Ep. 276: An Outdoor Recreation Pissing Match

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
can't predict anything presented by first Light, Go farther, stay longer. Okay,

(00:31):
quick round introductions. I'm gonna go the opposite way you
do that, you deal Poker Spencer, New Heart brand. We'll
talk about this brand new like I thought you're too
old for tattoo, brand new tattoo. Uh, Sam Longern with
his with his his? Uh, I don't know what. I
don't know if I don't I don't know if I

(00:51):
believe that's dry age? Is dry age? Dear meat sitting here?
We'll talk about that. I don't know what to call
it either. Uh. Crunch Niner's here, of course, and she
has a desiccated partial fox skeleton that she's running around
with trying to figure out how to make an art
project out of it. Phil the Engineer, Brody and special guest.

(01:13):
Rachel Schmidt so currently Director of Innovative Alliances for back
Country Hunters Anglers like a staffer. Yeah, full time, no volunteer, garbage, no,
no volunteer anymore paid member. Um Rachel, you asked about
these little wooden boxes in front of you. They're beautiful. Okay,
we finally got it. We're not really into it, we're not.

(01:34):
We finally got our like interest meter. So everybody that's
everybody in the studio has their own wooden box and
and they're beautiful, like very artisan. It's like an artisan
interest meter. Everybody has a wooden box as on off
switch and a dial. And if they're we're not going
to do this officially yet, but if they find something interesting,

(01:56):
like watch, let me tell this story. Okay, now, everybody
turn yours all the way down and I'm gonna tell
a story. I want to see how it works. We're
just me and my son, my ten year old. We're
sneaking up on a turkey the other day. Nothing yet,
and well it's just so okay. There's one red dot

(02:16):
just indicating it was on, and I just strike a
second red dot. We noticed a I notice, I'm I'm
walking point. I noticed a snapper turtle under someone just
lost interest because I loved because I was up front,
so that that lost interest. And I noticed under about

(02:38):
six inches of water, a snapping turtle laying there. I'm
getting interested now, so I say to my son James
and like, hey, watch, I'll show you how to sneak
up and grab one of these things. And I talked
about how you could tell by the shape of the
shell where his tail is. And I went up the bank,

(02:58):
kind of snuck down around, reached down under there, and
latched down to his tail and hauled him out. And
up comes not just one turtle, see it's already mated.
Not just one turtle comes up, but two turtles come up,
and their cloacas are like engorged making love. They were

(03:18):
making love. And you've got in the way of that. Yeah,
and the one So I lifted out the jacket of
both out of the water. The under one drops free
swims off um. And my boy, who doesn't like to
have an opportunity passing by, was adamant that we now
kill this turtle on butcher and cook it and and

(03:40):
just chift focus to that rather than the turkey or
after the turkeys in his mind, like that doesn't exist anymore.
And I was like, you're gonna have a mighty big job,
a hetty, if you're gonna saw that turtle's head off
with a pocket knife, because that's the only way to
do it, you know. And then I eventually talked to
him and letting the turtle go and so hopefully they
joined back up again. Now watch no, turn it back

(04:05):
up the full blast green lights there? What what? What? Like?
Nothing happened to be uninteresting or just it's fading. Now
watch watch what happens When I say, let's talk about tattoo,
injury and sex down Spencer's tattoo is just no, uh

(04:27):
what was that, Rachel say? I mean, you're halfway through
the story. You hit injury or sex. You're always you're
going to get the green. Yeah, it's gonna like that's
the cook the hook is there. So how can you
work those themes into that? Tell about what your tattoop? Is?
This your first tattoo? My first tattoos? Your wife have tattoo?
She has like six? Oh bro, do you don't have

(04:49):
your tattoos? Did your wife have a tattoo? No? I
miss that. I mean my wife were the only people
no tattoos. Now, I missed the window, you know, I
like went through that early nineties period and thought about
it and then just never did it. Well, I went
down to get one and I didn't get it. Then
I just got never made it there, My brother. My
brother Danny got the world's worst steel head. I mean,

(05:10):
it looked amazing thirty years ago, whatever the hell it
was when he was like, I don't know, he's twenty one,
twenty two years old. It looks amazing. He got a
steel head on his arm. And I was like, seventy
five bucks, right, And I was just burning up with jealousy.
So I'm like, wanting to get a fly. I'm gonna
get a steel head. Flocks. We used to catch a
lot of steel head in Michigan. So I was gonna

(05:30):
go down and I go down there and I had
seventy dollars and the guys like seventy five, and I'm like,
I only got seventy. And that's why I don't have
a tattoo. Today. You could have found tattollars. With a
change in your just you would be regretting that tattoo
so much. Now. I have many tattoos, because how many
tattoos you have on you, you're not gonna drop your
short sorry tattoo lower lower back, well my reaching up

(06:00):
the ribs. Yeah. My first one is a is a
dry fly. It's the first dry fly my grandfather ever
taught me how to tie. It's a royal wolf. And
so I got that tattoo in the late nineties before
they were called tramp stamps when you get one back,
so it wasn't a thing. So I got it right there,
and then they became known as tramp stamps. But by
that time I was just collecting flies and they're just

(06:22):
wrapping up my back. I've got three saltwater flies coming next. Zomi,
do you have right now? Uh? Not? Nine? Whoa Spencer?
You got some work to do. So Spencer got to
tell us again what it is. This it's about ten
inches long, probably about two and a half inches wide,

(06:42):
it's biggest. It is a black hill spruce. She's the
state tree of South Dakota only found. It's native to
the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Looks like
track marks running up his arm at a passing at
a passing glance, you think he was a junkie. Yeah,
it's no like that tattoo. Thank you. See I want
to get Uh. I saw a guy that had a tattoo.

(07:04):
It was the North American continent, okay, and he had
a little turkey foot all the places where he killed
his his royal slam. I like that, So what's thinking
about doing that? What's the appropriate age for tattoo? You
said I'm too old. I was just teasing. I don't think.
I think it does seem like most tattoos occur between
the ages of eighteen and twenty two. Though, yeah, there's

(07:26):
the age when people are susceptible to tattoo artists. I
feel like that's shifted, though, very much shifted. That was
that was the time that I thought a lot about it,
but then it's just continued to fade it. I tried
to get mine in nineteen my fly, it's not too late.

(07:47):
So my wife has stem Stephen Fever come on, cultivate
the rock star image a little more. Um. We did
get the turkey that we the snap turtle turkey, so uh,
it wasn't his first turkey, because he got another turkey
this year in Wisconsin. But we snuck in on a

(08:08):
stratter and got pretty like a hundred yards from him
and started calling at him, and he finally turned and
was kind of coming and also to Jake popped up
like twenty yards away. It just also in hears his
head and I told James, shoo, shoot shoot, and he
shot it, and uh he was this is like, this
is embarrassing to admit, but he was like he didn't

(08:28):
say it, but you can tell he was like bummed.
It was a jake. But he already at that precious
innocent age, it's already registered. I was like, man, I
didn't know about that kind of stuff to I was
thirty years old. We just thought turkeys like turkeys of turkeys, man,
who cares already already like, I want to see its spurs.
There's no spurs. I couldn't believe it, literally, none, no spurs. No.

(08:53):
I just had a little works, you know, little nubbins. Um. Yeah,
so that happened, which is my fault because when he
got his first turkey, it was a long beard with spurs.
And so we're all celebrate, you know what I mean,
you can't. You can't if you celebrate the highs and
people become aware of the lows. So that was a problem. Um.

(09:14):
And then we caught um and think quite that's not
quite fair. Almost caught a soft shell turtle that same
day too. I found in the Queen Mother of All
turtle trap and I want to go to the Queen
Mother of All turtle trapping spots. Well. Um, for a
while in high school, I would sell him for a
dollar a pound turtle soup meat. But you had to
take the carapace off. Had got him and take the

(09:35):
carapace off? What did you do with the shells? Various stuff?
Give him away? Paint him. I used to paint him
the inside. I'd paint like the color of the binding
on a National geographic magazine, like yellow and lacquer or
the top of their sweet. So when's the last time
you kill the snapper and ade him? Oh? A couple
of years ago I got one bowl fishing in Kentucky.

(09:58):
Moving on. Okay, Now, Brody explained, what how in your truck? Uh?
Is that turkey camp at Janice's secret turkey spot and
which I know about? Yeah, you know the general zone. Um,
and uh, everything's going great for like three days, we're
killing turkeys, and it rains the last night we're there,

(10:22):
and I had I was pulling my camper. So I
decided after the morning hunt to go check the road
out to see if I could even get the camper
out of there, and got like fifty yards from camp,
put the truck in a ditch because it's all gumbo.
Oh yeah, bad bad, Um, you better explained gumbo. Most
a lot of people don't know what gumbo is. I

(10:42):
grew up Michigan versus Sandy. Yeah, this is this really greasy,
glooey mud that's impossible to drive in kind of clay
based expandable. And I actually even put chains on the
back of my truck and that made no difference because
it just the changes like the gumbo. So it was

(11:02):
just from snowmelt or rain or what. It's just overnight rain.
Wasn't even that doesn't take a whole lot, you know,
it's just like a steady rain. Yeah. Hunting those gumbo areas,
you can go into a spot and then I mean
it happens quite frequently. Um, if you drive in you know,
ten twenty miles whatever on gumbo roads and it rains
a lot of times, you gotta wait a day, right,
and we're supposed to go to work or whatever, and

(11:22):
you just can't. Manyeh, we're prepared to do that even
before the especially go on private if you're on um
private land, like we're hunting turkeys on a little chunk
of private land the other day. And uh, it was
very much like man you know, because then you pissed
people off, right, You don't want to be teared up
there Like the quickest way to get uninvited to branches
to go behind through their gumbo things and cut ruts

(11:46):
in it. Yeah, but either way, I won't mention the
manufacturer's name. Um, but I recently got a new truck,
and that truck has a white dogging on our trucks. Man, listen,
that skid plate that they put on those things, that
cloth material pressed cloth like that doesn't even qualify as

(12:09):
a skid plate. And when I slid into the ditch,
it just tore off. Yeah it's you know, it's over
the transmission. Um. Yeah, that was disappointing. So it tore
that off and poked a hole in the transmission fluid pan,
which I didn't know, so I got like that steel, No,

(12:29):
it's plastic. There's this whole new training fluid in Yeah. Yeah,
well here's what they tell you. They tell you that
it's about fuel efficiency and lightweight exactly. I will it's
the most popular truck in North America. I think it's
the best selling vehicle in the world. Yeah. I loved
it up until this point. Now I love it again
because it's fixed. But I love It's like having an

(12:52):
apartment building. Yeah, if you got dogs and gear, Yeah
it's great. Uh. Anyway, I got stranded for a couple
days while the thing was getting fixed, which interestingly, it's
kind of like the Bermuda Triangle of Turkey Spot exactly
because Yanni had Yannie got stranded Yanni's brother in law.

(13:12):
But j honest was kind of the fact I was
stranded with him because his brother in law's truck broke
down the same spot last year. Do you feel like
your kids into turkey hunting? No, you were saying you
got you liked it? Oh yeah, he said he's he
wants to do that more than kill a deer because
he got to see the whole show. You know, three
gobblers messing around and one came down, and yeah it

(13:34):
was cool. He liked it, yeah big time. Did you
like doing that gripping grin? Oh yeah, yeah, he liked that. Uh, Brodie,
what were you saying, like, Cody Luhan? Yeah, oh sent
us this thing. Um, so this is the same river.

(13:56):
I'm not being very clear. We have a friend Cody Luhan.
I think he's on the show, though he was at
the live podcast in Denver, the very first one he
has been on the show. He um big New Mexico,
Colorado guy. He found a he found a buffalo skull
on the y'all say Yampa, right, I say yampa. Johanna
says yampa, which I think is correct. It's ah. I

(14:21):
believe it's the last. It's one of the last major
rivers in Colorado that's considered undamned flowing dumps into the
Green or yeah, no, yeah, dumps into the Green River.
You know, our own friendly Yellowstone River here is the
longest and man, they used to want to damn that
thinks so damn bad. Now it's now it's like pride thing.

(14:44):
They'll never do it. Oh yeah, people fighting him off
tooth and nails to try to keep him from damn it. No,
everybody runs around top Abo, how cool it is. It
is not damned. They were gonna put a bunch of
damns and a bunch of I think coal fired power
plants along it enough and which would draw enough water
to d water the Yellowstone. That sounds a good at
one point. Can you imagine including damning the Paradise Valley too,

(15:06):
That was a proposal. You imagine having a big right there.
I'll tell you what well, I had a controversial idea
about that, but I'm not gonna get into it. So
the Yampa, the Yampa um our friend Cody found a
school there and he sent us an article about this
kind of interesting the guy found quite a while ago,

(15:28):
but he just donated to museum. A guy found a
Bison Antiquois school along the Yampa and uh radio carbon dating.
They think it's about forty years old. He just donated
to the Museum of Northwest Colorado. But the reason I
bring this thing up is these I don't know what
the current story is on these things, but the old
understanding of it was that you had at the end

(15:52):
of the you know, during an interglacial period when glaciers
receded um step ice and came down and colonized the
lower forty eight like came down through the ice sheets
when they were receded from a melt, and then here
they were, and they kind of like poured forward on
this this landscape. That was that they didn't have any

(16:14):
real competitors, this big grassland grazer, and they were living
in areas that had recently been glaciated. Tons of Territory Forum.
Great conditions, and they sprouted horns six ft tip tip,
so more like like what you think of a water

(16:35):
buffalo horns like going out straight rather than I'm almost
more like buffles kind of got a muskoxy vibe to it,
you know, longhorn after you steam or after do they
steam it? Yeah? You know when you see those crazy ones,
they like steam them and change of shape on him.
It's real common. I did not know that. Yeah, I've

(16:55):
never heard that anyways, big, big gass long outside of
his heads, horns six ft tip the tip, this one
that donated the museum. It's just the cores, like the
sheaths are gone when you see one of those suckers,
but the sheets on it. Yeah, can you imagine one
and a half times the size of the current one
six ft tip tip big, that's obviously that. That's not

(17:21):
the kind you found that inspired you to write the book. No,
mine was just a Joe blow one. Now there's this
thing called horn coore morphology, which I was I became
a discipline of for a while, and it's like you
take all these relative measurements on on buffalo skulls and
you can kind of try to age it at least
like they used think they could do that with people
to not agent, but they used to think that they could,
like you know, like take measurements on your skulls and

(17:44):
who's smarter and not smarter? What it called, Yeah, like
you could tell like intelligent races by like eugenics. Yeah,
it was that based in like measuring people's skulls. And
I feel like it's teetering on that, like craniums are like, wow,
it looks like my skull's the smart kind um phrenology. Phrenology.

