July 8, 2025 • 18 mins
This week, Tony explores the reasons why public land is so important to all deer hunters, and why our collective voice is the key to ensuring a good future for the next generation of whitetail addicts.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, 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
Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey everyone.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I know last week I said I was going to
talk about setting up for rut hunts in the middle
of the summer, but I'm going to put that on
hold for a week to talk about our recent public
land fight, those sell off attempts, and why this issue
should matter to all deer hunts. Well, if you haven't
been living under a rock, you've probably heard about a
specific senator from Utah named Mike Lee and his grand
(00:41):
plan to sell off public land, which he finally pulled
after a ton of pressure from you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
This was a huge win.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
This issue has been front and center in the hunting
community for a few weeks now, and it has been
pretty wild.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Now. The good news here is that a.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Lot of hunters showed up for the fight, and both
Cal and Mark here have had a huge impact on
the issue in a truly positive way. But it's also
something that might feel a little disconnected from the average
whitetail hunter, which is fare, but it's not something we
can or should ignore. And that's what I'm going to
talk about right now. This is going to sound like
me bragging a lot, but I don't mean it that way.
(01:18):
I just want to list off something about my life
to sort of contextualize this whole public land issue and
make the case for why all of us deer hunters
should be concerned not only with having land for all
of us to hunt, but what it means to us
at our core as Americans. Maybe that sounds a little
grandiose or overly dramatic, I don't really care, so let
(01:39):
me start with this. In the last ten years, I've
hunted and killed whitetails on public land in my home
state of Minnesota, across the river in Wisconsin northeast of me,
in North Dakota, and then down in South Dakota, and
in Nebraska and in Oklahoma and in Iowa. Some of
those states, I hunted public because it was the best option,
and sometimes it was because it was just an interesting
(02:00):
option that I wanted to explore, and it's really nice
to have options. Now that was just deer I've also
turkey hunted all those states, or at least almost all
of them on public land as well. And you can
throw in Kansas into that list now since we're including gobblers.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
But then you have Western critters.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I've personally a hunted and killed elk, mildeer, and antelope
and a couple of Western states in that same timeframe,
and I was really happy to have a place to
hunt each and every time it was all on public Now,
allow me to tap into my infomercial side here and
say this, but wait, there's more. When it comes to
following my dogs around trying to shoot some birds, I've
(02:41):
hunted pheasants, grouse, woodcock, prairie chicken, sharp tails, bob white quail,
and a whole host of ducks and geese on public
land and the same timeframe, not to mention squirrels, cottontail, rabbits,
and snowshoe hairs. In fact, I have plenty of private
land places to hunt in a few different states, but
I'd give them up in a heartbeat to not lose
(03:03):
any public land opportunities.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And I mean that too.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Public land has been a ticket to a better life
for me, and I'm not alone in that. Now, you
don't have to hunt public I don't really care if
you do or you don't. I know there are some
hunters who think we don't need public land at all,
and that the government shouldn't be in the business of
owning idle recreational land. Now, it's no coincidence that most
(03:27):
of those hunters, and probably all of them, if you
really get down to it, have private places to hunt
where they don't feel their access will ever be threatened.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Okay, if you have that, good for you, that's great.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
But can you put yourself in someone else's camo knee
highs and understand that not everyone owns land, or was
born into some family land, or makes the money necessary
to lease some ground. To me, that mentality is kind
of like the anti car thing that you hear about
largely in Europe but also in population centers in the
United States.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Dates.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Some people who live in metro areas with walkable amenities
think that no one really needs to own a car,
let alone an evil, gas guzzling truck. But that takes
an astounding level of cognitive dissonance to get behind. They
can't imagine why someone would need a truck for their
living or just their life. Or what it would be
(04:21):
like to live in most of the country where you
can't just ride a bike to the grocery store. Life
doesn't work like that, and when we get that myopic
of a view of something, it just doesn't jive with
reality usually. So anyway, even if you don't hunt public
land for deer or whatever critters, try to understand how
that could be valuable to other hunters, let alone the
(04:42):
non blood sport crowd that might enjoy some of the
wild places we like to rome as well. Look, this
is just me in my opinion, but I like public
land because I like freedom. I think the ability and
the opportunity to walk into thousands of acres of woods
or cat or whatever is fundamental to us as humans,
(05:04):
and without it we'd be missing something that makes us
who we are. When I think about the animals I've
hunted and all the fish I've tried to catch, either
on public land or by accessing something through public it's
not a running total of a body count. It's a
hell of a lot of memories of getting to do
what I want in the places I want to be
(05:25):
the most. But I don't want to just live in
the past, and that's the reason I love public land too.
