December 18, 2025 • 60 mins
In this episode of The Articulate Fly, host Marvin Cash welcomes Robbie Kroger, founder and Executive Director of The Origins Foundation, for an in-depth conversation about hunting advocacy, wildlife conservation and the sustainable use model that's shaping the future of global conservation efforts.
Guest Expertise: From Wetland Scientist to Conservation Advocate
Robbie Kroger brings an unconventional background to hunting advocacy. With a PhD in wetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry from the University of Mississippi, six years as a professor in the Wildlife Fisheries Department at Mississippi State and over 100 peer-reviewed publications, Robbie served as chief scientist for the BP oil spill restoration framework. His science-based, measured approach to communication sets The Origins Foundation apart in the hunting advocacy space.
What You'll Learn: Reframing the Conservation Conversation
Discover how The Origins Foundation communicates with non-hunters (not anti-hunters) using honesty, respect and scientific reasoning rather than emotional arguments. Robbie explains why sustainable use of wildlife isn't a silver bullet but rather one of only seven critical tools in the limited conservation toolbox. Learn why value-based wildlife management - whether protecting elephant habitat in Africa or managing wolf populations in the American West - creates incentives for local communities to coexist with wildlife rather than eliminate it.
Featured Conservation Projects: Global Impact Through Action
Robbie details the world's largest cheetah relocation project, having moved 17 cheetahs into 500,000 acres of Mozambique habitat buffered by 10 million acres of protected land, with three more relocations planned for 2026. Hear about upcoming documentaries including "Sauvons Bambi" (debuting June 2026 in Paris) about European hunters using thermal drones to save roe deer fawns from farm equipment and "In My Footsteps" profiling the first scholarship recipient from a South African hunting charity who became a successful architect. The Foundation is also building schools and clinics in South Africa and Zambia while working on rhino and lion conservation initiatives.
Public Lands and Management Philosophy Insights
Drawing on his experience growing up under South Africa's private wildlife ownership model, Robbie contrasts it with America's revolutionary public trust doctrine where wildlife belongs to everyone. He discusses the chronic underfunding of agencies like USFS, USFWS and BLM, arguing that public-private partnerships, biodiversity credits and creative funding models could dramatically improve stewardship. The conversation explores complex topics like fair chase ethics, social media responsibility for hunters and anglers, wolf management controversies and why both sides being upset with you often means you've found the right position.
Join the Conversation
The Origins Foundation actively engages with supporters across all social media platforms, typically with Robbie responding personally to messages. Whether attending major hunting shows from Wild Sheep Foundation to Safari Club International or meeting supporters for roadside coffee in Australia, the Foundation maintains an accessible, ego-free approach focused on lifting up the entire conservation community rather than self-promotion.
Sponsors
Thanks to TroutRoutes for sponsoring this episode. Use artfly20 to get 20% off of your TroutRoutes Pro...
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash,the host of The Articulate Fly. On
this episode, I'm joined byRobbie Kroger, the founder and Executive
Director of The OriginsFoundation. Robbie's vision is to
advocate for hunters bypromoting sustainable use of wildlife
and communicating specificallyto non hunters. Join me as Robbie
shares his hunting journey,the underpinnings of his approach
(00:25):
at Origins, and the great workOrigins is doing around the globe.
Think you're really going toenjoy this one, but before we get
to the interview, just acouple of housekeeping items. If
you like the podcast, pleasetell a friend and please subscribe
and leave us a rating andreview in the podcatcher of your
choice. It really helps usout. And as 2026 approaches, just
(00:45):
a reminder for our industryfriends that the Articulate Fly offers
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Help figuring out how AI can boost.
Your bottom line, or just needhelp with some old school blocking
and tackling, we would love tohear from you. Check out the link
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interview.
Well Robbie, welcome to TheArticulate Fly.
Marvin, thank you. Iappreciate the opportunity. I know
it's been a little bit of aschedule mumble jumble to try and
(01:49):
get me to this point and Iappreciate the patience. But here
we are.
It's all good. I mean, youwere telling me your travel schedule.
