool
that you had them on that. That's great. Yeah, like
I said it, I mean, like so the first time
we really broached this subject. And I'm not I'm not naive.
I understand that there's a wide swath of America that's

(56:46):
tired of of tired of hearing about it, and wants
to just talk about turkeys. I'm with them too. I
would love to just talk about turkeys. But I have
a disposition that doesn't allow for that. I don't think. Um.
But you know that for us, like I said, for
us to be able to push push that forward and
simplify it um on a broad level and personalize it
on on you know, like a micro level, I think

(57:10):
is is just the way in for for people to
be asking. We had some good emailers from last Kudos
to these folks that emailed last week about that episode,
and they were just it felt like they were nitpicking
some of the points made, and I was so happy
to see people nitpicking some of the solutions for the
problem rather than the problem. Yeah. Absolutely, that's a good
way to put it, for sure. And I think, um, well,

(57:33):
you know it won't surprise you that I found that
your discussion with paulish you're really interesting for that because
because of that, I found, um, there was a different
focus sometimes, um from his perspective on on the problem
versus the knitpicking of the like the ideas and and
and um what he chose to focus on. Right, So yeah, yeah,

(57:55):
I'm glad you. I'm glad you listened to that. I
can't listen back to it. I don't have it's you know,
like those things become just to get one of the reasons,
I'll just will start at the beginning here. One of
the reasons I wanted to have Paul on was Paul
McCartney who we're talking to, not Paul the sheer Holly
different reasons. Yeah, and not Paul McCartney because he would

(58:15):
probably have to come with Paul the Sheer. They'd have
to come on together. UM, as you wrote a piece
called up the difference between animal rights and animal welfare
around appreciate the nuance between in the history of of
animal rights, and I'm sure i'd love to get you
know after you listen to that. It's been a while
since I talked to Paul the Sheer, and it's been
a while since I really kind of went back to

(58:38):
that episode, but we did. UM also have a listener
of our podcast send us a bunch of answers here
recently about uh large scale agg and how many animals
that kill and we we've talked about that already in
this episode, but we're getting you know, this is kind
of a good time to take a reset and respond

(58:58):
to that because they're so much that happened. I fired.
I laughed because I just fired a lot of people up. UM.
But what's you listen to that? What What did you
take from that UM conversation? Yeah, Man, I took us
so much from it, Um, I took it so I
I specifically focused on the concept of appreciating nuance, and

(59:20):
I did very deliberately when I wrote that piece of
animal rights and welfare, I very deliberately did not position
it as animal rights versus animal welfare UM. Because I did,
I don't see them as as I see them as
as a as a contrast and as having specific, nuanced differences.
And one of the things I took from that conversation

(59:42):
is the importance of language and exactly what I was
sort of trying to highlight my pieces around and what
I took from that was and how language can be used,
um and in some cases misused UM two in presenting
a perspective that U that kind of mobilizes certain you

(01:00:02):
know what's called in the literature, It's called moral framings,
so um, you know, packaging something up into a set
of kind of framings and ideas that certain people are
going to respond one way to and other people are
going to respond a different way too. And the animal
rights movement is phenomenal at this. They're incredible at doing

(01:00:24):
doing this effectively. And so that was something I took
from that because I felt that it, I mean, I
was pulled out of the conversation and it when when so,
and I mean, I don't know, I don't want I
don't want it at all. Um. You know hang Polish
show to dry it all. It was a great conversation
and I enjoyed listening to it. Um. But you know

(01:00:45):
there were when when they use when he used his
language like like murder and violate and things. Um. That's
that's reference to very specific legal and ideological ideas and frameworks. Um.
And so that something that that really stood out to me,
is it it pulled me out of the bigger topic
and and sort of had me focusing too much on

(01:01:08):
that stuff. Let me just let me just say that
that is something I've run to almost I actually did
another podcast with a gentleman um, an animal rights activist,
and I went to his house or this animal rights
house called the Dingo Den, and Uh, this gentleman is
is I just don't like to say his name or
his group anymore because they've just done some stuff since
then that I just I don't even want to promote

(01:01:31):
even as as a listening tool. Um. But I went
there and immediately was struck me. This is the first
time I've really seen it. And then I've seen it
and heard it every other conversation since. As we start
to get into animal rights is kind of like the
civil rights movement as kind of like the right, you know,

(01:01:52):
the movement to end slavery is kind of like And
so then I end up having to be in the
uncomfortable sometimes position of semantics trying to decouple slavery from hunting.
And that I feel, I feel, if it's not deliberate,
it's certainly tactical. Right, It's certainly like part of their

(01:02:12):
training to get you to to become uncomfortable with your
own argument, because you have to then you have to
set those two things beside each other. So I think
that goes to your moral framing comment. Yeah, and it
and it and it is deliberate. Um and and hey, look,
I mean you know, as a hunting community, we have
strategies and tactics that we use as well, many of

(01:02:33):
which I think are great and many of which make
me cringe. Uh. And I understand that different movements have
different approaches and tactics, And I think this is the thing.
This is sort of the rub to me, is, um,
how do we peel back those those specific strategies and
tactics and get to some of those underlying ideas and

(01:02:54):
um and uh And in some cases I mean, in
some cases that will be strategic for us, because at
the end of the day, no one is letting go,
no one's letting go over their long term goals, and
so in some cases, I think, you know, one of
the things to me, I think is is that this
is strategic to us if we can be a little

(01:03:14):
more measured, a little more careful, and even some cases
more sympathetic to to these other ideas. Um, the worst
case scenario, we're gonna have a better understanding of our
own perspective, in our own directions, in our own language,
and in best case scenario, we're going to have better
connections with people that, um, we didn't have before. You know, well,

(01:03:36):
I mean your article gets into the history I want
to get into the history of animal rights and then
comparing it to animal welfare. But you bring up a
good point that maybe we can work through if you
don't mind. Prior and I didn't really think of it
this way, but there are these kind of constructs in
our own head about hunting, how we argue hunting. Um,
I always try to first start by peeling back our
own dogma and saying, like, what am I really trying

(01:03:58):
to say here? And that's led me to kind of
like a conversation about death that is pretty infallible when
when you start thinking about animal rights, you know, because
then you start to then you start to compare death
to death um, and it gets interesting. But but when
I think of okay, here's one of the see, if
you agree with with the analogy of the altruistic hunter,

(01:04:19):
we often present ourselves, present the hunting community, this altruistic
band of um animal welfare lovers and conservationists that are
out there thinn and herds and and really that's like
uh anymore a thin veneer on why we're really out there?
My my philosophy or my thought about this would love

(01:04:40):
to hear you talk about it a little bit. Is
that you know, there's a game theory side the hunting.
You know, you're you're pursuing a goal, right, a trophy
in some cases are you're pursuing a goal and there's
a lot of of different inputs and outputs that are
very exciting UM on just a game level, Like the
same way we play a video game, this same way
we play a board game, where those things are pleasing

(01:05:04):
to us psychologically and help us UM in a lot
of ways. So while we might come off as alstruistic
in an argument with an animal rights person, we have
a lot to unpack there. Um. Have you done much
thinking about that? Yeah, for sure. UM. And one of
the things that have kind of come to a lot
more recently is UM is being able to um to

(01:05:28):
being able to adjust our presentation of things depending on
the audience. And I think getting past two issues that
we have with that, so we know, be often this
is why hunt, and this is this is the narrative.
I hunt because of A, B and C. And and
then we have a tendency in a lot of cases
or whatever. I mean, not not just hunting, but anybody, right,
But UM, we have a tendency then to say, no

