Ep. 915: Can Hunters and Carnivores Coexist? with Casey Anderson

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven
versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
the show, I'm joined by Casey Anderson, a big game hunter,
a wildlife filmmaker, and a large carnivorre specialist to discuss
the much debated and pretty darn tricky topic of coexistence
between hunters and carnivores. All right, welcome back to the

(00:41):
Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Life,
and this week we are tackling a topic that I
have long wanted to discuss. This is a tricky, hairy,
tough animal to wrestle with. Here we are discussing hunters
and carnivore and whether or not these two groups, one

(01:03):
set humans, one set animals can coexist. What are the
challenges of living alongside large carnivores like bears, mountain lions, wolves,
What are the realities that come alongside of that? What
are the pros and cons of having these animals on
the landscape, What are the risks? What are the benefits,

(01:24):
what are the challenges inherent in trying to find some
kind of balance in between, because there are really strong
opinions on either side of this issue. There are some
who think that wolves and grizzlies are you know, God's
gift to the world, and they're going to solve all
of your problems, and they're going to cure world hunger,
and they are angels, you know, spitting rainbows and butterflies

(01:47):
out of their butts. On the other side, you have
people that think that wolves and bears and lions are
the work of the devil, and they are going to
destroy ranching, and they are going to destroy your opportunities
to hunt, and they are everything that is making your
hunting worse. Right, there's some people saying that as well.
There's some people who want to wipe grizzly bears or

(02:07):
wipe wolves off the map. There are some people who
say that we should never be able to hunt them
and that they're the best thing in the world. The
reality might lie somewhere in between. I would say my perspective,
and I'm leading you here a little bit with a
preview of what's to come, but my take on the
matter is that there is somewhere in between those two

(02:28):
polar sides of this issue that deserve some time and
attention and some discussion, and that is what we're going
to do here today. And joining me, as I mentioned
at the top, is a guy by the name of
Casey Anderson, and he's someone who is very well equipped
to talk about this topic because he has lived this
from all sides. He is a hunter. He is a

(02:48):
big game hunter, he's a bow hunter. He's chased elk
and deer and all sorts of critters like that. He
grew up in this world, in this lifestyle, so he
understands our perspective. On the flip side, he is also
an animal lover, just like many of us are, who
appreciates these animals on the landscape, not just elkin, deer,
but also bears and wolves and lions. And he studies

(03:11):
them and follows them and films them for a living,
and because he loves doing that and is fascinated by them,
so he sees the value in having these creatures out
there too. So he's talked to the animal rights activists,
he's talked to the hunters, he's talked to the people
going to Yellowstone to watch for wolves, and he's talked
to people in Montana where he lives about hunting wolves.

(03:33):
He's seen all sides of this issue. He's explored it
and disgusted with experts. He's lived it himself. And that
is I think a really key thing here for this discussion,
because he brings to this topic a perspective that is
not just informed by reading some papers or by reading
the social media comments or by listening to some other

(03:55):
random person. His experience and perspective is based very much
so on his on the ground experience because over the
last thirty plus years, he has traveled all over this
country and world, getting up close to and studying grizzly bears,
mountain lions, tigers, wolves, big toothy critters that evoke all

(04:15):
sorts of emotions. He's been up close to them, watched
them for days upon days upon weeks and years worth
of time seeing them, watching them, developing an intimate understanding
of the reality of these creatures, how they live, the
impact they have on the landscape and the people in
the area. He's seen it all the good, the bad,

(04:38):
the in between. So I wanted to chat with Casey
today to explore this kind of murky in between what
exists between the predators are horrible and the predators are
the best. What's there in between, what's the radical center
of this issue, and what can we as hunters do
to better understand how to make sure there's a positive

(04:59):
future for us in our hunting way of life and
the critters that we like to hunt and pursue, but
also for the health of the ecosystem out there that
supports those animals, which does include carnivores in many cases.
So that's the plan for today. That's the chat we
have in store. I absolutely love this one. Casey is
a wealth of knowledge, has a lot of great stories.

(05:21):
He just launched a new YouTube channel be called Endless Venture.
I highly recommend it. It's very entertaining. By the end
of this conversation, I guarantee you're going to want to
go check it out. So I'm just gonna preview it
for it until you just go ahead subscribe to that
now and then come on back. Listen to this chat
with Casey. If you have ever wondered about, or been
frustrated by, or confused by, or just simply intrigued by

(05:46):
the challenges, the debates, the discussions you see online when
it comes to hunters and the animals we hunt, and
then how all that exists alongside stuff like wolves or
bears or mountain lions or coyotes, any of that stuff
has ever popped up in your mind and you're like, man,
that's a doozy her Man, that's frustrating her Man, I
don't get it. This is the chat for you. This

(06:08):
is one to listen to. So, without any further ado,
here's my conversation with Casey Anderson. All right, joining me
now is Casey Anderson. Welcome to the show, Casey, thanks
for having me Mark, Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you

(06:28):
making time to do this. It's a conversation that I've
been looking forward to for a while. I never expected
it to be on this podcast, but my wife and
I first started following your work. I don't know, it's
been a lot of years ago. Now you've been doing
this for twenty years, thirty years probably something like that,

(06:50):
Is that right, Casey? I think we first stumbled on
your stuff maybe fifteen years ago. But how long ago
did that start?

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah? Fifteen years ago I was doing National geographic series,
but I've been doing wildlife filmmaking type stuff for about
thirty one years.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Getting old, it goes fast. I can't believe that thirty
one years. So I think most people probably are familiar
with you from that kind of stuff, from your National
Geographic series, or you did some stuff on Animal Planet too,
Is that right I did?

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah, I've been all around the block animal Planet, History,
Channel Discovery.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, so you've done all this wildlife filmmaking. People view
you as a wildlife expert. I've heard you talk about
yourself as like a animal activist or advocate, but folks
probably might not be as familiar with the fact that
you are also a hunter. Can you give me a
little bit of that background. How did you get into hunting?
What is that?

Speaker 3 (07:49):
You know?

Speaker 2 (07:49):
How is that a part of your life now?

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah, you know, I grew up in Montana, was born
and raised, fifth generation, so hunting has been a big
part of my family very very long time. Yeah. I
mean I was hunting in Montana, you know, going out
with my dad since I could walk, you know, and
you know that it really hunting really made me who

(08:13):
I am today in a lot of ways, you know,
as a tracker looking for animals, being out in nature,
you know, you know, even though we're pursuing elk and
deer most of the time growing up, you know, it's
having those interactions and encounters with the other wildlife always
left me a little bit curious wanting to know more,
especially the more elusive ones like mountain lions and grizzly bears,

(08:35):
where you just you'd see them, you know, maybe once
a year or every once a decade, right or you know,
you see their tracks, and so wanting to know more
about them really kind of led me into trying to
film and and learn more, you know. And funny thing
about the filming someone asked me, like how I got

(08:55):
into filming, And it did start in hunting in another way.

Speaker 4 (08:59):
You know.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
I would go out have these amazing stories and these
amazing encounters with my dad, and I'd come back to
the school yard and I would tell these stories over
and over. And it got to the point where I
had such so many good stories that I think everybody
thought I was full of it. And there's a part
of me that started documenting this stuff just to prove

(09:19):
that I wasn't full of it, right.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
That's funny. So I've always thought, you know, watching you know,
like Planet earth or any other wildlife you know, focused
film or documentary. You watch this stuff and sometimes wonder
do these guys really know what they're doing a lot
of these folks, they kind of imagine someone coming from
London or England or wherever it is over there where

(09:43):
they've got the BBC Studios where there's so much of
this wildlife expertise as far as documentary making, And I wonder, like,
these guys come over here to America and they're filming
bears or deer or elk or whatever it is, and
how often are they stumbling around half blind when you
could take a deer hunter or elk hunter, or someone
from Montana or Wyoming or Michigan who's lived out here

(10:05):
tracking deer or elk and they could probably do a
hell of a job finding these critters and filming these critters. Uh.
Have you found that a non hunting wildlife filmmakers struggle
a little bit more than folks like you who have
that hunting expertise. Is there some truth to that?

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Oh? Man, totally on p Yeah, sorry to me. My
friends that are listening that are in that camp, that
are but they know they are, you know, that's the
thing it's it's there's a I would say over they
a majority of the folks that you see on TV
don't know what they're doing, right, you know, they they
spend most of their time in the field on the

(10:44):
net's during these projects, right, so you know they're not
not you know, they're not like rookies, but they don't
have a lifetime and experience and definitely not generational knowledge. Yeah,
you know, I hate to pick on them. You know,
usually they're pretty face that shows up and there's usually
somebody who has had the experience off camera who's tell
them all about it and leading, you know, guiding them

(11:05):
through the through the process. And yeah, but even even me, man,
I'll tell you I'm go all over the world, and
I'm the first to admit that, you know, I don't
know anything about tigers or snow leopards, but what I've
learned in Montana and western North America, you can't apply
that stuff. You know, there's a bit of resiliency gained

(11:26):
from hunting, but there's some simple tracking stuff you gain
from hunting that you can't apply to other parts of
the world. So you're not starting off from scratch. But
you know, being humble enough to realize that when you're
in somebody else's backyard, listen, watch learn. Yeah, I'm always
learning and I love it. You know, I'm always learning
in my own backyard.

Speaker 4 (11:46):
You know.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
That's the one thing. The more you out there, the
more you realize you've got so much to learn. Yeah,
I mean, I'm an open minded dude. I never like
to use the word expert because I don't think there
are any yet.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
That's the beautiful thing about hunting or wildlife in general.
It's an endless, an endless road to walk down. You're
never going to have it all figured.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Out for sure. Absolutely. So.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
You grew up hunting as a kid with your family.
You fell in love with the pursuit of wildlife, studying wildlife.
You mentioned that in particular that the especially elusive critters
like mountain lions or maybe some of the other carnivores
that was particularly caught your attention. What was that like
and how did that kind of shift your career trajectories.

(12:32):
You started not just pursuing wildlife to eat them, but
also to study and then film these critters, tell these stories.
What was it about lions, wolves, bears that kind of
got their hooks their claws into for lack of a
better pun.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Yeah, And I mean more you're you know, as a
hunter and being out there and killing elk and I mean,
I'll just just give you a little anecdote. I remember
one time because you reminded me of it.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
Here.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
I was like in fifth grade and I must have
had a little bit of a knack for tracking because
I'm in class and I remember the teacher. Ade walks
in the room and had to slip to the teacher,
and the teacher goes, O, casee, your dad's here to
pick it for that appointment. I don't. I'm like, I
don't remember this appointment. But I'm like, okay, So I
go to the office and there's my dad looking standing

(13:18):
there waiting for me, and so let's go to that appointment.
And I'm like, I nod my head and we get
and get out the truck. He goes, I just shot
a big bull with my boat. We got to go
track this thing down. I lost the blood trail, you know.
So he lost the blood trail, so he knew that
I could help, you know. I think it was a
you know, part of that being a young kid too.
You don't get in your own way a little bit,
you can get focused. But he would do this all
the time, So my tracking capabilities were My Dad definitely

(13:42):
noticed him right away, and I think the more he
kind of celebrated him, the more I wanted to lean
into him. So then I guess, I guess where I'm
going here is that you know? So now there's these
other animals you see tracks of. You never get their
eyes on them, but you know, you know, fundamentally if
there's tracks on the ground and you can follow those
tracks at the end those tracts as an animal. So
what about this mountain lion? Right where's this thing at that?