You're going to be in multiplecontinents for just a span of about
two weeks. I know you'retraveling. You're probably a million
miler on some airline, right?
I'm not a million miler yetbecause I was in the beginning of
our travel I wasn't very loyalto one airline. I just sort of picked
(02:12):
wherever we could go becausewe had no money, right? So it was
I would get the cheapest,cheapest, cheapest ticket or we would
drive everywhere really. I putyou talk about Million Miler. My
truck had 230,000 miles on it.And it was like an eight year old
truck bought brand new. So weput the miles on the road. But yeah,
(02:35):
I think I'm a Delta guy. SoDelta is my hub. Out of Memphis,
head into Atlanta that way.And we're certainly loyal now. And
every year we're probablydiamond medallion by the middle of
March. So we travel a lot.
Yeah, well, the importantthing is to get those flat seats
for all that transatlantic flight.
Right?
Well, I don't get those. Weare not that kind of nonprofit. So
(03:01):
I get a nicer seat than thecattle class, but that's about it.
Fair enough. Well, before wedive into the Origins Foundation,
I wanted to learn a little bitmore about what initially drew you
to the outdoors.
You know, in South Africa, aboy growing up in South Africa, you
know, you, you love the bush,you love nature, you love seeing
all these, all the wildlife.And you know, kids in America aspire.
(03:25):
Young boys or young girlsaspire to be, I'll just call it young
boys aspire to be firefightersand policemen and all that kind of
stuff. But so in South Africa,we want to be the same thing, but
we also want to be a gameranger. We want to be that guy that
drives people around, drivesAmerican tourists around and shows
them elephants and shows themlion and on walks, you know, stops
(03:46):
at a certain bush and says, ifyou chew this leaf, it's going to
give you a numb mouth. Soyou've got a toothache, you can chew
on this leaf. And so I wantedto be that person and I became it.
I did a little bit of that,but that's where my love of the bush
sort of started and my love ofwildlife, I studied it. I fell in
love with swamps at 16 yearsold. And that's what led me down
(04:09):
my career. I got a PhD inwetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry.
But my family just loved the,you know, loved the outdoors. My
grandfather was a huge hunter,lived everywhere in the world from
Russia to northern China to,you know, his final years in Mozambique.
Uh, my father the same and youknow, grew up, he grew up in Germany,
(04:35):
spent his time in Mozambiqueand South Africa, opened the business
in Brazil. So it's just, youcan see all the things like that
you see, you hear from metoday is almost like this product
of my family up until now.
Yeah, it's really neat. But Iwant you to expound a little bit
because I mean, you have avery non conventional background
for a hunting advocate. So, Imean, let our listeners know a little
(04:56):
bit more about kind of youreducational background and then kind
of all of the field work youdid before you started Blood Origins.
Yeah, so I didn't, I didn'thunt at all. Okay. So when I was,
when I was growing up, I grewup in a town called Johannesburg,
South Africa. Eight and a halfmillion people. We didn't talk about
hunting. My friends didn'thunt. I wasn't thinking about hunting.
I was the exact audience thatI speak to today didn't have an opinion
(05:19):
about hunting. I knew that mygrandfather hunted. I knew that my
father had hunted. I'd readstories of theirs. I've seen trophies
on the wall like up behind meright now. Those are my grandfather's
trophies. But that was it. Andso I have an education in environmental
conservation biology. I have aBSc, a Bachelor of science in that.
I have an honors in botany, Ihave a master's in botany and then
(05:43):
I have a PhD at the Universityof Mississippi in technically in
biology but specializing inwetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry.
Have been a professor atMississippi State for six years in
the Wildlife FisheriesDepartment. I published over 100
peer reviewed articles. I wasthe chief scientist of the BP oil
(06:03):
spill that happened. Thebiggest ecological disaster that's
happened on this planet. I wasthe chief scientist in charge of
standing up a restorationframework for the first billion dollars
from Texas to Florida. And inthat entire time I was starting to
hunt. I was exposed to huntinghere in the United States through
(06:24):
friends. And it was just, itwas just this natural sort of occurrence.
