Ep. 169: Coyote Shootin' Folk Songs, Anti-Hunting Hyperbole, and Unpacking Wildlife Killing Contests with Cornell Ethicist Dr. James Tantillo

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
I guess I grew up a row. Hey, everybody welcomed
episode one hundred and sixty nine The Hunting Collective. I
as always in Ben O'Brien, and we got a bit
of an issue today. Phil the Engineer is out. Uh,
he's out sick. He told me just now. I just
talked to him to confirm. He doesn't believe it's the coronavirus.

(00:33):
He hasn't had it yet, but he's out. He's under
the weather. So thoughts and prayers to fill filthy engineer.
So we have a fill in stand in. I feel
like maybe better than Philly Engineer. Maybe Phil Philly Engineer.
Two point Oh it's Brian Lynn from the Sports Alliance. Brian,
what is up? Well, we probably could have used Phil
to help set this thing up as struggle with technology,

(00:57):
but we got so you're here. Here, We're here. That's
all that matters. That's all that matters. We well, like
what's going on in your world? I just literally just
called you and gave you like a five minute heads up?
Hey man, can you co host this portion of the program?
And you're kind enough to just jump in Stop what
you were doing? Stop what you were doing? Ye, things

(01:19):
are good. Just getting ready for that warm weather. Some
turkey embars season coming up. Oh I can't wait. We
got a special guest at the end of the podcast
that people are just sticking around for h He has
a really important question for everybody. But um, he actually
went out and helped me build a turkey blind this weekend.
So we did a lot of a lot of turkey hunting,

(01:40):
me and a bunch of buddies, not turkey hunting, turkey
blind building, turkey prep time over here man, and the
birds were actually gobbling in Montana in the middle of March. Yeah,
it was, Oh my god. It just shivers my spine
when I hear it, and I just closed my eyes
and I think the wonderful times to come? So you

(02:00):
got are you? Are you guys gonna actually be able
to hunt bears this year? And watchington. Nobody's banned it yet,
like it hasn't. Nobody's got to it. You can do
the spotting stock they banned baiting and hounds. Okay, spotting
stock only. I'm actually probably gonna go over to Idaho
and uh hunt with a cousin, so so do that
and do Yeah it's more free. Well we'll we talked

(02:24):
about that coming up in this episode with Dr James Tantillo,
our favorite Cornell ethicist, a man who's been on the
podcast a bunch of times and he thinks very critically
about ethics and hunting morality. So we we flipped them
a topic that Brian, I know you're familiar with, and
that's uh Coyote. I guess what we'll call it wildlife
killing contest because that's exactly what it's framed as by

(02:46):
the folks who want to ban it. Um. We talked
to Dr Tantillo about that, Old Jim about that. Um,
he had some great opinions that I somebody I was
a little bit surprised to hear him go on, but
uh totally and definitely agreed with what he has to say.
So everybody stick around for that. But before we get
to him, Brian, are you aware of Project Coyote? Do

(03:07):
you know what this is? Oh? Yeah, yeah, they're They're
behind a lot of this stuff and uh always facing
off against him. So you have a adversarial relationship you
would say with Project Coyote. Yeah, it's not it's not
a friendly one. That's what are they? Man? Because I
will say we said this in our interview with Dr Tantillo.

(03:29):
I heard about them from my non hunting I guess
you'd call them non consumptive user filmmaker friends. Like there
was a video going around of a film that was
made um by or at least four Project Coyote, and
there was a trailer going around about wildlife killing contests,
and it was it was compelling, to say the least,

(03:52):
And so this film came out. Um there's an official trailer.
It's connected to a movement, Uh stop the Kill. There's
a petition, as they're almost always is. But I would
admit to at least in in the forefront of my mind,
this is the first time I had seen Project Coyote.
I don't see a lot of people in the hunting
space talking about them, so you find that, uh yeah,

(04:14):
a lot of people don't talk about them, but they're
they're behind the scenes. They're just another animal rights group.
And just like we have Quail Forever and Deer Alliance
and our different credter groups, everybody on the other side
has their credter groups, Project Coyote, Mountain Lion Foundation, you know,
they're they're all have their credit groups too, and Project

(04:35):
Coyote is one of those UM that is behind a
lot of legislation to stop coyote hunting, stop contests. Uh.
They jump on board with other initiatives and legislation Mountain Lions,
you know, for example, and they'll put out so called
facts and talking points and the emotional side of things

(04:58):
to try to ban this. Yeah. That's uh their official
trailer that only has four thousand views, so we're probably contributing,
contributing to uh, to the views there for this. This
podcast is bumping them up a little bit. But if
you look at UM, the film and the filmmaker and

(05:19):
uh try to suss this out. I mean, this is
this people that love wild like this is people that
UM want to see this thing end and are as
we talked about with Dr Chantillo are looking at this
from ethics and morality standpoint. They're using all the same
language as we used for all these other bands we
discussed UM. And then you start looking at the comments
when they're on their trailer hunting is this guy Yoshi

(05:42):
Girl twenty eight, Here's what she said, Brian, I want
to get get your Actually, this hunting is an illness.
Anyone who kills animals as a hobby has something wrong
with them. They are getting pleasure from the suffering of
the most innocent beings. It's sickening. They need help. That
got twelve likes. Uh any official response for the sports
of two lines to that comment. I'm just not sure

(06:03):
if I can use that kind of language on the air. UM, Yeah,
I just what do you say? It's okay, you got
your opinion. Everybody's got an opinion. Uh, you're not a doctor,
you're not a psychologist, and you don't know anything, so
like I don't I can't even say anything. I just
you do you, I'll do me, roll your eyes and

(06:24):
move on. Unfortunately, Uh, all that hyperbole and all of
that uh ideology speak that comes from the animal right
side leads to legislation. As we've talked about in other episodes. UM,
and and looking forward, just a very pragmatic, objective conversation
with the subject UM doesn't seem to be something that

(06:45):
we could find once we get deep into this and
and again, I the the trailer for this this uh
and we'll put up We'll put a link up to
with the trailer for this documentary is floating around h
in a lot of circles and a lot of people
that have millions of followers were sharing it. So it
made its rounds and it made an impact. Yeah, and

(07:07):
so we really just can't ignore it. But there are
there is legislation still out there to ban uh wildlife
killing contests across the nation, is there not? Yes? Or uh? Well,
last year it started and there was more than a
dozen states simultaneously. This this is a completely a coordinated effort.
Actually sat in on an Humane Society United States webinar

(07:30):
on how they were going to do this in the
Pacific Northwest, you know, and they were given instructions, given
updates how they were going to do it, which politicians
were gonna help them, who was friendly. But it was
interesting because last year, when you looked at this and
you saw this happen, you saw the animal rights movement,
their belief system. It was like in a microcosm. It

(07:52):
started down in uh in New Mexico by executive order
they banned it on on state owned land kyak tests,
and it moved up the West coast as it does,
and by the time it even got up to Oregon,
it was wildlife contest, not just kyote contests. Even in Montana,
it was any predator that it was a contest for,

(08:15):
and then it moved to Wisconsin, and then to the
East coast New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and then by
the time it came back and circled back across the
country in Nevada, it was a felony. It was the
equivalent of manslaughter if you participated in or promoted even
put it on social media, promoting a wildlife contest. And
that's their ultimate goal, you know. And so you've got

(08:38):
to see their kind of their evolution within a microcosm
in one year of what they actually want to accomplish.
Oh boy, um. And one of the fact sheets that
Project Reality UM put out, and I told you on
the phone earlier, there's no facts in it. UM. That's
very devoid of facts. When I when I when I
saw that they put out a fact sheet, I was

(08:59):
excited to see, like a bullet pointed list of like
how many coyotes and predators die and while ife killing contests,
how prevalent is it and state by state basis you know,
why is it relevant here and not here? How is it?
Uh misuse or as they say, a symptom of misguided
wildlife governance. That's what they say and this fact sheet, UM,
and we talked to in something I think, folks, when

(09:20):
we get to Dr James Dantillo here in a minute,
something that people should realize is that they're they're putting
together um, ethics, morality, and the things that you know
in the animal welfare and animal rights philosophies. They're putting
that together in a gumbo with wildlife management. They're trying
to mix all that ship together. UM. And that's it's

(09:40):
pretty clear. And each one of those is subjective, Yeah,
it's individual and everything else. And so it creates a
compelling argument. You know, it's a confusing one that isn't
backed up by science or fact. So when you guys
go into you know, if you're arguing a case against
H S U S Or Project Coyote, and they bring

(10:01):
up this and I'll read you some of this, just
some of the bullet point you know, subheaders they have
in this document. It starts off with cruel and unsporting,
it gets it gets into kind of, like I said,
the sociological factors UM and the motivations of particular hunters.
Cruel and unsporting. It's a blood sport like dog fighting.

(10:22):
It fuel it myth. It myths fuels the killing, and
then it starts to then and then it saddles right
into um contrary to modern based wildlife management principles, a
symptom of misguided wildlfe governance, as I mentioned, destructive to
healthy ecosystems, a violation of the public trust doctrine. UM.

(10:42):
And it goes on and on and then it gets
to like this is now we need to outlaw these things.
And that's essentially where we've landed here. And at the
end of the day, UM, as I said, we should
decouple this this management argument from this, you know, a
blood sport like dog fighting argument. If we can do that,
then we it suss this out. Do you guys, are
you able to have the wildlife management debate with them

(11:05):
when these things come up? And how do you have it?
Like what do you say to them? Uh? It's usually
not directly with them. It's in the legislative process. And
you know, we talked to the legislators and it's basically like,
what what's the point here? Like we suss out all
the emotional stuff and be like, what is the point what? What?
What are you against here? Okay, you're against killing and

(11:27):
a private incentive versus a public incentive, because I mean
there's states that have bounties. South Carolina has a tag
coyotes out there for a thousand bucks. So like, what
do you actually against here, And let's talk about writing
this bill or changing it or whatever. But at the
end of the day, they're they're just using it to

(11:47):
ban what. They don't care about wildlife management. They don't
care about any of it. So they're just trying to
ban a piece of it. And the language they use
in these bills is wide open. It captures, feel trial evantic,
captures squirrel hunts. It has in there for entertainment purposes.
So if you're having fun, what does that even mean?