(18:04):
So I initially thought the one I found, the first
one I found, I found a couple of cents. Then
partially like not as cool as the first one. But
the first one I found an Initially I thought it
was an oldie, But then I had a radio carbon
dated and I had a genetic sample taken from it,
and it's just a regular one. And they think, what
the reason I like it is? They think that there's
a sixty six percent probability that it died within about

(18:26):
ten years of seventeen seventy. Oh that's cool, just when
things were getting going here, m just when things are
starting to heat up around here. Uh, crank uh found
this thing that's in here and she put in about
she she mentions that it's not Gonnaly mean anything. I

(18:46):
don't know much about professional sports, but I like this guy.
A big thing in the news now, the Baltimore Ravens. Like,
honest to god, if you sat me down and told
me to list teams, I don't think I would have
come up with that one. I've been like cowboys hackers,

(19:08):
like the ones that were cool and when I was
a youngster. But after the other week's podcast about Ravens,
you know, can Yeah, when people say the name an
NFL guy, I'm like Fridge Perry, like, I just don't
no idea. Oh man, uh so this dude, I like

(19:29):
this guy. Creani trying to get him on the show.
Can you work on that real hard? If you know,
I know we have NFL listeners. Ben would trying to
get hold of Ben Cleveland Baltimore Ravens guard just got drafted.
He's making the news all over the place because he
eats a lot of squirrels. Then you have to clarify
that his squirrel diet is being overblown. He's more of

(19:50):
an opportunistic squirrel ead. He just says, he goes into
his freezer and he eats what's in his freezer, and
sometimes they're squirreling his freezer. But everybody's acting like the
advice for celebrities, I think that like, if you want
to make the news and you can't think of whatever
and you just haven't been in the news cycle, will
probably talking about eating squirrels because it doesn't piss anybody off.

(20:11):
Like if you said, like I eat panda bears, you're
gonna get the wrong attention. Right, if you eat squirrels, like,
no one's gonna get mad. Everybody's gonna think it's kind
of quirky. You'll get some good ink. That's my tip,
My tip to celebrities. Did you see his quote about
the squirrel taste. I know that he was saying that

(20:31):
he finds them in certain areas to have a nut
of your flavors, and another South Georgia, he said they're
quite a bit nut of here, and then when you
get up north, they just taste like squirrel. Now, dude,
I want to have him on the show so bad.
I don't want to talk about football. And then I mean,
I appreciate that he's good at what he does right, right.

(20:51):
I appreciate he's good at what he does. And then
he's clarifying quote like I think made it better because
he's like, I don't eat squirrels all the time. It's
just when there ain't no dear meat left him. What
happened somehow or another one brought it up is he
was telling a story. I don't know if he grew
up in a hard scrabble family, but he's telling a
story about when he's a kid, he didn't have anything.

(21:14):
There was nothing in his home that he wanted to eat,
but they had biscuits and he shot two squirrels out
of It's talk about making his own food when he
was a kid, and he shot two squirrels out the
window with the twenty two and made squirrel and biscuits
for himself. He was on a sick day that he's
home from school. I love this guy. I don't know,
maybe maybe the worst guy in the world. We'll find out.

(21:37):
I think he's a good guy. It sounds like it. Yeah, um,
we're having squirrel for dinner night. I thought out two
packs of squirrel and one pack of rabbits. Um, My
kids just like it, like they like you. To brown
it in a pan and then put it in an
I had to eat out last night for a work thing,

(21:59):
but they had uh raccoon last night. I love it. Man.
They don't know what they just don't. They don't know
enough to care. Um, we're talking about sis. I was
explaining that, but I couldn't remember. My brother used to
have my brother's old girl friend. We called her to
the Tower of power. Uh she do you care to elaborate?

(22:26):
I would like some clarification. He's like not a small person.
She towered over him. Are you kidding me? Like he
had like an eight foot tall girlfriend. Um, the Tower
of Power just would beat your ass if you got
in a fight with her. I don't wanna tell her name,
as you can't remember name. They weren't together that long.

(22:47):
I liked her. Remember, I remember one time we went
I remember this. We took her duck hunting, and remember
we were eating duck duck hunting and I finished my
duck leg and through it and said, like ashes, the
ashes dust to dust or something like that, and through
the bone. I remember hung up in a barbeder fence.
Interesting memories just stuck in my head. Um, where those

(23:11):
dials that guys turned out, turn those things up, turn
those things up. I was saying how she had a um.
I remember while they were boyfriend girlfriends, she had this
sister removed they had teeth in it. Okay, you guys
talked about this the other day. I was eating breakfast.
It's the first time in a long time. I just

(23:31):
stopped chewing and I was done. Yeah, it's on appetizing.
I don't have a like, not a squeamish person. No
one wants this tooth thie sis but in them. But
we have one of our, one of ours that we
had a doctor right and the doctors like I know,
you guys got all kinds of doctors that are always

(23:53):
righting in, but you don't have many obstetrician guy in
the Collegist he writes, and he's act. I think he's
the first obstetrician guy in ecologist to write it. And
he wanted to clarify a few things about the Tower
of Powers Cist. It's a dermoid cyst. It's an ovarian
germ cell tumor, very common. Most women who have one

(24:17):
probably will never know it. And you are probably close
to someone with and ovarian cyst. Whether they know it
or not. And I'm only close to you too, Rachel
and Krim. So one of you has one of these
little buggers in you right now? Is that what we
call them? All of them have hair and a copious

(24:43):
sebacious fluid that looks exactly like Papa John's garlic butter.
That's too much detail right there. That's how he that's
how he describes it. A great way to set up
my my little tasty treats we brought in here to eat. Yeah,
we should have switched, we should we should have switched
around there. That's a knock against Cran's producing a bill

(25:03):
to have to have not put Sam up top before.
This looks like I don't taste no, not taste like
looks like Papa John's garlic butter. Occasionally they have teeth,
sometimes a small jawbone, sometimes styroid tissue, even cartilage or

(25:24):
tissue related to the eye. Hmm, that's what I haven't
heard carrying a little person around. You guys might want
to go down and get some kind of exam to
find off you might have one of these buggers. Have
you heard, like looked at video? Is that are they called?
Is it sebacious? Cists. Oh you want to feel one
of those right now? Well, or I haven't removed every

(25:49):
few years. I had him one time come in like horns.
They grew in exactly perfect for horse. What am I thinking?
I'm thinking of like these like um like they're like pyloric,
I don't know anyway, but it's like the infection goes no, no, no,
it's actually young truckers usually get them. I watched this
whole special. It's like a doctor pimple Popper special or

(26:11):
something like that, right, and it's like they get like
an ingrown hair like usually on their butt because they're
strong on their butt all the time, and then it
gets infected. But the infection goes in and it can
actually like these like infected tentacles like go down the legs.
So when they finally get them, it's like this little
like ZiT. But then they start popping it and it's
just fountains and they're like squeezing the puss up from
the leg and like it's just fountains of this substanti.

(26:36):
What are you're saying fountains? I keep thinking about how
that community is so drawn to fountain pop too. Founting
soda found thirty fountain sodas or not. That might still
that might be a contributing factor. Uh. Another your clarification
came in. I was saying it a long time ago.
I wanted to do and never did it. When I
was magazine writer. I wanted to do a piece for Outside.

(26:58):
When I used to write, there a lot about camping
and highway medians, Like you know in some areas where
there's you have too high the highways right like two
lane highways, interstate highways, and they have the obviously the
median strip, but sometimes the medium strips because of whatever
is going on with the road construction. There's hundreds of
yards of no man's land. Can you imagine deer and

(27:21):
whatnot crossing wind up in that meeting and probably find yeah,
or like whatever, there's probably and there's no one would
go in there, and I wanted to explore those with
this guy pointed out. Someone wrote in that there is
a guy that has a YouTube thing called Camping with Steve,

(27:41):
which makes me jealous as hell because I didn't come
camping with Steve and I haven't watched yet, but on
Camping with Steve, he does the whole thing about camping
and highway medians. He does. He's an expert in stealth
camp I love that. I love that for is I've
employed that a lot in my life camping with Steve.

(28:02):
No stealth camping just like, well, I gotta pull over
and sleep somewhere, and I do not want to pay
for a hosted campground, So I was just gonna slide
into the most interesting stealth spot you've The first time
I visited Missoula, Montana, I tried to go hide out
in this area under construction under a bridge, and it

(28:24):
wasn't very stealthy because the cop came in found me.
I ended up living there for eight years and it's
a whole beautiful part of that didn't go very well.
I don't know. That's just what came to mind. When
you're younger, um, and you guys are quite bit younger
than I am, but you have a very different attitude
about like getting kicked out of places. I mean, you

(28:46):
just want to sleep, and the idea that in the
middle of the the night of cops gonna bang on the
window and shine a light until you can't sleep there,
it just isn't It's like, Okay, that's cool. But now
I sort of like living fear of conflict like that. Yeah, absolutely,
I would not. I would not repeat that. Yeah, I
just don't like now that kind of thing just makes
me like everything to be all like positive, sure that

(29:10):
I'm okay to like sleep somewhere or camp somewhere. Stealth
camping is not. I like it. I like the camping
with Steve exists, and that he's a stealth camper. But
I just got I'm too cautious now about that kind
of stuff. Well, we got money and smartphones and stuff
now that maybe back then it was just like, well
I think I can probably get away with it, and

(29:30):
I just need to sleep. So yeah, exactly, have no
quick way to research where you were and to find
a good place to go sleep and all that business. Exactly.
The cops was super nice about it. He's like, yeah,
I know you can't sleep here, but here's some ideas
of where you can sleep. A couple of tips. It
was real, real pleasant. I'm sure he's lunched those out
to a lot of homeless people as well. Probably I
think that's what he thought. It was like he was

(29:52):
he thought I was cooking meth under that truck or something. Oh,
speaking of police, officers. I was gonna mention this. I
got a text message this morning from our friend guy's Uck,
who has been on the show a few times. If
you go back a ways in our library, we had
an episode called something like the Brown's Back and the
Baseball Bat, and it was it was about guy's Uk
who was on the show. And he's an expert turkey

(30:13):
caller and does it without He can call turkeys with
no calls in his mouth. But when he's a kid,
he had a Brown's back turkey and he would call
it in and then you'd whoop it with a whiffleball
bat a little bit hit it to spook it, not bad,
just to let it know so that it would become
less inclined to be duped. Not bad, not whoop it bad.

(30:37):
I should I use a poor verb choice. He would uh,
look it, love, tap it with a whiffleball bat and
then call it in again, keep tricking it. Did it work.
He's a really good turkey caller. He this morning took
out a guy he uh where the land like? He's

(31:01):
a land manager at a at a property that my
friend zone and they use. My friend uses the property
to have veterans and people, Um, allow veterans another, A
lot of wounded veterans go hunt on his place and
that's kind of his main focus of the properties he owns.
And they had a guy out there that got a
turkey this morning. There was shot on duty in Springfield,

(31:23):
Missouri five years ago. Um, first time he has fired
a gun since he was shot. It was first time hunting,
got himself turkey this morning. So that was Yeah, guy's
looks good, dude. Um. Someone wrote into a question struggle
with why people name game animals. We've talked about the

(31:45):
hundred times. What's your take on it? Rachel, Like, Old,
it's just I mean, it's about where you come from too.
And like I think, um, a lot of folks in
the West because we don't necessarily like isolate ourselves to
like a pocket with two routine deer, Like that's a
foreign concept to us. It's like most of the deer
I've ever shot, I've never even seen before to whereas

(32:07):
in the East, like you are, you're in this pattern,
You're in the same stand you have you know, deer
that are you know, super you know patterned, and so
it it's a way to I mean, that's just certain
nature is to figure out how to mark some thing
so you can keep track of it in your head.
So for a while I thought it was super ridiculous,
but now I'm like, what do I do? I care?
I had to around it because people got clever, Like

(32:29):
I only caught it once. People got clever with it
because if everybody would be like, you know that one buck, right,
the buck by Bob's house. That doesn't make anyone upset.
I Saw's house. Yeah, but that's that's not a name either.
That's not that's not a Christian name, I know, but
it's it's an individual that you're communicating about. So the
fact that someone would go, let's say it's by Bob's house,

(32:51):
so he's Bob the Buck, why does that all of
a sudden become like, oh, I don't know about that.
It's fine to say the buck by Bob's house, But
Bob the Buck upsets people? You upset? No upset me.
I was just kind of like, it's weird. You got
the like the the descriptive names to like the Big
nine eighty. Yeah, my dad had. My dad is a

(33:12):
huge white tail hunter for years, and he had this
five year period where he was just like obsessively rabbit
after this buck that he called the hook toe and
because it's track like like the front, you know, like
they would hook over, and so it always was like
this hook and he would like it was a really
big buck and he you know, catches track every once
in a while, and he was just obsessed with it.
Did he kill it? He didn't know? He didn't. Now

(33:34):
Mark Kenny explain Because Mark Kenny, he's got a lot
of little places he hunts, you know, he doesn't he
doesn't have like some he's big white tail hunter, you know,
wired hunt Mark Kenyon, and he's got all these little spots,
you know, like twenty acres whatever. And he's always kind
of watching what bucks are coming and going. And he
might in any given time be sort of aware of
eight or ten deer and he watches them. Over the

(33:57):
course of many years. It's like what the hell is
he supposed to do? And and I've also found that
like in especially in Mark's situation, it's it's very useful
for creating a narrative to allowing people to follow along
with it to give an idea of deer he's recently killing.
He was Tran Frank Drupi one he tried killing was

(34:18):
Holy Field. So that those are like the names. What
was the name of that crazy bock you shot in
Kansas last year? UM, trying to think. I'm disappointed. I
don't remember what they had named him at Buck's gotta
have a name. He had a name. I don't remember,
but that that was an example to where they had.
You know, pretty much any deer that we would lay

(34:39):
eyes on had a name. We have a very interesting
white tailed lives around our yard and he's still just
like the one big buck. Oh that one we were
looking at last maybe last fall's look. But he's all velvet.
But I have a hard time. I'm sure there's people
that are good at it. I have a hard time, like,
tell him what's going to happen. But he's got like

(35:03):
celery stocks of velvet coming out top of the head.
You know, I mean not the individuals man, I'm talking about.
When you buy all the celery still hooked together, that's
an exaggeration, and then cut one of those in half
and then called those in half. That's what looks like
big velvet knobs coming out column celery the celery buck.