(14:04):
I see its tracks all the time? So I think
that I became almost just obsessed with the idea of
trying to find these things I knew that were out
there and leaving their tracks behind. And that led me,
you know, I went to Montana State to study wild biology,
and then in the summer months, i'd go down to
Yellowstone and I would run into these guys that we
were talking about friars, these guys from la and New
York who were out here doing documentaries but not knowing

(14:29):
where to find things. And they would come up to
me and say hey kid, you know, I'll give you
fifty bucks a day to carry my heavy backpack on
top of the mountain and go try to find some
of these animals. And I'm like, seriously, like jackpot, right,
this is what I'm good at.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
Right.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
So that's how it started. That's how I started, that
made that connection to TV. I would take those skills
that I learned from hunting and those tracking skills, and
now I'm out in the park searching for these elusive
animals I've always wanted to and making enough money to
you know, buy beer.

Speaker 4 (15:05):
You know.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
So it was like it's how it went down. And
so that just metamorphosized into like, you know, the producers
asking me to do a little bit more, me helping
him produce some of the story ideas. And then ultimately
about my junior year, used to before my junior year
in college, a guy came up to me and says, hey,
I've got the series. It's this launched. I wanted, you know,

(15:27):
I need you to come along with me. I'm going
to go all over the world and you're gonna be
my sidekick and help me find animals. And I'm like yeah,
And I never looked back. I never did. I That's
what I've been doing since then.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
So that's how it all. Yeah, So you grew up
in Montana at a particularly interesting time because before you
were born, we saw many of the big carnivores in Montana,
across the western United States kind of reach a low point. Right,
Grizzly bears reached their lowest point there in the seventies,
mountain lines were pretty close to their lowest point. Wolves

(16:00):
have been completely essentially eradicated from the Western United States.
And then in the nineties when you were in college,
I guess wolves are reintroduced. Grizzly bears have been slowly recovering,
reaching higher levels than they had in a while, Lions
showing back up more and more. What was that like
growing up and seeing that change and seeing these critters

(16:22):
start showing back up. Was there any point where you
kind of remember like a before and after or like
when you were really young, these things are pretty rare,
and then by the time you're in college and beyond,
now all of a sudden you're seeing this different world.
Was that noticeable? What was that like?

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Oh Man so much? I mean he really kind of
painted the picture there, I mean literally, as my start
of my career that these animals were invisible and they
just started coming back. I mean, growing up seeing a
mountain lion, seen a grizzly bear, it is so rare.
You know, wolves like a fantasy, right, something from the
far North, and then to be you know, one of

(16:58):
the first projects I worked on knocked down on those
the pens. When they had the wolves ready to release,
we did you know, a guy guy showed me a map.
He's like, hey, I'm going to get some footage of this.
And I looked at him, like, well, let's this go on.
The back door doesn't close back there, it's going to
take us about fourteen mile hike. And he's like, let's
do it. So we went back and shot some like
snipered some you know shots of the wolves and the pen.

(17:19):
I didn't know at the time what was going to be,
what was going to happen. It was interesting. Even then
I was so skeptical. I mean, half my family are
cattle ranchers, and you know, they weren't real happy about it, so,
you know, it was it was interesting time. And then yeah,
as my career started launching, these animals were gaining ground

(17:39):
and you see more and more of them to the
you know, and arguably you know, then the early two thousands,
you know, the grizzly bear started popping up like crazy.
You start seeing more and more, and it was it
was interesting, and it actually had a lot to do
as the launch of my career. You know, I started
going out there and having pretty guaranteed sidings and observation

(18:00):
and opportunity with grizzly bears, and that was taken advantage
of it. Yeah, no, I mean it was. It's still changing.
You know, it is a very strange time to be
involved in this because I've watched it go, like I said,
from zero to one hundred in the last few decades,
and now we're trying to make decisions of what we're
going to do with all these animals, right.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, and that's where all sorts of interesting conversations come up.
And there's never been a shorte of controversy with these critters, right,
I mean before the reintroduction of well even before all that. Right,
if we really rewind the clock, you've got you know,
European American settlers coming across the country and encountering gray
wolves and grizzly bears for the first time, and pretty

(18:43):
quickly not wanting them around, and then over the next
hundred some years essentially getting to work eradicating them, and
then they're rid of them. And then when we talk
about trying to help bring them back, there was all
sorts of fear and hysteria around. Well, if you bring
back wolves, it's gonna demolish all the elk, it's going
to kill all the cows, et cetera. There's a lot
of that. I'm sure you were hearing that from your

(19:05):
family members and people there in the mid nineties. And
then wolves were brought back and grizzly bears have been
protected and slowly have been returning. There's still a lot
of that talk today, right, there's still a lot of
people who say, well, you know, the wolves destroy the
hunting here, or the wolves are destroying our ability to
make a living on the land. What's the reality been

(19:26):
from your view? You've been in the middle of it,
You've lived a lot of it. You have friends, I'm
sure I've heard you talk about friends who are elk
hunting guides and friends who are wildlife viewing guides. So
you've had people who've dealt with this from all angles.
What's the reality on the ground. Bin Have we lost
all the elk? Has it become impossible to raise cattle?

(19:46):
Is it something in between or is it the Disneyland
story that some folks also say where it's you know,
wolves are just you know, shooting out rainbows and butterflies
from their butts and saving all the world's problems. What's
the truth?

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, I appreciate the question, and and I can only
tell you the truth from one of my truth right.
It's the truth is it's somewhere. It's very gray and
somewhere in the middle from what I see. You know,
I actually go out and try to find wolves all
the time. It's hard. It's hard, man. Wolves aren't everywhere.
They're hard to They're hard to find. I see results
of them being out there. I definitely just let's just

(20:21):
take some kind of a metric here. Let's take elk.
Elk's a great one because I grew up hunting them,
and there was a heyday in the nineties before the wolve.
Early nineties, Man, there were there were elk everywhere everybody.
All my friends were out shooting them. You know, all
the guys that could couldn't hike up a trail quarter
mile or getting a bowl, right, So if you look
at it in that aspect, it was easier to haunt elk.

(20:45):
But do I think the ecosystem was was healthy? Probably not.
It was healthy for an elk hunter, but it wasn't
healthy holistically. Yeah. I think that I've, you know, in
some level, and I've I've talked about this. I've killed
my biggest bulls. Lately, I feel like there's bigger bulls

(21:06):
out there than there ever has been. I mean, I
remember in the early nine ers you can go out
there and you'd see like one hundred you know, brusheads
in a day, you know what I mean, But you
you know the real big whoppers. Man, I feel like,
you know, records are getting broken constantly. And I'll tell
you what I like to hunt better now. There's something
about it, man, beyond the landscape with predators, to beyond

(21:28):
the landscape with praise, species that are weary, who don't
give you the second glance when you crack the branch,
because there's other predators out there that are not going
to be forgiving. You're hunting them more like there's a
I don't know, I have a lot more pride, I
guess in it in some level. So there's that. I mean,

(21:52):
I'm just giving you that. But you know, as a predator,
you know, the predator thing waxes and wings from just
a guy who's seeking them out all the time. You know,
there's a lot of there's a push right now for
grizzly bears. But I've notably noticed in the last couple
of years, I'm actually seeing less grizzly bears than I
ever have. I don't know why. Maybe they're changing their habits.

(22:13):
I you know, the only wolves I've seen in the
last couple of years regularly or been in the in
Yellowstone Park, and there's parts outside the park to where
I see wolves all the time. But I think they're
getting weary too, because they are getting hunted and they're
very hard to find, not an easy animal to hunt,
whether you're with a camera or a rifle. So it's
all changing. I think there's that that mix between humans

(22:34):
and humans and predators is evolving, and they're changing their habits,
even if if even if there's more on the landscape,
they're I don't know, they're just getting more weary period. Yeah,
that's what I'm seeing.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
So so let's say you're at a diner or some
bar in Paradise Valley or Livingstone, or or maybe you're
traveling your over in Minnesota checking out the boundary waters
or something, and someone's sitting at the bar next to
you and they're talking about this very topic. And let's
say they're a hunter, and they're saying, man, we used
to have good deer hunting here up in northern Minnesota,

(23:14):
and now I can't hardly see a deer. It's because
of the damn wolves. Or you're there in Livingston and
someone's talking about all the elk hunt is not like
it used to be in the nineties. Wolves ruined it.
What do you say to someone like that? How do
you carry on a conversation? What do you what do
you try to share with them? Given your experience that's

(23:35):
pretty unique from compared to many.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
You know, first thing I do, Mark, is I listened
to them, because everybody's got their living their own life,
you know, and animals, they all have their own values
out there, and you know, hympathize with anybody who's lost
livestock or and not seen as many deer around their
trees stand in Minnesota or whatever. Man, I do because
I think that there's change on the landscape. I'll listen
to them, and I don't ever I don't know. I

(24:00):
don't ever disagree or pushback or try to preach my agenda.
I don't have an agenda, you know. I I think
the main thing I try to do is help them
understand the importance of a healthy ecosystem, and that includes
about I mean includes predators, a balanced ecosystem. I feel

(24:20):
like if we could all agree on that, if that
was the bottom line, no matter what are. You know
what our value is, you know what stakeholders we represent.
That if we just want a healthy, well balanced ecosystem,
that's that a win for everybody. Yeah, you know, the

(24:43):
wolves in Montana is a tough one, man. I mean
there's part of me that wishes and that knew they're
just north of Helena. I knew there's wolves around there.
I hurt them, howling have seen their tracks. This is
pre reintroduction. And if you took the amount of money
and and value the chaos that created and just gave
them time and try to open up corridors, wolves would

(25:03):
have been in Yellowstone. I've been social wise, they would
have been accepted. You know, a little lot more, and
I always wish that that would have been the case.
But here we are, you know, bears. I think it's

(25:26):
another thing. I mean, we hear about them. You only
to hear about them because they've done something wrong, right,
you know, And so I'm always trying to paint the
picture of the other side the truth. I mean, I
I've argued, probably have had thousands of bear encounters, and
they've all been pretty good, you know. But at the
same time, I'm not the rainbows and stars. You're not
your butt thing either. I mean, I've also carried a

(25:48):
man off a mountain who's killed by a grizzly bear.
I've been around the dark side a lot too, So
I know there's a reality of that, you know, And
I think that the truth lies there in the middle.
And the other part of it is, I think those
of us who lived amongst amongst all these animals, I mean,
I think we have to have a pride in the
fact that we do and kind of you know, kind
of honor and respect our neighbors no matter what. Man,

(26:10):
Because there's a lot of people that don't live in
the country with grizzly bears and wolves. There's a lot
of people that go in their backyard and don't have
to worry about them or think about them, and they're
not living man. And I think that I've tried to,
you know, get folks to realize that we that this
is a gift to have these animals in our backyard.
And there is something about that the wildness that you

(26:30):
have by having large fetters on the landscape, that is
is such holds such value and you feel it when
you go to these places that don't have it. You know,
my grandpa cattle rancher, you know, he was a he
had a lot of pride in being a Montana cattle
rancher and dealing with forty below winters and grizzly bears
and wolves and you know, and if you heard people
are you know, arguing about it or complaining about it.