(12:09):
Under that guy's anything would be a contest. Yep. So,
and when we talked about we talked about that with
the with Dr Chantillo in a minute, about the gamelike
quality of hunting and kind of the value systems and
the reward systems that are in there. You break that down,
you can ban ban the entire activity based on that
line of thinking. Far enough. Yeah, so here's one thing

(12:31):
that here's one thing they say wildlife killing contests are
a violation of the public trust. Doctor and a foundational
judicial principle mandating that governments hold natural assets, including wildlife
and trust for the general public and future generations. Allowing
a minority of the population to kill animals and on
mass uh contributes the rights of the majority of Americans

(12:53):
who value the intrinsic, ecological, aesthetic value of native carnivores
and damaging the reputation of state wildlife management age these
and sportsmen alike. So yeah, I mean the basis there
is a minority of Americans. So using that logic, anything
we do is a violation. So if you buy into
that thinking anything we do is a violation of that

(13:16):
which isn't true, you can flip it around and say, well,
a minority of you want it band. I mean, it's
just it's just crap. Oh boy. Um. Yeah. And like
I said, I wanted to take it with Dr Chantiller.
We wanted to take it from an ethical and moral
standpoint because I said, these two things are kind of

(13:36):
mashed together in the way that this is voiced. And again,
this trailer that's been floating around for this documentary, um
is really easy to take in if you if you
you know, just on a service level, disagree with this activity. Um,
there's a lot of I'll tell you this, Brian, there's
a lot of hunters quoted and a lot of people
from UH fish and Wildlife departments quoted in this document

(14:01):
as against this. Do you run into this as you
go through this, like they're using hunters against themselves and
in this particular movement against the Kyarti killing contests. Yeah,
I mean we see it a lot. I mean even
another balloting issues and stuff. They'll put up somebody who
is a guide. You know, they did it in Maine
trying to ban bear hunting. Well the guy was a

(14:22):
river guide. But once it's out there in the public,
it doesn't matter. Um. But yes, they'll find hunters that
disagree with with a certain tactic. I mean it could
be trapping and a bird dog guy. So they split
us that way, um, you know. And then on the
flip side, we can be our own worst enemies. Some

(14:43):
of this footage is ridiculous and we shoot ourselves in
the foot, you know, So it's like, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah,
this is this is interesting in that way. We talked
about that with Dr Santillo about how how do we
suss out the motivation here? And how do we try
to at least avoid being the strong man, because any
hunter that puts out any kind of information on social

(15:05):
media wherever you have the ability to be made a
strong man by these groups. Yeah, that that's exactly that's
what they're looking for. But again, like, how do we
react to that. Do we never talk about these issues,
which has been suggested in the past kind of part
of part of the hunting dogma that I grew up with,
or do we just continue to talk about and and
have these very um complex conversations out in public and

(15:28):
just say, hey man, we're willing to talk about this,
we want to talk about this, but what we're not
willing to do is is um be made to account
by your hyperbole and you know, your bullshit activism here. Yeah,
and at the end of the day, you look at
what's the end result. Motives don't matter, and individual motives,
whether the so called quote unquote trophy hunter who wants

(15:51):
something for the wall or the meat hunter as as
they're often called, and the gamut in between, doesn't matter.
If you're enjoying it for fun, family meet, whatever, doesn't matter.
What's the end result, and that is proliferation of wildlife
and wild places. The end result is what matters individual
motives don't. Yeah, And that's that's where we get into.

(16:13):
That's where this is, this conversation gets into. And we
talked about this with but James as well, Uh, crossbows,
arguing about crossbows, arguing about trapping, arguing about hound hunting,
argue about bait, arguing about all these things. Um, he
takes a very um liberty or libertarian based approach to this,
and and boy after talking to him, Um, I couldn't

(16:37):
agree anymore then possible. I just I think once you
hear that this in a minute from someone who obviously
he doesn't do what you do, Brian, he's not in
this every day. He thinks about it from I would say,
like the ethical and moral dilemma of all outdoorsmen, of
all people that go outside. And that's where he's looking
at it. That's the lens in which he've used this from.

(16:57):
So it's it's interesting, nonetheless, but where we get to that,
we got one thing we gotta cover. I know everybody
out there that listen to this podcast is waiting for this,
and you'll be able to help me because you, Brian,
you work at a conservation organization, so you'll be able
to help me with this. Let me just explain to
you what happened and see if I can get some
of your advice. Oh, a while back, we made we

(17:18):
asked our listeners, like what should we call our group? Right,
everybody gets like everybody's like Hunter nation. Everybody has like
a thing for their group of people. Right. I made
a joke that will call ourselves a cult. It's hilarious
if we were the THHD cult. Well, um, that caught
on and people people now are using that terminology. I

(17:42):
use it all the time. I enjoy it. I enjoy
the irony of it. What happened was people started to
take that into account. We made a joke next about
having membership cards for the cult. People started acting on that,
requesting membership cards, giving themselves their own member I D
numbers within the cult. And then what happened was I
had made a joke that we had a brand new

(18:04):
hunter that was looking for a mentor in the Blue
Ridge Mountains of Virginia, North Carolina. We we put it
out there to our audience. Seventeen or twenty people rode
in to to to offer help to that hunter. I
made a joke. Okay, this is like our first regional
chapter of the Cult. Next. What happened next was people
started making Facebook pages uh with regional and state chapters

(18:29):
of the podcast Cult that we've started here, and so
the and then last episode I called for everybody, if
you want to be a leader in this fictional podcast
cult that we've got, going reach out to me and
we'll we'll figure it out. Well, hundreds of people reached out,
and now let me pull I gotta spreadsheet. Let me
pull it up so I get an accurate number. But
now we have roughly thirty four state chapters of this

(18:54):
podcast um and and three regional chapters that cover forty
three total states. So we basically got the whole the
whole country covered with regional chapters. And what we're gonna
do is create Facebook pages for each one of those
regional chapters. We've declared leaders for each one of those chapters,
and maybe the next episode we'll let you guys know

(19:15):
how you can find those things. But now I'm kind
of I've backed myself into a corner where now I
have like this uh non accredited non three. I got
my own a conservation organization here, and I don't know
what to do with it. I don't know what to
do with it. So as a as we pulled you
out of the bullpen because Phil got sick. But I mean,
I feel like you can really help us out here.

(19:36):
What the hell do I do? Am I in trouble
legally in any way? I'm not a lawyer. I'd like
to drink beer and I can make stuff up. So
me too. Me to take my advice for what it's
worth and what you're paying for it. Uh, I don't
think you're in trouble. Okay, thanks, But then boy, you
can step in stuff, but you just you just step

(19:58):
from one thing to the next, don't you. That's how
I roll. That's how I roll. My whole life is
one big just mass I've created. But now we have
these very passionate people, and we are going to create
these groups, state by state groups, and really the basis
of these groups are are getting mentors from Yeah, this
is what we're doing, this is how, this is how
this started, this is what we're gonna do. So in

(20:19):
my mind it's a really good thing. But I also
like to just be I just like to work this
out in public because I don't have no idea what
I'm doing a little bit scared and um, a little
bit excited, which is the state I like to be
in all the time. You and I have partied. You know,
what's up party in Vegas? Yeah, you disappeared. I turned around,

(20:41):
you were gone. You're on the phone, and then you
were gone. I was like, where'd you go? A band
they call that the Irish Goodbye. Yeah, this isn't even
an Irish goodbye. We're in a hotel room. Like, turned around,
you were gone. You're on the phone with your brother
or something. Yeah, yea, and goodbye be called the Irish Goodbye.
So anyway, do you have any how do we do this?

(21:03):
We have the chapters, we have the leaders, but all
these people willing and I don't know what to do. Yeah,
I like it. Yeah, probably some type of mentor show.
And every chapter has to do something wise, yes, bear turkey, dear,
well whatever the big ones are in your state requirement.

(21:26):
That's alright, alright, the vice president, you're now the vice
president of communications for the Cult chapter leadership. Um, let
me just say this, this is this really upset me
in a way that I never thought it would. I
we have, like I said, most states covered. I can
give you the full list, but I mean most states covered.

(21:47):
We even have three providences, three provinces in Canada, a
military chapter, and uh, you know we're getting around here.
But here's the thing. The three places that I've lived
I don't I did live in Illinois, but I don't
count that, So we strike that from the record. I
never lived in Illinois. The three places that I've lived

(22:07):
that I'm proud of, Um, no offense. Illinois, You're fine. Texas, Maryland,
and Montana do not have leaders that have raised their
hand up that want to start a chapter, so I
just won't put that out there. Um, we're missing. The
states we're missing right now are are Montana, Idah, Hawayoming, Hawaii, Alaska, Maryland,

(22:30):
and both the Dakotas, and also the District of Columbia
about you know, I don't think that's gonna count. No,
And I don't think we've seen West Virginia either. So
if you're out there listening right now, and you're a
leader and you want to be a part of this
weird thing we're starting, that's what we need. And then
when you fill out the full the full country, and
somebody needs to you know, ruin the the O'Brien effects

(22:51):
of those three states in particular. Yeah, I mean, now
they just step up and level set the damage that
I've done by moving to these places. You don't know,
you're you're kind of working for hunting and you're undermining
it up here a little bit. It's a double it's
a dull stord. We had a guy right and we

(23:12):
had a guy right in about how a meat eater
particularly was like ruining hunting, and it was this very
logical I mean, I was very proud of him for saying,
it's a very logical step by step argument as to
how we were ruining hunting. Sorry, like you're making it popular,
screw you. And then it went from there. It was
very good. Um, so I'm always I'm always trying to
be aware of that. I was a little bit worried
about that, and uh, I understand, I get it. But anyway,

(23:35):
if you're out there and and those states and you
want to be a part of of whatever it is
we're starting here, you're welcome and we need you hand
up be a leader, and um, hopefully when this is
done by the end of this fall, we'll have every
state covered and they'll be people out there hunting together
that never would have known each other prior, and um,
we'll have done something good man. And yeah, that's what

(24:00):
we're trying to do. And as I said last episode,
it's the most accidental hunting movement of all time. And uh,
the and the annals of history, we'll all look back
at this and laugh at this. This really probably changed
the fabric of our community in some way. Uh, no pressure, guys,
no pressure. This is the first year hearing of this.
Does this sound insane to you or just seems like

(24:22):
a logical thing to have happened in your in somebody's life. Oh,
it seems knowing you, well, it seems insane. But knowing you,
it fits the m O and the trajectory of it all. Yeah. No,
I gotta tell you, like, like yesterday was Sunday, right
like I was sitting around, I put the kids to bed,
I was sitting around building out spreadsheets for the podcast.

(24:42):
I was doing this last week to building out spreadsheets
for the podcast Cult that I've started. And I and
I'm self aware, I knew that was weird. That's probably
your wiki page, Yeah, wiki page cult leader leader started. Yeah,
I don't I don't think Facebook or Instagram likes the

(25:03):
word cult uh at all, so maybe they might ban us,
which would even fuel the movement further, I feel. And
then on these animal rights fact sheets, it's gonna be
colts and you have animal sacrifice going on. Oh wow,
in legal trouble. I see. I'm trying to I'm trying
to think all the future paths that might lead me

(25:24):
into trouble leader. But I will say, let me call
out some people that volunteered. I sent out an email
to all our leaders. So if you didn't get an email, uh,
he didn't get chosen, I guess, but you're very welcome.
We will communicate how you can find these pages. But
let me just uh read a few people that we
know that are gonna be that a long time listens
to program. They're always writing in. Eric Hall, Luke Reeves,
Ryan Subpoena, Derek Storical, Greg Moon, Ben Peterson, B. J. Trickler, Kelsey, Guy,

(25:49):
Keith Sprague, Mike Morris, Patrick Ray, Mike Dil Mike Peterson,
John Selfew, Chris Stocker, Ryan Waters, Dave Campbell, Dan Cohler,
Michael Canals. How you pronounced your damn name? Sean Managed
Coucci in New Mexico, Mike Earnst, all these people, there's
just so many, so many to name A b Rich,

(26:10):
Aaron Shaw, Matt Barrick, Jacob Davis, Martin Resinick, Jordan Riggsby
Nurry Hong, Brian how Jim Fleischner, Jared Adams, there's more.
But but thanks to all you guys for stepping up,
putting your hand out saying you'll do this even though
you don't know really what it is that you're doing.
So we appreciate it and we're gonna keep on rolling.
Brian and again as vice president of communications, UH for

(26:34):
our regional chapter. Regional chapter called, thank you for volunteering
for that. I appreciate that. Yeah, you're very welcome. I'm
gonna get the lawyer up on speed dial now. Yeah, yeah,
I'm uh. All these people I just named appreciate you're
you're helping them with any PR trouble. I come from
this all right, Well, I think we've done our jobs again.