(01:05:51):
matter what conversation I'm in, I'm going in like a
ton of bricks with my A, B and C reasons.
And a lot more recently, you know, in the last while,
I've kind of released had to think about, you know,
this kind of framing element to this and how do
we how do we adjust what we're saying to the audience.
And I think we have to get past a couple
of things. We have to get past one this UM

(01:06:14):
idea that we are somehow being politically correct or all
these other accusations that I sometimes get in this while
you're just pandering, right, and uh. And then the second
thing I think we need to get past is um
the idea that we need to be that we are
being somehow dishonest by by doing that, by adjusting the
way we frame things. And I don't think either of

(01:06:34):
the two things are true. I think, um, I I
hunt for many reasons, and it's very complex to me
in my own head, and so too kind of pull
at different threads at different times is not is not me.
It's not it's not pandering, it's not bowing down or
bending over to anyone. It's it's about saying, you know what,

(01:06:57):
this is such an important activity to me, and this
is so meaningful and profound to me that no matter
what the perspective is you come from, I have a
way to relate to that because hunting touches so many
different parts of what I think and what I believe
and how I moved through the world that I can
I can find something to relate to on that. And
then again, like you know, not feeling like we're being

(01:07:18):
sort of dishonest to our to it by not saying, well,
I don't know, I have to I have to cover
the how much money we rate as well, because not everyone,
not everyone is thinking about that. Now. People don't if
you have them, If people are morally opposed to killing animals,
telling them that you pay to kill animals doesn't make
any sense to them, and understandably so in this guy,

(01:07:40):
I think comes back to something else that I really
took from your conversation with Paul that I that I
found really sort of insightful in a way. So one
of the things that I don't want to keep bring
it back to this, but but it kind of connects here.
UM is one of the things that you both talked
a lot about was UM was getting closer to food

(01:08:02):
and in this case, getting closer to the to the
death that is inevitable in food UM and taking kind
of taking that on right, carrying that burden. And to me,
where where it went in my head when I heard
you guys talking about that was sort of the flip
side of that, which is that hunting to me is
about taking control of the animal welfare part of things

(01:08:22):
that I'm taking an active role in ensuring to the
greatest extent possible that I am looking out for animal
welfare and so yes, it's death, but I'm ensuring as
much as I possibly can that I'm taking that under
my own kind of wing. Um. And and that's and
that's why I kind of come back to this animal
welfare part of things, that that if as hunters, if

(01:08:44):
we can kind of think about this and embrace this,
I mean, you know, it's and not not be not
shy away from the idea that is hunters, we are
animal Welfare US and and we would extend that to
probably say that we are Wildlife Welfare US and we
are have tat welfares and we are you know, ecological
process welfaris right. Um. And that's I think comes back

(01:09:07):
to this idea about you know, we can adjust our
messaging depending on who we're talking to and what we'll
speak to that to them. Um. Yeah, I've always been
and I've come to this through a lot of conversations
like the one I have with paulish here, where there
are the things I say I hunt, the reasons I
say that I hunt, and then there are like the

(01:09:29):
value that hunting brings to me personally, and that's like
that's hard to understand even in your own mind. You
know that I'm gonna say why on a broad scale hunting, Um,
it's good for society, And then I'm want to say,
on on my own personal scale, why it's good for me?
And a lot of times it is, you know, a
building skills and understanding UM, animals in a very intimate way,

(01:09:54):
and those things are kind of they're very personal things.
And what I saw that Paul does they do the
same thing. They they have the same kind of micro
macro reasons for being animal rights activists. UM. They want
to save the world, they also want to save themselves
in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that's
one of the big I think differences between the animal

(01:10:16):
rights kind of philosophy and subsequently the animal rights movement
and UM where David Peterson, the writer David Peterson talks
about you know, different kinds of hunters, and one of
them he talks about is the nature hunter. Right, so
people who would think about the landscape on on a
bigger level, UM. And I think that's one of the

(01:10:38):
differences is this is also the focus or not on
to the the extent to which we focus on individuality
UM and versus the go versus the whole or the
or the you know. Um. And this is something we
talked about his hunters, like I think about the herd,
not the individual right um. And that can be in
this case a bit of a metaphor as well, that
I'm thinking about, you know, the welfare of the whole,

(01:11:01):
not not the rights of the Yeah. And then you
think of a lot of animal rights activists and a
lot of the way that they decry hunting is to
to look at a motivation in this singular sense. Right,
the dentist that killed the lion, What was that dentist
doing over there? Why would he be over there? Why
does he want to do that? Right, It's and it
becomes a straw man, um, and easily to kick over there.

(01:11:25):
I've recently seen something going around in the animal rights
community around um, coyote killing contests that makes hunters look
like heartless bastards who kill um, you know, to notch
their belts. Uh. And so those things, while those things
are interesting conversations and in useful conversations in terms of

(01:11:46):
like the fringe parts of hunting, it's it's nothing but
a straw man when it comes to how we characterize
each other. And I always encourage hunters not to do
that the animal rights folks, Um, not every animal rights
activist is pay Anderson right, And it's it's important not
to decry that when it happens to us, but then
turn around and apply that to the other. Yeah, And

(01:12:09):
that's that is so important. And I mean, I think
there's there's two things that come to mind to me
there that's such an important point. And inasmuch as we
talk about the hunting community being, um, being so different,
it's made up of people that are that that disagree
with some things and agree with some things, and um,
you know where it's so complex. It would be a
mistake to think that the animal rights community is one

(01:12:32):
homogeneous is as homogeneous as the outward kind of billboards
and slogans that the organizations put out right. And I
and that's an important point to not kind of paint
them with one brush. And I had a great conversation
and again I won't I won't say his name here,
but I had a great kind of private conversation with

(01:12:54):
someone who's, UM, I don't know if he would consider
himself an animal rights activist, but he's certainly advocate hates
he certainly kind of advocates for anti trapping and in
a lot of cases, um, what he would describe as
anti trophy hunting activities. And anyway, we were speaking privately
and he said, you know, UM, in some cases he
would not consider this species to be a trophy hunter,

(01:13:16):
a trophy hunts what quote trophy hunt species, whereas officially
sort of in the animalrights community they would. And I
got me to thinking about, you know, how comfortable would
he be saying publicly, no, I don't think that that
species should qualify for this kind of opposition to hunting,
because he's just as much kind of pressured by his

(01:13:39):
kind of community and in group as in some cases
hunters are. And it makes me kind of then come
back to the second piece there, which is that that
I think hunters also need to be willing to um
to demonstrate that that internal kind of difference. And it
doesn't mean that we are you know, cracking the statue.
To piece is it means that we're demonstrating that we

(01:14:02):
can do for ourselves and within our own community. UM,
we can have debates, and we can we can dig
into things ethically, we can disagree on things, and we
can we can occupy spaces of seeming contradiction, and we
and and it it reduces the ability of those that

(01:14:23):
would oppose us and anti hunters and I distinguished that
from non hunters, but anti hunters. That reduces their ability
to say, see, all of you hunters are the same.
Because if we remove that ability and we show that
we're that no, there is division and we are willing
to have these debates internally in our own community. UM.