(35:24):
But here's a question, where does that all dovetail with
like anthropomorphizing animals, and then I've heard many people say
like I'm going to go and get my dear this year,
or that's my bear, you know, like over the course
of a couple of years, you think you see the
same animal. You know, you're unsuccessful at, you know, killing

(35:46):
the thing, and and it's like that's mine, and it's
like that animal knows you. Of course, not like you're not.
It is legally, it is legally yours. It's legally your problem. Sure,
well yeah, okay, so they're just call on your show. Well,
I think more than so. I think more than anthropomorphizing

(36:09):
in this situation, like the naming of a deer, it's
more of I think maybe the where our brains work
is we just like something that's routined in our life,
we like to label it, like you want, you want
to classify, you want to label it. You want to
because it's something that's familiar. And I think that's maybe
the wear lives are. I mean, just our brains kind
of worked, Whereas I don't know if you're necessarily like
like giving that animal some human characters. Yeah, you're not

(36:31):
putting a bow tie on it, and no imagining it's
relationship with its skunk best friend and they go off
and have adventure. So yeah, I just I think it's
maybe just wear where brains work or want to work.
I don't know. The guy from Oklahoma wrote in UM

(36:52):
his hunting body is a farmer and you're talking about
how they, you know, winter cattle on their place, and
he says that they feed corn and then a lot
of geese come out into the pastures where these cattle

(37:13):
are at and pick the undigested bits of corn out
of the nerve. And he's wondering what everybody thinks about
that eating those But man, if you eat a duck anywhere,
you're eating yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you eat a
turkey anywhere in the American West, if you eat a colie,
you're eating cowshit. Like I mean, come on, like they're

(37:36):
eating You've seen him out. Yeah, they looked themselves, and
they're coated in nerves and they it's all over in
the grass. They're eating I mean everything, dear, I'm sure
are picking up ship when they're eating. I mean, let's
be clear, if you're eating the mints that are on
the lake hostess table as you're leading restaurant some matter. Yeah,

(37:59):
it doesn't bother me. Now. We one time had um,
we one time had a duck hunting permission in a
pretty famous waterfowl area and there's we got a duck
hunting permission where there was a municipal sewage facility, and uh,
it was so bad. I mean, we got a lot

(38:19):
of ducks there. It was so bad that there were
prophylactics now and then. So we were hunting in the
treated stuff or the untreated stuff. You know. I was
never clear, sounds kind of untreated down the line. We
were down the line. We were down the line a bit,
and it had like a lot of aquatic vegetation. I
was like some kind of like later settling pond. I

(38:40):
have to go back, and we visit. We didn't pay
too much attention at the time. I later realized it
seemed like a good way to get up Titus the
topic of plastic in the environment. Man. We're like, man,
we got this place all to ourselves. And when the
guy gave permission, he uh didn't even hammer hall about it.
I was, I can't leave. No one has the spot. Yeah,
we hunted for several years. Um, so I don't know

(39:04):
that doesn't bother me, all right, Sam. Now, after we
talked about those little toothy siss and eating nerve, Sam
longer in here texted me one day, I was asking
about Okay, just to clarify, I feel like you said,
have you ever tried to dry? How did you put
it to me? I said, I think, I said, have
you ever tried to do like a purshuto ham with

(39:25):
a deer? Yeah? And I said that it won't work? Yeah, Well,
and you're basing you're basing that off, I think off
of trying it with hogs in Texas and and saying
that there wasn't enough enough fat on them to to
make like maintain the moisture in there. Because when I
did it successfully with a friend of mine who's like
a sharkootrie expert at a restaurant, he um was dismissive

(39:48):
of all this stuff. And then we made it with
pig legs with the skin on scraped skin on pig legs,
which worked very well, really, you know, but there's a
lot of protection, right fat, right right, and and there
are a lot of methods for kind of emulating that

(40:10):
with with deer. And I mean, let me apologize upfront
that I do not did not get into the science
of this as far as I could. I mean, i've
I've I've read a lot of this is my This
is my is my first attempt at it. But basically,
both my freezers were full because I killed a moose
last year as well as a baron, an elk and
a deer and a turkey and a bunch of other

(40:30):
ship and uh, I had one deer ham left, and
both my freezers were like packed to the to the brim.
And I always kind of wanted to do like a
big hole muscle cure. Read a lot of stuff online,
mostly just kind of like experimental blogs and eight something
turning my dialoge. You're talking about the process. So the process,

(40:50):
what I did was I just salted the Jesus out
of it for three weeks, but just rubbed it all
over the exterior of it. Yeah, and then and so
I just like had it out and there's all kinds
of water coming off, all kinds of water lost, pounds
of water, room town um colder than room timp. It
was like out in the out in the garage at
my last place in my in cool weather. Yeah, I

(41:12):
killed my my buck like mid November. So you did
it back then, Yeah, you did it right, Like he
never frows the thing or anything, never froze it. Probably
probably deer pulled the skin off and started putting all
kinds of salt on. Yeah. Yeah, shot shot the deer,
gutted it, dragged it out, which I don't usually do,
but we had a skiff of snow, and I was
a mile and a half from the truck, and I
was like, you know, it seems easier. Hung it for

(41:34):
a week, butchered it and then just like left that
ham hung it for a little while longer than then
salted it real heavily for for quite a while, took
off pounds and pounds and pounds of of of water
it um on a tray, and so I would like
pour off the water occasionally and flip it, put more

(41:54):
salt on, rub off the old salt, put more salt on,
uh than After three or or weeks, took it out
and washed all the salt off. Hunging out in the
sun for a day because after I washed it, I
don't wanted to didn't you wanted to rid it of
that moisture um. Then I put on more salt a
little bit of curing salt, uh, dried garlic, um, dried

(42:19):
rosemary and pepper, and then kind of let that set
up and kind of make a little bit of a crust.
And then I mean melted down a whole bunch of
large that you gave me and allowed that to kind
of cool, and then just kind of painted it over.
Caked it, just caked it almost probably probably a quarter

(42:39):
inch thick in large, but you know, thicker in some places.
But I mean I put on like five or six
pounds of of large and then it was the whole Yeah,
I went started. So after I coated in a large,
then I wrapped it in just a just a cheap
game bag, so cheesecloth, and then kind of bound that
up with para cord and hung it in that basement.

(43:03):
I was living in um in a dark closet, so
ambient temperature of the house, so you know, fifties sixties,
no sunlight, um and just ambient moisture for Montana, so
you know, generally pretty arid. And then when I moved
to my new place, it was I put it in
the in my I got it like a it's like

(43:24):
a house on top of a big, big gas garage
and hung it in the in the basement out of
the sun. Same thing, you know, forties, fifties, sixties, a
lot of air movement, not much sunlight. As soon as
it starts to get hot, out you want to cut
that thing down because once you're getting into like seventy
eight degrees, you're you're gonna run into different types of

(43:45):
mold and you're going to run into um, just run
into more trouble. It's gonna dry out, it's gonna this
and that the other thing. And so to three weeks ago,
whatever it was, it was like it was getting real hot,
and I'm like, I just started getting nervous about it
and decided to chop it down, cut it up, and
and see how it was um. And honestly, I was

(44:06):
surprised by how moist it was. Silky. Yeah, I ended
up smoking a lot, smoking a lot of it after
I after I parted it out, because it was so
moist and it was it was still very much raw.
It did not the cure did not really penetrate, and
and and and next time, and and and I have
reached or why do you think the cure didn't penetrate? Yeah,

(44:28):
it's salty I mean it feels like that salt. Yeah,
but but like but you know, what you're tasting here
is smoked as well, like really low light smoke. But
it just it felt very raw. You know. What I
wanted to do here is like trail meat, you know,
something you can kind of throw in your backpack. Um.
But yeah, I was like, again, I was shocked by
how much moisture was maintained. And I feel like it's

(44:51):
got kind of a fattiness to it from having that
large coating. Um. Yeah, so that's the best thing I've had.
Did you have any mold on it? Yeah? Yeah, the
outside definitely had some white mold. Um there, Uh, there
were some little black spots that were appearing, and I
think that might have been like kind of concurrent with

(45:13):
that hot weather. Um the outside you know that that
that large kind of seeped through the cheese cloth and
it was starting it was starting to look pretty fucking weird,
to be honest with you. Um, I mean it's very
very yellow and kind of congealing at the bottom. But
but I would always get you know, like as you
moved out and left that hanging in the garage, someone
would throw it away. And now eat it for an

(45:37):
investigation probably, But man, I mean I got ten pounds
of sliced you know, or well like ready to be
sandwich meat, um and so and and like that with
some good cheese on some sour dough and then toasted up.
It's like it's it's really good. And you could kind

(45:57):
of when you take it, you and almost rolled into
a ball. Yeah, you know, you could take a piece
and kind of trimmed if you trim the edge away,
that's exactly that's when to make the meat and make
like a little sphere out of it, tenderized the crap
out of it, and man like exceeded by wildest expectations. Yeah, man,
that's good. I'm gonna try top Sam. Are you checked

(46:27):
out on the the lobster fight? I am okay, explain
this lobster fight thing. A lot of stuff in the
news like UN peacekeepers coming to Canada to settle a
lobster fight. A tribe in Canada, Psycanuka teat on the
Bay of St. Mary, which is on the Bay of Fundy.
And you know that's a giant cutout of Nova Scotia.

(46:50):
That's the biggest tide swing in the world, right one
of them. I think Bay of Fun might be the
biggest tide swinging. I heard it was somewhere in England
because where I grew up as one of the biggest
big tide swing I was familiar with the name a
lot of the towns because the show Trailer Park Boys
is set in that area. UM, I wouldn't expect everyone
to know that. One, it's a phenomenal television program. It

(47:13):
is correct three point five ft Holy crap. So last year,
this this first nation tribe in Canada decided that they
were going to have their own lobster season. The Canadian
Fisheries Ministry has you know, a set season and um

(47:38):
like federal federal, federally set season. So kind of like
their version of our like you know, Noah or National
Marine Fishery Service. UM. So this this tribe you know,
is trying to uh, you know, really kind of build
more of a kind of a career path for their people,
create more jobs in lobster fishing. And they've leave that

(48:00):
the that the lobster populations can't sustain a more intensive
fishery than the you know, the Canadian government believes. Um.
Last year they went ahead and did this fishery. They
just they went for it, um, and and caught a
whole bunch of lobsters. But there's a lot of people
in that area who were very upset about this. There's

(48:23):
people pulling their going up and pulling their pots, stealing
their pots two different presumably other commercial operators who are
operating under the federal law exactly. So you can hear
they are like, you're you're catching lobsters that I can't catch. Exactly, yeah, exactly,
so you know I could you know, you can see
where that they might perceive unfairness. But it got really

(48:44):
out of hand. The um the like mobs attacked these
lobster storage facilities in West Pubnico um, and you know,
stole lobsters and then they eventually burned of those places
to to the ground. Um. The cops came, people were arrested. UM.

(49:08):
But and like what I read, you know is that
the cops were just glad nobody died. But really nasty stuff.
The chief of the or leader chairman. Let's see what
it was, chief, Yeah, um was it was assaulted. UM.
One of the tribal members vans was set on fire. UM.

(49:31):
Really nasty ship, really nasty UM. And and they really
insist that you know, they're right right across the way
from from Maine, and Maine conducts a year long lobster season,
and and they think that they should be able to
do that in order to really you know, access those
markets and and build you know, build up there their
fishery and their kind of way of life. Um. And

(49:54):
they're planning to do again this year. UM. And it
got so nasty last year and they're basically fighting against
the you know, the federal government of Canada. And so
they have this year requested you and peacekeepers to come
in and using little blue helmets exactly to come in
and avoid the the violence. UM. That's very wildly out

(50:19):
of the question because it's interesting because it ties into
the thing we were taught over the other day. Of
the other day, we had a law student who's from
the Choctaw Nation and he was explaining, like he's explained
the concept of sovereign nations that when our government, um
wanted to strike, like when our government wanted to negotiate
with tribes, they had to for our government to negotiate

(50:40):
with an entity like it can't negotiate with an entity
that's not a sovereign thing, so tribes became legally sovereign nations.
So it's interesting that you'd say, like, no, our sovereign
and I know this is Canada, but like our sovereign nation,
our tribe is in a dispute with another sovereign nation
of Canada. And what happens when two sovereign nations are
in dispute oftentimes the U N. Yeah, but but the

(51:05):
u N always Uh, it's far fetched. I think it's
the logic is. I think it makes a point, absolutely absolutely,
and I think it got it got a lot of attentions.
It got a lot of attention that we would be
talking about We wouldn't be talking about it right now
if they hadn't requested UN peacekeepers. Yeah, and you know,

(51:25):
and there's there's there's some kind of mixed up Supreme
Court decisions within this um that they affirmed the right
to a moderate livelihood from fishing and hunting um, which
which opened the door for First Nations in Canada to
be able to hunt and fish outside of the established

(51:50):
regulations and um, you know, pursue more more subsistence kind
of hunting and fishing. But then there was a follow
up to that um that indigenous treaty rights are subject
to regulation as long as the regulation is shown to
be justified on the grounds of conservation or other public importance.

(52:14):
But would be helpful for people listening to kind of
understand this where I want to give a state side,
like a US version of something similar. Where UM in
your home state, Sam in Washington with razor clams. I
was reading about the regulatory structures from razor clams. So
there's a basis as a shellfish management panel, right, and

(52:37):
it includes representatives from the state of Washington, and it
includes tribal representatives from coastal tribes. They together like with
with each of these representatives are Each of these representatives
are represented by biologists who do shellfish surveys, and they

(53:01):
start out saying, like, what is the harvestable number of say,
razor clams on said beaches. It's already agreed that the
percentages of whatever is there, Yeah, are allocated tribal state
state being to anyone that goes and buys a state license,
tribal being just the tribal members. So they already know

(53:21):
how they're going to cut it. They just don't know
how big the pie is, but they know how they'll
slice the pie. And every year they need to or whatever,
I don't know, if it's every year, every two years, whatever,
they need to come to an agreement like okay, how
big is the buy and then we'll cut it in
a half. But that's sort of like the moving piece there. Absolutely,
and that comes out of the nineteen seventy four Bolt Decision,

(53:42):
which which was a byproduct of the salmon wars and
and where they were like there was actual gunfights out
in like the Straits Wanta Fuka among commercial salmon fishermen, um.
And what what that did was reaffirmed the treaty rights
of the tribes in Washington and and and cut it
in half. It's at fifty for triabal harvest fifty percent

(54:04):
for non indigenous. So that plays out across sam and
steel head, everything any fish you can or shellfish you can,
and crab and everything you can think of in Washington's
frustrates the hell out of people because I think a
lot of people look and um, I mean, I'm frustrates
the hell out of people on both sides, I'm sure,
but a lot of people look and they think themselves,

(54:25):
I'm an American, I belong to the state. We're all Americans.
I thought the whole thing with America's all Americans are equal.
Why is this not divided equally? Why do some Americans
get you know? And then and then on the other hand,
people are like, well, would be all mine? We're not
taken from me by your ancestors. And so I'm pissed. Two.
And it's getting it's getting especially sticky with steel head

(54:46):
right now, which are declining precipitously in in Washington's implementing
all sorts of different regulations. But you know, when I
wrote about this earlier this year, is that they banned
fishing from a boat on most of the coastal rivers
for steel head. Just what all they're trying to do
is exactly just trying to reduce the catch rate. But

(55:08):
you know, kind of a bit of the elephant in
the room and that discussion is the fact that all
of those rivers are still being gill net for wild
steelhead by the tribes. UM, and catching release does count
as take under some more recent court decisions. UM. But
you know that it's it's harder, harder mathematics now that

(55:30):
you know a lot of these steel head runs are
like under a thousand and the tribes still assert it
in their fifty take on a very small escapment um.
But you know, it's it's the math is a little
the math is pretty fuzzy because it's you know, it's
gill nets and stuff, and it's like you get these
days a week estimating how many you're going to get. Um.