The prospect of planning hunts and fishing trips around public
land is sort of the life force that keeps me
and a lot of other outdoors minded people going every year.
This season alone, I plan to hunt white tails in
a couple of states on public and bird hunt a
(05:46):
couple more. The planning behind that, the eat, scouting, the
process of it all. I just love it so much,
and that would go away if the public land did
Without the setting. There is no show if you get
my drift, And this is what I know about the
public land that has been on and off the chopping
block over the last few weeks.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Once it goes away, it's gone.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
This is no different from a hell of a lot
of hunting opportunities, and one of the reasons I think
the resident non resident fight in a bunch of states
is so dangerous because once an opportunity goes away, it
generally just doesn't come back, no matter how much the
conditions change. If this public land out there, scattered across
a whole bunch of western states in Alaska had been
sold off, it would be gone for good. I know
(06:31):
that seems evident, but it's hard to understand the impact
of something like that in the moment before it really happens,
especially if it doesn't affect you personally. We could try
to make up ground through walk in programs and tax
incentivized programs, which we should every chance we can get,
but the appetite usually isn't there in a meaningful way,
and that means that while we can try to recoup
(06:53):
some of those losses somehow, it's never going to get
us back to baseline. It'll be a net loss, guaranteed.
So what would have been the impact of losing three
hundred thousand or three million or one point two million
acres of public land. Well, it would have shifted more
pressure to available spots, which would have degraded the quality of.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
The hunts on those spots to some level.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
It would have put more pressure on leasing prices and
recreational land prices, which both favor the well healed but
not so much the rest of us. So there would
have been some residual loss of all hunting ground, even
for some hunters who didn't hunt public land at all.
That would be bad enough if this would have somehow
been a magical, one off event. But the precedent is
(07:38):
what scares the shit out of so many of us,
just like that resident non resident fight I already mentioned
and will again toward the end of this rant. Once
some people with some power over others figure out how
to use it to their advantage, it becomes almost like
a contagion.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
It might slow down at certain points, but it never
seems to stop. This goes both for the general complaints
and the fix, which benefits some hunters but removes opportunities
from others. Once we have the template for this kind
of thing, it's very repeatable and will be repeated.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So this isn't a one off deal.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
And honestly, it's a fight that's going to keep coming
up until enough people don't care about it to challenge
it anymore. Is that a risk we should have taken.
I don't think so, and I know a lot of
you don't think so as well. There are some things
that are just too valuable to some of us to
let them go without a fight, and public Land is
one of them. Will we lose this fight eventually, I
(08:32):
don't know. I kind of believe so, but that's not
good enough of a reason to be dismissive of it.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Now.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
This is probably a good time to point something else
up with this issue, too, which is that we are
constantly actively being divided all the time. We see this
(08:59):
political which is a huge issue in and of itself.
With the public land selloff thing, you kind of just
have to pick a side in it. And once we
pick sides on one issue, it's human nature to paint
ourselves all on one team or another, and that sucks bad.