(26:56):
Thanks for for pinch hitting for old Philly engineer. Man.
Thank you. We're gonna keep talking about these these very
interesting we're on a role man. We started with California Bears.
We went last week into the Wisconsin wolf situation, and
then we have steered the ship right into the iceberg
that is wildlife killing contests, uh this episode. So we're
gonna keep on keeping on where that's concerned. And I

(27:16):
think trapping all has to be next, right, Trapping the
thing we talked about in this Yeah, trapping, trapping on
public lands, it's big right now. They're they're pushing that
hand in hand with the contest stuff. Yeah, that's I
think that's the next thing we're gonna touch on. And
this one, I like I said, this one just came
to to my to my desk, as it were, from

(27:37):
people that aren't in the hunting community that are passing
around a lot of propaganda and things that that really
uh man, they don't paint us in a great light,
and they're using hunters to do it. People that are
willing to talk about these pursuits, are willing to be
filmed for it and and really believe in what they're doing. Yeah,
and that and the tough thing with that is you
never know what context is taken in. You know, the editing.

(27:59):
You know, you've worked in TV and stuff, and you
can make anything, any sound bite sound like whatever you
want it to. Yeah, and it often happens in this way.
You know, these these folks aren't coming into this with
pristine motives. They just aren't. There's a lot of confirmation biased,
there's a lot of culture hacking going on, UM and

(28:20):
these things. So it's good and like I said, I
wanted to talk to you about this, but also just
just bring in someone from across the country who's sitting
in Cornell University right now, UM, teaching people about ethics
and morality and teaching people about wildlife sciences and thinking
about this and so now here is our friend, Jim

(28:41):
tant Tiller. Jim, how are you, sir? I'm good. I'm good.
Almost springtime here. Yeah, how are things? We were just
talking before we hit record about how things are looking

(29:02):
at Cornell. Everybody's hot on, you know, returning to normalcy
at this point, I think, so, what's happening over your neck?
And it was last time we talked, we were in
full lockdown? I think right right, No, I've been teaching
in person since February and h five days a week,
so it's I'm back. I'm back on campus in my
office right now. UM. Again, the challenges have been trying

(29:24):
to uh zoom it at the same time. So you're
teaching a lot of students and you're teaching a pull
at home. Yeah, but so far it's it's fun. Well,
I'm glad you guys are still doing it one way
or the other. And and of course I said last
time we talked, we were full lockdown mode. Thing. A
lot of a lot has changed. Um, do you know't

(29:45):
hunting this fall? You got at all? Oh? Yeah, oh yeah,
you know. I put my teaching off in the fall.
So I took a full month in Michigan and hunted
my German short hair pointers and then hunted deer in November.
And yeah, it was was pretty good, pretty good hunting season. Actually,
my daughter shot her first year. Awesome. That was that

(30:07):
was very exciting. She named him Bucky, so that was
kind of fun. How old your daughter? There you go,
there you go. We've we've deemed this the year the
new hunter on this program. We've got a lot of
we have a lot of people that are are joining
our community. It was her first time hunting and she

(30:27):
did a great job. She you know, she really did
so that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, we just had Pat
Durkin on who I know, you know, well last week
talking about the wolf situation over there, and it was
a trane wreck in its own right. Yeah, we should
probably cover that a little bit just based on I know,
you know that part of the world. Well, um, what

(30:48):
what was your perspective on what happened? And for anybody
that didn't listen, go back and listen to the last
week's episode with Pat Durkins. I don't know the details
all that much. I understand there was some purecratic confusion
from the Wisconsin di and our in terms of the
you know, the allocation of the quote and stuff, and
that Native corporations claimed something like eighty four of the
whatever it was two hundred, and it was unclear to

(31:09):
me whether they actually killed eighty four or if they
simply claimed that eighty four and that didn't they didn't
kill Yeah, they didn't kill any right, so then that
that yeah, they still ever shot the harvest total even
with the unused Yeah. Yeah, so it was that we
talked about it. It was a complex situation that you know,

(31:30):
I had a lot of political, uh influences on a
lot of levels, you know, and a lot of societal
influences as as you well know, it comes in every
time we're hunting. Seems to be every time we're hunting
predators these days. So it's interesting if you you know,
as a somebody who thinks about ethics a lot and
that have have worked with O. Ryan, the Hunter's Institute

(31:50):
on on things like this, do you guys talk much
about the presentation of wolf funds like this? And you know,
how we communicate them, how we or why they or
not we we feel like they're they're supported by the
Science and Wildlife BED. I think it's hard to bring
back anything that's been suspended. So you know, you've got
the wolves that have been on the endangered and Threatened

(32:10):
species list state and federal level, and then the population
hits a certain peak and you want to bring hunting back.
That's a hard a hard step for the non hunting
public too to understand first and then accept. And yet
you know from where I hunt, you know, a bird hunt,
the Upper Peninsula, Michigan. I hunted Wisconsin for that matter

(32:32):
last year. Um I was in places where you know,
they're five, six, seven wolves in a pack walking down
my trail and a daily you know, there's a fresh
sky right there. Um, that's that keeps you on your toes. Yeah.
Same here. I've I've one of my favorite little elk
countey holes here close to my house. We've had I

(32:53):
have truid cameras. Listeners the show will know I've talked
a lot about I had trail camera videos of wolves
attacking cattle. I had them. You know, I've heard them,
I've seen their tracks, I've seen their scat I've seen there,
I've seen their evidence of where they've been on gut
piles of other hunters killed elk within hours of those
elk being killed. Um, I had a buddy he was

(33:15):
packing out his bull and uh had wolves following him
as he was packing as well. So I think you
and I are both well aware of kind of what
it's like hunting and and and country that has wolves,
and and it provides an extra challenge, actually an extra
sensory challenge, but also it's an extra challenge understanding that

(33:35):
that they're on that landscape. So I would I would
admit to being personally conflicted about about wolf hunting. It's
not something that I think I would do. But like
on a from a model of conservation standpoint, from a
from an understanding how the E s A should work,
and then how we should transfer and as you said,
pick hunting back up and where it had been halted.

(33:57):
I do understand that support that. I think that's the
right thing to do. But again I understand where people
are coming from if if they're just a little bit
hesitant about it. Yeah, this is and this will be
related to the kyote topic as well. I mean with
any carnivore, there's a pragmatic argument alone, independent of moral
questions of shooting wolves, kyotes, bears, whatever, um, that the

(34:20):
hunting makes the rest of the animals where you know,
warrier than they would be wary of the human presence,
so that you're not having coyotes walking to people's backyards
and you know, eating chihuahua's or you know, staring at
a kid and a baby stroller sort of thing. Um.
And I think with wolves that's even that much more important. Uh.

(34:43):
You know some of those towns on the Upper Peninsula,
you know, you've got people who are fencing their backyards
now because of wolves, and you know that, you know,
I think that calls for some sort of management attention. Yep. Well,
you know we're here and wolves aren't definitely aren't off

(35:03):
the table in this the topic that we're talking about here,
but mostly it's coyotes that are that are thrust into
the fore for killing contests. And you know, we've already
kind of covered in earlier in this episode a little
bit about what killing contests are and how they've come
to be what I think of as as the straw

(35:25):
man for and I hunting groups to point to for
sport hunting or trophy hunting, or however you want to
describe it. But there is, and I sent you a
link to a project couty dot org film and then
also movement. It carries the hashtag hashtags stop to Kill,
and a lot of the folks outside of the hunting
industry that that I know well have posted about this recently,

(35:47):
and I haven't seen much of it within the hunting industry,
but there there is. What they say on their website,
project co funded the National Coalition to End Wildlife Killing
Contest comprise of more than fifty national and state wildlife
conservation organizations working together to bring an end to the
cruel and senseless killing contests nationwide. And so it's it's,

(36:10):
I mean, a contest doesn't make it any more or
less cruel than if you and I just come out
and sew to kyote. So that doesn't make any sense
at all. I mean, they don't care for the optics
of a killing contest. That's understandable. But if you're gonna
have state and wildlife organizations sign on to this thing

(36:33):
and say, well, we're going to ban something because we
don't like the optics, well guess what. The optics of
hunting in general are equally bad. So you know, I'm
not a slippery slope theorist or you know, you know,
opening up the Pandora's box. On the other hand, there is,
from a just a narrowly technical perspective on the killing

(36:54):
of an animal in the context of the contest, that
killing is equal to a killing outside of a contest setting. Now,
what really bugs people are the human questions. You know,
they don't like what they assume to be character flaws
on the part of contest killers whose motivation they question.

(37:16):
You know, so you're killing for thrills, or you're killing
for prize money, or you're killing because your ego needs stroking,
or you know. So there's a lot of stuff that
sort of enters unfairly and fuels the you know, if
it's a movement, I don't know that it's a movement,
but they follow it a movement, I'll grant them. I'll
grant them that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean hyperbole is the same.