(55:53):
You know, to me, it's important that they still have
that the right to do that and maintain those traditions.
But on the other side of the lane, like and
some of the tribes are totally at the table here, like, hey,
there's a problem, we're trying to fix it. We're and
are working with w DFW and the other stakeholders to
try to solve those problems. But then there's there's some
other tribes who are like, God, pound sand, look at

(56:14):
the bolt decision, We have the right to do this. Yeah.
I think that's one of the areas where there's a
lot of frustration would be that exercising tribal rights takes
precedent over sort of like the state of the resource,
and at a point it gets into the finger pointing.
It's like, well, the resource wouldn't be screwed up if
it weren't for you guys. But it's like, okay, but

(56:36):
it's still screwed up. It was white men that put
cannaries on the mouse of all those rivers, you know,
years ago. But does that then mean that when you
have a population of a thousand fish entering a river,
does does the fact that it's your fault? I mean
that we should kill half? We should continue to kill
half of them every year as a as a display

(56:56):
of our tribal rights. It's tricky, No, it's tricky as hell.
You want a good segue? Yeah? Please? This connects Washington
with Canada. Phenomenal. So this was another Canadian Supreme Court
the case that was just decided um in two thousand ten.
Rick Diswattle of Washington State. He lives on the Confederated
Colville Reservation north of Spokane, crossed up into BC and

(57:22):
killed an elk out of season without a license, crossed
uh No, in his in his truck there with his
with his wife. So wasn't like he wanted across the
border without knowing it. No, No, this is very deliberate.
He killed this elk and then reported himself and then
went and told the game warden, hey, I killed this
elk and I'm exert I'm exerting my treating international boundary. Yeah,

(57:44):
he's a member of the Sinics tribe or the Arrow
Lakes people that were traditionally lived in the Arrow Lakes
region of British Columbia. I don't know who that is,
but I'm told it's up there. The last Canadian member
of that clan died in nineteen fifty three, and it
had been declared an extinct clan by the Canadian government.
Basically when they're making you know, the reservation systems and

(58:08):
everything and and uh, you know more. Around the turn
of the century, that band mostly moved to Washington just
because they were kind of they kind of got squeezed
out of that area. Um, and very few were left
and then the last of them died. Um. But I
got a quote from from Rick to Swaddle in seventeen
he said, I knew for a fact of my ancestral
grounds were here. Um, if somebody didn't start this then

(58:30):
it would never get going. So he was he was
cited for this elk Like he went just went in
and said, hey, I did this, this, and I'm i'm this,
I'm exercising my treaty right, he was cited, he was
acquitted in trial, and then the Government of BC appealed

(58:51):
and lost, and then appealed and lost, and then appealed
to the Canadian Supreme Court. And they just recently ruled
um that he had the right to do that, that
that he is a Aboriginal person of Canada. Let's see um.

(59:11):
It's ruling. The Supreme Court of Canada firms that, regardless
of citizenship or residency, Aboriginal peoples of Canada do Canada,
do have rights and those rights are protected by the
Canadian Constitution. Um. And this is the first time that
the Supreme Court of Canada has interpreted what means to
be an Aboriginal people of Canada. And that does not
require living in Canada. It only requires that your ancestors did.

(59:34):
Was this his intention when he killed the elk? Yes,
this was This was definitely his This was his goal.
Did they seize the elk? That's a great question. I
don't know this one as well as her era. It's
gonna be dry age by No. That's really interesting, man. Yeah,

(59:58):
you want to think that there's a huge ramification, isn't.
I mean, it's like there's like it's legally interesting, but
I don't know that it's going to be. That's you know,
with with all of these it's easy to make a
lot of smoke. Yeah, but but it's not always it's
not always like it. It's not always born out that

(01:00:18):
it's hard to tell in practice, Like in practice, will
there would there be a flood of individuals leaving northern
Washington driving into BC and shooting elk or would it
be a thing that like will that become a thing
or is it just that it will be I wanted
to clarify that I could and ten years ago by

(01:00:40):
and you don't hear of anyone going elk hunting in
BC from the Colville. It's hard to know. It's a way,
it's a waste, it's ways to travel, and that that
country up there is vast um and I'm not convinced
that the all kind of was it would be better there.
And I believe that they have you know, treaty hunt
rights in Washington too. So yeah, that's a that's a

(01:01:03):
that's owns a head scratcher, and I need to read
more into it. It's interesting kind of duel citizenship. Yeah, Uh,
we're gonna hit on something quick. That we talked about
quite a bit. I don't want the hill a long
time ago. The Horrera case of Wyoming very similar in
that has to do with, like, you know, trying to clarify,
codify treaty rights. So there's a guy in the Crow

(01:01:25):
Reservation Herrera, what was his first name, Cyn Cleaven Herrera
was on the Crow Reservation in Wyoming, former game warden UM.
In January, he and two friends crossed out of the
Crow Reservation in Montana UH into the Yeah, into Wyoming.

(01:01:46):
They crossed, they crossed the border on foot. They still
insist that they didn't mean to that, that they didn't
know they had crossed the border, but kind of immaterial
at this point. UM. And they killed a couple of
elk onto a national forest Bighorn Bighorn National Forest. UM
locals found some partially bushered animals, reported to game warden.

(01:02:08):
He conducted an investigation UM, which was assisted to by
the fact that Claven Herrera reached out to him UM
asking if he had had knew about some poaching or
something like that because he was he was a warden
at that time, and which lad this this game warden
Dustin Sharma, who I've I've spoken to. UM started looking

(01:02:28):
at Herrera's Facebook page and saw pictures of him with
elk that He's like, that looks like it's on the
Big Horn National Forest. UM went up into that area
was able to match those photos UM to elk carcasses,
tribal game warden or tribal game warden. Yeah. UM. All

(01:02:49):
three men were charged with poaching and the animals are confiscated.
Two of them pleaded guilty, but Herrera claimed UM that
under the eighteen sixty eight second Treaty of Fort Laramie,
UM that gay and tied his tribal right to hunt
on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long
as game may be found there on. UM. So this
this has this had been litigated before in like, uh,

(01:03:14):
they that's an interesting go ahead language in the treaty,
very very interesting so long as game can be found
there on because it would say that at one point, elk,
we're extirpated from the Bighorn National Forest. Yeah, but all
this stuff was there. I mean, yeah, it's just weird
to say that that. UM. Like let's say, let's say

(01:03:36):
there was no game there and then someone's walking around
they said, well, I'm hunting, and somebody like, but there's
no game here, you're violating treaty, right, there's no game here.
It's just a weird thing to add in. I guess
they probably mean like in perpetuity. Yeah, but you know
eighteen sixty eight, you know as well as I do,
the you know, the Bison were on their way out
in that in that area, and so and some people

(01:03:59):
I have spoken to about this are like, yeah, that
was an acknowledgement of the fact that like they saw
it as like we're wiping it out, We're wiping out
this this area of of game, and it just strike
and all these things are so carefully worded. I would
love to talk to the person and be like, well,
if there's nothing there, who cares. I would love to
hear them and go like, oh yeah, but right, here's

(01:04:21):
why I want to clarify. And and but the word
unoccupied is by far the most interesting. That's that's the
sticky one. And and so this this went before the
Supreme Court January nineteen um and they were really interested
and unoccupied. And it's pretty interesting to read the transcripts
because they were just like goofing off on like what
couldn't signify occupation. Is that that because because there there's

(01:04:44):
there's past cases that have said that, um, the area
became occupied when Wyoming became a state, because all states
enter on the same footing and are able to manage
the game in the hunting within their territory. Whole other
court case said that those treaty rights had been extinguished
when the Bighorn National Forest was was designated and theme

(01:05:08):
occupied by the forest exactly became occupied by the Forest Service.
The Supreme Court of the United States disagreed with that.
They didn't overturn. They didn't go so far as to
overturn that specific opinion. And it's interesting because that specific
opinion was the exact same thing. It was a cro
tribal member crossing into Wyoming, into the Big Horn National
Forest and killing an elk. And so there there's and

(01:05:30):
that does Supreme Court decision from. But then there's another
Supreme Court case UM Minnesota versus Millock's Band of Chippwa
Indians that designation of of public land did not extinguish
hunting and fishing rights. And so basically all the Supreme
Court said is that there is unoccupied land. It did

(01:05:52):
not become occupied by statehood or designation of the of
the Bighorn National Forest. They toyed around with the ideas
like if it's close to a road in a trail,
maybe that's occupied. But like, you know, a big gass
wilderness area, like you'd be hard pressed to prove occupancy
because you literally can't live there or stay there occupy

(01:06:13):
like the permanently occupy the area. So they said that
there is not occupancy and that the treaty right is
is well and good. But as the Supreme Court usually
does it, they gets very narrow ruling and then they
remanded it back to the lower courts. So they come
back and say that you people are going to need
to better defind some things exactly basically in the descent

(01:06:35):
that the Samuel Alito was like, you know, the real
issue here is is the is the concept of issue
preclusion because this same court case has been played out
before the Crow tribal member killed an elk on the
Big Horn National Forest and was prosecuted, and they said
that that that area was occupied. So that basically this

(01:06:57):
this first lower court uh just went back on that.
They're like issue preclusion again because the Supreme Court of
the U. S didn't didn't address that except in the
in the descent and they said issue preclusion. So now
this is being appealed up from the county Circuit Court
to the to the Wyoming Circuit Court um, which will
likely hold in favor of issue preclusion again. So it'll

(01:07:20):
likely get appealed again. But where a major speed bump
in this comes. And so you know, a lot a
lot of people were supporting this guy, Claven Herrera going
to the Supreme Court, and there's the presumption that he'll
go there maybe maybe two more times to work out
a bunch of these issues. But he's gotten himself in
a lot of trouble with the law since then. In

(01:07:44):
Um he was charged with stealing a car in January,
um buying meth in March. When they seized his phone,
they found eight hundred and fifty images containing um explicit
materials related to children. To be clear, these are all claims, right,

(01:08:07):
This hasn't been this hasn't been gone through jury trial
or no. But he's been but he's been officially charged
with these with these crimes. And then in July he
was accused of strangling somebody. Yeah, so so this this
case was like draws into question his ability to revisit
the Supreme Court exactly. And it also draws into question

(01:08:29):
his ability to maintain the pro bono support of some
of the biggest and fanciest law firms in the United States,
because the all those lawyers you know, are always thinking
about their public image and a and uh pro bon
giving pro bono support to an accused child pornographer does
not look good. And even the crow tribe isn't isn't

(01:08:51):
happy about this anymore. And they've been like pushing it
and pushing it and pushing it. So like what some
people who are reading the tea leaves now are like,
they may drop this appeal, they may they may settle
this they they may end up not pursuing it. And
because the concept of issue preclusion makes it so difficult,
because this exact same issue has been litigated before, so

(01:09:12):
they may take a step back, let this one slide
like and you know, next time it goes before the
Supreme Court, cleavend Herrara maybe in prison. Um, so they're
they're like, what, they may stake a step back and
let somebody else go push the issue some other time.
And if they were smart about it, they would have
them poach and elk on Blm land or shoot it,

(01:09:33):
shoot a deer in the in the Big Horn National
Forest because the issue of crow to Big Horn National
Forest and and killing an elk out of season, that's
already been litigated, and that's why we're issue preclusion thing.
So they need to take it. They need to take
a fresh crack at it if they if they want
to get their hunting rights in Wyoming. But it's worth
mentioning that after that Supreme Court decision, Montana was like, yeah,

(01:09:55):
you guys are good. Like on public federal public land
in in Montana, the Crow tribe can exert their treaty. Right.
Can you back up for a second and just explain that,
because there's probably people that aren't familiar with what's going on.
Like what her Ara is trying to establish here, presumably

(01:10:16):
is that they can go hunt these unoccupied lands without
following state fish and game laws. They're they're they're exercising
their right too kind of follow their own hunting regulations,
if you will, Like they can just go where they
want and when they want and hunt how they want

(01:10:38):
rather than following state laws exactly. Okay, And I think
the lesson that we had covered this, we sort of
drug it out to like the most extreme example would
be them going into like Yellowstone, which is within within
the territory they're they're old territory. Yeah, especially you said
federal land in Montana. Uh, there's like three of Yellowstone

(01:11:02):
National Park that's federal land in Montana. Yeah, so my
but Montana doesn't regulate the hunting within Yellowstone National Parks,
so that'd be a question for the Park Service specifically.
But since we're into the concept you know, of of
optics here, that one's that's not a good look. You

(01:11:24):
would get Congress involved in on the wrong and on
again against you, and Congress would be the final arbiter
of something like this. So it'd be real bad idea
for for them to ever go try to shoot something
in Yellowstone. Um, and that that would go very poorly
go through. Oh I had a comment for it. You
jump on the next thing. What was interesting when this

(01:11:46):
went to the Supreme Courts was all these details like
rumors that you're here and I don't know how substantiated
they are. That um I had heard a rumor again,
a rumor unsubstantiated, Like I don't don't have any evidence
of this, but I heard a room or from someone
that one of these elk had been shot on seventeen
or eighteen times. I don't if that's true or not.
I had heard that, and I think it is born

(01:12:08):
out that they were only like gourmet butcher only part
portions and some elk backstraps, some some Yeah, so they
heads and backstraps. One elk not touched at all. Right,
and then you factor in the these new revelations or
these new things that coincidentally involved this individual. It's all

(01:12:29):
immaterial to the court. Like no one's saying, like the court,
the Supreme Court is gonna be like, yeah, well he
only just cut the head off. That's not cool. It's
like it doesn't matter to them. No one's asking them
their opinion about that. It's like can you go shoot out?
And so all these little details that in your head
are like, hey, I don't know, man, seems real, you know,

(01:12:49):
seems fishy. It doesn't matter. It definitely matters now because
you know, the even even the members of the Supreme
Court are going to take note of of some of
this bigger, bigger stuff. But like especially like Holland and
Heart and the Crow tribe. They don't they they may
not want to have this guy's name tied up in

(01:13:12):
the in this big, in this big court case. It's
just it's a it's a bad look and uh, politically disastrous.
So the one final note I want to point out,
um again charged, yeah right right, alleged, Yeah, like he
was charged with. He hasn't gone, hasn't gone a court,
It hasn't been like jury verdict. Charged. Yeah, and so

(01:13:36):
charge of stuff that they didn't do. But that's he
was charged. And I know a bunch about a bunch
more stuff that is purely alleged, not charged. And I'm
not even gonna go so far as to mention it here,
but formal charges. Yeah, exactly, Okay, try to uh here,
let me see this one up, and I want to
talk about this one too. Then we're gonna we're gonna

(01:13:57):
move on to some different subjects. But but I know
where to start. In Alaska. You have, UM, Alaska is different.
You know, we were here down here in the Lower Ford.
You hear about reservations, right, tribal reservations in Alaska when
they've kind of divided up Alaska formally, UM, we created

(01:14:17):
these tribal corporations, right, and they maintain a lot of
subsistent tribes up there, maintained a lot of subsistence hunting
and fishing rights. Game is managed through like federal subsistence
boards and the state kind of negotiate together and come
up with rules. UM. A couple of years ago there
was a thing to happen in south central south central Ish,

(01:14:39):
Alaska where a federal subsistence board made a move in
favor of tribal interests that limited big game hunting on
federal demount on federally managed public lands, limited big game
hunting to exclude certain individuals and to make it certain

(01:15:03):
like big game hunting for moose certain times a year
only open to tribal groups or subsistence sistence subsistence groups um.
And those are pretty small areas. Now in Alaska there's
a move to I think it does it encompass sixty
million acres of federally managed public land to make it

(01:15:26):
tribal members that that subsist or tribal subsistence. For my
messiness upper is it just federal subsistence. Federal subsistence and
I think sixty million acres of federally managed land would
be closed to not just non residents of Alaska, but
closed to residents of Alaska. Sixty million acres closed the

(01:15:49):
residents of Alaska, and during the fall Big Game season
only open two federally recognized assistance users. Um just for
to demonstrate my own biases. I hunted this area one
time for care. But which would now be if this

(01:16:12):
goes through, which would be illegal for me to do. Yeah. Absolutely,
And I think it's really important to acknowledge the Rhode Islands. Yeah,
this is this is not a this is not a
tribal thing. This is this is not a tribe versus
versus the white man. This is this is everybody against everybody.