You can love public land and you can love guns
and not be so tribal as to lose your voice
in the fear that you'll be considered one of us
(09:20):
or one of them. That division leaks through into hunting
in a million different ways. And it's easy to throw
your hands up and say that something like this doesn't
really matter because it's all going to shit anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
But it's not. And I don't care if your number one.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Issue is I don't know too many wolves in your
state or too much overcrowding on public land according to
your standard of who should be out there, and when
I don't care right now that the bird watchers and
the mountain bikers don't really foot the bill for a
lot of this stuff the way we do. Those issues
are all real, all valid and all worth discussion and debate,
But without the places to go to do the things
(09:53):
that might be affected by those issues, it doesn't matter
as much. The fight to keep the land ours should
take precedence over those issues that only really exist because
we have the land in the first place. Now, I
know these issues aren't that simple, and I'm glossing over
some of the nuance, but you get my drift. We
can fight about a lot of stuff later, but for now,
it's a good idea to consider what has to be
(10:15):
done to keep this land open to all of us
in the future. And it's also important to acknowledge what
this means to the average white tail hunter right now.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Not much.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I mean that most of us wouldn't miss a beat
if one point two million acres of BLM land had
gotten sold out west this year, we wouldn't A handful
of us will lose antelope spots or elk spots, maybe
a place to hunt mule deer, but mostly it wouldn't
matter to most of us at all. But how about
that national forest you might hunt or a lot of
(10:45):
the hunters in your state do hunt, but you don't
because that could be next maybe not this year. Or
in the next decade. But when we start placing more
value on land being in private hands than in the
public trust, we are going to give bad ideas to
politicians all across the country. And if not the national forest,
perhaps it's the state wildlife management areas. The Western stuff
(11:08):
is sort of the canary and the coal mine here
in a lot of those states, there's a lot of
land and not a lot of people. When you have
an abundance of something, it's easy to try to devalue.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
It, especially if you don't use it. But there's a
slow creep to.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Things like that, and it'll eventually make its way to
the east, and when it does, a lot of Western
politicians will have already navigated the waters enough to provide
other politicians with an effective route to take on this topic.
Just think about how much of a pain in the
ass old Mike Lee has been with just his three
recent attempts to sell off public. Imagine even a handful
(11:43):
of politicians east of the Mississippi trying the same thing.
It'll be death by a thousand paper cuts, and it'll
kill off a hell of a lot of hunting opportunities. Now,
even if the odds seem low right now, they aren't
zero and the prospect of losing land this way should
scare all of us, and you a warning and beat
an absolute dead horse just a little bit more. This
(12:05):
is one of those moments in our hunting culture where
you hear the rallying cry that straight out of Pink
Floyd's song Hey you, We're right at the end as
they fade into the outro, Roger Waters sings united, we stand, divided,
we fall, We are united in a way right now
that I haven't seen in a long time over this
public land issue, and it gives me a hell of
(12:27):
a lot of hope, it really does. I honestly can't
tell you how much I appreciate guys like Cal and
Mark getting after this issue with their audiences and really
pushing the message and how important this is while giving
a simple call to action that absolutely makes a big
positive difference.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
It's huge, truly.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
But remember how I said I wasn't done addressing the
resident non resident issue earlier. Here's the thing. This is
a Western issue first. Mostly it just is and it
will be until it's not. But for now, there are
a hell of a lot of us who live where
the elevation is about eight hundred feet and that's it.
And we called Mike Lee and left him messages telling
(13:08):
him how important public land was to us, and at
least in my case, how I was going to create
a podcast to talk about how misguided he is when
it comes to the issues, so that our listeners can
learn about his motivations. This is because we are united
right now, riding the high that comes with a big win,
that feels like real, actual justice.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
But I wonder how long.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It'll take before we get back to our old selves.
As I said, this fight is going to keep coming up.
Right now, we are largely in this together, But the
more a lot of us are told we are no
longer welcome in this state or that state to hunt
this or that critter, it's going to start to wear
on our unity. You want me to fight for your
public land and your state, I will, A lot of
(13:52):
us will. But when we also actively remove hunting opportunities
from our fellow outdoorsman, we are actively removing some pieces
of that collective voice. At some point, enough hunters who
don't live where you do and who will never get
to hunt the animals that you hunt, even on federally
owned land, in your state, They're going to become apathetic
(14:13):
to the cause, and when that happens, the dominoes will
start to fall more often and more quickly. We can't
preach unity now and then engage in so much division
later without suffering some of the consequences. It just won't
work long term. And while we have just won this fight,
we got to pay attention to this stuff because it's
not going to go away. I want to feel like
(14:36):
I need to fight for this until I'm dead, and
I want my kids to feel that this is a
torch that's worthy of picking up and carrying. But I
also know how easy it is to decide a fight
is not your fight, especially when you've been removed from
something you love because other people who love the same
thing have a way to take it from you.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We just have to be careful with this shit.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
We should use this moment to pause and at least
think about our future as hunters together and what that
might mean for us as far as land usage, land ownership,
and general hunting opportunities. A win now is huge, but
how we set ourselves up for the next fight matters too.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Now.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
I know this sounds like wishy washy, horseshit, But I
think we are better off unified in about every possible way.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I know.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
We disagree on crossbows versus vertical bows versus traditional bows,
and baiting versus not baiting, and trophy hunting versus meat hunting,
and about a million other issues that at the end
of the day might mean a hell of a lot
to our time in the field, or might just be
something we like to argue about. Because we have strong
opinions on this deer hunting thing that we are so
passionate about, we can argue and disagree when we have to,
(15:44):
but we should be keenly aware of our collective voice.