(37:40):
Marketing and hyperbole always mixed. Um. I do. I do
think you're right here. And I think one of the
as we kind of approached the discussion, one of the
things that happens is wildlife management gets lumped in with
things like and they do this in their website, responsibility,
humane practices, ethics, morality, you know, all these things that

(38:01):
I know you think a lot about get mashed together
with wildlife management and they get like mixed around into gumbo.
And I think what they're doing, very intentionally is kind
of blurring the lines between the motivation for for somebody
to kill a coyote and the management side. And I
think when you blur those lines, it's easier to say no, no, no,

(38:22):
they're awful people. They're not managing anything. Um. And I
think that's that's that's really what I wanted to try
to unpack with you, how we can separate those two
things and and talk about, Yes, is somebody's motivation maybe skewed.
Let's let's discuss and see if we can get somewhere. Um,
but how we you know, I've been doing this sort
of a lot like decouple this humane, ethical, moral responsibility

(38:47):
with our responsibility to manage these and more practical responsibility
to manage these animals. Have you thought about it that way? Yeah,
there's practical misunderstandings of what these contests do, right, I mean,
so the California group, Oh, we hate contests, and there
conjuring up visions of hundreds of kyles being slaughtered in
a weekend coyote killed. The reality is some of these

(39:10):
contests you're having novice coyote hunters sign up for something.
They said, Oh, that sounds like it'll be fun. At
the end of the day, we'll have a hot dog
in the clubhouse and see what happens. And many of
these contests result in a very low sort of kill count. Um,
I don't know if you know that. I'm gonna go
in a really different director with this. The folk singer

(39:32):
Tom Rush. Tom Rush is a New England folks singer
who retired to Jackson Hall, Wyoming, and he put out
an album uh called trolling for owls. I think back
in two thousand six and he comments about how different
Wyoming is from New Hampshire. And one of his examples
of how different Wyoming is is they have these coyote

(39:54):
contests and he has this whole long lined up you know,
spoken word where he's talking about this contest and you know,
all these guys come from all over the place, and
at the end of the weekend they killed two kayos.
And then he writes a song about kayo contests and
you'll have to listen to that later. Maybe you can
use it in the program. You know. The thing is

(40:16):
is these things, don't you know, Kyle hunting is hard.
So if you're worried about body count, I'd be more
concerned about you know, the two guys in rural Pennsylvania
who go out on a near daily basis and not
the same field, and they have the set up down
path because they've been doing it for twenty years and
they're efficient at kyote killing and they're good at it,

(40:39):
and they're doing it propels and all there, and and
recreation as well. Um, you know, they're probably going to
be more successful in terms of body count than opportunistic
hunters who just sign up on a lark for a
contest because it sounds like fun and they don't care
whether they kill anything or not. So I I would

(41:00):
sort of challenge groups like this California group to, you know,
show me some numbers. I don't think this is a
big problem, even if I were to grant your premises,
I don't think it's it's an issue. Yeah, they say
that they have a quote here that says, um, most
are Americans. I'm sorry, I laugh. It's like it's just
so very overstated. It's just so very overstated. I get it,
this is something to talk about in debate. That's fine.

(41:22):
I'm I'm with you, But this is the hyperbole is
off the chains with some of this stuff. Is this crazy?
Most Americans are shocked to learn that thousands of animals
die every year and wildlife killing contests barbaric events in
which participants win prizes for killing the greatest number or
the largest of any given wildlife species. Bobcats. You know.

(41:42):
So this is this is kind of how they presented.
I don't see in here, and I'm not saying that
they don't have it, because they have quite a lot
of documentation on on it. They don't have any any
numbers here as to you know, they say thousands, which
I think is a very easy thing to say. Um.
They also say things it's as a blood sport like
dog fighting. Wildlife killing contests are no different than dog

(42:04):
fighting and cock fighting, which have been outlawed nationwide. Uhum.
In many contests, young children are encouraged to participate in
hunting equipment and high powered arrivals, including air fifteens are
awarded as raffle prizes. This is um man. I wish
they would just take a pragmatic approach, but I guess
that would be uh too hopeful, you know, and even

(42:28):
I mean, I can you can take them one by one.
I mean, you know, where I live, we have squirrel
derby's in the winter, typically once duck seasons over, goose
seasons over in January and people have been sitting around
inside for a month. You know, you'll have a squirrel derby,
let's say in February, when it's still legal hunt squirrels.
And a sporting sportsmen's club or you know, rod gun

(42:48):
club sponsor one of these things, and it's simply an
excuse to get people out on a weekend. Tromp around
in the snow, kill some squirrels, come back to the
clubhouse way the squirrels about some certificates and hopefully the
kids win them all and then cook the squirrels off
at the end of the day. And um, you know, yes,
children are using rifles. Yes there are prizes. Um, yes

(43:13):
there's a body count. But you know, we've talked about
this before in some of the other podcasts we've done together.
And you know, I try to focus people's attention to
the ethical issue of the difference between offense, what offends us,
and harm. And I think here's a clear case where
these the idea of a killing contest offends people. But

(43:36):
it's very difficult to say there's any harm involved to
anybody on the outside looking in. You know, if you
grant the legitimacy of hunting to start with, so you know,
killing a squirrel for foods okay, killing a kyle for
a pelt, it's okay. I don't think adding the additional
layer of it being a contest, that doesn't that doesn't
add any harm. Yeah, And if you would look at this,

(43:56):
if you would look at this on all levels, I mean,
I know, Wyoming for sure, still has bounties on coyotes
in some counties and for a while hat bounties on
kayote statewide. Right, So they're giving people twenty bucks, They're
giving the people the incentive, financial incentive to do this
for lots of reasons. So I guess, as you said,
you know what would be your as we as we

(44:17):
break this down, right, you're you're a hunter percent right
in my opinion at least, that people are offended by
what this is, and so then they've they've then reason
themselves into why it's wrong. And it's pretty it's pretty
clear here the hyperbolic language backs it up. Um. Let's
so let's let's leave the wildlife management side of it
off for a minute. When when when you hear um,

(44:40):
I'll let me just read you a quote that Cody
Project co Org has in one of their little handouts
here from Michael Finley. He's the chair of the Oregon
Fish and Wildlife Commission. He says, as a hunter myself,
I am proud of the key role the hunting community
plays and conserving our state's wildlife. These killing contests, however,
are not responsible hunting. They glorify killing for its own

(45:02):
sake and cast the entire hunting community in a bad light.
What do you think about that comment? Yeah, that's fine.
That's just hunters pointing their fingers at other hunters and saying,
I don't like the way you hunt my way or
the highway, and to me, that lack of toleration for
things that you disapprove of. I mean, that's just fundamentally
un American. I mean, I hate to be as corny

(45:25):
as that, but I really do believe that. And we're
in this sort of period of time now where everything
is canceled culture and we're gonna censor people and we're
gonna ban things that we disapprove of. And you know,
this is what animal welfare and animal rights groups have
been trying to do for decades. They're trying to divide
and conquer, and so here they have found an issue

(45:47):
where they can get hunters pointing their fingers and other hunters.
So they're they're they're finding hunters who are willing to
do their dirty work for them. And it's a it's
a stroke of genius. Uh, that's a to uh, you know,
it's a real stroke of business for the for the
you know, the anti hunting groups. It's what hs US

(46:08):
has done forever, um, you know, with the various ballot
referendum that they've done to you know, ban you know,
bear baiting and other practices that they don't like, you know,
hunting mountain lines with towns and whatnot. So this is
yet another variation of that of that trend. Yeah, we'll
get to the state kind of the state wildlife management.

(46:29):
There's some other quotes. As I'm reading and they're talking
to you, I'm just I just I'm chuckling. I don't
want to make it that I think this is a
very serious debate that we should be having here. But
some of the way that it's a serious if people
take it serious, I'm glad you're in the position that
you're in, if I'm being honest, because it just there's it.
I think there is a lot of virtue signaling and
that goes on to things like this for both on

(46:51):
the hunting side and the and the anti hunting side,
where people are pounding their chests on on both issues.
Just from if we're looking at this, does this this
this goes does this fall for in the grounds of
ethics for you or as we almost always talk about
when you're on is it like personal preference of the
style of which you want to hunt. I think mostly
personal preference. On the other hand, we can imagine somebody

(47:16):
a bad character who joins up one of these contests
and for bad motivation and for bad reasons, takes part
in the contest. But that's the same in any other
realm of human behavior. I mean, we have people, you know,
you go driving on the highway. Most people respect the
law and the speed limit, and they don't. They're not crazy,

(47:36):
they're not drunk when they're driving. And yet we know
there are people who drive drunk under the influence, they
drive while they're texting, they speed their dangerous drivers. We
don't condemn all of driving because of the rare exceptions
to the rule of people who are unsafe. And I
think with hunting or worth killing contest, just because you

(47:56):
can figure, you know, find somebody who he's doing it
for the wrong reasons, or who cheats or you know,
using it to sort of for self aggrandizement or what
have you, that to me is not reason to condemn
the whole thing. Um the squirrel derbies, you know that
I was talking about, you know, one of the ways
of gaming the system is you pour lead shot down

(48:17):
the gullet of your squirrel, and so when you weigh
the squirrel and squirrel ways more. You know, to me,
I laugh at because if you feel the need to
win a squirrel derby that bad that you're gonna put
bird shot down the belly of a squirrel, you know,
I find that laughable. I think it's kind of sad.

(48:37):
I don't think that's a reason to condemn squirrel derbies,
you know. I think, you know, on the part of
the people who run squirrel derby's, they try to you know,
prevent cheating. Um, but people cheat, and I think you
just accept that as part of the cost of doing
business and move on. So does the environment of a

(48:58):
contest to get us into this. I guess that's something
that's that's more easily turned to something unethical, because again,
the you know, these folks point that out. I don't
I don't know if I have an opinion on that,
but I'd be interested, like just just a contest because Pete. Then,
but I will say I guess that I we talk

(49:20):
a lot about the game theory, and this is this
came up in a lot of conversations that you and
I had in the past, like the game theory of hunting,
hunting itself, uh is valuable to a lot of people
because of its game like qualities and the challenge. Right,
So we're just being more explicit about the reward system
in this case, which I think maybe makes it off putting.

(49:42):
You know. Again, I think these contests, while they're sort
of artificial in the sense that they're making you know,
they're creating an opportunity for people hunt who might otherwise,
you know, watch a football game on a Sunday afternoon. Um.
But again, once you're participating in the contest, just because
you're doing it with this sort of external additional piece

(50:04):
of motivation, I don't think that necessarily taints it. You know,
let's go to your typical big buck contest during deer season,
where you're simply adding a contest overlay onto hunting that's
already gonna happen. So people are gonna be on the woods,
they're gonna be shooting deer, they're gonna be antler chasing anyway.

(50:25):
And what you do to sort of make things a
little bit more interesting in your gun club or your
fishing game club, you know, you put up on the chalkboard,
big Bug contest, five dollars a shot, you know, whoever
wins the puck. And to me, that's utterly harmless. You know,
I can't imagine anybody decides the night before opening day,
well damn, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna win

(50:45):
that thirty five plot at that gun club. So you
know I'm going after mobi buck now. Uh. You know, yes,
I suppose there's a theoretical possibility that there's some knucklehead
out there who thinks that way. But I just don't
stay awake to night worrying about it. Yeah, they talked
about the squirrel Slam and some of their and their

(51:07):
fact sheet. It's hilarious that they have Projectity fact sheet
and there's just no facts on it. There's not a
single data point. There literally is not a single data
point that a fact sheet to me, should have like
bullet pointed data, and this has nothing. But it does.
I mean, it's you know, it says forty states it's legal.