(26:51):
He always said, there's a lot of grass and Nebraska
and that's proby a better place to raise cattle, you know.
And it's it's just kind of that the state of mind.
I guess it's just like you gotta have pride in
some level. And I think it's gonna be tough. We
got to I don't know the answers. I think it's
gonna be give and take and compromise. And that's when
I sit down with those people that you're talking about.

(27:13):
I try to find that compromise, you know, I try
to hear them out. I play double advocate from all sides,
and that's say hey, can we meet in the middle
somewhere on this, because ultimately, I think that's what's gonna
where it's gonna have to end up. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, because because like you said, the reality is somewhere
in between, and for some reason, big carnivores. I guess
many things polarize these days, but big carnivores especially seem
to polarize, and you get someone on on one side
or the other believing the this kind of radicalized, curated

(27:50):
story about the critter where it's either they're they're solving
all the world's problems or they are all the world's problems,
right when, as you said that, the reality is there
in between. The reality is that, you know, the elk
population in Montana is actually higher now than it was
prior to wolf reintroduction. But to your point, it is different.

(28:10):
There are some places where they're not as easy to
kill as they used to. I've got a good friend
of mine who I went on a wolf hunt with
last year, kind of studying this talking to people about
this set of issues. I went on a mountain lion hunt,
I went on a wolf hunt, and I went wolf
watching and exploring Yellowstone, trying to talk to as many
different people as I could to understand this set of

(28:31):
topics from these different perspectives. Right, And the fact of
the matter is that, yes, like wolves have impacted prey
populations in some places, in some localized places a lot.
But at the same time, they've not destroyed it everywhere.
They've not ruined hunting. They've maybe just changed behavior or
shifted locations or you know, rebalanced populations in relation to

(28:55):
the habitat. Maybe we're closer to where they maybe should
have been at one point, but not as many as
some hunters of like. Of course, another thing is that,
like I'm sure you've seen this and heard this a
thousand times, predators are very easy to point a finger at,
like they are obvious things like oh, that's the problem,
when in reality the truth is much more nuanced. Right,

(29:17):
Oftentimes habitat related things and human development related things on
all that is impacting you know, prey populations but you
layer on top of that, then yes, there is some
predation happening, and then that's going to seem even more serious.
And then the wolves are a lot easier to get
mad at than the fact that I'm building a new
house and you're building a new house, and your buddy's

(29:39):
building a new house, and you know, habitat is changing
and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, that's that's
a harder story to wrap your head. But on the
flip side, then you've got the same thing with you know,
folks who live in New York City who love wildlife
and who watch all the nature docum, they watch all

(30:00):
your shows, they watch everything on Netflix and Discovery Channel
and whatever, and they do a couple of nice posts
on Twitter or whatever talking about how much they love animals.
But then they think that ranchers are horrible because they're
upset with the fact that wolves are killing some of
their cattle, or they hint that hunters are horrible because
some of us are frustrated sometimes with the impacts, And

(30:24):
so I think to ignore either one of the realities,
the fact that there are challenges with predators, but at
the same time, there are real values to having them,
like there's there's truth to both sides of that, and
ignoring you either one of those sides, you know, puts
you in a place where you're just not seeing truth.
You're seeing this kind of kaleidoscopic view that's all painted

(30:46):
one color, and that makes it really hard to ever
find a solution. Like you said, right, the solutions probably
lay there in the middle.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Well said, that's all Well said now completely, And I find,
you know, because they now have the responsibility and you
you're in the same boat. We're talking to people. We
have a bunch of people listening to us. And I
find myself more and more these days trying not to
preach the choir. I try to lean it, you know,
reach across the fence and pull folks in the middle.

(31:14):
I tried to, you know, I just did a thing
about bear spray bolls versus bullets. I try to be
very honest about it, you know, show showcasing both sides,
not preach. Let people make their decision about what they wanted,
what they want to use for bear defense, you know.
And I know that I've nicknamed them, you know, I
used this before, But the jeth Rows and the moonbeams.

(31:36):
So those are the extremists, right, the jeth throw sorry
jeth throw out there. I'm sorry to pick on your name,
but you know, they're the ones that are going to
push the button and eliminate all the predators. And then
the moonbeams are the ones, like I said, they have
some spiritual connection during a full moon, that have some vibe,
you know, and they love all the predators. You know.
I may never get their ears, but there are a

(31:58):
lot of folks in the middle to both sides, and
they don't know which one to be on. And I
think that you know, giving them the right information and
talking to them about the things that you just mentioned,
most folks listen, and most folks are pretty smart. You
let the facts out in front of them and they'll
make some pretty good decisions. And I think we got
to resist the extremism. I think we got to We

(32:19):
just got to say no, we're not going that route anymore.
We're tired of this polarization. It ain't working, it's broken,
So it's time to let's find this compromise in the middle.
And a lot of people, look, I have some friends man,
and both sides that look at me and call me
a whimp for picking that middle ground. And yeah, I'm sorry, man,
I guess I'm a wimp, but I think it's the

(32:40):
way forward.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Well, I've liked to refer to it as this, and
I think I heard you say the same thing or
something like it. It's like the radical center. It's kind
of radical now to be in the middle. And I
think that actually takes maybe the most boldness these days
is to resist falling into this while you're in this
camp of this camp, resist that that's the easy choice

(33:02):
to be like, Oh, that's my team and I'm just
going to follow them for wherever they go, whatever they say.
It's a lot harder these days to carve out your
own path somewhere in the middle and maybe pick a
little bit from both sides and hear both sides and
consider different ideas. That's a that's a tough path to
to hoe.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
But yeah, and I think we got to make that
team strong. Man. I tell you I've gone to all
the I go to a lot of the Fish Wildlife
Commission and meeting they're listening at very least, and it
is the it's the jet throws and the moonbeams that
show up and talk they're allowed. Man, they're the squeaky
wheels and that radical center that we need that needs
to exist. They don't show up, and we need to

(33:43):
show up. The radical center needs to show up. And
we got to talk, and we gotta we got to represent.
And I'm and you know, honestly most people officially in
Montana that that's who they are. You know, they just
choose not to speak up for some reason. I don't
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Yeah, you talked about earlier how you'd like to kind
of push back on the kind of I'm strgging to
think of what I'm trying to say here, but you
kind of push back on the obvious things like if
you're talking to someone on one side of the issue,
you'll kind of give them the devil's advocate perspective, and
then if you're over on the other side of the
issue talking to folks of there, you'll give them the

(34:20):
other side and kind of, you know, push on, pushback
on both. So we kind of pushed back a little
bit on the idea that you know, large carnivores are
destroying wildlife and destroying hunting and destroying ranching. There are challenges,
there are localized impacts, but all the studies have also
shown that, you know, it's not cataclysmic on the flip
side though, then there's also the Moonbeam story, you know,

(34:44):
in Yellowstone for example. Right there was the reporting and
the studies that came out, you know, ten years after
reintroduction about the ecological impacts the wolves were having, and
there was the eventually social media posts and films and
videos talking about how wolves change rivers and all the
different things like that that the trophic cascades story and ideas,

(35:07):
and then I don't know, ten years ago or however
long it was, then new studies came out saying, well,
that's that's not quite right. There's actually other things that
are impacting you know, beavers and grassland production, all this
kind of stuff. So maybe the wolves change rivers thing
isn't everything that it was that those those stories told us.

(35:28):
And when that all came out, what I heard from
my community from hunters was jumping on that and latching
onto it and saying, wow, all that stuff was overload
of croc All the trophic cascade stuff is blowny. Anything
like wolves and bears aren't all you know, everything that
the crazy California Disney World. People said get rid of them, right.

(35:48):
That was like the Jethrow reaction to the news that
the Trophic Cascade store was a little bit more complex.
The jeth Throw reaction was that means it's bs again.
The truth is more in the middle. From what I've
learned in my research is that there is something there,
but it's a little bit more gray. This is a
very long winded way to get to a question. Sorry case,

(36:11):
My question is can you speak to what the reality
is of the positive impact of having these animals on
the landscape? Because you mentioned this earlier, You mentioned like, hey,
there's importance to having a balanced ecosystem, there's importance to
having wolves and bears and lions on the landscape. It's
easy for someone to say that. It's harder for someone

(36:32):
to understand that. Can you help us understand what does
that mean? What does that look like? And and was
the Trophic Cascades story a load of croc or is
there some reality there but maybe just not as simplified
as those videos and early stories made it seem.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
Yeah, it was some good, pretty good propaganda from that side,
you know, Like you said, I think that at first
it did appear that it was something that made sense.
But I think you're right, it's blood gray there. I
think that part of it's true, But there's a lot
of other bits and pieces that are missing from that story.
Are that actually add to that. What's happening in the change,

(37:08):
Like you mentioned, I's going there, So what have I
seen on the ground. Do I think wolves had created
a more vibrant ecosystem? Yes, it's the short answer is yes.
But I think it's it's it waxes and WANs, it
gets out of balance and then we you know, you know,

(37:30):
as soon as the wolf hunt came in and there
was some actual animals being harvested and they were moving
around and not getting the sedentary, at some level things changed.
And I feel like I honestly do. And again there's
all the moon beams are getting mad at me, but
you know, there's a couple of things that happened there.
The actual ecosystem seemed more vibrant. Everybody was a little

(37:56):
bit more happy, and I remember, I mean, and I
was like, yes, you know, like we got we got
like I've got friends that hated wolves ten years ago
and now love them because they love hunting them so much, Right,
and if you in ten years ago, if they could
push the button and all the wolves that disappeared, they
would have. Now there's no way they would do that
because they enjoy that. They enjoy going out there and hunting,

(38:19):
actually hunting them, so now they found value in them. Yeah,
there's not there's not a many elk on the on
the landscape. It's harder to find antlers in some of
these spots where I used to go find them laying
around everywhere, and during the shed season. There's a lot
of things like that. But you know, there's there's more.
I see more diversity of wildlife, especially meso predators, you know,
things like bobcats and badgers and pine martin and things

(38:42):
that you almost never seen. Somehow there's more around. And
whether that's directly a tie to wolves, I don't. I
can't make that correlation, but there's certainly more. It's more vibrant,
more variable than I've ever seen it, more closely to
pure you know. The other thing is the more we

(39:03):
curate the wild, we're just domesticating it. You know, if
we take freaders up the landscape, we have a bunch
of unculates kind of being lazily around, you know, and
we're one step away from putting fences around them and
call them cows. But when you have predators and lands came,
there's on the landscape and they're shaking things up. You