It's quite literally the thing that just kept that land
in our hands for now, and that benefits a hell
of a lot of us directly and the hell of
a lot more of us indirectly. Let's try not to
forget what we are capable of as a largely unified group.
(16:04):
We as hunters are treated like clueless bubbas and heartless
murderers in the media all the time. We are written
off as a dying demographic, kindred to cave men and
women who haven't quite evolved enough to do the ethical
thing which I guess is have someone else kill animals
for us in an industrial building far away from the
eyes of general society, so we can eat them with
(16:26):
a guilt free conscience. We just proved we are so
much more than that, and that's amazing to me. Let's
keep this momentum moving in the right direction by at
least remembering what it took to get us to coalesce
into the kind of group that wouldn't give up the
fight and who all threw our middle fingers in the
(16:47):
air and pointed them in the direction of a specific
politician who thought he could take something from us that
didn't belong to him. So wrap this up, I want
to offer us sincere thanks to everyone who may aid
the call to the Capitol switchboard or who did something
somehow to get the word out. My kids, thank you
(17:07):
and so do I.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank
you so much for listening and for all of your support.
If you want some more deer hunting advice, you know,
maybe read some articles, some other podcasts, Maybe you just
want to hear some good old storytelling over on the
Bear Grease Speed We've got Klay's Bear Grease podcast obviously,
(17:36):
which is amazing. But then you got Brent Reeves over there,
who's a national treasure telling stories every week on This
Country Life. Or the new podcast by my buddy Lake
Pickle called Backwoods University, that's just fascinating. He's doing a
great job with it. Go check those out. Check out
the new films we're dropping whatever. We have tons of
new content going down every single week at the mediator
(17:59):
dot com.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Zig in for your support.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
M
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, 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
Tony Peterson.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey everyone.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
I know last week I said I was going to
talk about setting up for rut hunts in the middle
of the summer, but I'm going to put that on
hold for a week to talk about our recent public
land fight, those sell off attempts, and why this issue
should matter to all deer hunts. Well, if you haven't
been living under a rock, you've probably heard about a
specific senator from Utah named Mike Lee and his grand
(00:41):
plan to sell off public land, which he finally pulled
after a ton of pressure from you guys.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
This was a huge win.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
This issue has been front and center in the hunting
community for a few weeks now, and it has been
pretty wild.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Now. The good news here is that a.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Lot of hunters showed up for the fight, and both
Cal and Mark here have had a huge impact on
the issue in a truly positive way. But it's also
something that might feel a little disconnected from the average
whitetail hunter, which is fare, but it's not something we
can or should ignore. And that's what I'm going to
talk about right now. This is going to sound like
me bragging a lot, but I don't mean it that way.