(51:30):
It would be a hard thing to track. And you know,
even they're even assessing whether something is legal or not.
You know, this is like football pools, right, Technically football
pools are illegal in a lot of places, and yet
every office has a football pool, every office has a
March Madness pool, and you know, it's the same thing

(51:50):
like you know, we also in this area sometimes they'll
have woodchuck you know, Marmot groundhog shooting contest were simply
you know, people are out there shooting woodch anyway, you know,
to cut down on on woodchuck's in in hayfields and
fishing game club in the middle of July when they're
not seeing much of the membership will say, let's have
a wood chuck hunt. You know, five dollars an entry,

(52:14):
biggest woodchuck, most wood chuck's um. And again there's nothing
necessarily offensive about that. People would be out there on
their own shooting wood chuck's regardless, and to have again,
to me, I interpret this having a little bit of
innocent fun, just to add some uh some sociology to

(52:34):
it and have people get together and you know, grill
burgers at the end of the day while they're weighing
wood chuck's. I just don't see this being a huge problem.
There is some, like I said, so much of this
that it just seems like this intentionally misunderstood. I mean,
they they say in the same document, killing contests are
condemned by sports is because they violate fundamental hunting ethics,

(52:55):
the fundamentally deceptive perhaps. I mean, you know, I think
you know here, I I I don't know the website
and I'll have to look at it after the podcast
and study it a little bit more. But if it's
anything like h s us, I mean, it's just similar.
I don't know if I can say a bad word
on you you know, the terms bullshit, I mean, right,

(53:18):
we've probably even talked about this maybe and some of
the other you know, the classic ethics essay by Harry
Frankfort on bullshit UH is widely read. It was on
the New York Times bestseller list ten years ago. Prince
the University Press published it as a standalone book, And
you know, Frankfort basically says, bullshit's more pernicious or damaging

(53:40):
to society than out outline because the bullshitter doesn't care
about the truth. The bullshit are just bluffs his or
her way through it. And I think what you get
on this level from these kinds of groups is a
fairly high level organized form of bullshit where they can
make it up as they go along, and nobody's gonna
round truth them on any of these claims, right because

(54:03):
the audience that they're preaching to they've already made up
their mind. You know, they hate telling contests, So then
that fact sheet is not there to actually change anybody's mind. Um,
you know they're they're they're preaching to the choir. Yeah,
I mean that. You know when owen bullshit is what
it's called by Harry Frankfort out of Princeton. It's been

(54:23):
some years since I've read it. I would just pulling up. Man,
it is good. It's it's so good. Deceptive misinformation is
one of the things I remember that he talks about
in that quite a lot, and I think that's what
that's what this is, um. And we've talked about this
kind of over and over. We talked about this on
this show when it when it came to the California

(54:44):
effort to band bear black bear hunting here this year.
We just talked about it with wolves in Wisconsin, and
we'll touch on it again in this case. It really
is deceptive. There's a lot of deceptive misinformation, UM that
that is really it's aimed to stroke the anti hunting crowd,
but it's also aimed to easily convince the non hunter

(55:05):
who has never thought about this before, sensationalized propaganda that really,
for any any person who's never thought about this critically,
it's gonna go, yeah, man, this is awful. And and
that's and then they'll sign a petition which Project Cowdy
has and that has sixty sings is just about um.
And so that's kind of the tactic here. That's ABC

(55:26):
over and over and over again. And and to borrow
from Frankfort, you know, Frankfort has a lot of interesting observations.
He says, one of the reasons people bullshit is because
it works, it's effective, and what the bullshitter is selling
as rather than the truth, the bullshitter is selling their
own sincerity. Right, I'm a good guy. I'm on the

(55:47):
good guy's side. I'm against killing animals. Um, you know.
So I'm wearing the white hat, riding in on the
white horse, and I'm saving the day. And those evil
hunters they're bad boom and again subtle almost ad hominem
attack on hunters, on sportsman, on coyote killers, on wood

(56:10):
truck killers. And it's it's like you said, it's propaganda.
I don't think that's much in dispute. Really, No, I mean,
you can read read any of it. I know I've
been reading a lot of it. But it's just I
think it's to hear it and then to discuss how
they present it. I think really is all that we
can do at this point, because as our friends at

(56:31):
the Sports's Alliance always tell me, we're very reactive in
the hunting community. This kind of language, you know, we
do not go out and pursue it, uh, unless it
comes at us, you know. We we we don't go
out and promote a culture that is responsible unless somebody
you know, pokes at us in this way. But they say,
state wildlife managees, management agencies, sorry, beholding to these interest

(56:54):
groups because they rely on them for funding. So again
we are holding them hostage with our tax dollars. Sonar.
It just it gives you. It's an eye roll. They're
setting up kind of this the strong man theory and
this kind of money. You know, it almost it almost
sounds like a conspiracy theory in the way that they
present it. They provide almost no protections to persecuted animals.

(57:17):
In most states, coyotes can be killed year round using
almost any method. And again, persecuted animals, let's return to that,
to that statement or that you know, that turn of
phrase for a minute. What is a persecuted animal? What
does that mean? You know? Well, you know, and here's
where they're not bothering to just look at basic, you know,
categories of wildlife management. Now I'm not trying to praise

(57:39):
categories of wildlife management. There's nothing sacred about categories of
wildlife management, but the fact that you have species that
are classified as nuisance species where you can hunt them
year around. So the coyote in some states, woodchucks in
New York are considered a nuisance species, so you can
hunt them all year round. Right, there's no limitations, no

(58:00):
bag limits or whatever. And you know, again, how a
target species is treated is a matter of law or
regulation and also local context. So all of that gets ignored.
I think in a generic you know, sort of stand
against you know, contest killing. Um, you know, there's no detail,

(58:22):
there's no subtlety, um, you know, so and that and
that's unfortunate. Yeah, I will say that a couple you know,
when I read a lot of what's what's being said
here by Project Cody there's some things that that that
hit on levels of truth, you know, the colonels the truth.
One of them, I think be interested to hear you
think about this is that we often in the history

(58:44):
of our time, every Dan Floores' book County America, we
vilified coyotes, you know, in the turn of the century
and on forward, as as we kind of our manifest
destiny took us across the country, we vilified wolves and coyotes,
and we did a lot of thanks to those those species, um,
that we probably shouldn't have in the way and the

(59:04):
way we treated them um throughout the you know, the
last one years up till now. They're you know. One
of the things Project Howdy says is this this wildlife
killing contest perpetuates this myth um and some of the
kind of dogma that's been baked into the hunting space
about kill all coyotes or kill all wolves. Um. I
think there's a kernel of truth to that. I think

(59:26):
there's something in the culture that needs to be sussed out. Possibly.
You know, there's a there's an environmental historian named Thomas
Dunlap who wrote a very interesting book. It's probably twenty
years old at this point saving American's widlife, and it's
a history of changing attitudes towards wildlife. And he specifically
charts the history of attitudes towards so called environments, so wolves, coyotes,

(59:48):
poisoning with compound ten eight and the like, and how
wolves and coyotes go from being feared sort of pests
and agricultural nuisances to being revered, you know, totems of
you know, uh ecological consciousness in the sixties or seventies
or or later. And you know, I think that's a

(01:00:10):
very interesting history. But where it leaves us in an
age of over abundant, potentially over abundant populations, is we
still got to deal with how do you you know,
we have more coyotes than the social caring capacity will allow,
We have more wolves than the social caring capacity will allow.
So you're left with the sort of practical problem. What

(01:00:33):
are we gonna do. Are we gonna have some sort
of limited hunt by individuals, by sharpshooters, by contest killers,
all of the above, none of the above. Are we
gonna have fertility control? Are we gonna have like wolf,
you know, birth control um like we try to do
with deer, Another species. Uh, you know, these are just
practical questions. And and this is where wildlife management, to

(01:00:58):
the extent that it's forward looking, is always trying to
figure out how to balance what are essentially sometimes plural
and conflicting values. You know, how do you maximize the
greatest good for the greatest number with passing the fewest
people off? And you know that's a that's a delicate
balancing act. It came up with the Wisconsin wolf situation,

(01:01:21):
the reason that Chippawa trial, the reason that Chippawat tribal
members didn't kill wolves just because they regard them as
sacred in their culture. You know, so we're still it's
kind of you you really can't get around that history.
And I really, no matter where you look, I'd say right,
and it makes it makes it all the more complicated. Um,

(01:01:42):
here's one thing that would be It is always interesting
they talk about gratuitous violence Old Project Cody does, and
they're often I've seen this in their film that I watched,
and I've seen this in a couple of things where
they're always they have piles of dead coyotes that are
shown and then hunters laughing, hunters shaking hands, hunters celebrating,

(01:02:03):
and they present this as a bunch of bloodthirsty, egotistical
assholes that don't like an ethical bone in their body.
Um So there's always this conflict even in me to
say like, yeah, man, that does not look great if
you've never hunted before. But there's also the same idea
that what they're doing isn't inherently unethical because you've you've

(01:02:25):
clipped out part and taken out of context what they're
actually doing. So I feel like that's a something we
could you know, discuss that maybe at length here to
try to suss out like the optics of the situation
and the reality and what we do with that when
it comes to you know, public and social policies within hunting.
You know, how do we as a community manage that.

(01:02:45):
You know, again, the optics are bad, but you know
you're taking something that is uh just a fraction of
the whole. You know, assholes are gonna asshole and you know,
think about that's a T shirt, Jim, that's a teacher. Well,
there's a book, a Theory of Assholary. It's another philosopher
you can look at up later. Um. Riots that occurred

(01:03:10):
Wisconsin and Minnesota not within the last year or two,
you know, somebody wins the n c A tournament and
the fans go out and they torched cars and they
turned cars over. And you know, we don't condemn n
ci A basketball because there's a group of knuckleheads who
after winning the championship go out and our assholes. And

(01:03:32):
to me, you know, just because you can find film
footage of people being jerks and whooping it up and
hooting and holler and saying yeehah, look at this, you know,
whackham and stack them sort of mentality, that doesn't you know,
that portion isn't necessarily reflective of the whole. And you know,

(01:03:53):
I defy anyone to sit there with a straight face
and try and make a case that this is, you know,
universal across the you know, entire pool of of hunters
out there. I just I don't. I don't buy it.
I think you they would be hard pressed to to
make that case. Um. Yeah, they are. They're they're making it,

(01:04:14):
that's for sure. And I think that, like I said,
I think part of this is that the hunting community
is just somehow immune to this anymore, if they've seen
it over years and years and years the way that
I became immediately aware of this the film that Project
Coudy is putting out, and really the petition and other

(01:04:37):
things are by folks that I know that are filmmakers
and creatives kind of in the more outdoor oriented space,
like say not geo space or the non consumptive user
group that that is that really takes this. I agree
with him with so many things, but then when it
comes to predator hunting, they take it and they use
it as a strong man, and they're happy to do

(01:04:59):
so because the so accepted in their community becomes a
it becomes a virtue signal about how much you care
about wild life, and so there's an operation. One of
the inconsistencies in their position is, you know, they've sort
of set up a situation in their historical animosity towards trapping.
You know, that makes shooting kyotes more popular than trapping,

(01:05:22):
So trappers have a bad name. You want to see
veneration for the kyles. I try to get my trapping license.
I've watched about the trapping videos. It's something that maybe
I'll do eventually. I never thought I would be interested
in it, but you watch trapping videos, say on YouTube
of these guys who are specifically trapping Kyle's for Kyle pelts,

(01:05:42):
and they absolutely venerate the animal and treat the animal
with just the utmost respect and talk about the challenges
in some cases of of trapping and snaring you know,
specific animals. And then they go through all the stuff
about the help and where the high value pelts you know,
how they are, and the lower quality pelts, and they

(01:06:05):
take them all the way to market and talk about
the economic value. And in fact, the animal welfare sort
of movement historically has so reduced the market for Kyle
pelts done respectfully through trapping that it's almost like they
set this up, you know, through their history, Uh, to
have these kinds of you know, massive body count and

(01:06:28):
I again, I don't really think that's very frequent, but
you know, people blasting away with rifles from a hundred
fifty yards and you know, so you know, I think
I think that's also part of the story that they're
not sharing or you know, not eager to fess up
to for sure. Yeah, like I said, we the lines

(01:06:49):
become so blurred in this case. Um, even the Massachusetts
Division of Wildlife and Fisheries, I read a thing, a
report that they did in twenty nineteen where they were
talking about uh that wildlife. One of the concerns that
they had for a coyote hunting contests and other hunting
contests was that they contribute to the waste of animals

(01:07:09):
um and they incentivize indiscriminate killing a wildlife. How could
you possibly make that stand up? And as scientific report
which they which again they said that they did on
this how could you make those things stand up? You
know that says more about the changing state of wildlife
management in Massachusetts than anything else. I mean, you know,
if you have an agency that is slowly drifting towards

(01:07:32):
an anti management sort of hands off approach to management,
then you know, their public relations staff, their education staff
are going to sound more and more like that, and
you know, again that's just how that agency is drifting. Yeah,
there's there's a lot of it. There's a lot of it.