(39:26):
can see it, you can feel it. There's just something
about every animal is just a little bit on edge
living life, a little bit more alive. And I think
that that's that's something to consider, you know, we can
cons we can continue down the road of you know,
let's be honest. I mean, the more regulations and the
the more taking predators off the landscape and all that stuff,

(39:49):
we're just we're one step closer to Europe, you know,
and go there and go walk around the wild and
tell me how awesome it feels. Yeah, And I think
that on the next step is what we have down
in Texas, you know. And so I think that we've
got to look at it and realize that those animals
are doing something to make it better and making and

(40:12):
keeping and maintaining the wild. I'm not a biologist. I'm
not out there measuring things and stuff like that, but
I can just feel it, and I can just see it.
And as a person who's out there pursuing multiple species
to film and wanting and finds value and seeing them
and their interactions with each other. I'm seeing it more
than ever. And I'm sure it has to do with
having predators on the landscape.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like that is so much
more relatable, I think, for people than a biological study
that says, well, because wolves are back on the landscape,
it reduced the amount of time that elk spend on
this patch of habitat by fifteen percent, which increased grass

(40:55):
production by twenty two percent, which led to more birds
on the more birds in the valley, and slightly less
pressure on willows and aspens, which eventually led to more
beavers on the pond. And YadA, YadA, YadA, like all
those things might be true, and it seems like, right,
there are these these cascading effects that when you insert
or remove an animal from a natural ecosystem, it has

(41:17):
a set of ripple effects on everything around it. Everything's
connected in some ways, right, But that's hard to wrap
your head around when you're reading some kind of thick study.
But when you're out there, you're right, you can feel it,
and I know that's fuzzy, and that's obviously not irreviewable

(41:39):
or publishable in the journal. But you can feel a difference.
I mean, it's like when you point out the difference
between like walking around in Nebraska versus Montana, I can certainly,
you know, a test to the fact that everything is different.
The volume is turned up to eleven. It just feels
like everything you and every other animal in the landscape

(42:02):
is on a different level. Everything is heightened, The stakes
are higher. Every sound, smell, shape, movement matters, and that
finds its way into every ounce of your being when
you're out there. Man, So there's something there. There's so right,
there's something there.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
Yeah, it's a funny one, you know. I think another
thing is a lot of people they used the baseline
of what's a healthy ecosystem quote unquote, that's what it
was in the past. You know, like my my father's generation,
you know, grew up in an overpopulated health population at
some level, you know where that was all there everywhere,
especially the yellows in ecosystem, and they think that that

(42:45):
that's the baseline where you need to get back to. Right.
But it was very what's the word, you know, it
was just very uh, I can't think of it, but
it was just yeah, very it's artificial, artificial, yeah, and
it was just a lot of el but there was
a lot of not a lot of other things. Yeah,
it felt different back then. So you know, I don't know, man,

(43:07):
I think that I have the wolves made it in
a better place. I think they have and they haven't.
You know, if you take put the human factor in,
I think that there's some people who lost a lot
of jobs and the wolves came in, But there was
a bunch of people who got jobs, you know. I
know even in the Park County, the county and this

(43:28):
north of y Elstone here, I mean half a million,
half a billion, five hundred million dollars go into tourism
and a lot of that's just to come see wildlife.
And it's ever increasing. And I think that, you know,
a lot of people are celebrating the diversity of wildlife
that we have here that include wolves and grizzly bears,
because that is a big draw. White people come here,

(43:49):
but they also come here to see everything else, and
everything else is here because of those wolves and those
grizzly bears are here too. It's hard. It's hard, you know,
It's it's like you're saying it's easy to connect those
little dots, right, but to look big picture and let's look,
let's look thirty years, forties, one hundred years. I mean
nature works in thousands of years, right, not not these
short term things. And are we doing something good? It

(44:13):
seems like we're on the right path. But I do think,
you know, these prettters need to be managed. And that's
the bottom line. We live in a world that is
greatly influenced by people habitat fragmentation. We're leaving our mark,
you know, and if we just left everything unmanaged, it
would be a catastrophe. So it's getting the other side

(44:37):
to realize that that's part of the equation. That's very
tough sometimes, but I think more and more people are
starting to come around.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, so let's continue down that line. There's this the
reality of the of the situation. If we're willing to
look at things that, yeah, like you just said, management
is needed. There are all these different ways we're influencing
wildlife now that require that we maintain being a part

(45:07):
of it. Right, Maybe if you turn back the clock,
you have to turn back the clock a very very
long ways, twenty thousand plus years. If you want to
see what North America was like before humans were here.
But we've always been a part of it, but less
so maybe than we are now. So maybe twenty thousand
years ago or ten thousand years ago, we had a
lighter touch, and huge populations of carnivores existed on the

(45:29):
landscape with huge populations of herbivores, and they are able
to live in balance. But now, to your point, there's
all these different things going on. Having both of these
things out there is important, but you know, there are
all these human elements too, and part of managing wildlife
now is also managing wildlife people relationships, and sometimes that

(45:52):
is just as important for the future of a species
as the actual numbers on the ground.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
Right.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
So to your point, when wolf hunting was reached, was
so wolf's are reintroduced. There's a lot of anti wolf
sentiments from hunters and ranchers. But then when wolf hunting
was opened back up, you mentioned that it made a
lot of people happy on the hunting side, right, Folks
all of a sudden had a sense of agency. They
felt like they could do something about it. They could

(46:18):
get out there and chase these critters and maybe impact
things a little bit. The way they'd like to see them.
But at the same time, it's still managed, there were
still quotas, it was still regulated. So you said something
that confirmed a theory I've always had and I'd love
to hear more about it, which was that I've always
thought that by opening a hunting season, by having an open,

(46:40):
carefully managed, and regulated season for a carnivor of some species,
it actually improves the long term prospects for that species,
because yes, there will be some taken through hunting, but
it increases support for that animal because now you have
a new constituency that has a reason to value that animal.
So you said it perfectly with wolves, right, because now

(47:01):
there are some folks out there who used to hate wolves,
but now they're okay with wolves or even like wolves,
because they've started hunting them. They feel if they have
some control. Maybe they've developed a relationship with the species
in a different kind of way now because they've spent
time out there looking for them, studying them, learning about them,
and all of a sudden, you have more people that
want that critter around, maybe not the same levels that

(47:23):
an anti hunter or just an animal activist wants, but
they still want them around. I think mountain lions are
a great example of this. Right, some of the most
some of the most kind of like profoundly involved advocates
for lions in America are houndsman line hunters for sure.
So is there you know, from your perspective, do you

(47:44):
think that that holds Is there that hold water? Is
that something that you know we could make a case
to the larger environmental crowd, like, hey, this is actually
gonna help wolves in the long run, this is actually
gonna help lions in the long run. Could this help
grizzly bears in the long run? That's very contentious right now?
Could you could you expand on that a little bit more?

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, I mean the bottom line is is that if
if the majority or even more than half of the
majority of the people don't want the animal there, that
it won't be there. Changing the value quote unquote value
to for an animal within the perspective of people changes
a lot. And you said some things that I think

(48:25):
are really important. I'll try to touch on. But you know,
so once an animal seems, once an animal becomes able
to hunt, it does the value changes? You know, now
you have it's a game species, it's an animal that
you can go out and enjoy being out in the
outdoors and in pursuit of you like you said, you

(48:45):
have that can you have that connection that you feel
like you're actually doing something to potentially save the elk
or whatever you you're worried about. Yeah, and then and
then again, what you were saying, I think is the
most important is that when you're on the landscape with
these animals, now you're hunting them, and you're learning about them,
and you're pulling the veil off them a little bit.

(49:07):
As you learn about them and observe them, you start
you start to understand what they really are. And I
think that you know, like I said, once you understand
who these animals really are, then you can actually have
a real perspective of their place on the in the
ecosystem and their place in the world. You know, the

(49:31):
lion hunters, houndsman man, it was. It's a great example,
like I said, right now, there's houndsmen, especially in the
state of Montana, there's a you know, kind of a
big push to reduce the line population and the houndsmen
are like they're the biggest animal advocates out there right now.
I mean, they're like hell, no, we won't go or
you know, we're going to draw the line. And it's

(49:52):
all based and real science. You know, in fact, a
lot of the sciences is from these line in the
front of these houndsmen. Because they're the only ones out
there looking for cats. Are the only people out there
that have any idea how many of them are out there.
They've got their finger on the pulse of these animals.
And I think that you see that with even bear
hunters in the North and Alaska and stuff like that.

(50:13):
They're the ones that have the actual pulse on these animals.
And if there was a quota that we got too
high up there, they'd be the first ones pounded on
the doors of the congressmen saying no, we're not going
to go there. So moral of the story is if
we can collectively all have value in these animals, and
again the common goal is that we want them to
be healthy on the landscape, because you can't hunt animals

(50:35):
that are not healthy on the landscape, and you can't
photograph animals that are not healthy in the landscape. If
that's the common denominator and we're all fighting for it,
then the animal is going to thrive long term and
everybody's going to be happy. And I think this we
go we look for it's it's pulling back. And here's
the thing, like with grizzly bears right now, you know,

(50:55):
and lions and wolves, it's all of them. As soon
as you introduce fear into the management any emotion or
lack of fear, you know, any of these. As soon
as you introduce emotion into wildlife policies and decisions, it
goes wrong. And I think a lot of the pushes

(51:15):
I see from a lot of people right now to
dealistic grizzly bear comes out of fear. We gotta hunt
them because they're getting too comfortable, you know, or you
know whatever. No, we gotta hunt them because because whenever
that happens, when the population is time to hunt them,
not because they're getting too comfortable or I'm too I
see three of them when I go ol hunting now,
and I'm afraid, you know, that's not why we hunt.

(51:36):
We gotta hunt these animals. We got to hunt them
because they've reached the population now that they're a huntable population,
and I think that we got to hold that line,
you know, And so you know why protected animal they
are afraid of and that's one of the hardest things
right now. So another big part of what I do

(51:57):
is trying to help people understand that, yeah, these animals
can be potentially dangerous, but your fear might be a
little blown out of proportion here and let me tell
you why. And this is this from thirty years of experience,
and that's all I'm just trying to do. You're trying
to do. Yeah, did I answer that question? Kind of
went on a take it there a little bit, But

(52:18):
I think it does come down to value. And I
think that if we can get everybody to want these
animals to be in the landscape for whatever reason. But again,
the common denominator is that we want these healthy populations
to either hunt or healthy populations to either take pictures
of whatever. But that's the common denominator. If we can
all agree on that, man, then everything's good.