(01:18):
I just want to list off something about my life
to sort of contextualize this whole public land issue and
make the case for why all of us deer hunters
should be concerned not only with having land for all
of us to hunt, but what it means to us
at our core as Americans. Maybe that sounds a little
grandiose or overly dramatic, I don't really care, so let
(01:39):
me start with this. In the last ten years, I've
hunted and killed whitetails on public land in my home
state of Minnesota, across the river in Wisconsin northeast of me,
in North Dakota, and then down in South Dakota, and
in Nebraska and in Oklahoma and in Iowa. Some of
those states, I hunted public because it was the best option,
and sometimes it was because it was just an interesting
(02:00):
option that I wanted to explore, and it's really nice
to have options. Now that was just deer I've also
turkey hunted all those states, or at least almost all
of them on public land as well. And you can
throw in Kansas into that list now since we're including gobblers.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
But then you have Western critters.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
I've personally a hunted and killed elk, mildeer, and antelope
and a couple of Western states in that same timeframe,
and I was really happy to have a place to
hunt each and every time it was all on public Now,
allow me to tap into my infomercial side here and
say this, but wait, there's more. When it comes to
following my dogs around trying to shoot some birds, I've
(02:41):
hunted pheasants, grouse, woodcock, prairie chicken, sharp tails, bob white quail,
and a whole host of ducks and geese on public
land and the same timeframe, not to mention squirrels, cottontail, rabbits,
and snowshoe hairs. In fact, I have plenty of private
land places to hunt in a few different states, but
I'd give them up in a heartbeat to not lose
(03:03):
any public land opportunities.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And I mean that too.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Public land has been a ticket to a better life
for me, and I'm not alone in that. Now, you
don't have to hunt public I don't really care if
you do or you don't. I know there are some
hunters who think we don't need public land at all,
and that the government shouldn't be in the business of
owning idle recreational land. Now, it's no coincidence that most
(03:27):
of those hunters, and probably all of them, if you
really get down to it, have private places to hunt
where they don't feel their access will ever be threatened.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Okay, if you have that, good for you, that's great.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
But can you put yourself in someone else's camo knee
highs and understand that not everyone owns land, or was
born into some family land, or makes the money necessary
to lease some ground. To me, that mentality is kind
of like the anti car thing that you hear about
largely in Europe but also in population centers in the
United States.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Dates.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Some people who live in metro areas with walkable amenities
think that no one really needs to own a car,
let alone an evil, gas guzzling truck. But that takes
an astounding level of cognitive dissonance to get behind. They
can't imagine why someone would need a truck for their
living or just their life. Or what it would be
(04:21):
like to live in most of the country where you
can't just ride a bike to the grocery store. Life
doesn't work like that, and when we get that myopic
of a view of something, it just doesn't jive with
reality usually. So anyway, even if you don't hunt public
land for deer or whatever critters, try to understand how
that could be valuable to other hunters, let alone the
(04:42):
non blood sport crowd that might enjoy some of the
wild places we like to rome as well. Look, this
is just me in my opinion, but I like public
land because I like freedom. I think the ability and
the opportunity to walk into thousands of acres of woods
or cat or whatever is fundamental to us as humans,
(05:04):
and without it we'd be missing something that makes us
who we are. When I think about the animals I've
hunted and all the fish I've tried to catch, either
on public land or by accessing something through public it's
not a running total of a body count. It's a
hell of a lot of memories of getting to do
what I want in the places I want to be
(05:25):
the most. But I don't want to just live in
the past, and that's the reason I love public land too.
The prospect of planning hunts and fishing trips around public
land is sort of the life force that keeps me
and a lot of other outdoors minded people going every year.
This season alone, I plan to hunt white tails in
a couple of states on public and bird hunt a
(05:46):
couple more. The planning behind that, the eat, scouting, the
process of it all. I just love it so much,
and that would go away if the public land did
Without the setting. There is no show if you get
my drift, And this is what I know about the
public land that has been on and off the chopping
block over the last few weeks.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Once it goes away, it's gone.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
This is no different from a hell of a lot
of hunting opportunities, and one of the reasons I think
the resident non resident fight in a bunch of states
is so dangerous because once an opportunity goes away, it
generally just doesn't come back, no matter how much the
conditions change. If this public land out there, scattered across
a whole bunch of western states in Alaska had been
sold off, it would be gone for good. I know
(06:31):
that seems evident, but it's hard to understand the impact
of something like that in the moment before it really happens,
especially if it doesn't affect you personally. We could try
to make up ground through walk in programs and tax
incentivized programs, which we should every chance we can get,
but the appetite usually isn't there in a meaningful way,
and that means that while we can try to recoup
(06:53):
some of those losses somehow, it's never going to get
us back to baseline. It'll be a net loss, guaranteed.
So what would have been the impact of losing three
hundred thousand or three million or one point two million
acres of public land. Well, it would have shifted more
pressure to available spots, which would have degraded the quality of.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
The hunts on those spots to some level.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
It would have put more pressure on leasing prices and
recreational land prices, which both favor the well healed but
not so much the rest of us. So there would
have been some residual loss of all hunting ground, even
for some hunters who didn't hunt public land at all.