(01:14:43):
I think that's that's an important example for I think
that's that shows that, no, we're not all just blindly
following one another. But it also allows us to connect
with people who who say, you know, I disagree with
kyote contests, but I don't necessarily disagree with hunting. And
that's that's where I stand on the batter. I think
presenting hunting is a contest. I find it horrible, but

(01:15:05):
I don't wear kyote for I don't disagree without hunting
and trapping. And so I can connect with people who
are not hunters who might share that perspective. And you know, yeah,
I've come to I've come to through conversations like those
of paulish here and others I've had because I said
before and I've said on this show many times, I

(01:15:25):
try to strip away the dogma that I was taught
when I walked into hunting at the age of twelve,
Not that you know, my dad taught me any of
this stuff, but just kind of the stuff that seemed
like it was um baked into the industry maybe when
I walked in like ways of thinking animal rights folks
are all emotion, emotion and no facts, and they're all
this and all that. And as I got through there,

(01:15:46):
I really realized that a lot of that is true.
But uh, it's true, and it's only a certain faction.
So when I look at like animal rights, I see
animal rights activists is way different than someone who tends
to agree with animal rights rather than the you know,
a hunting or conservation side of the coin. So in
in an activist group, especially animal rights activists, there are

(01:16:10):
a lot of very much emotional pan during that goes on.
You saw with Paul Baser, Like you said, there's moral
framing and involved and you get you you build an
activist movement that's very hollow. It's kind of a thick shell,
but it's hollow on the inside because the way that
you recruit people is through emotion. It's through you know,

(01:16:31):
slaughterhouse videos and you know the video I mentioned, and
that doesn't last, right, Like, yeah, I can't last? So right,
you you put a video up online of a bunch
of coyoties that were killed in a kyote contest in
you recruit somebody to your ideology that way, and they
become an activist. They may get a year or two
down the road and not understand why they believe what

(01:16:51):
they believe. And you know what, I'm hoping that that
I'm the person who gets to talk to them and say, hey,
look I agree with you about the contest, but now
let me tell you about another aspect of this. And
and I don't need you. I don't need that person
to become a hunter to to to like or a trapper.
But if I can bring to them the same kind

(01:17:13):
of complexity or that the idea that there is complexity
to this um, then that's a that's that's success, right, Um, yeah,
no it isn't. It's well, I think what you just
described as what I hope can continue to kind of
be the norm, and what I was trying to maybe
what I hoped in my mind's eye, like may be
displayed with Paula Sheer personally, is that hunting activism can

(01:17:38):
be It can be agnostic. Hunting activism can be just
us talking about what our value systems and and how
we see conservation. It doesn't need to be emotional. Um,
screw the anti screw the libs, screw the you know,
hold onto. It doesn't need to be that. And in fact,

(01:17:59):
it's very we have a better chance of winning over
the non hunter, which is at some levels who we
ultimately want to be talking to if we approach our
own activism, you know, with with our whole heart and
and and our heads and our emotions, our emotion, but
also our objectivity. Yes, exactly. And that's and that's where

(01:18:20):
I think like, if we can if we can start
to um think about the specific language that we're using,
you know, and as an example, animal welfare, if we
can start to use that to the to the non
hunting public who might respond to that and who might
kind of have a have a more automatic um sympathy

(01:18:42):
to that term then you know, science based wildlife management
for instance, then that's great. Then then I'll use that
term and I'll emphasize how how hunters are animal welfaress
and and we'll use that all then I'll and and
you know, the byproduct or the the kind of happy
side effect is that of that is that we're kind

(01:19:03):
of taking that narrative by the reins and we're saying,
you know, we're going to use that word, that term,
and we're not We're going to remove one more from
from the lexicon of of things that can against hunting,
because as you said, you know, most of the public
is not against hunting. Yeah, and so I want to
meet them where they are. It's it's weird, right, It's

(01:19:25):
like one of those things we said a couple I
said a couple of weeks ago on this show. People
will already know I say all the times like hunting.
You can you can get acceptance social successans of hunting
just by skinning it differently, by by approaching the question differently.
I mean, you can get You could say, do you
like killing contests or hunters? Go out and people you know,
you would probably get five percent yes and percent no.

(01:19:47):
You could be like, what about somebody who lives in
Alaska and kills coyotes by the dozens and wears their
fur and eats their flesh. And you would flip that
the other way in terms of and that's where the
survey data. Um. That's what it's finding, right, is that
when you ask people individual motivations for hunting, the approval

(01:20:08):
ratings are far different. Um. And there was a recent
paper and uh that came out in an academic journal
around the social license to hunt. And that was what
it was sort of getting at, was when that when
the public perceives that the that the purpose of hunting,
so both the purpose and the outcome are certain things.

(01:20:30):
And in this paper, I think somewhat problematically used the
concept of trophy hunting, which has never been firmly defined,
but they used that and found it was that Chris
Dermot Yeah, and he's great. I mean, he's it's a
super interesting paper. Um. Yeah, that's right. And you've had
Kyle ortellon as well, I think, haven't you. Yeah, So

(01:20:50):
it's great. Um. And that's exactly that's exactly what they're finding,
right that depending on how you talk about it, um, people,
you know, people respond to it differently, but in and
I think to say that differently, people connect with it differently. Right,
I try to think of, like, are there parallels in

(01:21:11):
our culture where it's not like basketball. It's just it's
not like there are a whole lot of like knitting,
a whole lot of pastimes that a guy or might
get into that he's thrust into this paradox or thrust
into this more moral ambiguity where it's like, well, why
do you It's cool with me if you do it

(01:21:32):
this a way, but it's not cool. You know, if
I play basketball and I shoot granny style, that's cool.
If I shoot a hook shot, it's cool too, Like
that's not Apple's apples that you're threatening their their entire
philosophy of life because of that, right, And I think
guns are that way too a little bit. I mean,
it's all kind of a jumbalaya of bullshit in my opinion.

(01:21:53):
But it's like it is for something that you can
do as a pastime, which is a good explanation for like, well,
how I spent a lot of my time. It's it's
unique in the way that it's so madietable based on
the way it's described. Oh absolutely yeah. And I mean
maybe I'm sort of like a fly drawn to the

(01:22:15):
to the lamp with this, but that's partly why I'm
I enjoy it so much because it's it's difficult, and
it's challenging and it and it um, it's it's not
you don't just sort of untie your boots and leave
it at the door when you come home. It chases
you around all day and everything you're doing. And that's
that's something that I enjoy about it, you know. And
and why that I and they say why, I try

(01:22:36):
to kind of figure out, well, how do I connect
this with all different parts of my life, whether that's
in my case, was my kind of academic pursuits or
my um kind of social and political interests as well,
you know, um, and and that that's, yeah, that is
what kind of makes it really interesting to me. I
think if it was, I think that's probably why I'm

(01:22:58):
not interested in basketball or yeah, I mean that's probably
why this podcast exists, because it's it's just infamite. Sometimes
you just feel like you're you know, you're just talking
in circles and it's just this intellectual game that you're
playing with yourself just to to satiate your own need
to explore things. Sometimes it feels like that I get
that and some but sometimes you actually get somewhere where

(01:23:20):
you may there is an epiphany and you do start
to see your own activities in the woods differently. Yeah,
and so I think it's probably fifty fifty half the time.
At the time, I'm just spinning my wheels and trying
to get there and sounded like maybe a little bit
pretentious now and then, and half the time I'm you know,
I'm getting somewhere. I'm digging in um and finding out