Speaker 4 (52:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Well, here's the funny thing is, as I've been kind
of working through this myself and working on this book
that I was telling you about, one of the realizations
that I that I had was at both sides of
this issue need the same thing for their life values,
their lifestyles to continue the future if you look at

(53:13):
the traditional animal lover environmentalists who wants to see lots
of grizzlies and wants to see wolves, they need those
critters to be In order for those critters to be around,
they need open, wild, healthy, intact landscapes.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
Right.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
We have some of that on public lands, but as
you know, many of these critters live off of National
park lands. Many of these species. If we want them
to continue to live into the future, if we want
grizzly bears to maintain genetic variability, to not just be
an island population in Yellowstone, they need to be able
to have habitat outside of the parks, right, So they
need open, undeveloped, healthy habitat. So what is that that's

(53:51):
private lands? Who owns all these private lands around Yellowstone
or Glacier National Park or Colorado? Well, it's ranchers and
land owners who live in these valleys who are trying
to either make a living raising cattle or sheep, or
they're probably hunters. They're people who make a living on
that land. Well, what's happening to allow of those people, Well,

(54:14):
it's hard to make a living these days, it's hard
to make a profit. They're having to sell off to
subdivisions or to whoever it is, all the many different
people that want to purchase these properties and develop them
for one reason or another. So for that to happen,
for us to keep undeveloped lands, for us to keep
ranchers in business, and keep these undeveloped lands out there,

(54:37):
what do we need to do. We need to help
make their life a little bit more manageable. We can't
make their life so they can't make a living. We
need them to be able to turn a profit and
to be able to maintain their way of life. How
do you do that? Help them coexist with carnivores, Help
lessen that burden a little bit, Help make it so
they can live alongside these critters. Now flip it to

(54:58):
the other side. These ranchers and hunters. They want to
be able to keep on hunting. They want to keep
on raising cattle or sheep or whatever it is. They
want to live their life. They want to be able
to do these things they've done. Well, what do we
need to do to make sure that they can do that.
It's not going to be wiping grizzly bears and wolves
off the landscape. It's not going to be you know,

(55:20):
taking matters into our own hands and shoot, shovel and
shut up that kind of thing and making hunters look
horrible and making ranchers look like they're part of the problem. No,
they need to showcase and would benefit from showcasing the Hey,
we want these lands. We would love to be able
to make a living out here doing this kind of stuff.
Maybe there's creative ways to make a little bit of

(55:41):
money from a fee added to National park passes. Maybe there's,
you know, all these different habitat leasing programs, ways that
we can you know, compensate folks who are bearing the
burden of having this wildlife on their property that's benefiting
them and everyone else around them. So I think there's
ways that if we look at what's needed, which is
healthy habitat open landscapes. You need that to hunt, you

(56:04):
need that to be able to see wolves. You need undeveloped,
intact places. You need that to ranch, you need that
for grizzly bears to spread out to where they are.
We all want the same thing, but the only way
we're going to get it is by kind of realizing
there's some compromise in the middle that we need to
make and then we have to understand the two different
perspectives a little bit and give and take a little
bit here and there to finally get that stuff, because

(56:25):
we can't do it by ourselves, right, we need everyone
kind of pulling in the same direction. Does anything that
make sense? I'm kind of I'm laying all of my
ideas on.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Your singing my song. Man, you're singing my song. Everything
you said is so so accurate. I've once said one time,
like the ranchers man are the the It's the greatest.
They're the greatest thing for wildlife right now. I mean
it really is. I mean without them, we'd be wildlife
would be in big, big trouble. And we just people
have got to connect the dots to make that realization.
These wide open spaces under a threat of development. You know,

(56:59):
I've watched my family sell up, their sell off their
ranches and thirty acre parcels here and there to development
over the years. And it's hard. It's hard, but it's
because it's a hard living and and it's people aren't supported,
you know, Yeah, you know, are there ways we are
we you know, in my backyard, we're working with ranchers
here who are willing to let all animals on their property.

(57:21):
We're trying to figure out ways to mitigate conflict. There's
a lot of innovation with AI and different technologies right
now that are really moving the needle, and there's going
to be a time I think that that people are
going to realize. I feel like people are moving that
direction that these wide open spaces are super important for
everything and that we need to maintain them and how

(57:42):
can we make them sustainable and through And it's through acceptance,
it's through taking through these technologies. Yeah, no, you're preaching.
You're preaching my my gospel by all that. Man. I
think Kenyon Anderson for twenty eight, I don't know, let's go.

(58:02):
I think it's I think it's good. I mean because
I think that this is a this is a narrative
that not a lot of people are. It's not speaking loudly,
but I really do. I think it's common sense solutions.
You know. I talk to ranchers that are like they
want the help. You know, sure there's the shoot shovel,

(58:22):
shut up folks like you said out there, but they're
they're going extinct, man, they really are. I think a
lot of these younger younger folks that are taking these
ranches over. They they they see that they can raise
cattle through the summer months, hunt in the fall, and
then take take those same people out and show them
wildlife for the winter. You know, they can double dip,

(58:43):
triple dip. Right. They see the value of these animals
on the landscape. I mean, some of the best documentaries
I've made mountain lions, wolves, and grizzly bears have all
been on private land. It's some of the greatest habitat
out there. I'll give you another example, and I I've
seen firsthand. This is ridiculous, but it's true. I've seen

(59:05):
some spots where cattle overgrades in areas and some thistles
popped up, and then in the spring, the voles love
the thistle root and the bears come in and hammer
that area. And I've seen it, and it's in this
very specific time where the bears are mating. So you
see these large congregation of grizzly bears on the landscape
going to these cattle ranches mating, and then it's actually

(59:28):
bolster and the grizzly bears are actually populations getting bolstered
by being on cattle ranches, you know, and I always wondered,
is that, you know, is there an aspect of that
that's kind of emulating something that happened with the bison?
You know, who knows? Right, I think we just got
to dig into all these things and figure out what's
what's working. And we've got to make sure these large
these large spaces still remain because we lose them, we're

(59:51):
in trouble.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah. So so another thing like and again I'm you
are helping me here, like pressure test some of the
things that I've been trying to like put into words.
So so I'm I'm getting an unpaid service out of
you here.

Speaker 3 (01:00:06):
Case I appreciate conversation a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
One of the best at well yeah, me too. This
is stuff like I've been thinking about for so many years,
and and it's really hard to articulate it though in
like a social media post, right, because these things are complex,
they're nuanced, they they resist simplification, right. So I've always thought, man,
I need a big place to really put it all

(01:00:32):
out there. And so that's what part of this book
has become that I'm that I've been working on and
and one of the things that became very apparent to me,
and I've always thought it is going back to like
what our values are for our community, the hunting community.
One of the things that's very valuable to us is
the ability to continue hunting well into the future. Right
where it's very easy to get folks fired up about

(01:00:54):
defending our rights to hunt, right, that's that's an easy
thing for us to understand. We need to maintain our
rights and releg is to hunt well. What is that
dependent on? That is dependent on public support, because we
live in a democracy where the majority rules, and you know,
if eventually the ninety six percent of the nation who
doesn't hunt, all of a sudden not you know, what's

(01:01:17):
the word I'm looking for here, stop supporting what we do.
We're in trouble. There will be ways to lose our
rights to hunt if we lose that public support. So
this is a long winded way of saying that we
need to be careful about our pr We need to
be careful about how we present ourselves. We need to
be careful about how the larger community looks at hunters
and the value the hunting provides. Right now, one of

(01:01:40):
the best ways we've done that the hunting community We've
always said, we've always liked to prophesize to the world
that we are the best conservationists. We're the original conservations
where the real true, you know, hands on the ground,
hands in the dirt conservationists.

Speaker 4 (01:01:55):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
We do a lot of good stuff, and there's a
lot of truth to that, tons of truth to that.
But if at the same time we are saying all that,
some hunters are also driving around with pickup trucks that
say shoot a pack, or smoke a pack a day,
or shoot shovel and shut up, or posting pictures on
social media with an illegally shot wolf hanging by a noose,

(01:02:18):
or different things like that that I've seen, And all
of a sudden, the non hunting public sees this and
they say, oh, that's hunters. They're people who hate wolves
and hate grizzlies and want to kill them all, and
want to whack and stack and pile up two hundred
coyotes and just just kill them all. That's what hunters are.
It seems like you only want to conserve the species

(01:02:39):
that you want around, but you're willing to just eradicate
everything else. That doesn't seem like a conservationist that raises
a lot of red flags about what hunters are, or
who hunters are, or what they are bringing to the
table here. I've always thought that this predator hate crowd,
which is probably a small it's a bad apple, few
bad apples within our community, but they can be a

(01:03:00):
loud community. They are really self defeating. They are really
hurting our ability to maintain our rights to hunt in
the future. They're not helping hunters by killing a bunch
of wolves. In talking about it in this way, they're
actually hurting our future because of that. Have you seen that?
Have you thought about that? Have you experienced any of that?
What's your take?

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
I tell you you and I have the same mind. Yeah,
one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
I think that we've got they may be doing the
most damage. I really believe that. And I've said this before,
and I've got a lot of people come back to
me and say, no, gun rights folks and animal activists
like Peter are doing the most damage. But I don't know.
I don't think so. I think that we all know
what they're doing. Most of the world knows what they're doing.

(01:03:46):
They can smell what they're doing. But when they see
someone label themselves as a hunter and do exactly the
things that you said that that tarnishes the hunter more
than anything. And those folks who are on the fence
that you know about that, when they see that it's
it makes them change their mind. Those other folks have
already changed their mind. It doesn't matter. So it's a

(01:04:09):
big part of what I do, man. I tell you,
I think it's an important thing is that, you know,
I when it comes to demographics, and I mean I
can literally look at if I look at my socials,
I'm about fifty to fifty, you know, I have fifty
percent hunters and fifty percent tree huggers, you know, and
so and sometimes I'll, I'll honestly do I'll do a

(01:04:30):
little bait and switch, man. I'll I'll put something up
and I'll pull in some hunters and I'll throw out
some heavy, fluffy stuff to them, and then vice versa.
You know, I'll put something fluffy out there and I'll
pull it in and I'll, you know, take a picture
with an elkrack on my back and say this is
coming straight to you from a hunter, right. But I
want to pull people into the conversation because I think

(01:04:50):
that we got hunting will go extinct. If people don't
continue or don't continue to advocate for it, don't weave
the garden, meaning look for those people that are doing
that and just get tell them no, stop it, do
not support it, you know, and tr trust me that
pressure will go on when fellow hunters start saying, dude,

(01:05:13):
that's not cool, over and over again, that pure pressure
will make a difference. And we got to do that.
We got to call these people out because if we don't,
we're in trouble. Per I mean, I think and I've
seen it, and it's that's there's some sloppy stuff out there,
and you know, I even think it goes as far
as you know, these big issues like grizzly bears. If

(01:05:34):
you want grizzly Bears delisted as a hunter, talk about
it with facts, right, talk about it coming from a
place that makes sense. You know, if you start to
getting real emotional about it and it comes from a
bunch of bs and a bunch of old school mentalities
that don't make any sense. Everything else you say that

(01:05:54):
comes out of your mouth, no one's going to stand.
You're going to listen to it. And that includes saying
I'm a hunter and it's worth being around. So think
about what you're saying, think about the decisions you're making,
and make sure they're based on that. Man. I think
that's super important.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
So let's dive into the grizzly bear situation a little
bit more, because this one is is hot. It's been
hot for a long time. It's going to get hotter
now as it's seemingly likely given the political wins, that
they're probably or there's a high chance of them getting
delisted now and maybe they're being hunting seasons in this
somewhat near future. All of that is going to be

(01:06:31):
this huge Some will view as like a huge win,
some will view as a huge loss. I will look
at as like this very fragile moment where things could
be made or broken for a long time. For example,
if you are a hunter like we are, and if

(01:06:52):
you think that grizzlies should be managed like other animals
and that there should be a hunting season for them
at some point, can you imagine the negative ramifications if
a grizzly bear hunt were opened up and some famous
bear from the edge of Yellowstone or edge of Rantiiton

(01:07:12):
is shot by a slob hunter who posts something nasty
about it and like glad to have this piece of
shit off the landscape or whatever. Can you imagine this
will be cecil lyon CeCILL the lion times a thousand, right,
So there's going to be this massive pr both opportunity
and risk if this happens right. It could be the opposite.