I started getting better,better, better jobs. My resources
were a little bit more. And soI started traveling more and I started
traveling more to hunt. And Iguess it's just this idea of, I don't
know, it just came to me likeI have two small boys, five years
(06:44):
old and three years old at thetime or four years old at the time.
And I wanted to take themhunting because I never got to experience
that when I was a kid. And Iwanted them to see deer hunting and
I wanted them to experience itand experience trapping and all the
things. And I could explain tothem biologically why we were doing
it, but I couldn't explain tothem like from my heart while we
(07:09):
were doing it. And so I had tolearn that. And for some reason instead
of just talking to people andinstead of just reading or watching
videos. Well, actually thereason I did it was because I couldn't
find anything reading, Icouldn't find anything in videos.
So I said, well, I'll juststart project a side project A hobby,
a passion project onunderstanding the heart of a hunter.
(07:35):
That's what started BloodOrigins. And yeah, I would say you're
right. It is a very nonconventional. I am not American,
I have an accent, I have aPhD. So I have the acumen to defend
positions, rhetoric. I usescience a lot. And yeah, now it's,
(08:01):
you know, we've changed thename to the Origins Foundation. Now
it's more sustainable use ofwildlife which, you know, 90% of
which is hunting. And ourvoice is the same. Our voice is science
based. Our voice is veryreasoned, our voice is very purposeful,
our voice is very measured. Wedon't get upset, we don't get, we
(08:24):
don't, we don't resort to namecalling. And again, we're rooted
in essentially the truth andan unbiased look at what we do and
how we do it.
Yeah, really interesting. Ifwe back up a little bit, I think
it'd be interesting for ourlisteners to understand why you had
to wait until you came to theUnited States to have your first
hunting experience when you'rekind of in the Mecca of big game
(08:45):
huntings where you grew up.But also too. What about that first
hunt that really lit the firefor you?
Yeah. So South Africa is avery different wildlife model than
the United states. It'sactually 10, it's 180 degrees away
from the American model. TheAmerican model is a North American
wildlife management modelwhich is a public doctrine. The public,
(09:09):
the resources, the wildliferesources belong to the public. In
South Africa it's theopposite. The wildlife resources
belong to the privateindividual. If you've got an enclosure
of adequate stature, they callit adequate enclosure which is high
fence or an appropriate lowfence, then the animals belong to
you. You can do with what youwant. So there's no public grounds,
(09:33):
there's no real access topublic wildlife in South Africa to
hunt. So it's not that I waschasing that. Just number one, wasn't
available to me or anybody inSouth Africa and two, I just didn't,
you know, obviously based onmy background, wasn't going to be
exploring that. My friendsdidn't explore it either. So, you
(09:54):
know, coming to the UnitedStates and understanding public land
and understanding the freedomsthat we have here, the rights that
we have here, it was prettyamazing to know that I could, you
know, from where I'm sittingright now, I could drive 30 minutes
and in the appropriate seasonhave a loaded weapon. Walking on
ground that belongs to you,Marvin, belongs to me and actually
(10:15):
belongs to the world. Becauseanybody in this world can go and
walk on it, which is just anamazing, absolutely amazing situation.
And so when I started hunting,I didn't start. I didn't start hunting
on public ground. A lot ofpeople do. I started with a friend
inviting me to go deerhunting, whitetail deer hunting,
(10:37):
and it was Mississippi, so itwas the classic sort of redneck Mississippi
hunting, which was stuck undera tree with a lawn chair. And he
said, here's your gun. This ishow it operates. I'd obviously got
my hunter's education class,and I'd done everything I needed
to do, had my license. And hesaid, if something walks by, shoot
it. And so I can't say that.Like, I had this sort of romantic,
(11:00):
like, amazing first hunt, andthat's what sort of sold it to me,
and that's what I wanted todo. It was just the thing to do.
It's the thing that everyonedid in the Beats. It was almost like
akin to, as I said in my. Mygroup in South Africa, we did things
that everyone did there,right? You played sports, you went
out, you did all those things.Well, the same group of friends that
now I had established inMississippi, they hunted. That's
(11:24):
what they did. So actually,I'm gonna hunt and I'm gonna participate.