(01:07:53):
Do you have any thoughts on just the idea of
banning something in general? I've I've thought about kind of
and we talked through this on this show a little
bit already about kind of the polarization of thought when
it comes to both politics and our society. One side
really does like the banned things, and it seems to
be the progressive left they really like, they really want

(01:08:13):
to ban the things that they seem to that that
they wanted to at least say or can in some
cases may be proved societal harm. They love. There's so
much ban lingo and this is another this is just
another example of it um And so to ban something,
it has to be reprehensible, evil, a detriment to society.

(01:08:35):
And I think because of of their propensity to use
that language, this hyperbole starts to get baked into a
lot of very similar things where they're trying to air fifteens.
They mentioned air fifteens in here, like there's some evil
uh you know, some evil tool that only these awful
uh contest hunters use and they give to children and

(01:08:55):
all this other stuff like it. Do you have you
thought about that in terms of how that stillizes in
this polarization of thought. You know, again then you use
the term progressive left, that's your term mind, But you know,
banning these kinds of activities is anti liberal right. The
classic liberal statement is John Stewart Mills on liberty and liberty.

(01:09:19):
Freedom is allowing people the freedom to make their own
decisions based on freedom of conscience, their own beliefs, right,
and a minimal role for the state. Right, So we
don't pass loss to ban things just because we disapprove
of them. Um and and here, uh, if it is
in fact progressive, progressive leftism that's behind some of this

(01:09:41):
banning impetus, that's anti liberal, it's it's more authoritarian, it's
and and to me, I think more potentially dangerous than
simply allowing people to freedom to choose based on their
own their own conscience. Do you do you feel like
that that's where I could be definitely proven wrong in
term like how we determine, you know, where this comes from,

(01:10:04):
or like what kind of community ideologies are pushing it
or political ideology of pushing it. It just seems that
way to me. Um, when these bands come come from,
you know, it's accurate. I mean, you know it's it's
accurate as far as it goes. You know, it's I
don't think it's limited to the progressive left. I think
you might have hunters who are themselves conservative, who not

(01:10:26):
realizing the significance of the stand that they're taking. The
ones who say no, I don't like the way you hunt,
the lesban the way you hunt. They're just inconsistent there,
contradicting themselves. Potentially, this happens across the board. We have
a situation in Montana right now that a lot of
folks just do not agree with me on when it

(01:10:49):
comes to crossbows during archery ELXis. I'm glad that you
I'm glad that you laughed when I said that I
cannot stand and I don't want to get into I
have another whole podcast prepared, let's go, Jim. I just
I cannot for the life of me. And again I

(01:11:10):
don't have I have like a whole document on this.
I'll pull it up at some point for the life
of me. So the idea, I guess I'm just setting
up the idea. Crossbows during archery elk season make uh
the archery hunting license holder more efficient, right, So it
changes the percentage of kill, right, So you kill more elks,
so you would have to shorten the season. This is

(01:11:30):
essentially there's some nuance to it, of course, but this
is essentially where the argument goes. If you add crossbows
in things are more efficient, Um, the hunter success rate
goes up, so you have to shorten the season to
keep the same population or the same tag numbers for
the state. Okay, fine, how could you possibly using all

(01:11:51):
logic presented, are you for a less effective killing tool
in hunting? How could you possibly sit on whatever high
horse that you're on and say that cross but because
I like my seven weeks season, that we should we
need to be less efficient in killing and we can't
have this um horizontal bow or you know, non archery tool.

(01:12:20):
This is where I'm at. I I will just say
to people, if you're gonna sit there and tell me
that you that bow hunting is less efficient and we
want to keep it that way, I can't. I've heard
people call it wounding season within the hunting community. So
I just that's where we are in Montanous specifically, and
this has happened across the country with white tails and
other things. I can't abide by that. It just doesn't

(01:12:42):
make objective sense to me. Well, and there you can,
you know, analyze this morally or ethically and just say
those are those people are selfish. I mean, I'm gonna
way oversimplify by saying that, But you know, if you
have people whose only interest is there self interesting, I
want more for me, me, me, me, me, So I
don't want to share my hunting season with crossbow hunters.

(01:13:04):
That might reflect the lack of character on the part
of people who are just sort of wine and invention
about crossbows. Um. Moreover, if part of the point of
having an archery season in the first place is to
sort of represent the sort of spirit, at least of
primitive arms. Right in many states in the East, for example,
Pennsylvania archery season muzzle loader is flintlock only. You know,

(01:13:28):
the ideas primitive arms, A crossbow is as primitive as
you can get. Go back to the medieval art from
seventy six Gastone to Phoebus is lever shots. The Book
of the Chase, and there are multiple chapters about how
to hunt everything with crossbows. So you know, it's it's
I don't know that. There's a whole lot of argument there.

(01:13:50):
There's a lot of assertion with no argument. There's a
lot of assertions with no evidence or reasons. I don't
like it. Period. That's usually not a good base this
for policy, And that's a it's and it's a very
easy argument to make to those that will also harm right,
if you would say you're currently an archery l hunter,
your vertical bow guy, you love your thing. You don't

(01:14:10):
want to see your season shortened. For these people, it's
an easy delineation. It's an easy demarcation, and then you
can get into again much like this. Um So, I
think this does display kind of how the same kind
of thought processes can get baked into both in the
hunting community and and within and without well. And it

(01:14:32):
ignores the positive argument that one might make on behalf
of the elderly archer who physically now needs across bow
can't pull back on a compound bow. And you know,
if people would sort of pay attention to that side
of the equation, what goes along with that with an
aging hunter group cohort population. Those people are probably not

(01:14:54):
as mobile as they used to be. They're not hiking
twenty miles in to use their crossbow to get the
all in the bad country. So as much as you
might say, oh, this is gonna make it too easy
and too efficient and whatnot, the fact of an aging
hunter population that's gonna kind of balance out to my
way of thinking, that's gonna end up being kind of
a wash. So, yeah, more people use crossbows, but many

(01:15:17):
and not most of the people using those crossbows are
gonna be you know, getting older. Yeah, yeah, well that's
that's again the the arguments like, well, there's disabled you know,
disabled hunters can use crossbows for most of the rest
of the season, and there's there's specific things you can
do as a disabled hunter. But again I think that
that ignores the fact that very very very many new hunters.

(01:15:40):
Every time we take a new hunter into archery and
we want to just show them that season, especially with elk,
elk are completely different animal in September than they are
in November. They're completely different um. And if you want
to take somebody into that environment and show them that
with a crossbow in hand, they have a better chance
to as they had a better chance of learning quicker

(01:16:03):
and they have better chance of experiencing hunting. Um. And
we are cutting that off, cutting off our nose despite
our face very much because we want to keep it
the way it is. And then as you said that,
just to me, there's only one way to read that,
and that's selfish and it doesn't go along the lines
of the way that we need to think about managing

(01:16:24):
wildlife or or opening up are the experience of hunting
to everyone, it just doesn't. Um. I think it's I
think it's a it's a huge problem. Crossbows, for whatever reason,
have been vilified, UM Pope and Young Club and other
traditionist clubs that just don't want to see that change.
And at some level I understand, I understand where they're
coming from. But I think when you applied to broad

(01:16:46):
based wildlife policy, man, it's it is. It's a tough
argument to make. It just is right, right, UM, have
you thought about your Have you ever hunt with crossbows?
You're in the land of crossbow us over there. Well, again,
you know part of my issues. I'm I'm color blind.
I'm red green deficient, so I cannot. I cannot blood trail.

(01:17:07):
So archery has always been something I've opted out of,
partly because of my fear that I'll need to blood trail.
I mentioned my daughter getting her first year, we had
to blood trailer. I was astounded at how good she
was at it. She saw every drop of blood. It
was not of a plump blood trail, but it was there.
I didn't see anything, and you know that just hammered

(01:17:29):
home to me the morality of my own decision to
stay away from archery. You know, I want to shoot
it with a gun, and I wanted to fall over,
So that's ideal. Yeah, that's when I think about I
have a young son when I think about taking him hunting,
and I think about how where he should start from
right and how he should build out his his competency,

(01:17:51):
and um, I do want to tell him that that
we we want to challenge ourselves in this endeavor. But
as as we probably talked about here quite off and
I'm thinking about fair kill first and fair chase. Maybe
ask you that what's what's going to kill this this
animal and the and really the most ethical and efficient way,
And I'll work backwards from there in terms of look

(01:18:14):
at this, and there's your argument for crossbows in certain context.
You know, it's the idea that you want something to
be efficient and uh, you know, painless for the animal ideally.
And you know, again this gets back to these aesthetic
questions about technique and technology. And again years ago I
had that argument with David Peterson about like preserve hunting,

(01:18:39):
and I argued, there's a place for preserved hunting. It's
a controlled environment. You have a young hunter, the bird
is planted, it's going to go up in a predictable direction.
You don't have to worry about swinging through somebody, And
you get to teach somebody how to hunt correctly in
an artificial, makeedly a contrived environment. But that's not a

(01:19:00):
bad thing. If you're trying to teach a young hunter
how to do it right, There'll be plenty of time
to go after wild birds later. Um So you know,
to me, I think it all calls for a kind
of contextual reasoning. The context matters. Uh so, yeah, that's
what that's That's where I feel like I agree with you.