(01:16:32):
A lot of these communities are very diverse, and have
you know a lot of Korean influence and uh, there's
a lot of there's a lot of a lot of
white people and all sorts of races out there. So
it's it's it's more locals versus outsiders. And that sixty
million acres is really easy to picture if you like
think of Alaska. It's basically like the upper left hand corner.
It's a giant area unit units twenty three and twenty

(01:16:54):
six A the Northwest Arctic UM and the and so Yeah,
the Subsistence Board up there in April submitted a special
action and request to close that UM that that special
action request is submitted to the Federal Subsistence Board UM.
That board is made up of three local subsistence hunting

(01:17:16):
community representatives and five representatives from government agencies including the BLM,
the Forest Service, National Park Service, US Fishing, Wildlife Service,
and the Indian Bureau of Indian Affairs UM. Basically, uh,
they they've been getting really upset with with with UM
out of outside hunters coming in like you and me

(01:17:37):
flying in. They think it's disturbing the migrations. But it's not.
It's not a resource issue, it's social issue. It's a
social issue. The herd is strong, there's a lot of
animals as people don't want to deal. They don't want
to deal with other people. It's not like someone can say, like, hey,
that carib we're vanishing. It's that UM. There's a plenty
of animals, but the spot I go to and sometimes

(01:17:58):
there's other people they're not don't want those other people
to be there. Well, and you need to explain that.
Like so it's what is subsistent. What is the subsistence
subsistence community? Like, what's the difference here? Certain certain in
certain zip codes, your your subsistence using you can qualify
not in a major metric, not a major urban area.
Is that an economic space thing? Yeah? I think you

(01:18:21):
could be Bill Gates with all his troubles. Bill Gates
could live in uh. Bill Gates could live in certain
areas ones up being the majority of Alaska and be
a local subsistence user. It has nothing to do with
your has nothing to do with your means, as to
do with your primary place of resident. What I'm saying is,
what's the difference between subsistence and say, if I went

(01:18:44):
up there to hunt, you would not be up there
hunting under for the subsistence law. You would not be
hunting under federal subsistence. Let me give you, Okay, if
I lived at if I moved my fish shack, okay,
and that became a primary place of residence is at

(01:19:06):
my fish chack, I would be able to right now
on federal lands, my dear season as a or if
I lived in Fairbanks or Anchorage or anywhere in the
lower forty eight Okay, as a person lives in Montana
has a fish shack there. I can hunt deer on
federal lands starting on August fifteen. If I lived at

(01:19:27):
my fish shack full time, I could start hunting deer.
I think sometime in June. I am limited to only
antlered deer. If I lived at my fish shack full time,
I could shoot dose. If I lived in my fish
shack full time, I could run a halibit long line
with thirty hooks. If I lived in my fish shack
full time, I could run ninety black cod hooks on

(01:19:48):
a on a long line. Yeah, that's why I would
have I would have no halibate limit off my long line.
That's why I have. I have a halibut limit of
two per day. This way, the subsistence rules and regulations
are different. You can run and it's it's funny in
some areas because you could live an anchorage. But there's

(01:20:12):
areas where if you go and you're you're an Alaska
resident in a subsistence area, you can then operate under
subsistence regulations. For instance, a person from Anchorage could go
to certain areas on the Alaska Peninsula and run a
drift gillnet. Does your brother do any of that, Like
does he have access to that? No, I don't know,
but you know they do. See it gets a little

(01:20:35):
I get a little bit over my waiters on this
because they go dip Like he every year goes dip netting.
So he every year goes to the copper or Kenai
whatever these rivers um and they'll go down there and
it's like you're a loud twenty five sock eyes for
the head of a household and ten sock eyes forevery
additional household member, and you can net them. Can you
explain the principle of I mean, I think we know

(01:20:59):
what subsistence means as a word, but the principle of
establishing subsistence, Yeah, it was that when Alaska entered into
statehood no Anilka. That's what established as we know today. Yeah,
so the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. I probably

(01:21:19):
got that backwards, but um in the seventies, which was
what you know under the Carter administration, which was what
kind of created the the tapestry of the federal public
lands that we know today in Alaska. That's what established
the reagonal subsistence boards and the system that we know.
And it also gave pre eminence of subsistence harvest over

(01:21:42):
recreational harvest. So in any of these considerations, subsistence comes first.
The people who the people who actually live off the land,
they get they get they get first, they get first.
Helping always, but no, go ahead. It doesn't need to
be the act. They don't define it. It doesn't need
to be that you actually live off the land. It's

(01:22:04):
where you live, right, billionaire and eat twinkies. I have
a great example. And you could be a subsistence You
can be a subsistence users just where you live. And
I think, and I'm pretty sure when I was talking
about the dip netting, I don't even think that's federal.
I think that's a state thing. But still state. I
think dip netting is still states. I'm sure thousand people

(01:22:25):
correct me on that. Again. Man, it's a it's a
byzantine Um like regulatory structure that I know a little
snippets of. I am not a subject matter expert on
this stuff. Yeah, And and it is really interesting. Byzantine
might be a good word for it, because these regional
subsistence boards, of which they are ten um, basically can

(01:22:47):
do a lot of the season setting for the area
within you know, within their kind of their their territory. Um.
So this this Regional Subsistence Board in the Northwest ARTIC
has submitted this special action request to close cariboo and
moose harvest during the cariboo and moose season for just
just this year. That's what the special action request August

(01:23:09):
in September closed to non federally qualified subsistence. It has
the final goal here, no, of course not no. And
it's worth pointing out here that the State Game Agency
hates us, hates this because they're their management authority. Their
management authority is being pulled, attempting. People are attempting to
pull their management authority from a quadrant of the state.

(01:23:33):
And it's not even an issue of resource abundance, no,
not at all. And they're fighting that. That that the
one you mentioned that from a couple of years ago previously,
the nel China Unit g MU. They're fighting that in
court like tooth and nail and um they they said,
I mean um. Ben Mulligan, who I talked to last night,
said like all avenues available to us. You know, this

(01:23:53):
is like all out war against this. So there was
a hearing on April on April before the Federal Subsistence Board. UM,
and that was pretty interesting. I wasn't actually able to
go to it, but ran four and a half hours long. Uh.
They opened a five day written comment period. All of
this is brand new. They're they're used to being a

(01:24:14):
rubber stamp agency. They're used to being thanked for everything
they do by these subsistence communities because there does their
Their government governing structure is meant to be very permissive
towards these regional subsistence boards and to be to assist
them in what they would like to do and the
changes they'd like to seek. And they're not used to
anybody paying any any the slightest bit of attention. There's

(01:24:37):
never more than a dozen people there and it's mostly
just like agency representatives. They took um spoken testimony from
a hundred and six people over six hours or something. UM.
They're fourteen in support of this special action request and
ninety two against it. UM. There were several like entire families,
including the grandfather, father son, grandson. Kind of because you're

(01:25:01):
you're locking out. It's a lot of stuff in Alaska.
You look at it being like outsiders versus insiders, you know,
certain bag limit things and like you know, you kind
of non residents pay more, they have less, you know,
less access to resources, and and that's fine. That's that's
how it goes in every state. This is like Alaskans
against Alaskas. This is saying to Alaskans, um, you just

(01:25:23):
lost access to too, like the northwest quadrant of your
state on federal land. It's also a violation. There's always been,
not always. I think that in the country we strive
towards this sort of like separation church and state. You
have a lot of federally managed lands, right, and I
think that's a great system. Federally managed public lands are
pretty secure. And I like federally managed public lands, while

(01:25:44):
they found it at its best is managed by the state.
Some people be like how can they both? How how
can it be okay for the government to manage land
and stay selangel wild? Like it just works really good
and I don't like to see Yeah, it round up
and it's been successful and people don't want to see
it interrupted. Yeah, ain't broke. Are the locals that are
in support of this, the minority of locals that are

(01:26:06):
in support of this justifying it because they're saying they're
having a harder time feeding themselves or what. So that's
what they're saying. They believe that Caribou migrations have been
drastically interrupted, and they're blaming that on outside hunting, where
a lot of people are like, might be climate change,
the snow patterns, the weather patterns, the seasonal UH temperature

(01:26:28):
has been a lot different, well, plus migrations migration. I mean,
it's a whole field of study. Carribou migration routes change
gradually all the time. And this Cariboo population Ta tonics,
they drift all over the place. Yeah, for twenty years
they'll cross the river in some place and then twenty
years ago by and they don't come within a hundred
miles there. Yeah, And like s C I and b

(01:26:51):
H A and t R c P all submitted comments
on this and have taken an active role. And that's
what I mean. B h A specifically in my article
about this, I quote you guys said, it's saying like, hey,
you know, might be some other it might be some
other things, but there's also an element of um. There's
a lot of stuff in the in the testimony and
in the special action request about poor treatment from outsiders

(01:27:14):
that people are are rude to them when they run
into them on the co Book River, that that they like,
this guy was an asshole to me. Social it's it's
completely social issue. I don't think you can hold sixty
million acres of land hostage over some people not getting along.
There are other ways to solve There are other ways
the resolve issues, especially when people have you know, a

(01:27:35):
constitutional right to the same access to that you know
for a service or US Fish and Wildlife Service ground uh.
We first covered this on the website on April sixteenth.
Now over a month later, has the sentiment changed at
all around this or like organizations in the state and
everyone else, they all still have the same stance as
a month ago. The trenches are deeper. UM. This is

(01:27:56):
likely going to going to go before of a vote
of the board in mid June. The date hasn't been
set yet. UM and A d F and G is
is very worried that it's going to pass. Like Fishing Game,
Alaska's fishing game. My my my contact Ben was was
saying that it's like it's very likely that this will pass.
The board may try to the bit board may try

(01:28:20):
to dismiss it. They may try to seek compromise, they
may also pass it. So, like I said, there's eight
members of that board, three of which are regional subsistence representatives.
One's Bureau of Indian Affairs, so that's four in favor
of The rest are federal agencies. The one from the
parks are the guy from the Park Services new So

(01:28:40):
they don't really know how he's going to go, but
they've and they've had they've had a hung vote before
because it's it's even numbers, so like that, they're they're
working on that math. They don't know, but they're definitely
bracing for this to go through. You know, this is
like if you have any interest in any interest in
hunting or fishing in Alaska, this song you gotta pay
attention to her. The more talking about the guy crossing

(01:29:01):
from Washington and to BC to shooting out, it's like
significant legally, but what is it really going to mean
this right here, because there are plenty of other areas.
We're already talking about sixty million acres, there are plenty
of other areas to say like, oh, you mean, we
can just cite the fact that we don't want to
have to deal with competition as a reason to shut

(01:29:22):
down millions of acres of federal land and make it
that it's for us only. You don't think that that's
going to be an appealing prospect to people. Yeah, it potentially, um,
it potentially completely completely rewrites what if they said, Prince
of Wales, is you know for blacktailed the blacktail deer

(01:29:46):
harvest has been because one time I was going to
fish this spot and there was another guy there. He
had a bunch of TV cameras with him. You know,
this is this is a perfect example. I mean, populations
are growing, there are more people on the landscape, more people,
you know, using all of this space and interacting and

(01:30:08):
social science is a huge problem, and we're not equipping
our agencies with social scientists like we should. We're you know,
we're expecting these biologists who are used to managing animals, right,
that's the job is managing animal populations. They're now in
the throes of managing people and the people interaction with
the people, and then the people interaction with the animals.

(01:30:29):
And um, they need they need more tools in their
chest to be managing this will be in your in
your opinion, what would be one of those tools, literally
more social scientists working with the agencies actually dealing with
people interactions so the biologists can work on the animals. Um,
it's about people interaction. You see things like that in
Montana all the time. You see you know, the Madison

(01:30:51):
going crazy, you see controversy over there. You just see
this stuff is happening. It's increasing increasing as more people
are outside enjoying everything that we enjoy. Yeah, UM, explain
your job a little bit. My job Director of Innovatible Alliance.
I don't know what. I don't know what that means. Yeah.
So I have created and building out a business development

(01:31:13):
and fundraising arm for back country hunters and anglers. Um
So Yeah, basically, I like to call our team the
energy development team. So we're out finding resources, um to
support all of our members work on the ground. What
does that look like? Money? Fundraising, fundraising and partnerships, working
with people like you've been on b h a's board

(01:31:34):
for a long time or b h A volunteering and
board member positions state level? Yeah? And I you know,
I have a I have a super fun career path
and life that has led me in amazing directions. Um.
I started working with b h A as a volunteer
when I worked for a farms manufacturer. UM. Actually, um,

(01:31:56):
you know, Kimber Manufacturing, and you know, sold guns and
started um displaying at rendezvous UM back you know, like
eight nine years ago, and yeah, go and set up
and and talk about guns and UM that's how I
got to know b h A. I just you know,
in that action, started interacting with the members of b
h A and was just like so awe struck by

(01:32:17):
the amazing people who are out there really caring about
and loving public lands and wildlife and hunting and angling heritage.
And so I started to get more involved with the organization. UM.
Then you know, through volunteering and everything. UM, became a
board member on the national board. UM. And then I
ended my work. UM. I was tapped as I was

(01:32:38):
working for the gun manufacturer kind of living a pretty
awesome life just roaming the world hunting and shooting. That's
kind of what my job was. So no one can
really argue with that. I know you guys don't know
what that's like, but UM, not at all. UM. The
governor of Montana came and tapped me on the shoulder
and said, hey, I heard you might be good at
creating this thing called an office about a recreation, And
I said, I don't even know what that is, but
sounds amazing. Maybe I would be no problem, no problem,

(01:33:01):
let's figure this out. So Montana was a fourth state
to create an offs about de recreation. I started working
for the governor in two thousand late SEV. Who are
the other three? The very first was Utah UM, followed
very quickly by Colorado and Washington. So Montana became number four,