(01:23:43):
why I think a certain way or why I react
a certain way. Yeah, and I'm really happy. I mean,
I don't know if this is I don't know to
what extent this is, this is changing. I mean, I
might talk to an eighty year old hunter who says
no, no no, no, the honety. It's always been like this.
There's always been pockets of hunting, the hunting community that
have that have just fed off of this kind of

(01:24:06):
um discussion and philosophical debate. So maybe it is, maybe
it's you know, but I certainly am excited that that.
I didn't think that I would be able to when
I got into hunting, I didn't think that I'd be
able to write, um, you know, things about the difference
that intricate differences between animal rights and I'm a welfriend

(01:24:26):
that if I did, anyone to read it. And I
originally wrote this piece for them for Hunter Eats blog,
and that was I thought like, oh, so there's actually
companies and platforms out there that are that are moving
this stuff along. And I mean then it was just
it was just like I couldn't get enough of it, right, Yeah, Yeah,
it's it's a different connection to hunting. You know, people ask,

(01:24:46):
you know, what's this about, what's this show about? What's
your you know, what angle do you take? I'm like,
I don't trying. I'm trying. I just going. I'm going
the way that's interesting to me. And that's the cool
thing about this, that subject matter that you can't go
just about. If you want to just get into the craft,
go for it. Go go learn how to do every
little intricate thing. If you want to get into how

(01:25:08):
it affects our culture, jump there. If you want to
get into how it affects our minds and the way
we think about animals and think about values and why.
I mean, you get you go any direction, it's there,
and it's and it's all out that those discussions are
all happening, right, um, and and I and I hope that,
you know, as yeah, and we kind of um going
off on a bunch of different tensions, but I was

(01:25:28):
gonna get you. I was just gonna like we needed
to explain rights versus welfare. Well, yeah, yeah, that's all
I was going to kind of say. Here was that
I hope that there's um, you know, I hope that
somewhere out there people are writing about the history of
the hunting the hunting conservation movement in the way that
I dug into the animal rights movement and found when

(01:25:50):
when I so to kind of go back to that,
when I is this that a good time? We were
driving on that, I was like, we gotta get back
to that. How we went too far? So when I
started looking into it, um the animal rights movement, I
found that and I described as I found there was
a pretty clear distinction in history between animal rights as
a as a philosophy and animal rights that became what

(01:26:11):
people now think of as the movement right as people
associate with with Peter and um and he made society
and different organizations and I didn't know that. I didn't
know that they that they were kind of um distinct
like that. When I look started looking into the history
of the animal rights movement UM, because I was guilty
of it. I used animal rights, animal welfare, all these

(01:26:33):
things interchangeably. And I found that it emerged in the
you know, in the eighteen hundreds M really as a
way to focus on treating domestic farm animals better and
as a way to end in many cases the live
experimentation on animals for for scientific purposes. And I kind
of looked at that and went and thought, who doesn't

(01:26:54):
agree with that? You know, who doesn't who can't see
themselves in that? And and so that was and then
later it was it was as we kind of moved
into the turned more into an organized political movement UM,
and animal rights organizations at the time talked about that
in the sense of that they needed to find some
overarching moral argument that defined the whole movement, and that

(01:27:19):
kind of moral argument became applying the concept of human
rights to animals UM. And I find for me, UM,
what I what I sort of take issue with more
than anything I think is about the movement and the
concept is that is thinking that we're going to apply

(01:27:41):
what to me is an imperfect concept in human culture
around rights and law to animals and that's how that's
how we should define our interaction with animals. And I
and I think, Um, I think I think that's missing
something to me. I don't think that's that goes deep
enough to be honest about how how we think about
our interaction with animals. It's just it's just applying another

(01:28:03):
kind of contrived idea, which is the concept of rights
that can change and that has changed. You know, Yeah,
there's so many you know. What was interesting to me
in reading through your paper is that you kind of
connected points in time. I guess in a way it
kind of pulls the pulls away the veneer of this
modern animal rights thought, that it's so sensationalized and it's

(01:28:26):
so emotional, and it kind of grounds it into some
really relevant places and time in our culture. I mean,
you talk about UM in a in a book called
from book called Second Nature the Animal Rights Controversy. There's
a quote I'll say, this guy's his name is Alan

(01:28:47):
hers Herskovi. Yeah, Yeah, he wins a he wins a
Canadian organization called Truth About For Yeah hers Covici. UM
suggests that after Biblical times, the first glimmers of concern
for animals appear in the work of certain Greek and
Roman writers who question the central role of man and creation.
And this goes even further to philosophers like Pythagoras and

(01:29:12):
and down the line to where they believe that humans
have a fellowship with animals. So quote, if we kill
them and eat their flesh, we commit injustice and impiety
inasmuch as we are killing for our own kin. Right,
So this is this is kind of deep in the
way that we thought about our own humanity. Yeah, And

(01:29:33):
and I think that one of the things to emphasize,
and I think in some ways that comes back to
how we started the conversation around um, the people now
who kind of define the hunting community is that these
ways of thinking. You know, he talks about Pythagoras, he
was a Greek philosopher and Biblical times, and so a
lot of the a lot of the knowledge and ideas

(01:29:56):
that define that the animal rights movement kind of took
up are very Western European. It became western, really Western
European concepts right around the distinction between humans and animals
or not, and the idea of of rights applying to
you know, right, the rights of man that Thomas Pain's text,

(01:30:21):
but but not all the and I won't speak to
it because I'm not from any of these cultures, but
there are hundreds and thousands of cultures in the world
who don't have knowledge systems built on these concepts. And
so at the end of the day, we also need
to kind of realize that the concept of kind of
animal rights is rooted in a very European way of thinking.

(01:30:46):
Um that not all that, not all cultures share. Um. Well,
when you connected to like said, Thomas Pain's rights a man,
you you talk about how they explored this like emerging
eagle concept of rights, you know, and then also how
they apply that to the those same concepts to animals,

(01:31:07):
and that again we still struggle with that today. I
mean when you're talking about Thomas Pains of writing in
but we're still looking at kind of like what's a
human rights, what's an animal what's an animal right? How
do we because we have basically dominion over animals, how
do we apply our own morality to our interaction with them?
These are all very real and very deserving topics. Um

(01:31:32):
As you say at the end of this section of
your paper that you know, anything that shaped over two
thousand years deserves our consideration. Yeah, um, I think that's
probably the thesis right here that Yeah, absolutely, yeah, totally
and um and I think that that's actually a piece
I wrote for truth about for at one point kind
of was inspired by some of Alan's work sort of

(01:31:55):
digs into this idea that a lot of the discussions
that we have around this, including um, you know, you know,
many discussions we have around these topics start from the
place that killing is wrong and death is um some
version of injustice, immoral, unethical right. And we start from

(01:32:15):
that place that that death is by a definition harm
and when we take time to actually question that, and
and then of course we get into people, you know,
could people who criticize hunting will say, well, you're just
trying to justify killing. But when we think about that,
it's not a it's not a universal truth, and it's

(01:32:36):
not a even if you study ethics, that killing is
wrong and that death is wrong, that comes from a
very specific intellectual tradition around ethics. Do you know that
the concept of doing harm to others and there if
you take take a life, that's harm and therefore it's wrong.
But I think we really have to go back further
than that I think we really need to strip that back,

(01:32:58):
like you say, take that veneer off of that, and
as go back further on that and say, you know,
is all death wrong? I mean this, and I mean
maybe we don't want to get into this cancer. But
that's the question, right, is it? Is it inherently again?
Is it injustice and moral wrong? Whatever the word is
that you would use, because I don't think. I think