That would be bad enough if this would have somehow
been a magical, one off event. But the precedent is
(07:38):
what scares the shit out of so many of us,
just like that resident non resident fight I already mentioned
and will again toward the end of this rant. Once
some people with some power over others figure out how
to use it to their advantage, it becomes almost like
a contagion.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
It might slow down at certain points, but it never
seems to stop. This goes both for the general complaints
and the fix, which benefits some hunters but removes opportunities
from others. Once we have the template for this kind
of thing, it's very repeatable and will be repeated.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So this isn't a one off deal.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
And honestly, it's a fight that's going to keep coming
up until enough people don't care about it to challenge
it anymore. Is that a risk we should have taken.
I don't think so, and I know a lot of
you don't think so as well. There are some things
that are just too valuable to some of us to
let them go without a fight, and public Land is
one of them. Will we lose this fight eventually, I
(08:32):
don't know. I kind of believe so, but that's not
good enough of a reason to be dismissive of it.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Now.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
This is probably a good time to point something else
up with this issue, too, which is that we are
constantly actively being divided all the time. We see this
(08:59):
political which is a huge issue in and of itself.
With the public land selloff thing, you kind of just
have to pick a side in it. And once we
pick sides on one issue, it's human nature to paint
ourselves all on one team or another, and that sucks bad.
You can love public land and you can love guns
and not be so tribal as to lose your voice
in the fear that you'll be considered one of us
(09:20):
or one of them. That division leaks through into hunting
in a million different ways. And it's easy to throw
your hands up and say that something like this doesn't
really matter because it's all going to shit anyway.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
But it's not. And I don't care if your number one.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Issue is I don't know too many wolves in your
state or too much overcrowding on public land according to
your standard of who should be out there, and when
I don't care right now that the bird watchers and
the mountain bikers don't really foot the bill for a
lot of this stuff the way we do. Those issues
are all real, all valid and all worth discussion and debate,
But without the places to go to do the things
(09:53):
that might be affected by those issues, it doesn't matter
as much. The fight to keep the land ours should
take precedence over those issues that only really exist because
we have the land in the first place. Now, I
know these issues aren't that simple, and I'm glossing over
some of the nuance, but you get my drift. We
can fight about a lot of stuff later, but for now,
it's a good idea to consider what has to be
(10:15):
done to keep this land open to all of us
in the future. And it's also important to acknowledge what
this means to the average white tail hunter right now.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Not much.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
I mean that most of us wouldn't miss a beat
if one point two million acres of BLM land had
gotten sold out west this year, we wouldn't A handful
of us will lose antelope spots or elk spots, maybe
a place to hunt mule deer, but mostly it wouldn't
matter to most of us at all. But how about
that national forest you might hunt or a lot of
(10:45):
the hunters in your state do hunt, but you don't
because that could be next maybe not this year. Or
in the next decade. But when we start placing more
value on land being in private hands than in the
public trust, we are going to give bad ideas to
politicians all across the country. And if not the national forest,
perhaps it's the state wildlife management areas. The Western stuff
(11:08):
is sort of the canary and the coal mine here
in a lot of those states, there's a lot of
land and not a lot of people. When you have
an abundance of something, it's easy to try to devalue.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
It, especially if you don't use it. But there's a
slow creep to.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Things like that, and it'll eventually make its way to
the east, and when it does, a lot of Western
politicians will have already navigated the waters enough to provide
other politicians with an effective route to take on this topic.
Just think about how much of a pain in the
ass old Mike Lee has been with just his three
recent attempts to sell off public. Imagine even a handful
(11:43):
of politicians east of the Mississippi trying the same thing.
It'll be death by a thousand paper cuts, and it'll
kill off a hell of a lot of hunting opportunities. Now,
even if the odds seem low right now, they aren't
zero and the prospect of losing land this way should
scare all of us, and you a warning and beat
an absolute dead horse just a little bit more. This
(12:05):
is one of those moments in our hunting culture where
you hear the rallying cry that straight out of Pink
Floyd's song Hey you, We're right at the end as
they fade into the outro, Roger Waters sings united, we stand, divided,
we fall, We are united in a way right now
that I haven't seen in a long time over this
public land issue, and it gives me a hell of
(12:27):
a lot of hope, it really does. I honestly can't
tell you how much I appreciate guys like Cal and
Mark getting after this issue with their audiences and really
pushing the message and how important this is while giving
a simple call to action that absolutely makes a big
positive difference.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
It's huge, truly.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
But remember how I said I wasn't done addressing the
resident non resident issue earlier. Here's the thing. This is
a Western issue first. Mostly it just is and it
will be until it's not. But for now, there are
a hell of a lot of us who live where
the elevation is about eight hundred feet and that's it.