(01:33:21):
quickly followed by Wyoming. Then there were eight of us.
The eight of us formed what's called the Confluence Accords UM,
and now there are sixteen states to do. What are
the offices? Like, what is the sort of purpose of
the offices aboutdoor recreation? Yeah, the purpose of the office
about the recreation. I think it's the culmination of something
that we've all known for a very long time and

(01:33:43):
we've seen for a very long time. UM. As economies
grow and change in states, So you know, back at
the turn of the century, states like Montana or other states,
they discovered like, oh, agriculture is a really important part
of our economy, Like this is a big contributor or livestock, right,
like UM ranching from like these really important parts of

(01:34:04):
our economy, and so they would form like Department of
Agricultures and States and so dedicated to protecting guarding. Yeah,
just making sure. So the Office about Derecreation UM in
Montana House and the Governor's office, Um, they're all they're
all very similar but different in some ways. But it's
really formally identifying that outdoor recreation is a very significant

(01:34:26):
part of state and federal the federal economy. Um. And
so why don't we have and it has tentacles and
fingers and like everything, and so why don't we have
one person that's their job to look through everything through
that lens about de recreation and identify what is helping
this economy, what is hindering this economy? Um? What are

(01:34:47):
the unique facets of this economy that we need to
look at in a different way? Um. So really, I
mean this is conversation and work that's been going on
for years and years, but it's just slowly manifested itself
into this UM. So Yeah, it's it's very interesting, it's
very positive, it's it's great. And then the then the
winds of change, right, So you came in under a
governor he turned out, Yeah, Yeah, I worked for Governor Bullock. Um,

(01:35:10):
he was a two term governor. He's done and will
the office? Will the office continue to run on a
different leadership. It's still remains to be seen. It's a
permanent office that's been created and it's up to the
new governor if they want to appoint somebody. Have they
staffed They haven't staffed it. They haven't staffed quite a
few things. Is there an argument? Uh? Is there an
argument for that? Is it plausible that they would be

(01:35:33):
like that? That didn't need to happen in aw'll go away? Um?
Are Anything's possible for sure. But you're not involved in
that conversation. Oh no, not involved in it at all.
But you know it's Um, it would be unfortunate. You
know from Montana, you know a very significant portion of
our state's economy is linked to out to recreation. We
have these amazing numbers. And two sixteen, the Wreck Act

(01:35:54):
was passed and that was actually the federal government like
identifying that, like wow, the recreation economy is like really,
like how big is it? And so they passed the
Wreck Act and that basically mandated the Bureau of Economic
Analysis Analysis to establish a sub account like a prototype
sub account. UM. Really you know, identifying you know, what

(01:36:15):
does outdore creation contribute to the economy because like you
and I, like we all sit in this room and
we're like, oh my god, outdoor recreation is what we do.
It's our way of life. It makes us feel good,
it makes us feel alive, We're healthy, we're happy. Um,
we all make our living around this. Like I was
a fishing guide for a while, I was in the
ski industry for a while, I was in the gun industry.
Like that's how I have made my livelihood as through

(01:36:36):
record recreation. So clearly it has a second on my impact.
So actually there are three, um I believe economic firms
that worked on them. One is here in Bozeman. It's
called Headwaters Economics. They consulted with the e A. They
created UM the very first economic numbers in the US
related to our g d P as it relates to recreation. UM.
Their first numbers were believe it was two point two

(01:36:58):
percent of the U S g d P is contributed
to outdoor recreation. And that's everything, that's the spectrum, that's
the that's the barefoot trial, tree walk in, Sleeping under
the Stars, and going out and killing stuff. Right, that's
the whole rainbow of us. But man, I've seen some
too that that have the that capture these huge numbers,
and you look and they're counting like Ebagos. Absolutely that's

(01:37:23):
part of this. Yeah, it's motorized, it's non motorized. I'm
a super outdoors for some people. What I'm saying it
like it catches a lot of stuff. It does. It
catches a lot of stuff. Um, And so to put
into perspective, two, that's twice the size of the U. S.
Automotive industry. That's twice the size of the U. S.
Pharmaceutical industry. So it's a huge, you know, portion of

(01:37:45):
our economy. The part that I think is really interesting
is and I'm gonna botch this one. The numbers are
not quite right, but I believe there's like it's like
seventy two. Like if you look at g d P,
there's like seventy two categories of like basement GDP. And
when somebody establishes a sub account, they actually say, okay,
like what parts of this is contributed? Um? But outdoor

(01:38:07):
recreation touches like someone godly number. Like I think it's
like sixty eight of seventy two. Like basic US you
know GDP functions, So recreation like has its its fingers
and everything. Um, do you think there will ever be
a Secretary of Recreation in the US. So here's the
but here's the funny part, is like that I've now

(01:38:28):
worked with some really remarkable people in d C and um,
you know with the Park Service and the BLM and
the four Service and just so many great people. Uh.
There was a period of time where we actually had
an office about de recreation federally for a brief period
of time. UM, And I wonder who, I don't know,
we gotta go look at it. But I remember he
was He was like oo back in the day we
had this, And I was like what I didn't know

(01:38:49):
about that? Um. So yeah, it's it's a it's really interesting.
It's it's great. Uh. Where were you born? Was born
a white Fish, Montana? So that was your tie to Um?
Is that were Kimberg's based No, the sales office, there's
part of it in um kalispell Yeah, I so I Um,
I'm a Montana girl. UM. I have been told I'm

(01:39:09):
embedded like a tick. And I guess I'm going to
own it. I just I'm owning it my entire adult career.
I've traveled the world and every time I come back
to white Fish, I'm like, and I'll live in the
best spot you know. So, um, yeah, I actually my
parents were born there, My grandparents were born there. I
was born there. I'm finally held stay there and raise
my boys there. It's a great place to be. I
have two boys. Um, they're twelve and fourteen. Do you, um,

(01:39:33):
when you were a little did you did you like,
did you like think about and identify that there's an
outdoor industry in which you would work or was it
just that that's what life was and it didn't seem
like a it didn't seem like a like a thing
you would move into. You just went into it. So
I don't know if we were I don't know if
it's classified like that, but yeah, very actually apparent because

(01:39:54):
I grew up my dad was a hunting and fishing
guide and a knife maker, and so literally I spent
my summer breaks about ornament on his on a whitewater
raft going down the middle fork of the Flathead right
like that was he took me to work with him. Um,
I would go on fishing trips with him. I would
do seven day packing trips with him, Like that's how
I spent my summers. And so my dad was in
the wreck business right like he was a guide and

(01:40:15):
he knew all of this and something that I look
back on, um, you know, because I was exposed to
so many people coming to experience what I lived like
it was my every day and like there are people
that are saving years and they're coming and having experience
like a once in a lifetime experience that's literally changing
their being. It's changing their thought patterns. And I didn't

(01:40:37):
have the context to put that in, but I watched it, right,
I would watch these people just like lose their minds
and just you know, see everything and like the but
the water, like I can see the bottom like how
you know, like it's so deep? You know. My dad
would crack wise jokes like they're like how do you
water would be like just tow to a duck, you know,
like a you know, to guide you know thing. But

(01:40:59):
UM didn't know. Like the thing is that I understood
is that I didn't know where they came from and
I didn't know what they're like life was like. But
clearly I have it way better than they do because
they were dying over what I just called my everyday life.
And obviously, as I grew older, like I definitely be
you know, I started to put that into context. Um

(01:41:19):
you know, I started working in fly shops before I
was old enough to pull a paycheck in exchange for
fly tying material and fly rods. I was like my
sport that I did. I was a competitive rifle shooter.
Like I didn't. He's like, you're tall, You're a big girl.
You must be a basketball player. And I'm like, I
can't dribble ball to save my life. But it has
it has a trigger is a totally different story. And
so as a competitive rifle shooter, um you know it,

(01:41:40):
thought about leaving, you know to go to school. Wasn't interested.
I wanted to stay in Montana and you never see
Montana Resource conservation is my degree. I chalked it up
to being an over educated fly fisherman because they were like, okay,
so to get a job, you got to go to
Oklahoma or Nebraska and like work on mud puddles. And
I was like, I'm not sign up for this. I'm
staying in Montana. And so went into the organic produce industry,

(01:42:02):
like randomly because I could stay there. So I was
actually like brokering produce from field to table on the
national market at the age of like twenty two. And
then I got a knock on the door and they
were like, hey, we heard you sell stuff, and you're
from Whitefish and you can ski. We've got a ski
and ski out office. You could be a regional ski
you know, ski salesperson for Big Mountain Ski resort. I

(01:42:22):
was like, you want to pay me more money to
have a ski and ski out office, and I'm going
to travel the US partying, golfing, skiing and drinking and
convincing people to come ski and totally do that. I
got this. I totally golf. Yeah, does not look like
he just he doesn't look like But I golf with

(01:42:44):
a lot of guys that look like you. So the
golf is in this room, yea. And I got that
tree tattoo and stuff. You're not gonna let you golf anymore. Drink.
I show up to drink, and then I golf while
I'm there. Yeah, so that's great. On the golf course,
I spent my I spent my twenties like just like
in the ski industry, and just like having a great life,

(01:43:06):
was married, UM had kids, and UM decided I'd stay
at home, stayed at home and work part time. And
then I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go back into
like the work, you know, work, Like what do I
want to do when I grow up? And I was
at a rocky Mountinolk Foundation banquet and I was with
my cousins and I was pretty drunk, and I turned around.
I saw my buddies have worked for Kimber. I was like, oh, Kimber,

(01:43:27):
I got a Kimber. They still guns. I love guns.
I could sell guns. So I just inquired and ended
up getting hired on and worked for Kimber for eight years.
And now here I am, um, is your dad's a
little guide? Is he still alive? He is still alive.
He is not guiding um he Um. He's a knife maker.
So my great grandfather started a knife making business called

(01:43:50):
Track Knives that turned into Schmidt Knives. And so my
dad actually has always been a knife maker, but then
with just guide on the side, stopped doing that. He
actually was in blacksmith thing. He's done amazing eximithing work,
but he no longer guides is he is your old man.
Um and like if you imagine your grandfather and stuff.

(01:44:10):
Are they sympathetic to the cause of b h A
or they have been like reflexively not love love. My
dad loves b h A, loves it, loves it. Um,
he's you know, he's even I've helped him write op
eds in support of like wild and scenic rivers. And Um,
my grandfather actually was super tight with my grandfather. He

(01:44:31):
and I. He was my best fishing buddy and I'm
so thankful to have had all those years fishing with him. Um.
But he uh no, it's it's very like they're they're
very like they're b h people. For sure, they didn't
have that. They didn't. Um, I mean you're telling me
they didn't. But uh, even like dating back that far,
they didn't have a sort of a reflexive like not

(01:44:53):
really liking um strong public lands advocacy or restrict actions
on public lands that might be like tinder industry. Well,
so and I come from so, I come from extractive industry.
So my grandfather was in the timber industry for sixty years. Um,
and so Q was involved in you know, like I mean,

(01:45:14):
like seriously like the logging of the sixties and the
seventies and the eighties, and in Whitefish, white Fish was
a timber town. The original name of Whitefish was Stumptown
because it was clear cut and the railroads came in.
And so Whitefish is this like literally this quintessential snapshot
of the evolution of the West and the economy and
how things are shifting. And Whitefish really kind of I

(01:45:35):
think was like a little bit of head you know,
like one of the first towns to go through that.
But literally, my my generations of my family, like paint
that picture. My grandfather was in banking and mining right
with the other grandfather. Um. And so what happened though,
is that obviously in the eighties, I mean like timber
harvests and everything, like you know, it was there were

(01:45:56):
yellow signs everywhere that was like this this family is
supported by the timber industry. Right, Like when the timber
industry was crashing, it was putting so many people out
of work, continued to put people out of work through
the two thousand's, right, like all the mills were shutting down. Um.
But what was happening is like at the same time
that like the timber industry and everything started to go down.
Whitefish is this amazing little community with this lake that's

(01:46:17):
really fun to like boate on. And then there was
a bunch of people in town that thought this like
big bald mountain up on top, you know, out of
town would be kind of fun to like go downhill
on and those ski things like you know back in
the day, like my other grandfather was one of the
first people to pioneer big mountain ski resort um, which, um,
you know it's it's so you saw this like gradual
increase of like this recreation opportunity as the timber industry

(01:46:41):
dove and that crossover period was in my life and
that was a really hard time. Um. And now you
you do see that recreation um, you know, resort kind
of community growing and evolving into then it becomes amenity based,
and then it becomes and it starts pulling in industry.
So so you guys, your family would be like, um,

(01:47:03):
it's almost like this like Larry McMurtry novel about the
like Lonesome Dove Man. Okay, I was thinking, like the
last picture show, all my friends are going to be
on nwees, Oh is it all my friends are gonna
be strangers. Anyways, he writes about the transformation of the
American West. So if you capture like generationally loggers, miners,

(01:47:25):
and then like big game guides and then outdoor recreation,
it's like just the evolution. So the flat the Old
West of the New West. Man when you talked about
like okay, so like my my grandparents, my grandparents, my father,
like do they find like this like resentful like nature
of more protection on lands And it's like, actually that area,
the flat of River system was one of the first

(01:47:45):
world and senior river systems in the country. And as
a result, like they were the first ones to see
it laid out, it had zero impact on anything anyone did.
It only improved the way of life and improved everybody's
you know, just lifestyle and so yeah, like so it's
totally different, you know up there. Every time, you know,

(01:48:07):
more protections established, like the more the community thrives and
the better people are doing. Um, there's you know, the
white Fish Legacy Partners have started the Whitefish Trail System,
and the Whitfish Trail System is this like amazing network
of trails, multiple use trails that are in and around
Whitefish and It was started by residents for residents because

(01:48:28):
they were illegally poaching trails on state timberlands and that
timberland was going to be sold off into development. There
was a bunch of like bikers that were like, no,
this is crap, like you can't do that. I was like, yeah,
actually we can. And so now we have this amazing
trail system that contributes like six point three million dollars
to the Whitefish economy every year just by its existence,
um and so, yeah, it's been a very proactive community,

(01:48:52):
very aggressively proactive community with surrounding land managers and um
just evolving what it is to live there. This is
a huge deal from Montana. Montana is way behind the
eight ball in funding recreation. And then we could go

(01:49:13):
off on tangents talking about who really funds recreation, who
funds our infrastructure? Um and so in Montana we've been
very behind. We don't have any state funding mechanisms of
significance to fund trail maintenance and expand all this kind
of stuff. Whereas states like Colorado it's called go co.
They it's literally like, isn't like like one tenth of

(01:49:34):
one percent of lottery dollars in Colorado equals four hundred
million dollars a year to go towards recreation and conservation.
And so we've not And there's there was a big
there's a big paper that was done I think in
like two thousand and sixteen, and it was statewide funding
funding mechanisms for outdoor recreation and that the array of
different ways that states will fund it. Um and Montana

(01:49:56):
literally had virtually no a no fund. So if you
come up with a oh my god, this is a
brand new tax, you know resource like, how often does
something new come along that you can tax? Right, So
you've got this new tax and that's why everybody's like,
we want the money, right. And it's a great opportunity
though for us to you know, figure out a way

(01:50:17):
to start investing in our recreation infrastructure. Now when you
say when you say outdoor recreation, I gather that you
picture a big umbrella. There's a very big umbrella. Um,
you're not just talk about like you think about our
recreation beyond hunting and angling. Yes, But now in your
in your new situation at b h A, you've got

(01:50:37):
to kind of refocus, right. Um, Well, you guys aren't
like b H a isn't beholding of the ski community. No, no, no, exactly.
They do appreciate the fact that I come with such
a broad background and understanding. Um. I also, you know,
definitely on the scene when I was an office about
direct you know, director I was, I was kind of
the hunting and Angling girl, like I was that representative.