(01:33:19):
we do a disservice to the conversation by taking that
for granted and starting there, because what we what we
then do is we start to build arguments on a
foundation that we haven't actually laid ourselves and don't understand ourselves. Um.
And I think that's something that I that That's what
sometimes bothers me about the animal rights discussions is it's

(01:33:39):
it's not the idea, it's not the the intent, it's
not the position. Is that I don't when people talk
about violating the rights of animals, you know, I'm not.
I'm not violating the right of an animal. I'm doing
something far more profound. I'm killing it. Yeah, that's to
me much more serious than violating its rights. And I
think we need to better understand and and articulate are

(01:34:01):
feeling understandings where those come from about about death and
killing and those interactions. Right, Yeah, that's where I think
when we talk about, you know, those conversations with folks
like Paul, you've gotta start where they start, you know,
But then you eventually just start peeling away the layers
and get to the death conversation. That's just where it
has to go. And to your point, you know, when

(01:34:22):
you think about animal rights, what's the animal have the
right to do? Right? The animal has really the right too,
not a whole lot based on how we move around
the how based on how we build roads, and based
on how we fly in the air, and how based
on how we move around we are the we apply,

(01:34:43):
you know, to the environment our own based on our
own needs. And so like you said, there, me driving
down the road may violate that animals right to get
it be in that road, Like the fact that the
road is even there may violate in and of itself
that animals right to move through that area with out
some imminent harm from me. Right, Like that's and and

(01:35:04):
it and it violates the habitats right to exist without
a road peeling through it? Right, And I think that
that's another way that I'd like to see And I
won't pretend to be an expert on the animal rights
history and movement at all, but that's something that I
have not seen as much discussion. I'd like to see
a bit more kind of discussion around that. Is it's

(01:35:26):
what what about habitat rights then or habitat welfare and
and you know, as it were like, how do we
kind of then start to talk about the rights of
clean water and and and there In fact, there are
there are cases where in Australia, I believe communities are
designating areas of land and water legal entities under the

(01:35:49):
under law, and so they are then those areas of
habitat are are very literally entitled to the rights that
people would be. Yeah, and I think there's you know,
there's discussion around well, isn't the rights framework still just
as as flawed, But it's a fascinating approach to them
to extending going beyond what is the common critique of

(01:36:10):
the animal rights movement, which is that it's really focused
on the dear and not dear and applying this idea
to to habitat and to landscapes. And I think that's fascinating, Yeah,
because they I think, you know it, some things are
kind of spiraling towards each other or you know, careening
towards each other here in ways that they that even

(01:36:30):
they don't understand, because if you have you line up
animal rights with environmentalism and the way that both of
these ideologies are kind of just driving towards each other
where they might soon crash, and also in some ways
where they're connected. So people talk about, you know, meat
and how meat just the commercial realization of large scale

(01:36:51):
animal agriculture um contributes to climate change, and that also
becomes we couple that together with animal rights, and then
I've seen guys like Paul the Sheer trip over those things,
like they don't understand the origins of both of those
thought processes and how they came to couple them together.
But they're just part of kind of the dogma. They're

(01:37:13):
part of the playbook, and so they get connected in
a way that really doesn't make a whole whole lot
of sense, because all you have to say is uh,
And as we've already discussed in this show, all you
have to say is, well, if if you stop eating animals,
you gotta eat something, and that means you've got to
destroy habitat, and that means you've gotta kill a lot
of animals, and that means you've got to displace a

(01:37:33):
lot of other animals that will die of starvation or
die by getting hit by a car. And so and
that was actually something that I found really interesting. He
mentioned he at some point he said, you know, he said,
I'm paraphrasing, but he said, um, you know, vegans aren't stupid.
We don't we don't think that we would value that
that that a single bug would be at the same
value as a single elk. And that was so fascinating

(01:37:55):
to me because I thought, but that's interesting because that's
where I actually fundamentally disagree um as and as a
concept that when I think, when I think about natural processes,
you know, and you brought this up with that in
that conversation around whether that's pollination or nutrient cycling, um,
you know, the transport of pollutants on air currents, whatever

(01:38:18):
the case is. I'm thinking about it on these process levels.
And so I don't think about clearing thousands of acres
from monoculture necessarily as only as the damage being measured
in only the some of the bugs that are killed
in the bird's nest, that are destroyed. But the interruption
of processes um, and to me then it's um that

(01:38:43):
ends up being primo profound. But I but I also
don't like to get into this balance sheet thing of
you know what, I killed an elk, Well, I mowed
down a bunch of field mice. Well, I don't like
to get into that because I think it's I don't
I don't see that bringing us to better understanding. Yeah,
And I think, you know, that's one thing when I listen,
or I at least think back, because I can't listen back,

(01:39:05):
but I think back to that conversation. I think all
all you get there with with somebody like Paul as
you say, like you get to admit that there are
levels too things because it's not the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals depending, Like, that's not what it's called,
because that would be yeah, yeah, it's like pe tad,
you know, we should start selling called the People for

(01:39:26):
the Ethical Treatment of Animals depending, right, Like, that's not
what they're saying, that's not what the social movement says.
The social movement is absolutist and its nature and the
way that it presents the conundru it's either you're a
murderer or you're not. But then the the kind of
the tip for tat that you explain there, all that
does is strip away that absolutism. It just takes it away.

(01:39:48):
It's like, there's no way that stands up to any
criticism at all UM or any intellectual an intellectual debate.
Most absolutism doesn't anyway. But yeah, and I and I
think that that's like when I think, you know, what
do we learn about because it should always be some
takeaway for ourselves to right and what do we learn
about our own community in this? And I think it's

(01:40:09):
it's it's the same lesson. It's you know, absoluteist and
you're kind of you know, and those those types of arguments.
They're appealing to us because we feel like safer and
saying something that we feel like can apply across every board.
But it doesn't. And so I think for the hunting
community it's the same lesson is it's it's let's not

(01:40:31):
be if let's not shy away from um the intricacies
and the complexities of these things, because we are capable
of it. We have shown that for many, many years
that we're capable of dealing with those things and meeting
them head on. Um. And so let's not yet's not
do that ourselves, right, Yeah, I think in your paper,

(01:40:52):
I mean you can kind of like you can play
mad Lives with your paper and just take the word
animal rights out and put in hunting and you get
the same. Ye, So you have in here. That's it, man.
You can just it's interchangeable, but it is, like you said.
By the nineteen seventies, animal rights advocates begin to recognize
that they needed to move away from what her her

(01:41:14):
Skevici describes as a focus on individual problems to develop
a comprehensive moral argument for animal rights. Now, you could
take away the word animal rights and say Ben O'Brien
describes a focus, you know, describes a focus on individual problems,
and we need to develop a more comprehensive moral argument

(01:41:35):
for hunting. You could do the same thing. Because conservation
is regional and its ecosystem based, and you know, kyote
killing contests are different in different settings. Um. So it's
either this comprehensive moral argument for hunting, or we address
individual ecosystem problems and individual problems with wildlife management in

(01:41:56):
the context of where they are. Yeah, yeah, and we've
and this is this the thing that it might be
interesting to hear you talk about. We we have gotten
into this idea of guard the gate on this show before,
which means we had a California bear band bill that
came up a few weeks ago. And and I've talked
about some of the logical fallacies around the slippery slope,