(01:07:34):
It could be someone who comes into it like you're describing,
who says, hey, I'm a conservationist, I'm a wildlife advocate.
I am a hunter. And you know, the biologists say
now is the time to hunt them, and they're going
to do it in a careful, regulated way. So I
want to be a part of that, and I want
to do it the right way, and I want to
show respect to these animals and to everything else out here.

(01:07:54):
And that person could be a tremendous ambassador and maybe
change the minds or educate some people. But it could
go either way so easily. So I guess what I'm
curious about your take on this case is where do
you land on this delisting issue. It's a tricky one
because well, I won't say what I think, tell me

(01:08:15):
what do you think?

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
It's it's it's a tricky one and it's one that
I just I wrestle with obviously because people people really
listen to me about grizzly bears. I wrestled with it
for a lot of reasons. But again I draw the line,
and I've drawn the line for myself and the same
thing I said that we got to talk to other
people about the same conversation I got to have with
the Minnesota guy in his tree stands in the north Woods.

(01:08:40):
What is going to create a healthy ecosystem, a balanced
ecosystem if biologists say that the grizzly bear numbers have
reached saturation, reached capacity, and it's time to take him
off the list. I mean, delisting is what is a
wonderful thing for species? Right It's a It's a marker

(01:09:02):
that the population is growing and becoming more healthy. That's
what we ultimately want. Right now, At what point do
we start to hunt them? I think it's a different metric, right.
They're an animal that has a low reproductive rate, They're
an animal that's very susceptible to changing environment. I think
all those things got to be in consideration. Like you said,
it's a very fragile time in many ways, and that's

(01:09:24):
one of them. I think Montana. You know, I've heard
they're going to wait five years no matter what, to
really get a finger on the pulse of what the
grizzly bears are doing before they even think about hunting them.
I think that's I think that's great. I think that
that's smart. I think the fact they put a number
on it like that right off the top is a
It shows the care in some level. But then you know,

(01:09:47):
how many, how many can we hunt? What bears are
we trying to hunt? I think it's a lot of
stuff like that, And I think it's important that you
know this is these are biologists that are making this
decision that and have an agenda. I always like this
idea of kind of a committee of biologist that may
be on a little bit both sides the fence, you know,
kind of really balance it out, because you know, no

(01:10:08):
matter what, when these desisions are made, there's always that
everybody's got a little bit of a a twist, a spin,
no matter what. It's just in a human right, you
have a bias. Right, So I think it gets is
an unbiased of folks at the table that say, okay,
it's time green light, right, and then man, I mean

(01:10:30):
that's my it's my take. What do we want? I mean,
what do we want with grizzly bears? We want grizzly
bears to be on the landscape and the healthy population
that you can get along with people and coexist, And
if that that requires hunting to manage, then that is
then that is a great thing to do. And that's
the bottom line. Do I think that we're ready for
it right now? I mean, right now, there's a lot

(01:10:52):
of other management things that are going off with wildlife
that I think, Wow, they're really having a hard time
figuring this out. So do I think they're ready to
handle something as compli geated to the grizzly bear right now?

Speaker 4 (01:11:01):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Do I think they can in the future if they
get their ducks in a row? Yeah, do I think
that that would be a big win for the grizzly bear.
Believe it or not, it would be. If we can
get our ducks in a row, we can come up
with the statistics that bears are ready to be hunted
based on not fear, but on biological facts by as
unbiased committee of biologists, then it's a celebra It's something

(01:11:23):
to celebrate, absolutely, And then we've got to be super careful.
As you said, Mark, you know, as hunters, we have
to be very respectful. We got to look at as
a gift that we're gonna we're gonna baby and take
care of respectfully. And then you know, we got to
look at something we're gonna be proud of a lower
forty eight states, and we have we live in a
place that we've managed and taken care of so well

(01:11:45):
that we're allowed to hunt grizzly bears because there's enough
of a healthy population and there's ecosystems that exist in
this place that are that are great enough to allow
for grizzly bears to live in a healthy way. That
is awesome, and we got to celebrate that and take
care of it. So let's hope we get there. Man,
I don't know. Is that ten years from now, is
that three years from now, is that twenty years from now?

(01:12:08):
I don't know. We can't do it too soon. I
think we got to be very careful with that. And
I think it's hunters, we've got to respect that and
realize that let's not do this too soon. Let's not
jump the gun because we're a little bit afraid of
these animals when we go out there, Let's not jump
the gun because we're really bad at making elk cow
calls and a bear comes in like it's a predator call.
Let's just let's just do it the right way.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Yeah, there's so many angles to this one, and so
much of it, like you said, is wrapped up an
emotion on both sides of the issue. For sure, on
the side that wants to hunt grizzlies. You mentioned the
fact that some folks want to do that because they
think we need to reinstill fear in the bears. There's
too many of them out there. When I go elk cunning,
They're dangerous, They're a threat. Can you just expand on

(01:12:54):
that side a little bit more? Because you've spent so
much time with these bears yourself all over the country,
you understand them more than almost anyone in the country. Probably,
should I be afraid of grizzly bears out there? How
much wood hunting change or not change that?

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
Yeah? I appreciate this. I want to talk about this
because it's a good one. I've thought about this so much,
and I've been in places where there's bears that are
not hunted, and I've been in places where there's plate
bears are hunted, and I've been in various places where
bears have different relationship with people. Here's the bottom line.
The bottom line is that bears are not out there
to look. They're not looking for people to kill and
eat them. Okay, people need to get that out of

(01:13:33):
their head. Has that happened yes, Can it happen yes,
but it's getting struck by lightning twice? Kind of statistics there.
Why do bears attack people? Let's think about that. Let's
break that down from behavior away. The fundamental baseline behavior
why a bear attacks people is because they are afraid

(01:13:55):
of them and they see it as a perceived threat. Now,
and I will, and I'm going to throw this out
there on the record. When we are allowed to hunt
bears and there's people actively pursuing them out there and
taking shots at them, we are going to see an
increase in attacks. And it's going to be two full
and there's gonna be a lot of reasons why there
can be more people on the landscape actually putting themselves
in bear scenarios. There's going to be bears that are

(01:14:18):
wounded and that are going to be acting in survival mode,
and they're going to get people, and then there's just
there's going to be an increase of bears afraid of
people on the landscape. And the way that bears, grizzly
bears specifically deal with things that they're afraid of two things.
They either run away or they fight. Fight or flight, right,
And one thing about the lower forty eight grizzly bear

(01:14:40):
is that it chooses fight a lot more than a
lot of other bears do. So do I think that
making bears more afraid of people is a good thing,
not necessarily, not in the way that most people think
it's going to because I think that is the very
reason why they attack you. Yeah, and you know what
dead bears don't teach real quick.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
Yeah, before you go any further, how many times have
you been in close encounters like this with grizzles, Because
I want to make sure people understand this isn't just
like a random person saying this kind of stuff. You
have been in close contact in these types of situations
dozens hundreds of times.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
I mean it's not easily hundreds of times. I've been
charged by bears at least a dozen times more than that,
more than that, but I've also charged bears, probably more
than that, more than I've been charged. I've bear sprayed
bears seven times. But I'm you know, I'm a unique guy.

(01:15:37):
I go out in the forest and I'm actively pursuing
grizzly bears, often with the wind in my face, sneaking
up on them to close the gap so I can
get close enough to get a good shot of them.
I spend time with them. I mean, I yeah, I
have again hundreds of encounters, and most of them bears
run away they see me, but in place that they're

(01:16:00):
not hunted. Let's stick like cat my National Park. I've walked,
I mean, bears walk within ten feet of me and
don't even look at me. They just don't care. You're
not a threat. They don't look like you're at us food,
they don't look at you as threat, and they just
leave you alone. They look at you like you're a
fox or something on the landscape and just don't care.

(01:16:22):
But when we start taking shots at them, they're going
to care. And I think that, you know, some were
gonna run away again, some are gonna get more afraid,
and some are going to use that flight part of
that response more. But there's gonna be those ones. They're
going to feel like they're in a corner and they're
gonna be extra afraid. There's gonna be a little bit
more fight. So that argument doesn't hold ground hold water

(01:16:43):
at all, and I wish hunters would stop using it
because it doesn't. There's no statistics about that anywhere that
I've seen, and from my thirty plus years or almost fifty,
if you look at from a lifetime standpoint, I'd not
seen any any evidence of that being true. So it's
just a bad argument, and I think it's part of

(01:17:05):
one of those arguments. Like I said, stop saying it
because it just makes you look like you don't know
what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
Now, continuing down that line of thought though with like fear,
another reason why folks like to suggest that we should
be hunting these grizzlies is that they are now spreading
outside of places that are appropriate for them to live. Right,
some people would say, well, it's okay for grizzlies to
live in Yellowstone, but I don't want them in Cody,
or I don't want them, you know, knocking on the
door behind my place and drigs, I don't want them

(01:17:44):
you know, bumping up to my ranch here in Livingstone
or wherever it is. There's folks who are afraid of
grizzly bears expanding outside of these little ranges that are
in now towards more of our historic range. You know,
there's places like the here of Idaho excuse me, Idaho
that have been designated as a recovery zone for grizzlies

(01:18:06):
that have appropriate habitat that still don't have bears because
of the fact that they just haven't been able to
connect back into their consistently enough. Argument being by some peoples,
if we start hunting them, it will keep that from
ever happening and will push them back into their tiny
kind of micro islands of habitat right now, what do
you think about that? Aon like the fear of them

(01:18:27):
expanding and then be on the flip side, which is
the benefits of them expanding.