And we called Mike Lee and left him messages telling
(13:08):
him how important public land was to us, and at
least in my case, how I was going to create
a podcast to talk about how misguided he is when
it comes to the issues, so that our listeners can
learn about his motivations. This is because we are united
right now, riding the high that comes with a big win,
that feels like real, actual justice.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
But I wonder how long.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
It'll take before we get back to our old selves.
As I said, this fight is going to keep coming up.
Right now, we are largely in this together, But the
more a lot of us are told we are no
longer welcome in this state or that state to hunt
this or that critter, it's going to start to wear
on our unity. You want me to fight for your
public land and your state, I will, A lot of
(13:52):
us will. But when we also actively remove hunting opportunities
from our fellow outdoorsman, we are actively removing some pieces
of that collective voice. At some point, enough hunters who
don't live where you do and who will never get
to hunt the animals that you hunt, even on federally
owned land, in your state, They're going to become apathetic
(14:13):
to the cause, and when that happens, the dominoes will
start to fall more often and more quickly. We can't
preach unity now and then engage in so much division
later without suffering some of the consequences. It just won't
work long term. And while we have just won this fight,
we got to pay attention to this stuff because it's
not going to go away. I want to feel like
(14:36):
I need to fight for this until I'm dead, and
I want my kids to feel that this is a
torch that's worthy of picking up and carrying. But I
also know how easy it is to decide a fight
is not your fight, especially when you've been removed from
something you love because other people who love the same
thing have a way to take it from you.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We just have to be careful with this shit.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
We should use this moment to pause and at least
think about our future as hunters together and what that
might mean for us as far as land usage, land ownership,
and general hunting opportunities. A win now is huge, but
how we set ourselves up for the next fight matters too.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Now.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
I know this sounds like wishy washy, horseshit, But I
think we are better off unified in about every possible way.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
I know.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
We disagree on crossbows versus vertical bows versus traditional bows,
and baiting versus not baiting, and trophy hunting versus meat hunting,
and about a million other issues that at the end
of the day might mean a hell of a lot
to our time in the field, or might just be
something we like to argue about. Because we have strong
opinions on this deer hunting thing that we are so
passionate about, we can argue and disagree when we have to,
(15:44):
but we should be keenly aware of our collective voice.
It's quite literally the thing that just kept that land
in our hands for now, and that benefits a hell
of a lot of us directly and the hell of
a lot more of us indirectly. Let's try not to
forget what we are capable of as a largely unified group.
(16:04):
We as hunters are treated like clueless bubbas and heartless
murderers in the media all the time. We are written
off as a dying demographic, kindred to cave men and
women who haven't quite evolved enough to do the ethical
thing which I guess is have someone else kill animals
for us in an industrial building far away from the
eyes of general society, so we can eat them with
(16:26):
a guilt free conscience. We just proved we are so
much more than that, and that's amazing to me. Let's
keep this momentum moving in the right direction by at
least remembering what it took to get us to coalesce
into the kind of group that wouldn't give up the
fight and who all threw our middle fingers in the
(16:47):
air and pointed them in the direction of a specific
politician who thought he could take something from us that
didn't belong to him. So wrap this up, I want
to offer us sincere thanks to everyone who may aid
the call to the Capitol switchboard or who did something
somehow to get the word out. My kids, thank you
(17:07):
and so do I.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
This has been the Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which
is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank
you so much for listening and for all of your support.
If you want some more deer hunting advice, you know,
maybe read some articles, some other podcasts, Maybe you just
want to hear some good old storytelling over on the
Bear Grease Speed We've got Klay's Bear Grease podcast obviously,
(17:36):
which is amazing. But then you got Brent Reeves over there,
who's a national treasure telling stories every week on This
Country Life. Or the new podcast by my buddy Lake
Pickle called Backwoods University, that's just fascinating. He's doing a
great job with it. Go check those out. Check out
the new films we're dropping whatever. We have tons of
new content going down every single week at the mediator
(17:59):
dot com.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Zig in for your support.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
M
Host
Mark Kenyon
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