(01:42:19):
and you know, whether you really think that's a fallacy
is probably a different conversation. But I go back and forth,
and I will admit to vacillating between guard the gate
as as something as a philosophy of like don't let
them take an inch, because they'll take it all in
terms of animal rights activists and legislation, but then also
within the within the conversation like we're doing here. You

(01:42:42):
can't you don't want to guard the gate intellectually, but
you do have you do have animal rights groups that
will legislatively take an inch and then take another inch,
then take another inch, then take another inch, And so
there is like a paradox in there. I think, oh, yeah,
there's totally a paradox. And I mean, and I do
it all the time. Like I try to preface a

(01:43:04):
lot of these things by saying, you know that I'll
take full ownership of my own hypocrisies. Um, because that
also allows me to just have them as much as
I want, because I say I can, I can, I
can own them. That's okay. Now, self awareness is good. Hey, Hey,
you know, Paul, I'm an asshole, okay, And you know,

(01:43:24):
I'll go to all kinds of moral acrobatic like like
like acrobatics to justify why in this case it's okay
for me to make a comprehensive moral argument, but in
every other case you shouldn't do it right at all.
But yeah, it is a paradox. And and I, you know,
to just be totally honest about it, I found myself

(01:43:45):
not identifying with the guard the gate kind of approach
because um, and it comes back comes back to the
framing piece a little bit. For me. I don't like
the idea that of a sort of offense between us
and them. You know, a gate necessary by definition, implies
someone's in someone's out. Um. And I get that it's

(01:44:05):
of course a metaphor, but but I think, um, but
I mean, there there's also a lot of discussion out
there about how the metaphors that we use are taken
up by the public, and to me, I think that
this idea that we are we are guarding and therefore
um preventing or admitting depending on certain you know, criteria,

(01:44:28):
I find that that's perhaps not the way to connect
with with the people who are not trying to storm
the gate, but they're they're certainly watching what's going on,
and they're not coming in either because because we are
presenting it as a as a as a gate, as
a as a sort of a barricade to them. And
I think, to me, I'm much more I feel like,

(01:44:52):
you know s B two fIF two, that is the
bear hunting bill in California that got struck down, and
you know British Columbia they did ban the grizzly hunt.
It was probably not the best move scientifically, but they
responded to social pressure, you know. And so I feel
that like, what are if I kind of think about

(01:45:14):
the different approaches to this and what I think is
a better way for the hunting world to go. I
think that we can respond to things as they come up,
and in many cases we've shown a real ability to
respond well, and to prevent the inch from being taken.
But I think it's important that I think it's worth

(01:45:35):
doing it in that way and not risking the idea
that we are kind of um dating or preventing, you know.
I think it makes in two ideas that I've struggled
with and openly because I think everybody. I mean, these
are such broad topics that it would be hard not
to struggle with them. But I always you know, I

(01:45:58):
think of like guard to gate is a is a
way to is a tangible way to guard against into
heightening our awareness of what we would call attacks on
our our the privilege of hunting, right banning something that
we do based on you know, by people that do
not do it basically. Um so, yeah, I want to

(01:46:20):
guard the gate against that, and and how I guard
the gate is not as probably it's probably a little
bit more open than most people, so tangibly that that
term works in that context. But if I remove it
to and put it in a philosophical conversation or ideological
conversations around hunting, it's useless. It's probably a harm more

(01:46:41):
than a good. And so I like to have it.
When somebody puts up a band you know, somebody in
San Francisco wants to band bear hunting across the state.
It becomes this thing, like, listen, we've got to guard
against this thing fiercely so they know how much we
value it. Um, that's a very gray area. That's very
delicate thing to do without becoming an activist in the

(01:47:04):
way that we decry Paul the Sheer might for being
an activist. So it's a very delicate dance that one.
But you know, in this conversation that's more philosophical, guard
the gate is useless because you get nowhere. Yeah, that's
a good point. That's that's a really good point and
around and I think that is something and I think
that was This is what you and I have been
sort of saying for the whole time in a roundabout

(01:47:24):
or like between kind of circling this is that it's
okay because the conversation changes. In a philosophical discussion, we
recognize that that's perhaps not the best analogy or metaphor
to use. But when it comes to mobilizing hunters to
take action and inspiring them to take action, um, maybe
it is. It's instrumental in that way, and it shouldn't necessarily,

(01:47:47):
And it comes back to this kind of comprehensive argument idea,
right that it doesn't have to be relevant and perfect
in every situation, every context. That's okay because it does
what it's supposed to do and what we needed to
do in some situations. And maybe that's and I think
that what we just need to make sure we do
is is emphasize that that is the case that we

(01:48:09):
are using this particular framing or metaphor in this case
and not in others. Yeah, well, and I just understand
the pitfalls of that kind of that kind of like
it becomes I guess, let me try to explain something
I've seen in our industry, and this happens. This happens
with the National Rifle Association. It happens with almost every

(01:48:30):
every time there's a threat out there for something. People
gather around things that are threatened and then they value
and so it's you know, we this is this is
true in our media, This is true in our society.
You know, making someone scared makes them active. Often making
someone angry makes them active. Um, and so in our
attention economy and even in the conservation space. If I

(01:48:54):
tell you public lands are at risk, every single day,
every single minute. If you wake up not thinking about
that somebody's taking your public land, you'll probably give me
more money for my conservation group. You'll probably do more
for me, rather than in the case of the bear
band saying like this this not everything is bad, but
this particular one, this one is bad. So fight like

(01:49:15):
hell against this one, but be very you know, be
very resident of reticent to fight like hell in other ways,
like be a listener most of the time and a
fight or what you need to be. So like one
of the things that I think about that and I
don't know, like interest in your thoughts on this too
is And I'll to give some American examples, but there
are many in Canada as well, and I'm sure you

(01:49:36):
have Canadian listeners. But um, how do we then? Okay,
how am I trying to say this? So we see
just in the last of Ale while right we saw
in the States tongas opened up and Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge opened up, and in Canada, to give a ky example,
we saw just yesterday or today approval of a of
a sight sa dam in British Columbia. That's gonna have

(01:49:58):
to devastating impacts on wildlife and lands, and how do
we move to a point where you know, I think
in a lot of cases that that that that issue,
and we can think about the same thing with climate
change unless unless a more kind of nebulous example. But
those things are seen as well. But that's a that's

(01:50:18):
a left wing that's a liberal issue, that's a liberal fight.
And this I'm a conservative or a right wing and
so people don't mobilize on that. But how do we
get to a point where something like that, something like
tongas or something like that, this damn British Columbia, that
those are those become a guard the gate issue? Right?
But how do we how do we get get past that?