(01:19:21):
I've struggled with this over the years, and I think
most hunters kind of enter into it with the mindset of, um,
what their personal ethics are right and and even maybe
what their situation situational ethics might be. But it's often
such a solitary decision that you have to make, that
that your public declaration of how you feel about something

(01:19:44):
and your private action are often at odds sometimes and
you and you have to then determine, like do I
tell the truth about this that I wounded three elk
this year? I didn't, but like that I wounded three
elk this year, but I still don't want to people
to have crossbows. Do I do I tell the truth
here or do I shadow this portion, this uncomfortable portion

(01:20:05):
to be able to then have the ethical conversation without
the personal connection that quite happens quite often. Well, And
and crippling loss is something that nobody likes to admit to,
and yet it happens. And I don't think there's anything
to be gained by denying it. Do you want to
sell it in a big way? No, because you know,

(01:20:27):
optics do matter. But uh, and crippling loss isn't a
reason to ban hunting, you know. I mean, if the
hunter is conscientious, they will do you know, his or
her best to to minimize that that risk. You can
never eliminate the risk. There's always the chance that the
animal flinches at the last or you just get the

(01:20:47):
toughest animal in the woods. You know, you could hit
it directly where it needs to be hit, and that
animal just is made of steel and goes off and
dies somewhere else and you never find it. And it's
just luck. That's luck. Yeah, it doesn't mean the only
hunt the weak animals, I mean, yeah, or maybe, but

(01:21:08):
it is, it is. It's an interesting thing that happens
within our own minds as hunters in the way we
try to, you know, offset the value system that we present,
the ethics that we present with what actually happens in
the woods. And I think that happens maybe in the
reverse when it comes to wildlife killing contests, that the
straw man is easy to identify in that in that situation.

(01:21:29):
You know, we have a contest up here. You probably
don't in Montana. The city of Auburn, New York, has
a problem with crows, and so there are ten thousand
crows that descend upon the city of Auburn. And they've
tried various methods to try and scare the crows away.
And you know different places around the country whose border

(01:21:52):
colleagues to scare geese away on golf courses, and and
you know, they tried to have a crow hunt a
couple of years and a contest just to get people
to shoot a bird species that nobody's shooting for food.
There's there's just nobody makes a living out of crow killing.
And and here again they were trying to kill two

(01:22:13):
birds with one song, so to speak. You know, just
provide some incentive for people to get out there and
and and try and you know, help the city with
this problem. And that contest got shouted down, and so
Auburn continues to struggle with this population of crows. You
walk around the town town depending on where that flock
is any given day, you know, you're you're walking through

(01:22:36):
a you know, ankle ankle high crow ship. So um so, yeah,
you can be a pro crow purist and say no
contests are bad, but you know you're you're gonna have
to walk from the downtown. I had embrace your purism.

(01:22:56):
We ate crow here one time. Oh yeah, it was awful.
It was chalky and just it was it was I
can't in butter milk and make it like ag. They
put it on like a Ryan Callahan cooked it up,
and they put it on the kind of like a
cracker with some tomatoes and a very Italian presentation. And

(01:23:17):
it was just other people, I think, claimed that it
was pretty tasty, and I was just looking at them
like you're lying, because I know you're eating exactly what
I meant. And it's there's no accounting for taste, you know,
yeah there is. Yeah. I watched you know, like I
said about these trapping videos, you know, you have some
people who believe in sort of full utilization of the resource,
and they'll eat the coyote, and they'll eat the beaver meat,

(01:23:39):
and they'll eat the various things that they're trapping, and
you know, with cruel of the problem is there's just
so little meat there. I can't even We dropped one
in the water one time and it came out looking
like a mouse. I mean it was just tiny. Yeah. Yeah,
I can't promote I can't remote full. I can promote
saying like you should give it a shot, and I'm not.

(01:24:00):
I'm not thinking you're killing a mess of crows for
dinner is probably not going to make your wife all
that happy or your kids either. Depending on how you
do it, maybe a slow smoke might might do it.
But that's I guess at the end of the day, Jim,
would you? Would you? I try to suss all this,
and I know a lot of this. A lot of
people will say that these ethical conversations that we have

(01:24:20):
are our mental gymnastics and we're working our way through
something that really doesn't have any answers. But at the
bottom line, we will always end up just talking about
individual or group hunter motivation. Right, Like, what are you
motivated by? And what's that due to the way you
treat animals? What's that due to your um your understanding
of the ecological benefits or detractions of certain types of hunting.

(01:24:43):
Is there a way I know people have in the
past said this type of hunter, this type of hunter.
There's been you know, writers and theorists to identify the
different types of hunters and their motivations. But have you
thought about a way to communicate that holistic to say that,
you know, there it might be one sentence like hunters
are are are like campers. There's a lot of people

(01:25:06):
from a lot of different perspectives and campers litter that
that doesn't mean all camping is wrong. That's the way.
That's where I kind of land, and that puts me
more towards the liberty. Let's not ban things. Let's let's
use the bounds of our model of conservation, wildlife conservation,
and and go from there. Let's just let's let's be
more open, less closed. That's exactly right. And and again

(01:25:29):
we should celebrate the diversity of humankind. And you know,
and hunters are a diverse lot, and that's that's a
good thing. And the fact that people are interested in
different kinds of hunting and different critters that they hunt,
different techniques. It's all good. And again, just because people
are offended by hunting, or offended by trapping, or offended

(01:25:51):
by squirrel derby's or offended by Kyle killing, that that
that offense is not enough to justify, you know, abolishing
an activity that other people care about. Um, you know. So,
but the camping analogy, that's the you're right, that's a
good analogy. How do we how do you think we

(01:26:13):
do that on a legislator front, because obviously that's that's
an h U S model. That's how they run this.
They're going to put in anti hunting legislation. We talked
about this in a in an earlier episode about kind
of like the tangible way that we guard the gate
or let we guard against this legislation and then the
open way we have the discussion around it, because because

(01:26:34):
that legislation is gonna keep coming, band county contest, band trapping,
band grizzly bear hunting, that stuff's gonna keep on coming. Um,
And I'm right there with you with the slippery slope,
and I'm not man I hesitate to make that argument,
but it's it's you know, it's pretty true in this
case with the legislation at least well, and we've seen
forms of hunting eliminated. So whether it's mountain lion hunting

(01:26:57):
or bear hunting, you know that the risk is there. Um.
You know again, I think people who care about hunting,
wildlife managers who care about hunting. I do think there's
a need for people to acquaint themselves with the basic
political theory of you know, American democracy undergirded by English liberalism,

(01:27:22):
you know, the liberalism of people like John Locke and
the founder you know, the founders h Jeffersonian ideals. You know.
As corny again as that might sound to the outsider listening, uh,
it really matters that, you know, all else being equal,
we try to privilege people's freedom to make their own choices,

(01:27:43):
and we try to have government be restrained about coercing
people one way or another, either to do something or
to not do something. It's like vaccines right now with COVID,
we want people to have a freedom to make that decision.
It's debated and debatable whether we're gonna force people to

(01:28:03):
have a vaccine against their will, even though most of
us think that's a good thing that people take the vaccine,
but voluntarily. And that's the dilemma between freedom and freedom
of choice and the role of society and dictating people's
choices using government as the instrument and government as a

(01:28:24):
blunt instrument. Um. You know. So, I just think we
need to just continually reacquaint people with that sort of
basic level of political theory. And and a little of
it goes a long way because you're kind of reminding
people of things they already know or that they learned
in like high school civics or middle school civics, and

(01:28:47):
they just haven't thought about in a long while. The
idea that we're often with these critical issues talking past
each other, right, Like, we have completely different ways of
framing the topic, uh, gun control, it's stopping mass murders
or protecting your family. Those are not That's not a
debate you can have in a rational way. Those are

(01:29:07):
two very different. Not. Those are two, it's it's set
up to fail. Um. I think wildlife killing contest is
very similar. It's stopping the victimization and murder of wildlife.
And on the other side, you might say, well, I'm
just I've been told that if I kill a kaya,
it's good for this ecosystem. I trust them North American
Mile of Conservation. I trust the state game age. He's

(01:29:29):
telling me what's right and wrong. If it's not illegal,
it's it's probably right and I should be free to
do it. Um. I don't know if that's really That
might not be apples to oranges in terms of comparations,
But it's a cartoon on each side, right, because you
can take you can make a car a cartoon or
a parody of the contest and and dramatize it and

(01:29:50):
point out everything that you think is wrong with it.
And by the same token, you could make a fetish
of the North American model and say it's all about
ecosystem help, when in fact, most of the time it
isn't you know, if you have an over abund oft
coyote population, the ecosystem may be just fine with having
lots of coyotes. It's the people that don't want to

(01:30:13):
be overwhelmed by coyotes. It's the people that don't want
to be overwhelmed by wolves for crows, you know, or woodchucks.
And if you default to the North American model, that
itself is a kind of elaborate bullshit. You know, that's
a it's way too easy for hunters to try and
pin it on the wildlife manager. Well, they tell us

(01:30:34):
that we're killing deer to save the deer. That doesn't
make any sense. It's never made any sense. You know.
There's lots of reasons for killing deer, killing coyles or wolves,
and some of them are social, and we should just
fess up to that. You know. We we have two
thousand walls in the Upper Peninsula Michigan, and honestly, we
could get by with a thousand, right, and we'd make

(01:30:56):
everybody happy who loves wolves, because they're still there and
there are some a little while and their sacred. And
the bear hunter who just had his fourth hound munched
by a wolf, it's probably gonna be happy that at
least somebody is kind of siding with his interest in
having hounds and and doing something about you know what
he perceives to be a problem. Yeah, I mean the

(01:31:18):
guy in Wyoming who I was just reading an article
the other day of a guy in Wyoming was quoted
out of Casper was talking about how he has sheep
and he is very much for a twenty dollar bounty
on kayades and he shoots the shoots a kiote on site,
right and barries him and doesn't Hell yeah, probably, and
he's very much for the bounty system, right. I'm sure
he doesn't mind wildlife killing kinds. But I feel like

(01:31:40):
that's really good advice in terms of the model of
a wild conservation. I'm probably guilty of kind of using it.
I try to use it as guardrails is a way
to like keep us in the factor. No, I'm not
trying to say it's not a factor. But here's where
the North American model backfires with over abundant deer and
wildlife Society members are aware of this, you know, therth
American model says, we don't sell meat, right. We do

(01:32:03):
this because we lead the individual hunt and philis freezer.
But pretty soon we're gonna have to privatize a market
in Venison because there's too many deer. And the North
American model is is contradictory because oh yeah, we allow
hunters to consume their own meat, but it ignores trapping,
you know, which is done for market based sort of reasons,

(01:32:27):
or at least historically has you know, so you can
you can trap beavers. And right now the beaver peltics
worth what is it worth? Fifteen dollars, twelve dollars whatever,
I mean, there's still a price. Um, you know, so
I think what's looking forward? This is the point earlier
about wildlife managers having to look forward. They can't get

(01:32:48):
locked into a North American model sort of mentality. They're
gonna have to be creative going forward. And yeah, yeah,
I mean that the our our bison herds and in
the state account of the state of Montana, bison his livestock, right,
but yet we hunt them in certain places. I can
get it's very this is a very nuance to get
a very nuance thing. I don't want to present as

(01:33:08):
like general it's a livestock, can get hunt it. There's
a lot going on there. But there there are some
inconsistencies in the way that we view wildlife and certain capacities.
And again, you know, the North America model, being is
as imperfect as it is, has kind of pushed us,
to your point a little bit towards kind of captive
servits being served up as venison uh at fancy restaurants

(01:33:31):
around the country and being sold we you know, being
sold by organic meat suppliers who are getting this captive
service from New Zealand and selling it as just like
fresh venison. You know, this alternative meat when it really
has it's kind of forced the hand of the captive
serviid world. Especially red deer in New Zealand is just
one of the main sources of this. But it's kind

(01:33:53):
of forced us into that, into that realm where you
could possibly be uh using ven sin killed by hunters
or donated by hunters or some way. And now that
again this this, this is a lovely long conversation and
you'd have to really meter it out, but a good
point to be made there for sure. Well, and it's
done in other places. You go to England, you know,

(01:34:15):
you go to a driven grouse shoot on August twelve,
the glorious twelve, and you pile up dirty grouse. You know,
they end up in the pub that night in the
local village being served as dinner, you know, in the
hunter or the you know, the shooters in the butt
you know sits there and takes home a couple of
growse ceremonially. But for the most part they allow a

(01:34:35):
private market and game meat and that works well. Yeah, yeah.
And I think even in uh Shane Mahoney and Dr
Player Skies, they have a book they released last year
on the model and and they identify some of the
issues with it for it into the future. Um and
I think this is that's certainly something to talk about
because it is like on a on a micro scale,

(01:34:57):
makes a whole lot of sense. It would be it
would be hard to situed on on a larger scale.
But that's why we have state game agencies running the
show in a lot of ways where you can manage
it that way. Um. So yeah, it's it's interesting, But
I do I say people should return to your advice
there too, as we there's no I think the human
mind is is very capable of producing its own bullshit reasoning.