(01:50:58):
I was that voice and all of us because you know,
quite honestly, when I first came in and there were
eight directors and then more and we would be having
conferences and we're having discussions, I'm sorry, hunting and angling
is not well represented in the broader conversation about the recreation.
And that was really really concerning to me. So that's
why I made sure to really try and elevate that conversation.

(01:51:19):
You mean, when people would say, from an like from
an industry or governmental perspective, outdoor wreck they were biking, skiing, correct,
like ari I stuff correct not And so that's why
it's constantly bringing it back around. And you know, like
I've heard you say non consumptive or consumptive, which is
just the most I am. I hate, hate, hate hate

(01:51:41):
that it just got your hiker bikers and you got
your hunter fishers exactly well, and we have like different things.
But the notion to me that that would instill in
someone who likes to hike, the notion that they don't consume,
they don't have an impact act. That's terribly dangerous. That's dangerous.

(01:52:02):
Can you break that down a little bit, right? Yeah,
first you better explain consumptive and non So traditionally it's
like we have non consumptive and consumptive users and hunters
and anglers are in Lumpton this consumptive mushroom pickers. No
one ever talks about mushroom picks. Right. The foragers, they're
consumptive right there. There's they're they're supposedly killing or taking

(01:52:23):
a piece of the resource with them while they're out there. Now,
if you're rockhound spencer, you're consumptive. He's not consuming those rocks.
So like a detainer, it's this notion that someone is
taking from and or having a greater impact. That's what
it's meant to be. So well, that's what it's cut. Yeah,

(01:52:44):
consumptive absolutely, Like I always thought there was like a
little negative thing there, but I couldn't figure out what
it was. And then they're supposedly Supposedly, the non consumptive
is someone who is just simply out leaving no trace,
walking on a trail for you know, yeah, like like, oh,
I'm on the landscape, but I'm causing no disruption. I'm
not having an impact on anything. Well, that is complete

(01:53:07):
and utter horseshit. Um. Everybody is having an impact of
some level, whether you're motorized, non motorized, like you name it.
Everybody plays apart. And that is something where I don't
like people, and I never tolerated it. If someone wanted
to use those I said, Nope, not allowed to use
those words. We're all having an impact. You just need
to start understanding what kind of an impact you have.
The other the other week, we discussed this this these

(01:53:29):
guidelines that came out, and it was that what does
someone had done some research on it. What distance do
you impact wildlife? So I listened, I was catching up
and I was listening and fifty yards on rodents, fifty
yards on chipmunkster likes on you know. And that's the
thing is like people think that they're not having an impact,
and so that's something too Like, Um, I just feel
like the outdoor recreation economy and the people that are

(01:53:51):
in the outdoor recreation economy like we're talking. The reason
we're talking about it in an economic sense and the
reason we have now a percentage of the g d
P and we understand how many tax dollars are going
to this, we understand how many jobs are related. The
reason we need to do that is because we need
to speak the same language that all the other lawmakers,
all the other policymakers are listening to. Because every other

(01:54:12):
segment of industry, whether it's you know, like mining industry
or you name it, they talk about jobs, tax dollars,
like what are we contributing? They're able to do it
in really concrete terms. But I would imagine wouldn't like
a lot of these outdoor recreation companies would not want
to be categorized they were like, they wouldn't want to

(01:54:33):
be categorized as consumptive, say that the mountain biking industry,
skiing and well, consumptive, but contributing. That's the thing is
what we're trying to do, is we're trying to calculate
the contribution of to the economy because that's what everybody
else is beating their chest about, what do I contribute?
So It's like, okay, what you mean you get priority
because you're touting these numbers. Well, now, the outdoor recreation

(01:54:55):
industry has these numbers. And so when you go to
a county commissioner, when you go your state legislature. That's
why I put together, you know, a state legist, you know,
a package on what does the auto recreation of mean
in Montana? Or when you go on a national level,
it's like no, no, you want to talk about jobs.
You want to talk about tax dollars. Oh, I'll show
you numbers and I'll show you bigger numbers in employment
because there's so many people. And that's the thing about

(01:55:17):
the recreation economy is it's not eleven conglomerates right, like
that hold all of the pie and there's you know there,
there's eleven entities are pulling all the strings and calling
all the shots. This is I mean huge numbers of people,
like vast numbers of people. Seven seven to ten of

(01:55:40):
Montanans are employed because of outdorecreation. Like that's a huge percentage.
It's to go up and it's only going up. There's
four hundred fishing guides in Gallatin County. How many mountain
biking guides are there or jobs in mountain biking. I
mean there are some. It's growing, I mean, but everything
plays its part. And that's retail. Oh, that's you know,

(01:56:00):
that's that's gear and goods, and like that's what I
want to look at the big number, you know when
you see like it's X billion dollar economy and you
look at it. And I used to be and I'd
see things rolled in there that I would feel are
almost anthema, you know too, what I like like for instance,
and I shouldn't say this now because we now have

(01:56:21):
a camper trailer. The man, we've got three little kids,
just hard to get everything that is where it's at
with kids. A camper is where food is in it,
the beds, the sleeping bags are in it. Throw bodies
in the truck, and marshmallows are in it. It's like
it's just and then when you're done, you throw all
that stuff back inside there and drive away, and then

(01:56:41):
you spend the whole week digging through it and stop
feeling bad about a long time. I'm saying I'm gonna
dog on big window bagos, but I want to clarify
that I'm dogging out myself when I look at the
numbers like nationally, I look and I'm like, man, they're
throwing stuff in there that doesn't belong in there. But
let me finish because I'm like that, like that is

(01:57:04):
an outdoorrect that's I'm what that is staying in It's
just you. Your sliver aboutdorecreation might be a slimmer. Yeah,
it's it's mean. It's mean spirited, but that was That's why.
That's what I'm trying to get at the next part
of this. I looked at him like, man, they're throwing
in some wild ship into those figures. But I'm like,
why not, because if you anything you can use to

(01:57:26):
combat the idea when someone says, like the national force
it's just sitting there doing nothing, it's nice to be
able to say, well, on the contrary, Um, x percent
of the economic activity that happens in no surrounding towns
is to thank for that. Ex percent of the jobs
that happen to those surrounding towns is to thank for
that real estate prices are tied to that tax base,

(01:57:50):
And go like, so, don't tell me he's doing nothing
because if you plucked it away, um, you would impact
the lives of like a hype sentages people live in
this area, like I like being armed with those and
all of those figures exist as much as I was
a little bit suspicious of when they started drawing them
up because people throw around some crazy numbers. Well, and
that's the thing we were just like so the evolving

(01:58:12):
economy of the West, right, So we were used to
talk looking at national forests as um timber producing, right,
And that's an easy like you're going in, you're cutting
a stand of timber, you have board feet, you're doing
the calculation. There's the money sitting right there in a
tidy pile getting piled onto a truck. Very easy to calculate.
And then you can also do the then the extrapolation
out into the communities and what kind of a recirculation

(01:58:34):
where you have. But with recreation it's different, right, It's
it's you're not just loading things on a truck, and
it's different to comprehend. But the four like USD a
forest service, Like they have economists that that's what they do.
You can go in and you can actually search and
find out like what is the recreation economic impact for
such and such a forest on a community, And they'll
extrapolate it out in their own way. Um so yeah, yeah,

(01:58:56):
and we're way past hunters and anglers being like but
and here's it's just there for It's like, but this
is where I think hunters and anglers need to So
I talk about infrastructure, like the infrastructure that supports the
derecreation economy, and so like every segment of the economy
has like this unique like what's the unique infrastructure that
that defines it or supports it? Right, It's not just
the roads that go to the parking lots that go

(01:59:16):
to the trailheads that go to the trails. It's also
open space, it's habitat, it's aquatic habitat, it's terrestrial habitat,
it's viewsheds. Like though that's infrastructure, just like a bridge
might be important to a certain sector, Like that's the
infrastructure right well, by and large, Like who and what
has paid for the infrastructure that the entire recreation economy

(01:59:37):
now sits on. It's hunters and anglers like that have
like built the foundation that that it's writing on, right,
and the care of wildlife, the maintenance of row el life,
and that it just is this then the segue of
like oh my gosh, and there's so many more users,
and how are the users helping pay for it? And
and there's no silver bullet by any means, but you know,
like passing habitat Montana weed money is like one little

(01:59:59):
piece of the pie to helping support that it's getting
to be almost a trillion dollar. Yeah, oh for sure.
So seven they figured, uh, seven eight, but this is
for the country seven eight billion and economic output. This
is the outdoor industry numbers billion economic output two per

(02:00:22):
one two like you said, two point one percent of
US g d P five point two million jobs. And
it's domestic that doesn't count the import of gear, right,
Like this is like gross output. They're they're geting, they're
rolling in Okay, they're rolling in boating, fishing, r ving, hunting, shooting. Oh,
even trapping made the list. Motorcycling, trapping. There's no dude,

(02:00:47):
not that me buying uh not me buying m B
seven fifties. Uh, motorcycling, a TV and equestrian sports mm hmm. Yeah.
It's it's huge, it's big and and so but and
that's where when I was in the office and you
talk about this a huge umbrella like hunting and angling
has been a very very very important piece to this

(02:01:10):
puzzle and I really want to make sure that it
continues to be very relevant. And uh, like you're just
a little tiny snapshot, right. I talked about like the
white Fish trail system and Whitefish. Um, this amazing you
know collaboration between private timberland and state land and federal
land and private land like to put this trail system together.

(02:01:31):
And the timberland is a block management piece in Montana
and block management. I'm sure you talked about block management
all the time, but it's people enroller land and for
access for hunting and um, but you know, it was
very important to maintain Like if you had just anybody
going in there, they'll be like, yeah, we we have
a trail system going through there, so there needs to
be no more hunting because that's what's happening right, Like
it's but that's not the case like that, you know,

(02:01:53):
everyone made sure that like no hunting is a traditional
use here, Like we are all sharing the space. We
all need to be doing these things together, so we
do need to keep hunting in these areas. Let's just
make sure we're doing it in a safe way. So um,
you know, if there's not a voice that's constantly talking
about the heritage of hunting and angling. Um, I'm it's
very concerning, you know, and we often we often times

(02:02:15):
are talking in this like inslary bubble like hunting an angling,
like we're king like you know, no man, not even
kinda And um, so there's a lot there's a lot
of interests out there, and so that's why it's really
important to stay um in the mix and and understand
like everyone else's perspective and where they're coming out of from.
But do you feel that that's the case, and like

(02:02:35):
for everyone in this room, right like knocked on folks
who you know motorbike and make noise and right or
like you know, even you're knocking on Yannie for skiing
and liked be the last one trick pony on the planet.

(02:02:57):
We hunt and we fished, and that is it. Back
you're not a true outdoorsment. That doesn't mean you're bad.
I prefer it. I wish that everyone. I wish to
everyone the ice fish scheme instead. I don't, but I
don't think that they're not true outdoorsman. No. But okay,
so here here's the where I'm going with the question, like,

(02:03:18):
because so much hunting angling money goes into supporting the outdoors,
it seems better in my mind that everyone's like, we
all do this. Yeah, but when you're discussing the idea
of hunters and anglers and other outdoor users, there's a

(02:03:42):
there's an important distinction here. Um. I think that hunters
and anglers have developed an elevated sense of importance, perhaps
even a supremacy when it comes to discussing sort of
like their share of the pie on public lands or
outdoor recreation or however you want to define what we're
talking about, because they have historically had such an important

(02:04:07):
funding role. Correct. So a lot of the land like management,
state management of wildlife. Okay, certain land management agencies um
having issues having to do with access, wildlife mitigation, disease
research on down the line were funded by people who

(02:04:28):
bought hunting and fishing licenses. So they felt like, naturally,
we need to have a real seat at the table
here because we're paying for a lot of this and
other user groups don't have that. Other user groups don't
have that legitimacy. Yeah. I refer to it as an infantile.

(02:04:49):
It's infant Uh. The new it's so new users Like
there's hunting and angling, right, and like this this evolution
and now there's you know, like phishing access sites. The
stupidest name ever. It's a water recreation site and on Hannah, right,
but fishing dollars that paid for him. And now you
look at the reality of like how many people that
use those fishing access sites are actually fishing, fewer than
the recreation user that never paid a dime for him.

(02:05:10):
I loved one recently, though I can't remember where I
saw it. If you held a fishing license, you didn't
need to pay the fee, yeah, because they're like we
already hit you when you bought your fishing license. So
and that's and that's different states are doing different things
to what when people show up at those fishing access
sites and they're launching a kayak and not fishing, they
should be kissing fishermen or they should be required to
buy a fishing license. And these are all things that

(02:05:32):
have been proposed. These are state funding mechanisms, and you
need legislative you know, follow through to establish all these mechanisms.
And so it's it's discussed like like explained like what
people say when because I think you're gonna get into this,
broty is like the backpack tax, and no one knows
what it means. But what's it getting at. Well that
you're that you would create the same kind of funding
through an excise tax on camping gear or um campers

(02:05:57):
or like mountain bikes, and so you know, then they're
contributing in the same way hunters and anglers are, which
initially as like yeah, man, like they should be paying
two and they probably should. But if they do, then
they want to sit at the table. Yeah I would

(02:06:17):
if I could have it my way out, have them
not pay and not be at the table. Well, they're
at the table and they're not. So there's a situation here. Well,
and here's the thing. Okay, so you guys are referring
to like paying so like the it's licensed dollars, it's
all of that, but it's also then pr DJ dollars
you know that have so like all of that, all

(02:06:38):
of this explain that real quick. It's over mentioned. But
when you buy, uh, if you go buy a pocket pistol, okay,
you buy a pocket pistol for seven hundred bucks for
personal self defense whatever whatever you buy, like, you go,
you go buy a personal self defense uh compact nine millimeter.