(01:50:41):
Like people are hung up on those, I think and
some and maybe I'm wrong, but I think in some
cases people are hung up on those because of perceived
political affiliations of those. Yeah, because what happens is here's
what it ends up happening. And I've been I've been
trying to be as honest what I can on this
podcast about this because I think it it is important.
I've said, listen, I love the Second an Amendment, I
love my guns. Um In some ways I'm I am

(01:51:04):
in favor of constitutional carry, and I'm a libertarian in
a lot of ways. But I also love the environment.
I'm an environmentalist, I love public lands. I don't craft
my ideology based on the buckets that have been you know,
or the the containers that society has provided. I just don't,
and that that opens me up to hate from both sides. Right,

(01:51:25):
So you just have to be willing to say I've
said publicly I voted for Joe Biden. Got a problem
with less talk. Um, But if you don't want to
be around me because I voted for Joe Biden, I
probably didn't want to be around you anyway. Um. And
so it's it's much bigger than I think it's. It's
it's much much bigger than I think just the tongas
or just um some bill to to ban air fifteens

(01:51:47):
in Canada and America. I think it's being able to have,
you know, really at some level, the honesty, the transparency,
but also the bravery to say, like the here's a
complex set of values that I hold and here's how
I got there. Um. Some of these values are malleable,
some of them aren't. Um. And being able to let

(01:52:09):
that be what it is and not have to be uh,
you know, cut up like a whaler cuts up a whale,
you know, and and used wholly for one side or
the other. When do you feel like your entire identity
is threatened? Yeah, yeah, I'll fight for the tongus and
I'll also tell you know, and I'll fight for my

(01:52:30):
air fifteens until John. I mean, I I often say
that I'm a I'm a political mess. I'm homeless politically.
I've voted. I have voted for every party in Canada. Yeah,
and then everybody will say to me, like your guy
Joe Biden said, you know what, Listen, Joe Biden's doing
a lot of stuff. I'm gonna fight him wholly against
um he starts passing, he's gonna I know when I
voted for him, he's going to pass uncontroled legislation. I

(01:52:51):
know what. I'm going to fight him with all that
I have. And I don't feel ashamed about that issue
because that is that is me, how, having a complex
set of beliefs that don't always line up with even
the people I voted for. So it's like, I think
that's an honesty if we can all start to have
that um and if we can slough off the social

(01:53:12):
pressures to adhere the self censorship that we all partake in,
whether we like it or not. UM, if we can
get away from that, then we can start to find
ourselves in a position where maybe we can, you know,
maybe like you and I can start to collect around
ideas that are plucked from each side that we all

(01:53:34):
agree on well totally. And I think, like I often
try to spin it on myself and I go, okay, well,
I'm asking this person, you know, whether the animal rights activists,
I'm asking them to acknowledge that they see something from
my perspective, and we might agree. And I think, like
to use maybe a blunt example or a bit of
a low hanging fruit, I go, well, can I understand

(01:53:57):
the idea of right? So now it's a bit different
me because we actually don't have the gun rights in Canada,
But you see where I'm going with this that it's like, well,
if we have, if we think of things like hunting
rights and gun rights, I can understand the concept of
the importance of rights and how how fundamental and profound
that idea is. And so then I find, okay, I

(01:54:20):
can I can see the the place that that person's
thinking is in, right, um, and realize that, um, it's
it's it's not a totally alien concept that they're coming from.
You know, I have a frame reference for that. Yeah,
I do too, And I can see why sometimes people

(01:54:41):
get spun into, hey, are we gonna chop down some
old growth forest in the the Tongas in Alaska? That's going
to create jobs? And like, okay, well, like I can see,
let's let's talk about that, um, And let's try to
come to some at least some amenable way to approached
the topic rather than just beating each other up with

(01:55:02):
the polar polarized versions of of the conversation. Unfortunately, the
discourse doesn't allow that most time. Well, no, and I
think that that's one of the things I really try
and do too, is that it doesn't work anywhere near
half the time, probably, but is to kind of, you know,
define the terms a little bit. And I said earlier, right,
if you you tell someone who's opposed to killing animals,

(01:55:23):
but okay, I pay for it, you know, and I
kind of go, like, what are the terms we're discussing here,
and let's make sure that we're not you know if
if sometimes we talk about you know, apples and oranges,
I mean sometimes we're in completely different food groups. And
let's at least get to understand what is it we're
talking about here, what is the and like you said,
you don't find out where people are coming from. Let's

(01:55:44):
start there then, and one of us has to be
willing to to shift, um, And so let's figure out
what it is we're talking about and where we're starting from,
and at least make sure we're talking from the same place.
Because you're right, if somebody is addressing an issue of
land sale from the perspective of jobs and you're addressing

(01:56:04):
it from the perspective of environmental justice, well the completely
different things, and you're the approach might better be to
talk about how, you know what it's actually not going
to be that economically profitable. And this comes up in
the climate change discussion all the time. You hear you
talk about and I've done a lot of work and
climate change research. You know, Um, if you're talking to

(01:56:24):
conservative or typically people who would think of themselves as
conservative or right leading political affiliations, you've got to talk
about the economics and the rights element of it, and
individual rights, individual well being, and not focus on so
much of the environmental justice and morality of it because
that's just not what they're going to respond to. And

(01:56:46):
that's okay, you know, because that's a part of it
is you can't you can't remove that from the conversation.
But I I always in talking to a lot of
animal rights folks, and I said this the thing with
the interview of paulished here he started out. I'm sure
you heard it. He was real prickly starting out, he
didn't want to talk to me, and by the end
we were having a conversation. And when he before he

(01:57:07):
hung up after off air, he was like, I'd love
to have that conversation again. I appreciate you, I appreciate
the way you approach that. And that was it. That's
all I really wanted out of that. I was never
going to move him very far. And what I always
tell people and what I would what I hope can
be true one day, is that we can start all
these these very necessary disagreements, like just imagine that we're

(01:57:31):
standing back to back or standing face to face in
the spot where we agree and then slowly walking away
as we get digged deeper into the disagreement and also
not being afraid to take a step towards the other
person when they say something that you do agree with.
And I think that that's super key too, right, is

(01:57:51):
we know that we're probably going to end up on
opposite side of him eventually, but we don't have to
go running to those sides of the Well, most conversation
on on in our society start with us at different
sides of the room. Should we yell at each other
on the other side of the room and neither of
us It's like the game of I win if you
take a step towards me. The way I like, the

(01:58:13):
way I like to take those conversations is like I'm
in the same place as you to start, and then
let's walk away from each other, but talking as we go,
and that way, at least if we get to the
other end of the room were yelling at each other,
at least we can stop and think, wait a minute,
weren't we just in the middle of the room together. Yeah,
that's a good that's a good metaphor for that or
sort of analogy there, because I think where that also

(01:58:34):
leads us to is it's okay to stop moving back
at any point if we realize we're shouting a bit
too much to be heard here, let's just let's just
pause for a minute here, right, And um and the speed,
I mean, we kind of feel pressured, you know, to
get everything out in characters or less and to you know, um,
but but this is this the speedy that we feel

(01:58:56):
like we need to get through all these issues? Um?
Is is it not doing us any favors? Yeah? Well
that's it, you know, for me and you, I'm sure
we would agree that one of the reasons we love
this conservation and hunting is how quickly we can get
to where we are right now. Like we can start
from like we love animals, we like killing animals. What
should we do animal rights? And next thing you know,

(01:59:17):
you're at this very broad socio political conversation that has
nothing to do with killing the turkey. Um uh. People
will often say this is a hunting show, like, oh,
only kind of maybe by name. But you say, like
there's a you have there's a quote in the conclusion
of your article when you're you're really talking about that

(01:59:37):
disagreement is not the problem. It is that East Side
digs in and clings tightly to this ideology. And there's
a quote in there from uh, I think you said
Fraser and priests, but I'm not sure what's that. Who
those folks are? You probably reference them earlier in the piece.
Yeah so they yeah, they exactly. They wrote a paper
and animal ethics. Yeah so in that in that paper

(01:59:58):
they said, lacking any agree even on an appropriate methodology
for resolving the contradictions, it is hard to imagine that
the current approaches will move towards consensus. I could have
just read that quote would have saved us about ten
minutes of podcast. But but that is that is it,
And it is just at the end of the day.
That's it's these kind of um back and force that