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
Yeah, it's a tough one because you know people don't
want them there. Then it's it's a tough you know,
should they should they be there? I don't know the
answer to that. You know, there are they are expanding,
They're going into their historic range. Where do we draw
the line of where they should be or where they
used to be. You know, eighteen fifty is that the
range that they should be able to get back into. No,
I mean we've done a lot since then, So I

(01:18:55):
do think it's going to come down to again unbiased
biologists saying, okay this, you know, they're there's going to
be some collateral damage, right for let's just use the
eastern Rocky Mountain front. Right now, we're seeing a massive
expansion of bears pushing off the front. Bob marshabled in
this area out into the flatlands, and there's a lot

(01:19:15):
of ranchers there that haven't had a deal with grizzly
bears and it's you know, it's scary to them. They
don't know what to do about it. But simultaneously, there
are grizzly bears now moving into habitat that's completely suitable
for grizly bear and will benefit from having grizzly bears
on the landscape. So should we allow that happen? If

(01:19:36):
a few people are going to get mad, but it's
ultimately going to make the hundreds of thousands of acres
healthier ecosystem. I don't know the answer to that. It's
a tough one man it's a tough one. I would
love to see, you know, go out in the Missouri
River Breaks and know that there was grizzly bears running around.
But I'll tell you what, most people that live out
there don't want that, so maybe they shouldn't be there. Then,

(01:19:57):
if most people out there don't want it to be
I don't know public land, you know, it's again, it's
like if it's public land again, I think it's going
to come down to unbiased biologists kind of figuring out
what's best for that land and what's best for the ecosystem.
I can't give you a hard answer.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
On that one, mark that's fair. It's a hard one
to answer. A lot of this I think comes down
to value, like you talked about earlier, and in either
demonstrating the value that they provide already or finding ways
for them to create value in different kinds of ways.
So for example, with like a rancher, private landowner, you know,

(01:20:37):
the public you or I might say that we benefit
from grizzly from grizzly bears being on their way towards
the Missouri Breaks because we know that that's gonna, you know,
in some ways create a more healthy holistic environment and ecosystem.
We would like to know they're out there, maybe see them.
How do we make sure that the rancher that lives
next door is getting value out of that. Well, maybe

(01:20:58):
it's by compensating them in some kind of way for
the presence. Like I know there's programs out there in
eastern Montana around the American Prairie where they have programs
where if you get trail camp pictures of certain wildlife
on your private lands nearby, they'll pay you for that.
There's habitat leasing programs down by you, and you know
southwestern Montana where folks are being paid for the presence

(01:21:20):
of elk or by doing certain habitat practices that would
be beneficial to elk or bears or wolves. They're going
to compensate the rancher saying that, hey, we know you're
bearing a burden of housing this public wildlife on your
land and there's some challenges that come with that, so
we're going to find ways to help, you know, make
this financially valuable for you too. Or like I mentioned earlier,

(01:21:40):
you maybe you've heard about one of these ideas that's like, hey,
let's add a wildlife fee to every Yellowstone admission price,
so you add another ten bucks to every time someone
comes in on a bus into Yellowstone, and that ten
dollars from four point five million people a year all
gets put into a fund which then gets shared with
adjacent and landowners to help compensate them for the challenges

(01:22:02):
that they are bearing in there being elk or bears
or wolves or whatever. I wonder if there's more creative
ways that we can find to help make these animals
valuable to people, whether it be by allowing hunting so
it's valuable to you in that kind of way, or
with financial reimbursement or whatever it is. But we need
to make these things a win win win for no

(01:22:23):
matter which side of it you're on.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
Man, that's so spot on. I think that we got
to look at those things. I think I've heard, you know,
even here in Park County. I'm part of a group
called the Wild Livelihoods Business Coalition, and we've talked about that.
You know, we've got a big portion of those four
million people going through Park County down to the northern
gate of the park and they're spending money on bed
tax and you know all that stuff, and can could

(01:22:46):
there be a little bit of that chunk of percentage
of that that goes back and does help out these
folks that are basically harboring wildlife and keeping these ecosystems attacked.
I think that's a great idea. Again changes the value perspective,
but overall it's a win win win, And again I
think that maybe that's the platform that the Kenyan Anderson

(01:23:08):
twenty twenty eight that we run on.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
At the very least, I need to drag you along
on my book tour.

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
But no, dude, it's such a it's such a smart
I love it because it Let's be honest, man, you
hate to bring up economics when you talk about wildlife,
but it's the way the world goes around. And if
that's the value is actual money, then that's the value.
And it's it's just the way it works, and it's okay,

(01:23:37):
and I think people would sign up for it. Man,
people who love wildlife, you have a little bit of
money to help them out. You know, hunters can buy tags, right,
what can non hunters do something similar? You know, just
go buy a tag and it's some you know, and
it supports these initiatives that I think there's a lot
of people out there are smarter than me that are

(01:23:58):
figuring these things out all the time, and yeah, let's
just do it and let's make it cool. I mean,
I hate to use that term. It's so simple. We
got to make it cool, right, It's got to be
something everybody thinks is awesome and believes in, and all
the silos are all thumb got the thumbs up about
it and saying this is good. Yeah, I think that's

(01:24:20):
what we got to do. And having this conversation right
now is a big part of it because there's people listening,
and those people that are listening can talk tell the
same story to other folks, and we can make something happen.
Move the needle.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
Yeah. So, if you could envision a future fifty years
from no cases in which there are grizzly bears thriving,
There are wolves in manageable, healthy populations across the country.
There are also terrific herds of elk and moose and
mule deer and pronghorn, and hunters are still around happily

(01:24:53):
doing what we love to do. And wildlife viewers are
still happily viewing and visiting Yellowstone and all these other
places and seeing critters and this imagine world where they're
still open and intact and undeveloped private lands surrounding these
public cores with ranching still a viable lifestyle. If all
of that were still true in fifty years, what would

(01:25:16):
have had to have happened over the course of that
period to get there? What are the key what are
the what are the key things? If we were going
to list out like the Casey Anderson's five commandments of
how we can coexist with carnivores for the next fifty
years to make it actually work, what are those like
key tenants that has to happen. They could be something

(01:25:36):
we've already talked about, or if there's anything we haven't
discussed yet, what has to happen to make this a reality?

Speaker 3 (01:25:43):
I'll start off with, Man, I don't have high hopes,
but I don't think it's impossible. And I think the
number one thing that would have to happen right now
is that we would have to just stomp on the breaks.
I'm crazy right now, like everything that's crazy and what
I mean crazy, you know, and everybody knows what I'm
talking about on both sides. We just got to hit

(01:26:06):
the brakes on it, right now hard. We got it.
We got to preserve what we have right now, right
and I think in fifty years, if we have what
we have right now, that would be a huge, huge win,
even amongst the chaos. You know, we gotta we gotta.
You know, this anti hunting movement, anti wildlife management movement's
gotta go away. The you know, eliminate forty percent of

(01:26:31):
the mountain population in Montana without even knowing how much
of the of a population of mountain limes. We have
kind of mentality gotta go away. You know, all the
wolves off the landscape. We don't need wolves in Montana.
They're bigger wolves from Canada. All that stuff gotta go away.
You know, wolves should not be hunted, No predators should

(01:26:53):
be hunted. That's gotta go away. All that's gotta go away.
And I and I think so the biggest thing is
we got it. We just gotta. It's guys like you
and me, man, you know, that's why it's such an
honor to be you know, part of this this podcast
and part of the greater meat eater world is like
I mean, Meter is doing it. I mean, I think
you gotta you gotta keep talking. You gotta keep communicating

(01:27:15):
because most people who are making these decisions for the
world to be a better the place that you've spelled
out in fifty years don't know simply are ignorant to
all of it and ignorances. It's not their own fault,
it's just that there's no one telling them, right, there's
not Grandpa who's a hunter talking telling stories anymore. They're
not listening to this. They're they're listening to crazy. And

(01:27:39):
so we we got the main thing is it's going
to be communicating all this stuff and having these conversations
regularly and recruiting people to believe and yeah, and it's
continuing to have biologists on the landscape who are making
who are you know in this day and age, or
keeping their finger on the pulse by the microsecond changing

(01:28:00):
you know it might they might have changed things a
couple of times a year to keep up with it.
That's what it's gonna take, and it's it's gonna it's
gonna take listening to each other. Right, you know, you
and I might not agree on everything, but we're willing
to sit down in a conversation. I actually think we
might agree on everything based on the conversation but you
know what I'm saying, I think that, you know, we

(01:28:24):
got all talk, and I think it's important, you know,
not just preaching to the choir. I think all that's
very important.

Speaker 4 (01:28:32):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:28:33):
I'm raised. I've got three little kids. I got a
three or five and a seven year old, and I
look at them and I take them out on public
lands and the other gona we gotta fight for public lands.
We gotta keep those things, you know, not one acre
we can give away. But yeah, back to the kids,
I mean, I take I take them out there, and
I just think, you know, I hope that you get

(01:28:53):
to have a kid childhood. I did, you know. And
it's scary because it doesn't look like it doesn't look
like it's going to be that way, but it can
be if we can hit the brakes on crazy, just
say no and help the other, and help the other
ignorant people who don't understand what we're fighting for understand.
And yeah, I think that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:13):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:29:13):
I don't know, because I think I think most people,
when the facts are laid out in front of them
and it comes from a place of logic, people make
the right decisions. They really do. But most people are
just not hearing that.

Speaker 2 (01:29:29):
Yeah. Yeah, folks are so divorced from the natural world,
so distant from it, you know. I think the life
that you live or the life that I live is
pretty unique these days, and so it's easy just to
to either never even think about these things, or if
you do think about them ever once in a while,
it's solely predicated on the one TikTok video you saw

(01:29:51):
last week, or the one the sensationalist headline they got
posted because of some crazy thing on Instagram or whatever. Right,
So a lot of this too, I think, also comes
down to people just need to get out there and
experience this stuff themselves and see what's out there and
fall in love with it for themselves, because I feel

(01:30:12):
like oftentimes that is like the the initial barrier that
has to be broken before you can ever get someone
to really engage with this kind of these ideas in
a real way, or let alone get them to advocate
in any kind of way. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:30:25):
Yeah, it's a hard one because you know, we know
that everybody's not going to be able to do that.
You know, we'd love that, you know, And I think,
and here's this perfect segue to doing some self promotion
but you know, me having my new YouTube channel, Endless Venture,
you know, the only reason, you know, I can't keep
up with the kids these days. And everybody keeps saying
that most eyes are on YouTube right now, you got

(01:30:45):
to go to YouTube. And ultimately, it's all I want
is the most eyes, you know. I want people to
be able to go on adventures out into these wild
places and fall in love with it, even if it's
vicariously through my storytelling, you know. And that is all
my Endless Venture is is just it's you know, animals
and finding cool stuff out there and just and giving

(01:31:06):
and doing it. And like I'm just taking how many
people are how many people are watching on a hike
with me? Right? And if that if that initiates them
to get out and take a road trip to the
west and get out and walk around amazing. But even
if it's just when they sit down and they're deciding
who they're going to vote for, and it changes their

(01:31:29):
mind a little bit about some policy that they're reading about, Uh,
that's enough. I mean, that's that's big. So I think again,
it's just it's important. We gotta Yeah, that's that's the
responsibility that you and I collectively and everybody and meat
eater and everybody in National Geograph and everybody have we
have the responsibility of representing these things as truthfully and

(01:31:51):
as honestly and as purely as we can and hope
that we get enough people to show up that we
can change some minds in a big way. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
Yeah, that's uh, that's certainly what gets me out of
bed in the morning. And I got to say, when
it comes to where, you know, connecting to where the
kids are on YouTube, you're well on your way.