And that's just how itstarted. And then it just grew and
grew and grew. I can't saythat, like, now my fire is completely,
like, lit, because I guaranteeyou the next hunt that I do is going
to add a log to that fire,because there's things that I've
(11:46):
never experienced. I'm still avery, very nascent hunter, so. Yeah.
Yeah, very interesting. It'skind of funny. So I grew up in central
Virginia, and it was notuncommon for people to skip school
the first day of deer season.
Yeah, Pennsylvania, they. Theygive it all. In Pennsylvania, first
day of deer season is off,school is out. Yeah, amazing.
(12:07):
Yeah, that's how it is in thewestern part of Virginia. But, yeah,
it's an interesting thing. Andso, you know, so you kind of get
that first taste. You're ingraduate school. You know, you're
progressing in your career. Soyou get to kind of range about a
little bit more as you'rehunting. You're having kind of more
and more sophisticatedexperiences, I guess, to say. But,
you know, do you remember thatlight bulb moment when you said,
hey, I'm going to kind ofcreate this little side thing called
(12:29):
Blood Origins?
No. Like, it wasn't actuallytied to hunting. It was more. Again,
it was more tied to my boys,was More tied to, like, reading my
grandfather's stories again.My grandfather was a prolific writer,
so I just picked up some ofhis stories and started writing,
reading some more of hisstories. And I was watching outdoor
(12:49):
television and Sportsman'sChannel and all the things that we
all watch. And I guess in mymind I was like, man, I could do
that. I could be thatcreative. Maybe in my brain I was
like, man, I see a niche herethat nobody's filling, so why don't
I try to fill it? Not knowinganything about what I was stepping
(13:11):
into, didn't know anythingabout, and I still don't about cinematography
or photography, and I leavethat to the professionals. I just
had an idea, and I had an ideaof how I wanted to communicate and
I. And I had an idea of how Iwanted it to look. And then I just
had to learn everything else.Like, you know, what is the distribution
(13:34):
strategy when it comes tomedia? I didn't know I had to Google
that. You know, how do you,how do you do Facebook and Instagram
and how do you, you know, allof this stuff? We just. We're still
learning, Marmont. We're stilllearning, even though we're, you
know, we started with nothingand we're over like 450,000 people
across all of our platformsright now.
(13:56):
So, yeah, it's interestingbecause there are kind of two things
you said that really resonate,you know, one, I kind of. I fished
as a kid, but I came to flyfishing probably in my early 30s,
because I wanted to havesomething to do with my boys that
would compete with video gamesand soccer. Right?
Yeah.
And so, so that was part ofit, but also too. I mean, I've kind
of had the same experience atthe Articulate Fly, where you're
(14:17):
like, well, let's try this.And then, you know, if you're relatively
bright, I mean, we've put outa thousand episodes, so I mean, that's
amazing. Yeah. But I think,you know, to your point, if you're
kind of bright and motivated,you know, like, this isn't like when
we were kids and you weregetting stuff in the mail, like you
can literally, on a thousanddollar supercomputer in your pocket,
talk to anyone in the worldand find out anything that you're
(14:37):
interested in. And so there'sreally no excuse for trying these
experiments.
No, it isn't. And honestly,Marvin, I'm living the epitome of
the American dream. There's noother country in this world that
you could have an idea brain,fart it out and Work hard at it.
(15:05):
Right. You work bloody hard atyour podcast. We work bloody hard
at what we do and just nose tothe grindstone every single day.
And now it's my full time joband I travel around the world.
Yeah.
Who else can say that? Whoelse can build something like that?
Only in a place like America.It's just like it's. And the fact
(15:25):
that we're a nonprofit, acharity now, that's what made it
happen. That's. And it's thephilanthropic heart of Americans
that allows something likethat to happen.
Yeah, it's super interestingand I know it's an ever evolving
thing. So the challenges nevergo away. They just get different
and bigger.
Right.