(02:00:22):
that ours are you know, ours really is moving forward
in agreement. But it's the same thing. It's really the
same exercise that's talking to Paulish here it is and
and you know, I took notice at the end when
you said, okay, floor is yours? What do you want
to say? And then that was the end of it.
You didn't respond to what he said. And I don't
know if this was just because the conversation is ending,

(02:00:44):
or maybe I'm reading too much into this, but his
whole tone changed during those During the closing, he said
his last piece, and he changed how he said that.
I mean, if I'm sure a linguist would have a
heyday with this, but when you when you asked him, um,
anything else you want to say, and he said, here's
what I would ask hunters to think about this, and

(02:01:05):
his whole approach changed there. He wasn't telling anymore. He
was inviting and welcoming and asking people to think about something.
And it totally changed the nature of of how he
said it, but how I heard it as well. Um,
and I was already interested in in in thinking about
his perspective, but the way that he changed that, And
I think that that's this sort of calling in versus

(02:01:28):
calling out approach, and and I think that that's such
an important way to do things. And I mean I've
had similar experiences, Um, you know where I've been on
Twitter and getting fired up with someone and one of
us reaches out and message the other person privately, and
immediately that the audience has gone, you know, the need

(02:01:49):
to show off is gone. And I mean I have
I've now I've now connected with people who would who
would be on a totally different sides of a spectrum
to me, and we realized that maybe there's not even
maybe the spectrum is not finally anymore, you know, and
that's that personal connection is super key. I've seen it, man,

(02:02:09):
Performative outrage is is all? Is all the rage, I
guess you would say, but yeah, I've seen it. I've
seen it, and also in a way that it shapes
like piling on. You know, somebody puts put somebody puts
a negative thing up, and then somebody else feels like,
oh yeah, I do that with them. Sometimes movie reviews,
if I hate a movie, I will go to Rotten
Tomatoes and if it's like it's got a ten and

(02:02:32):
everybody hates it, I'll be like, yes, great, like everybody
hates it and I hate it. But if I go
there and I hated it, I will and everybody loved it,
I'll go find the one star and I'll go, oh, yeah,
that's good. That guy hated it too. So those are
things that we all do. Man, It's like this a
natural when it's happening to you. It doesn't feel natural

(02:02:53):
when you're doing it. It certainly feels natural. So yeah, absolutely, um,
I've seen it both ways. But man, I I really
appreciate shape you're coming on and going through all this.
It's weak bright talk for hours more. Maybe we'll have
you you come back and and talk more about People
can find your stuff everywhere. But where's the best place
to find writing and find your social media? Just google

(02:03:13):
Paul McCartney. I'll come. Yeah, actually google Paul McCartney. Hunting
I just started writing. I mean that's right, yeah, yeah, So,
I mean most of my stuff is up at it's
the websites called landscapes and letters dot com. Um, I
have a bunch of stuff I I on on the
hunt to eat blog and untruth about for a blog
as well. Um, but that's that's kind of where I

(02:03:36):
don't most of my ramblings and and thoughts when no
one else wants them scapes and letters dot com. But no,
this is a great man. Thanks a lot for digging
into this. I I've kind of keep saying to people
like I, I, Um, I sort of sit. We gotta
not only get out of our echo chambers, but break
down the echo chambers. And I find I do feel
sometimes I do worry sometimes sitting and just writing things

(02:03:56):
on a blog is um, I'm just sort of sitting
in my on echo chambers. So it is super nice too.
Actually discussed some of this stuff you think about it
in real time and be not be worried about that
needed to be perfect. And I'd tell my friends all
the time that if you call me, you got to
talk to me for an hour, Like don't call me

(02:04:17):
just to check in for like five minutes because I'm
a podcast. Or if you tell me one thing, We're
going to talk for a long time. But I've never
written I've never written a five word blogs just so yeah,
I understand that for sure. Um, we'll have you back on.
I mean when I was looking at like the categories
of your writing on your on that website, landscapes and letters,

(02:04:38):
a lot of it was like, well, you know, practical matters,
personal reflections, management and policy, ethics and culture, um, a
lot of the things that I think of as categories
for this year program. So we'll have to have you
back on and get into some of those other categories.
But I really do would be great. Yeah. I appreciate
your thoughts on this and and appreciate you having some
time for us. Yeah, you bet, Thanks so much for

(02:04:58):
having me Ben, all right, Paul thanks of a toxing.
That's it. That's all another episode in the books. Thank
you to the wonderful Kayla Ray for making all of
our dreams come true minds specifically, and thank you to

(02:05:20):
everybody that wrote in and helped us with this theme song.
It is better, Phil, would you agreed than you could
have ever imagined? It? Actually is? I am it really is.
I'm not even lying because I I we had not
heard it before Kayle played it, and so you don't
know she could have uh half asked it, which she didn't,
but we didn't know it was as organic as it gets.

(02:05:40):
And when I heard it for the first time, like,
that's catchy. I want to hear that every week. And uh,
sometimes things just work out the way they should, so
we're all excited about that. We also want to thank
Paul McCarney for coming in breaking some stuff down with us.
We went on some tangents man on that one, but
it was fun, fun, smart dude, critical thinker. Important to

(02:06:00):
have him in our community, So thank you to Paul
for coming on and chatting with us. Next week, me
and Phil are having quite an episode here, uh in
both senses. An episode of the podcast in an episode
where I can't get the words out of my mouth,
so hopefully he edits out all the ridiculous mistakes I've
made on this episode. I think that Kayla A did
such a good job that it just threw me for

(02:06:21):
a loop mentally, and I can now no longer perform
my duties podcast host. Would you agree with that, Phil? Yeah,
she said such an example of professionalism, yes, and and
coherence that now you just you're beer buckling under the
pressure and talent. Uh that now I feel I feel
like I don't even won't know what I'm even doing
here on this spinning blue orb in the middle of space. Um. Anyway,

(02:06:46):
it was good to get that out there, and we'll
keep on keeping on. Next week, we're gonna look at
something important to us. Wisconsin. We do love you because
you have Pat Dirk and you got Duck during over there.
We love Wisconsin, and we're gonna talking about the recent
wolf fund over there. Um, wolves were killed on I always,
I guess you could say on mass over the last

(02:07:08):
couple of weeks and what is always going to be
a controversial hunting however, brief hunting season over there. So
we're gonna dive into that. I'm gonna look at it critically.
I got a lot on the works all the way
up until it's March, Phill and all the way up
until April when hunting season kicks off for turkeys and
we go full bore into Phil's first season as a hunter.

(02:07:31):
Phil actually tags come out today in Montana, so we're
gonna get your turkey tags and that'll be a ceremonial
purchase for you. I'll even donate at least a dollar
to the to the effort. Wow wow, thanks, if not five, ten, fift,
any amount of money to get you out in the woods.

(02:07:53):
So sorry that I sucked. Kayla Ray was good, Phil
the engineer was good, and uh, I'll be better next week.
I promise, say bye goodbye, you know, because I can't
go a week without doing run, oh without doing run, dranking,
out right drinking,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 167: Kayla Ray's New THC Tune, Deadly Vegan Data, and Animal Welfare versus Animal Rights with Paul McCarney

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Ep. 167: Kayla Ray's New THC Tune, Deadly Vegan Data, and Animal Welfare versus Animal Rights with Paul McCarney

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