Speaker 4 (01:32:10):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:32:11):
My seven year old son was very excited that you
had a collab, a crossover video with mister Coyote Peterson.
And when he saw that, he's like, Dad, I think
Casey's the new YouTuber I need to follow. Yep, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:32:26):
Right, that's good. That's big news. That's a big win
for me right there. So tell your seven year old he.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
Said, yeah, he's seven, so he's he's on it. And
then he with that said he had he asked me,
he said, I have to ask you, what is the
craziest thing about Coyote Peterson. We're spending time with Coyote
Peterson and for folks who aren't familiar Uh, Coyote Peterson
is like a more youth child, kind of focused YouTuber,

(01:32:56):
all kind of nature outside activity, his wildlife kind of
things that kids love, and my kids love him. He's
pretty wild. So yes, so Everett, my son, Everett has
to know, what's it like hanging out with Coyote Peterson.
What's the craziest thing he did or does or anything
like that.

Speaker 3 (01:33:17):
Yeah, So, Everett, Coyote is a He's one of the
nicest guys. I know, he's very you know, perfect example.
I'll turn out to go too much onto this, but
you know, he's a guy with a very open mind
and not a hunter, and him and I have talked
about hunting a bunch, you know, and he's interested. You know,
he's listened. But back to Everett's question, Kyote is a

(01:33:41):
bit of a superhuman. I don't know if it's because
he's been stung and bitten and you know, has had
so much poison into his blood that his body has
built up some resilience. But like just the other day,
I went actually back east and visited him, and he
like walked through this like worst of poison ivy. Everybody

(01:34:03):
else he was involved got your typical reaction, no reaction
at all. He's tough. He's a tough guy, he really is.
And uh yeah, you know, and in the end, you know,
his his thing. You know, it's awesome that evert's watching
him because you know, Coyote does he does that. He's
a showman. He's really good at producing his stuff. He

(01:34:24):
has these big sensationalized things. I think a lot of
adults would shake their head at, right. Yes, but as
you dive in, you click the clickbait and you get
in there. It's full of great conservation information. And he's
got millions of people watching him because of that all
the time. And again, these are people that are making
good decisions down the line because they're learning through Coyote

(01:34:46):
and even if they had to click the clickbait to
get there, you know, and that's just it. You know,
he's he's a smart fella. And again, and I'm having
huge conversations with him, you know. In fact, I've had
long conversations about the wolf issue. And he came in
and where as you would a guy from Ohio has
never been out here, and there's an animal advocate, you know,
he's like, what's going on out there? He saw the

(01:35:08):
guy run the wolf over in Wyoming and things that
that's what we're all doing out here. He really did,
you know, and I and I had an opportunity to sit
down and have a conversation with him. That's now wait
a minute, this is we're talking about a small people
here anyway. Yeah, so Everett good guy. For sure. I'll
tell Coyote that, yeah about Everett.

Speaker 2 (01:35:28):
And uh, he'll get a kick out of that.

Speaker 3 (01:35:30):
He'll like it.

Speaker 4 (01:35:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
Yeah. Everett my seven year old and Colt, my five
year old, are are both big Coyote Peterson fans and
uh and blooming Casey Anderson's.

Speaker 3 (01:35:39):
Okay, Well, so I won't disappoint. There's gonna this little
secret that you can tell Colt and Everett. I got
at least one or two more collapse with coyote coming home.
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:35:51):
They'll be they'll be stoked. So so on that note, then, Casey, uh,
you alluded to it a little bit. But give folks
the full picture. What's what's Endless Venture all about? Where
do they find this? What can they expect to see?
Tell me all about it?

Speaker 3 (01:36:05):
Yeah, Endless Venture is just exactly kind of like the title.
It is my endless ventures into the wild. So over
the last fifty years of just being a kid in
the woods, right, and I've done it professionally, but I've
always just been a kid in the woods, and so
it's just going to be that more of that, you know,
I've I've met so many cool people over the years.

(01:36:25):
I go back and revisit stories that they've told me,
and you know, I go, I'm just doing things like
I wake up the morning and go, what do I
want to go do that is going to be exciting,
and I just make an episode about it. So that
can be anything from tracking man eating tigers in Nepal
to seeing snow uppards for the first time in the Himalayas,
to stay and spending the night in a grizzly bear

(01:36:47):
den in the middle of winter. And the other thing
is I'm a you know, as you know, like when
you're out and about you see things like I'm fascinated
with it with Native American history and artifacts. So if
I find something like that, I'll deep dive into it,
bring archaeologists, archaeologists in really try to learn more about it.

(01:37:08):
I discovered a cave that's never been explored with a
friend of mine that we were actually looking for mount
lions with his hounds. We found this crazy cave in
the middle of nowhere and now it's almost a mile
of unmapped cave that we've found that we're totally documenting
all this. So it's just, yeah, just being a I mean,
something you can relate to. Everybody can relate to that

(01:37:29):
run around the woods, just me being my inner child
in the wild. Anything everything cool, and I just try
to but I try to expand on it and bring
an expert and teach more and tell the stories. But
all the treasures man, not just wildlife everything. So yeah.
The other thing like I like to throw out to
an audience like yours, is like legends and stories, like

(01:37:53):
you know, I always hear from hunting stories like well,
I was hunting elk and then I looked up and
there was a cave in the rock face, and I
always wish I could get up there. I saw these
pictographs once and I never could find them again. I've
revisited a lot of these stories people told me over
the years, Like twenty years ago. Someone will tell me
a story and we'll go back and try to find
this very cool thing that they saw and sometimes we

(01:38:14):
strike out, sometimes we find it. So if there's anybody
with like really cool stories, or they've heard this crazy
story from their uncle or their grandpa and they want
to go look for these legends or whatever, if there's
any ounce of truth that maybe we can find something
very cool and like make this story come to life,
let me know. That's exactly the kind of stuff I'm
looking for.

Speaker 2 (01:38:33):
That's cool, It's got to be. I'm making some assumptions here,
but I guess I should ask as a question, is
it has it been freeing to be developing film for
YouTube in this kind of way that's probably with fewer
guardrails and restraints than maybe producing something for network television, Right?
Is that pretty fuch?

Speaker 3 (01:38:53):
Yeah, you know, definitely trying to navigate the madness of
networks and streamers and all that and what they might
want and whatever. It's such a hard that's a hard animal, man.
It's like that, you can't unpredictable. Yeah, Now complete creative control,
can go do what I want. And I think at
some level that freedom comes out in me. And I

(01:39:15):
think people just love watching people be excited about something
and passionate about something, and because of that freedom I'm
probably more passionate and excited. I've heard people give me
feedback on this too that they think so I'd just
been more natural and more into my element than ever. Yeah,
you know, I'm an old guy. I'm gonna turn fifty
this year. I've got a lot of a lot of

(01:39:35):
experience and a lot of cool stories and friends and stuff.
So i'm's gonna just bring it all, like bring it
to life. But I don't feel like an old guy
when I'm out there right checking out all this cool stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:39:47):
That's the scary thing is that I don't feel old either.
But I'm knocking on forty's door and that sounds really
old to me. And I'm realizing, like, oh my gosh,
I'm gonna blink and I'm gonna be fifty, I'm gonna blink,
I'm gonna be sixty. And so I better do everything
I can very single day and just soak it all
up right, because it goes it goes fast, and it goes.

Speaker 3 (01:40:04):
Fast, and things are changing. So you never know when
you go to your favorite place again and it's not there,
and that's that's the scary thing. But yeah, it's I think, uh,
endless venture. So yeah, please go check it out and subscribe,
because that's the only one I get to do it.
And I think, again, it's maybe for a little bit
more of a mature audience, but I think kids definitely
could watch it, and I'm glad to hear that they are.

(01:40:26):
But I certainly think that a lot of folks in
this demographic that listen to your podcast would probably really
dig it because they could relate to it, because most
of us are just that's the words run around the
woods catching frogs in some way, shape or form, right.

Speaker 2 (01:40:42):
Just the adult version of it now, and sometimes I
still do the child version of it. Yeah or but
but yeah, I've watched a bunch of the new videos,
the ones up in cat My, the stuff with Coyote.
I liked your viral video court, you know, Sunday Morning
or Monday Morning Quarterback. That was great. So yeah, it's

(01:41:02):
great stuff. I've watched a lot of the previous network
television stuff that of course is great. So I'm excited
for you, excited for this new project. And yes, at
least in this sample size of three, a thirty eight
year old, a thirty seven year old, a seven year old,
and a five year old, you have people who like
the content across that entire age range. So you're doing well.

Speaker 3 (01:41:22):
That's awesome. Thank you appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
So endless venture on YouTube anywhere else that people should go.
Instagram handle, any website or anything you want people to
go check out.

Speaker 3 (01:41:33):
Yeah, I mean Instagram. And I'm still on old school
Facebook because that's old school now. But Grizzly Guy is
the handle. Yeah, just go check it out. I mean,
I'm updating that stuff constantly too. Again, I do feel
like it's the way people can experience the wild without
being in the wild, and I find a lot of
responsibility in that. And I mean anything, I try to

(01:41:55):
post stuff up on there, and I try to at
least make it where you can learn something too along
the way. And you know, I'm always learning. I've had
even the day I just posted a crazy thing about
hundred guys versus gorilla because I saw that not a gorilla,
Grizzly because I saw the gorilla thing going around for
a while. Yeah. I love I love the debates and

(01:42:16):
the craziness of it all. And but in the end,
you know, I threw some real facts out there, and
I just want to get people thinking about nature. Right,
And that's one thing you can count on. If you
click on any of my socials or YouTube, you're going
to be thinking about nature. And I think that we
all got to do that a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (01:42:33):
No matter what, man, no truer words could be spoken
in that Casey and I think that's probably a good
place for us to wrap it up. So I've loved this.
I've really enjoyed this chat.

Speaker 3 (01:42:44):
Thank you, Oh, thank you. I've loved it too. One
of one of the best ever, all.

Speaker 2 (01:42:51):
Right, And that's a wrap. I appreciate you tuning in.
Hopefully you enjoyed this one as much as I did.
I could have chatted with Casey for a couple more hours.
There's there's so much to cover on this one, so
many interesting stories of his that we did not get into.
We probably need to have another chat with Casey just
to hear his stories, because he's done so much wild,
crazy stuff that would just be fun to hear about.

(01:43:12):
That probably needs to be on the schedule down the line.
But today it was kind of a deep, kind of
sink your teeth into it discussion of carnivores and hunters
and how we can maybe get along into the future
and make sure that all the things that we need
and care about exist twenty years from now, forty years
from now, fifty years from now. So I hope, in

(01:43:34):
some small way we're able to address some of that,
and I appreciate you sticking around here to tune in, So,
without further ado, thank you, and stay wired to hunt

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Episode Transcript

Host

Mark Kenyon

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 915: Can Hunters and Carnivores Coexist? with Casey Anderson