(15:46):
But so you're about five yearsin. You know, can you share maybe
like your biggest surprise orone of your biggest challenges as
you're kind of building outthings to get to the Origins Foundation?
Yeah, I think we do thingsdifferently, Marvin. And it's, it's
a, it's a. In our industry,probably the same thing in the fly.
(16:06):
In the fly fishing industry.There's a lot of ego in the industry.
We have no ego. I could, youknow, if it, if I just happen to
be a face in the voice of theorganization and because we need
one, that's. It could besomebody else. I just happen to have
an accent and the acumen. So,like, all right, you're the person.
(16:27):
You're the face and the voice.But I don't have to be in. In all
of our videos. I can hireother people to be in other. In our
videos. We just don't have anego and we have an ethos which is
on I am second ethos, which isif you, Marvin, are doing great work,
I'm going to lift you up. I'mgoing to tell everybody about how
good a job you're doing. AndI'm going to look at the guy next
(16:50):
door to you who's yourcompetitor in your space, and I'm
going to lift him up too,because he's doing good stuff. And
that's an anomaly. Nobody doesthat. That's just, that's altruistic.
I want to be altruistic. Wewant to have a rising tide that rises
all ships, and that's what weare and that's what we do. And that
(17:11):
has been surprising to theindustry. And so because that's surprising
to the industry and it'sunique, that was the biggest hurdle
to climb over, is that you'renot doing this for yourself or you're
not doing this. Just you Know,I was like, no, we're doing this
for the betterment of thecommunity that we're all a part of.
And then secondly, to raisemoney, we had to break the typical
(17:33):
marketing model, which was acompany A gives you X amount of dollars,
and in return they get Y.Well, I. Before we turned ourselves
into a nonprofit, every time Iasked for money, they would say,
well, we need Y. And I wouldbe like, I'm not. Why would I give
(17:55):
you. Why? Think about whatwe're doing. We're changing this
narrative and this perceptionaround hunting for the world. It's
good for us. It's good for ourcommunity. You should believe in
me and do that. Well,everybody said no to me. Everybody.
Marvin. I didn't get a singledollar in three and a half years.
(18:15):
And because of that, we didn'tbelong to anybody. And we could say
whatever we wanted and wecould talk to whoever we wanted.
And so then when we turnedourselves into a charity, now I could
go to company A and go, I'm acharity. Would you give us X to help
support what we're doing andyou're not getting why? And they
(18:37):
said, yeah, we'll do thatbecause we have proven ourselves
now. Right. We weren't just afly by night. We had proven ourselves.
And now it's. It's juststandard. Like, people know that,
like, when they give us money,we're going to be thankful. Don't
get me wrong. We're going totalk about them, but we're not delivering.
Like, you have to give us, youknow, four posts a week or whatever
(18:59):
it is. So those are the twothings that I think we've sort of
upset the apple cart a littlebit, but that were a couple of challenges
that we had to climb over.
Yeah. It's always interestingwhen you try to do things a different
way, and it's almost likeyou're speaking a different language,
right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so for.
Obviously you're.
You're, you know, you're ahunting advocacy group, but, you
(19:19):
know, you focus on non huntersand, you know, why should non hunters
care about what you do?
Yeah. So we are obviouslyheavily advocating for hunting. However,
we do say that it's not thegolden. It's not the. It's not the
panacea. Hunting is not thesilver bullet to wildlife conservation.
(19:40):
It's a very important tool ina toolbox. That's very limited, Marvin.
If you think about the thingsthat you can do in this world for
wildlife conservation, itcomes down to like, seven things,
one of which is Hunting. Andso a non hunter, the general public
that we speak to needs tounderstand that we're on the same
team, we're after the samething. I think most people in this
(20:02):
world, the vast majority,would, when you ask the question
of what is your goal, whatwould you think around wildlife conservation?