(02:06:59):
Of that money funds wildlife. It's ten percent of wholesale
but close and the bullets for it. But not reloading
supplies UM, not optics, UM, you know, like archery equipment,
fishing equipment, but chunks and pieces. But anyway, so voting
equipment that doesn't boat gas from when you buy gas me, Marina,

(02:07:22):
there's no equivalent of that. There's no equivalent of that.
When you buy a set of skis, is that a
back country touring skis? There's no equivalent correct, And that's
and that was just you know, like hunters and anglers
UM started funding all of this, and you know, maybe
not the average hunter and angler, but but we started
funding this out of crisis, crisis, like we're at the bottom,

(02:07:47):
like we're like we are losing everything. So then now
we have this history of fighting to get it back
and investing to get it back. Well, these other recreation
you know opportunities, they have never been through crisis, they've
never lost anything. They're just getting going. Yeah, there's no
but but as but as a result, like if now

(02:08:08):
it's just like a bunch of like recreation pissing match, right,
it's just like, yeah, well this trail is my trail.
I don't want you on my trail. And you know
it's like no, your stuff doesn't belong here. And it's
like wow, everybody, if you don't back it up to
like thirty feet and look at like the real core
of like what is enabling us to do all of this,
and if we don't work together, you know, like on

(02:08:29):
public lands on a on a larger scale, will all
lose everything. But it goes back to that consumptive versus
non consumptive because if they're quote not having an impact,
which is why it was very important when I was
in office. There is a twenty year old um document
that was done by the Montana Wildlife Society twenty years
ago and it's the Impacts of Recreation on Rocky Mountain

(02:08:52):
Wildlife and it hasn't been updated for twenty years and
so you can go and look at it. And so
I spent a lot of time when I was in
office like this is really important, Like we need to
be able to give our land managers the tools and
the scientific knowledge so that they can resolve disputes. And
then we can also tell everybody like look, no, you're
having an impact, like you're pushing animals around more than
a hunter would push animals around because of what you're

(02:09:14):
doing in your actions. UM. And so that's why that
was a really really important piece. That is, you know,
go is the work is going forward, their updating the document, UM,
we're finding funding for it. So it was really important
to get that done. It seemed like most of the
states you said before they have an office about door
wreck were like in the Rocky mountains. Does it make
sense for every state to have it, like Delaware in

(02:09:35):
Indiana or so, it's not a Rocky Mountain thing the
first but we've got oh my god, we've got like
three in the Midwest, We've got UM, We've got Vermont.
Sorry it's been a long time since Ratley's off. We've
got Vermont, North Carolina. Like, it's kind of all over
the place. It makes sense for every state, Oh, absolutely so.
But it's office about the recreation right there. It's the

(02:09:56):
outdoor recreation economy, which is really like to see and understand.
In the asked iteration of the UM national report that
came out for g d p UM, it had these
great infographics because you have experiential expenditures around outdorecreation, and
then you have the manufacturing expenditures around outdore creation. And

(02:10:16):
so you see states like like Florida and Illinois where
in every camper on the planet's manufacturing I think it's
in Illinois. Um, but you see these like hot red
states that are making all this money off of manufacturing
the stuff. And then you've got these hot red states
that are making all this money off of people using
that stuff and experiencing the outdoors. And so you have

(02:10:37):
you have to know, like none of these states, like
these guys wouldn't be making money and manufacturing if they
didn't have a place to go, and if we didn't
have the place to go. You know, like it's this
symbiotic relationship between the differing you know, demographic of the
United States and are differing economies within states that intrastates
stuff makes you think that it needs that we need

(02:10:59):
a Secretary of Hey, it's it's young. We could see
this first Secretary Hunting and Fishing, but it has Secretary
of Outdoor Secretary of Hunting and Fishing. Then I actually
actually did find the history of that Federal Bureau of
Outdoor Recreation, which was founded in nineteen sixty three by
a secretarial order. It was subsumed into a new agency

(02:11:23):
called the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service in nineteen seventy seven,
which was then subsumed by the National It's interesting. Yeah, yeah,
so we used to have one. Now we don't. Can
let me hear you up to last questions? Um, they're
big ones all. What so you're you now currently? You're

(02:11:44):
like fundraising for a nonprofit Background and Anglers. What do
you guys, Let's say you had all this money, get
all this money, what are the top priorities did you
like to spend it on? So the heritage of hunting
and angling. Um. And then it's it's the voice of
wild public land, water and wildlife and spending the money.
And that's the cool part. B h A. Back and

(02:12:06):
Hunters and Anglers. And by the way, we're having our
tenth rendezvous this year and you're the speaker at the
first rendezvous at the same space we're having it this year.
It feels like about three people there, I think a
hundred a hundred people. Yeah, super small. Um. But so
this is what I've always found that is remarkable about
back country hunters and anglers, back English is about its

(02:12:29):
members like it is its members. This is people. These
are hunters and anglers that give enough of a crap
to be involved, to be active, to support what they
love and believe in. Right, and so b h as
an organization, we're simply finding resources to elevate their work,

(02:12:52):
to help them do their work, to provide support because
for as much as we're definitely used to UM you know,
like your CPS awesome organization, and it's an organization of organizations,
and it's you know, taking the collective voice you know
of of organizations and talking on the national level. And
b h A does work on the national level, but
you you need that, you need organizations to have these

(02:13:14):
formalized conversations with like policymakers and you know, involved with
legislative actions. But what really moves the mark is an
individual voice. And you know that is what b h
A members do. It's an individual voice. It's that I
am an individual and I believe in this and all
of these people believe in this too, and so it's

(02:13:35):
this amazing, awesome symbiotic relationship like these are These are
the people on the ground getting the work done. Like
if you ever think that you're a badass hunter angler.
Just go visit with the average b h A member
and you're just like, I need to up my game.
You know. It's just and but the humblest, most amazing,
you know, group of people and diverse. I mean, like

(02:13:55):
our demographic is remarkable. There's you know, it's a third Democrat,
a third Republic and a third independent. Membership is forty
five and under UM and so it's you know, it's
people that are not It's so much of conservation work
is done in the tangible, like let's go and put
this fence up, because I can act and I can

(02:14:16):
do it, and I can see it and I saw
the process start and I saw it finish. And so
much work that b h A members do is the hard, long, grueling,
thankless schlog of working on forest plans, of working in
legislative sessions, and so much of the work that's done

(02:14:38):
it's not tangible instantaneously. It's it's this, it's a long haul,
and it's it's the really hard work that requires patients
and perseverance. UM. So I couldn't be happier to be
where I am. And UM, every career move I've made
through my life It moves me one step closer to
expelling every ounce of my energy only working on the

(02:14:59):
stuff that I really really give a shit about, and
that's my family and my life and you know public
lands in these spaces that has sculpted in my life.
So the more I can do to support pH A
members and the work that they do, happier, I am. Uh.
The last one touches on something you just brought up,
which is your family. A few years ago, I saw
you give a talk and you were kind of laying

(02:15:19):
out the it was a slide show presentation. We were
were a story we were storytellers. It's really funny, and
you were laying out the storyteller this year like how
hard it is and just like messy and inconvenient to
raise kids in the outdoors. Just pull your hair out right,

(02:15:39):
what is my life become? Yeah? So what um? And
I know it's really important to you that you do that,
that you raise your boys outside. What do you think
they'll get out of it? Because the other day we
had on UM we had on a spearfisher woman really
identify with Kimmy a lot. And what I said, we're

(02:16:00):
kind of like laying out like how much her dad,
how much time her dad dedicated to bring in her spearfish,
and and she kind of like dispelled any romantic notions.
It was that he was going and he had to
watch me. Therefore I had to go. I don't think
there's anything else going on there, and it's landed or
where she is. But just like a different version where um,

(02:16:22):
I am kind of split. I guess like I'm going,
which means you're going, but also I really want you
to go. I'm in the same boat as you talk
about a little bit like what you want them to
get out of it or why it's important to you. Yeah.
And I actually listened to that one with Kimmy and
when she was talking about her relationship with her dad
and her upbringing with her dad, I was like, oh
my gosh, like I really identified with like everything she said.

(02:16:46):
I remember my dad. I remember waking up in the
middle of rain storms, sleeping on the top of gear
piles in the back of rafts from overnight trips, and
my dad is lining the boat through a precarious rapid.
I'm just sleep on the boat and he's like, you're
a good babe, just go back to sleep, right, And
I've got one of those horse collar, you know, life
jackets on, and you know, it was like that was

(02:17:07):
his job, and I just got to go with him.
Um yeah, with my kids. And I'm very very front
with him because now I have a fourteen year old,
and um, teenagers are the worst, but I love them
in the same notion. But he's very much flexing his
independent muscles, and he has had the most idyllic childhood,
growing up in just the most amazing wild places, doing
remarkable things, and he's just like, yeah, it's just so

(02:17:29):
my jam. I'm just I mean, if I have my pick,
I'm just not really and I just want to go hunt.
I just don't want to go fish. I don't want
to go camp, Like, I don't want to do that.
I'm not really into that. And I tell him over
and over again, I say, okay, yep, but I have
one that's gone the other way. So with that guy,
I just tell him, I was like, look, you are
going to have to go do some of this stuff
with me, but I am going to compromise with you.
But what's really important to me is that if some

(02:17:50):
day you decide that it's something you want to do,
you have a skill set to fall back on, like
you can. And I told him, I'm like, someday you're
going to meet the super hot chick and she is
going to think that, like, hunters are super cool, and
you're probably gonna start hunting again. You know. It's just
like I want you. I want to know that you
have the skills. You can hunt if you want, you

(02:18:12):
can fish if you want, you can ski if you want.
If it's not something that's your top priority, okay, that's fine.
But then my twelve year old is just like this
just rabid outdoor kid. Like he he loves passionate about skiing,
he's passionate about um mountain biking, but he loves hunting. Um,
he loves to go out fishing. He you know, he's

(02:18:32):
getting his life membership from h A as a gift
for me, and he's pissed that there's not a fly
rod incentive. So I had to buy him his own.
He got his own Winston this a couple of weeks ago.
Used to I know, but that's not one of the
perks at the moment. Yeah, exactly. And so he was
just like, well I wanted the fly rod. I'm like, oh,
I didn't get it for you soon enough anyway, So um.
But yeah. He on the other hand, is like he's

(02:18:53):
already been like so when he was like eight, He's like, so,
I'm going to go to college in Bozeman because I
can go for snow science and I can be a
fishing guide in the summer and then I can be
ski patrol in the winter. I was just like, oh,
my kid, if I had figured out like you and
I'm sorry, um, but I was like, I like where
your head's at, and like your heads at So yeah,
it's it's so it's just a compromise and yeah, it's

(02:19:17):
you know, when I was doing that presentation, it was
like going from a person outdoor in the outdoors to
a parent in the outdoors. It's like this complete rearrangement
of priorities in your head. And it's like I used to,
you know, go so hard over here and so fixated
and so focused, and now it's like more about the snacks,
and you know, like it's just it just becomes different.

(02:19:38):
But it comes full circle too. When they were little,
did you find that it was just so hard to
get everybody out the door? Um? Yeah, and so much preparation,
like so much preparation, Like you're like like the bags
of the gear and the getting and the like what
did I forget? And it's so much more work, and
you understand why some people, if they're not really dedicated
to it, it's just like, let's let it go by

(02:19:59):
the way side. Too much work. Boots were just here,
Yeah you had a jacket on exactly. So yeah, it's
it's pretty wild, but it's it's totally worth it. I
think it's worth every every minute of it. Um, it's fun.
You know, like last then one day you catch tea
turtles having sex. Yeah exactly, but yeah, you can be

(02:20:21):
like that. Last summer I took my kids, we did
the Main Salmon River in Idaho, and so I, you know,
my kids thought they had seen whitewater and they had
never seen Idaho white water. And so I wrote them
down the main Salmon and even the one that even
the one that doesn't want to go, yeah, and the
one that's like, well, I don't really want to go,
but if I'm gonna go, And then you know, you
get him out there and he's just like this is

(02:20:42):
a sick trip. He you know, he just he loved. Yes,
it wasn't that bad. Wasn't that The beaches are amazing?
You know, so it all it all works out. Yeah,
fourteen and twelve, fourteen and twelve dread. Yeah, I see
I still have where everybody likes me, and I know
that that's going to go away. Oh is it? Yes?

(02:21:05):
Yeah it does. And then I think, what did we
When did we all start liking our parents? Again? It's
not that I didn't like my parents, but you're like,
died before that happened. It was it was like postmortem
for me. He died in ten years later. I'm like, yeah,
kind of he is getting at Yeah, but you know,
and I look at it like my grandfather he used

(02:21:25):
to take me out fishing all the time too, and
you know, like we would you know, like I remember
like driving like two and a half hours to like
a fishing spot and then like we get all of
our stuff out and get the flow tubes out, and
I just looked at him. I was like, I was
like twelve. I was like I forgot my flippers, and
he was just like, okay, we'll pack it all up here,
we go home. You know, Just like it's just the

(02:21:46):
way it ghost. It all comes full circle. It's upsetting um,
but man, there's like magical moments because my little boy
just caught us first, like where he did the cast,
the hook up, the real end, no assistance, and he
was just ecstatic. It's amazing. That's a big moment. That's

(02:22:08):
to say, come to his laugh is the best man
when he gets going. Well, like my win, my one
win this winter was I loved ice fish. I love
ice fishing, and I think it's like the best kid
thing too. So drag the fourteen year old old fourteen
year old out ice fishing and he's just like I
can't believe this, And I'm like, what we're doing in

(02:22:28):
the afternoon, We're on for the afternoon bite. It's all
gonna be good. I set up like whole camp chef
set up. I'm like cooking tacos and I'm just running
and like literally it's hot perch and like one boy
is like pulling it. I'm like doing a triangle like
fish off, you know, magat On down the whole, fish off,
megan On down the whole, flip a taco, run back over.
I'm just like doing this like circle in the hot chocolate,

(02:22:49):
and I like I'm doing my own thing, and I
hear my fourteen year old look at his his twelve
year old brother and was like, dude, this is really fun.
It's like I win, Like I won this winter. I won.
I won. That's great. It's a good mom. I'm working
on it, trying, trying hard. Well, hopefully someday you'll be
on your deathbed. They were like, you know, ma, thanks,

(02:23:13):
you know, yeah, thanks. Thanks. When you told me that
chick would really be into fly fishing schools, you were right,
she was. Rachel Schmidt, thank you very much for joining us.
I was gonna do that thing where I tell you
what how to for people, how to find you check
out b h A. Let me talking about it a lot.
Everybody is pretty involved and it's a good group of
people and you learn a lot of stuff and it's good.

(02:23:36):
But yeah, if you want to find me personally, um Instagram,
it's Montana Ray ray m t r a r A
or Rachel Schmidt Montana Ray ray m t r a
r A. Latest picture is a giant black drum. I
just caught in Louisiana. Very pumped about that. Yeah, well
check are you active on there? Do you put stuff
up on there? A lot? Yeah? Not as much as

(02:23:58):
some You don't live by it. No, no, what are
you eating by more pocket meat while you're packing a chaw?
All right, Rachel, Hey, thanks for happy, Thanks for joining
us sing, Thanks for bringing down all that stuff. That's
very helpful. Grybody, See you next time.

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Ep. 276: An Outdoor Recreation Pissing Match

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