(01:35:21):
Uh and it compounds right as soon as you as
soon as you're unwilling to strip away your own bullshit,
then you're then you're lost. You just can pound your
you compound your bullshit reasoning until you're so married to
it that you're just full of ship every day. Well,
it's good to acknowledge that about yourself. You know. It's
like the Cousin Vinny line, you know, the movie Cousin Vine. Yeah,
cousin Vinny's opening line of defensive everything that guy just

(01:35:45):
said is bullshit. You know, you know, thank you, thank you.
That's yeah. That's one of the things that we that
I think is is key to getting into these complex
issues is you've got to peel away everything that that
you believe almost repeatedly every time you get into a
new complex situation, and acknowledge that you, yourself are are

(01:36:05):
potentially fallible. You know, I could have most of this wrong. Um,
I don't think I do, because you know, I thought
about it a lot. I don't think you're wrong on
a lot of things that you're articulating yourself. And so
back to the contest in this group in California, you know,
they really there's a burden of proof that they you know,

(01:36:26):
they bear a burden of proof. And to me, just
from the sounds of it, uh, I do not think
that they have across a threshold there yet where what
they're offering is compelling enough to you know, to think about. Yeah,
and we said this, uh last episode, I think it
was with Pat Derrick, and it's something I've been thinking

(01:36:48):
about a lot. We we have our our North American
model of wiles like conservation, and then you have kind
of like the animal rights philosophy that sits as an
opposition I've been calling for. I'd like someone in the
animal rights community to build a model the conservation off
that ideology, off the animal rights ethicists like the animal
the humane treatment of animals ideology. How do we manage them?

(01:37:10):
How do we manage them and not kill them? How
do we manage them and not perpetuate victimization? And just
using some of their hyperbole and some of their their
speech here, how do we do it? Make me a model?
It can be. It's gonna be a very future future
looking model, forward looking model. Um it would it would
have to be just by the way that it would
be um sussed out. But that's one thing I would

(01:37:31):
love to see. So we can at least compare the
two and say, like, don't just tell me that because
hunters give a bunch of money to state game agencies
that they're beholding us, tell me what your alternative to
that is, uh, and then we can have a conversation
from there. At least it's a logical back and forth
rather than all this all this hyperbole and chest pounding

(01:37:52):
that's where you think we'll ever get that breath, not
hold my breath and Montana I as you're talking, I'm
thinking of Gary Varner is an environmental ethicis Texas, A
and M I believe in. You know, he uses this
term therapeutic hunting, and it's basically for sort of case

(01:38:14):
selected species that you know over exceed their carrying capacity.
So you know, he's sympathetic. I think to sort of
a welfare perspective that may be as far as you'll
get somebody from the animal welfare not that he is
animal welfare, but trying to craft an argument, you know,
because I think there is an understanding among animal welfare

(01:38:37):
slash animal rights activists that you can't have a problem
with an over abundant species like dear who over the
winter starved to death, and all else being equal, we'd
like to avoid that. Um. Now a lot of them
will jump on you know, wild a fertility control as
their silver bullet. Um. Most dear managers are going to

(01:38:58):
say no, some sort of therapeutic a hunting, uh will
probably be more effective, more efficient, cost less. Yeah, but
I don't know that you'll ever get a tolerant position
that allows people to run beagles on rabbits or you know,

(01:39:19):
chase grouse with their setters or their German short air pointers.
I mean, I think there will always be disapproval of
you know, elective hunting that's done just for fun. Yeah.
I've had Dr Larry Skistan here before and he said that,
you know, intell he used the term intelligent intervention. His

(01:39:39):
first guest appearance on the show was he was very
anti wolf, anti predator um in the way he wanted
just you know, he vilified him in the way that
they using terms like predator pits and all that. And
he came on the right, and he came on the
next time. He didn't reverse course, but he kind of
expanded on his on his opinion, and then he started
talking about in intelligent intervention and kind of the nuances

(01:40:02):
of how we do that. And that's a term that
always struck me as Yeah, man, I can like, I
think that's a good articulation of a very hard thing
to nail down. This intelligent intervention. Now, how we do
that is interesting, Like you brought up with some you know,
some spay and neutering our deer, but that's that is
it's it's just like a philosophy. I think that is

(01:40:23):
one part of the intelligence is thinking about context. You know,
different critters will demand different kinds of management. We're going
to manage a wolf different differently than deer, or differently
than grouse or rabbits um. That's just the way it is.
So there's not a one size fits all kind of
formula for how to how to manage wallet. That's that's

(01:40:44):
for sure. Well, Jim, thank you as always, as always,
it's great man, it's great fun to talk to you.
I appreciate your perspective and um, I appreciate you helping
helping us answer questions that may not have an answer.
So go on spot of by Tom Rush for owls hell, yeah, yourself,

(01:41:05):
get yourself some kyles. Listen to it this afternoon. You'll
love it. We might we might be able to get
that and play a little bit for you here later
to the show. I'll see if I can get Tom's email,
get permission Jackson, do you and Jackson Hall? He may
play it for you live. Yeah, I may drive down
there there you go, all right, there's a lot of Yeah,
there's a lot of animal rights actives down there we

(01:41:26):
could talk to about the subject a lot of them,
a lot of them. All right, thanks so much, man,
all right, sure, thank ye alright, that's it. That's all
another episode in the books. Thank you to our buddy

(01:41:48):
Dr James Tantillo from Cornell as always for coming in
and help us break down some of the more important issues,
complex issues in our space. Thank you to the man
still joining me now, Brian in Uh, you're way better
than Phil. I'm not gonna do. He won't listen to this,
but you've you've made him look silly. I mean, he
his contributions are null and void based on what you've

(01:42:11):
brought here today. So thank you, thank you for telling us.
Thank you. Phil could help us hook this thing up.
I'm still confused on how to make this microphone work.
That's true. He does that value. But we're gonna take
We're gonna take Phil Hunt. And actually next week we're
gonna we're gonna build. We're building a whole series of
podcasts to teach Phil to hunt. Uh. And this the
first week in May this year, he's gonna go in

(01:42:32):
his first ever hunt. He's gonna get his hands on
the shotgun for really the first time in any in
a real setting. And he's gonna learn. So we're gonna
take our audience on that journey with Philly Engineer, our
proxy non hunter, and we're gonna turn him into were
reluctantly turn him into a hunter because I've enjoyed my
time with him not knowing anything about hunting, and we
have a comment on everything we talked about from a

(01:42:54):
non hunter standpoint. I know now we're gonna turn him
into a hunter, and we're gonna have to find a
new non hunter to bring onto the show for that perspective, Colt,
the cult is getting stronger. It is really, it really
is a strong cult that we have here. Um, we
don't ever since we started using the cult language, we
have less sponsors. I don't know what it is, man,

(01:43:15):
I don't. I don't know. I think I think it's
Trump in the liberal media. You might, you might open
up a new revenue stream and a new audience. So
it's true. I'll probably write a book. I'll probably write
a book. I'll come out with some sort of pill
you have to take to be a leader. Yeah, yep,
six months as a cult leader by Benner Bran what

(01:43:38):
I learned. Yeah, just like when Andrew Cuomo wrote a
book about how to manage the pandemic about four months
into it, celebrating how awesome he was that that's what
I'm gonna do. I'm gonna say, uh, four months as
a cult leader by Ben and Brod, what I've learned, really,
what I've learned, and how awesome I am at it.
But anyway, you're if you have it, if you if
you received an email from me and you're on our

(01:43:59):
leadership board, uh great, if you haven't, next week we're
gonna give you details on how to find these pages
and be a part of these groups and mentor new
hunters or be a mentee yourself. Um, and we're gonna
keep on growing this thing even though, Uh, I'm a
little scared, but Brian, you've given me, You give me
a little hope. You know how I am. I'm a

(01:44:19):
you know, this is just how it goes. Yeah, band
with the little hope is scary though, but I'll look
forward to see what happens. All right, Well, you're officially
part of it, so you can do now. All right, guys,
well we have we're gonna leave you with at least
we're gonna play a little bit of as much as
legally possible Tom Rush's song. It's called a Coyote a

(01:44:40):
Cowboys pe in, and it's about shooting coyotes. As we
heard from Dr James Tantillo, he turned me onto this
song and it's about shooting kyotes and about kyote contests.
And the fact that we found a song about kyo
contests is interesting, alarming. We'll see, we'll see if you
like it. We're gonna play it as we get get out,
and we'll see an next episode where we teach Phill

(01:45:01):
the engineer, all about turkeys. It's gonna be fun. We'll
see you then say bye, Brian Lynn, see you everybody,
Thank you. Thanks man. I'm going out and shoot yourself.
Some kay makes a man feel good. Lord, It makes
a man feel proud going out and shoot yourself. Some

(01:45:22):
cans one for mother, one for country, one for God.
If you're having trouble with the truck, or with the woman,
or maybe them kids are screwing up in school, if
the cows are acting smarter than the cowboy, you gotta
show the world you ain't nobody's school. How are you

(01:45:44):
going to do that? We'll go on out and shoot yourself.
Some cal makes a man feel good, Lord makes a man,
feel proud going out shoot yourself. What

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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. 169: Coyote Shootin' Folk Songs, Anti-Hunting Hyperbole, and Unpacking Wildlife Killing Contests with Cornell Ethicist Dr. James Tantillo

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Ep. 169: Coyote Shootin' Folk Songs, Anti-Hunting Hyperbole, and Unpacking Wildlife Killing Contests with Cornell Ethicist Dr. James Tantillo

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