Is that good thing or badthing? I reckon half, you know, not
half, the vast majority, 90%or more, would say it's good. We
want to protect wildlife, wewant to support wildlife conservation,
we want better wildlife in thefuture. And we agree. And we just
(20:27):
want to educate you about thistool that has a bad rack around,
it has bad PR around, it ismalaligned to say it's not as bad
as everyone portrays it to be.There's a sector of our world that
hates what we do because itdoesn't fit philosophically with
(20:49):
the way their beliefs. Andinstead of saying, we don't like
your activity, but we canstill see the benefits that come
from it, I. E. Wildlifeconservation, habitat protection,
they choose to try and get ridof the tool. And so that's why we
speak to that general public,we speak to that non hunter and say,
(21:11):
hey, that non hunter. Let'sjust make sure we, from a. We're
clarifying from a definitionthat non hunter is a non hunter,
it's not an anti hunter. So wejust want to, we just want to sway
their decisions towards themore positive side of, of sustainable
use, I. E. Hunting.
Got it. And so it'sinteresting too, because kind of,
(21:33):
as I was doing research forthe interview, I sort of think of
the Origins foundation as amanagement philosophy and a communication
strategy.
Right.
And I, and I think of themanagement philosophy as sustainable
use. And I would really likeyou to kind of expound on that and
like, kind of why thatmanagement philosophy is kind of
the bedrock of what you'redoing at the Origins Foundation.
(21:54):
It's the bedrock. And to me,the reason we're focusing so hard
on it is because we believeit's the future, it's the future
of wildlife conservation inthis world. The reason it's the future
of wildlife conservation inthis world is that the human population
on this planet is burgeoning.
Yeah.
There's certain countries thatdefinitely the human population is
starting to trend down, butthere's no place in this world that
(22:16):
the pressures on habitat andwildlife are not being felt because
of humans. And because of thatfact, we as humans have a greater
responsibility to steward theremaining habitat and wildlife that
we can look after, which meanssustainable use needs to play a role
(22:44):
in making sure that we protecthabitat and protect wildlife in the
future. Because if wildlifehas value to Joe the farmer and an
elephant raids his crop everyfortnight and that elephant has no
value, what's going to happento that elephant, Marvin?
(23:04):
It's just going to keep ondoing what it's doing.
It's going to get poisoned orit's going to get chopped. You know,
it's hamstring chopped by thelocal villages and they're just going
to slaughter it becausethey're sick and tired of their crops
being raided. But what ifthere was a sustainable use model
in that area where thatelephant could potentially be hunted
(23:27):
by someone and money generatedfor the community and the village,
what then? What has justchanged in their mind? The change
is a value. So I'm willing toaccept some risk and crop damage
because I know that thatelephant's actually doing more for
me alive when somebody comesin and hunts it appropriately than
(23:51):
not. Nobody hunting it, nobodyusing it sustainably. And I just
hate that animal. So that'sthe premise, that sustainable use
provides more value, not allof the value. Again, it's not the
silver bullet, it's not thepanacea. It provides more value to
wildlife, which means wildlifewill be looked at in a way that will
(24:15):
be sustained for our kids andour grandkids one day.
Got it. And you know, and thenthe communication strategy and we
talked, you know, you focus onnot anti hunters, but non hunters.
But you're also. Yourstorytelling is a broader arc of
the hunting experience or itfocuses on, you know, the human experience.
Kind of like planning all theway through to the harvest and after
(24:37):
the harvest. And that's one.It's very different than most hunting
communication strategy.
Right.
Like, you know, if you go toOutdoor Life Network, that's usually
not what's going on, but the other.
Speaking to a huntingcommunity. Yeah, their communication
strategy, their communicationstrategies. We talk to hunters, so
we're going to show hunts,we're going to show people killing
things.
Yeah, it's.
(24:57):
Yeah.
And so the interesting thingtoo is that's also a very different
strategy from kind of yourprofessional background. Like that's
not a, like a, that's not theway you generally talk to people
about what's going on. And soI was kind of curious how you settled
on, let's just call it thepersuadable middle for your communication
strategy.
You know, it's not that fardifferent from what I was doing from
(25:20):
a science perspective. Myscience was all management based,
so I was using my science tosway politicians and politics and
almost the general public tosay, and back then I was in the farming
space, agricultural farmingspace, and using wetlands. And so
I was using my science toconvince others that this is good.
(25:43):
Same thing. Now I'm usingcommunication strategies, whether
it's science, whether it'sblog articles, whether it's podcasts,
whether it's films, whetherit's documentaries, whether it's,
you know, commenting on socialmedia as a means to sway opinion
on this thing that I think is good.
Yeah, I get that. I guess whatI'm saying though is most people
(26:03):
generally, they try to kind ofpreach to the choir as opposed to
finding the people whose mindsthey can change. And that's a, you
know, I wouldn't say it'ssingularly unique, but most people
are not that sophisticated intheir advocacy.
Yeah, no, you're, you'reabsolutely right. I think you, you've
got to, we've got to, we, weare constantly looking at it through
a lens that this person thatwe're into. So a couple of, couple
(26:25):
of lenses. We look at thiswhen somebody engages us and calls
us every name under the sun.They typically are not a non hunter.
They typically are an antihunter. And so what the lens that
we immediately go to is one ofhonesty. We very, are very upfront.
(26:46):
Like if they're commenting ona picture that looks terrible, everyone's
seen those terrible huntingphotos, we gotta be honest and go,
yeah, you're right, that's aterrible photo. We agree with you.
And so you're disarming themimmediately. And then secondly, like,
then you say, well, let me,let me just for a second, let's talk
(27:07):
about the things that camebecause of that, that hunt. Let me,
let me talk to you about thevillage. Let me talk to you about
the person, Let me talk to youabout the community upliftment that
came from that hunt. Thatindividual that I'm engaging with
is not going to get his mindchanged or her mind changed. Okay,
(27:29):
but depending on the account,depending on the situation, there
could be fifty thousand to ahundred thousand people that read
what I wrote. Most of them arenon hunters and, or hunters. And
so for the non hunters, wehave just put our, ourselves in front
of them because again, youcan't believe the voyeurism in this
(27:53):
world when it comes to socialmedia. There are lots of people that
don't engage, they don't likethings, they don't comment things.
They just, but they want toread, they want to be in the know.
The FOMO is big, right? So Iwant to be involved. I want to know.
Well, they're seeing me do acouple of things. They're. They're
getting information out of mycomment. They're seeing a character
(28:14):
of a hunter interacting withan anti hunter, keeping his cool,
keeping his character, keepingrespectful, all of those things.
And then the hunting communitythat's watching me is looking at
it, going, oh, I want to. Iwant to interact like him. So it's
(28:36):
almost like a little peerpressure system that we're building.
And I see it every. Like we'vebeen going now, you know, as a nonprofit
for five years. I see postswhere I get tagged into things. We
get tagged into things. Thatsounds like us, but it's not us writing
(28:57):
it. So there's definitely apervasiveness that's happening in
how people engage, which ishuge. It's very, very, very important
in how you engage onlinebecause it shows, you know, it's
a. It's a broader look at whatthe community's character is like.
(29:19):
Yeah, it's interesting, too,because, you know, I know this is
your criticism of socialmedia. You know, the harvest, whether
you're hunting or fishing, issuch a little part of the entire
experience. Right. You know,like, even for me, like, I do a little
bit of upland bird hunting,and, you know, I don't really care
about the birds. I love justwatching the dogs work, right. Because
(29:40):
they're just so happy, andthey want to make the. The people
that are on the hunt. So, youknow, they want to be, you know,
good servants, basically, andthey just. They're so enthusiastic.
Like, to me, that's like, youknow, if you get to go out on a brisk
day and walk around with ashotgun and watch the dogs go, that's
an amazing day.
Amazing day. Yeah. So thereason why, you know, I. I rack my
(30:01):
brain all the time, like, whyare we, as a hunting community, not
talking more about the thingsthat I want them to talk about? And
the reason is because they'recommunicating to their. Their peers,
their community. They'recommunicating to hunters. And the
way that hunters communicatewith one another, just like fishermen.
(30:24):
How do fishermen communicatewith each other, Marvin? They send
pictures of their fish.
Yep. Size and size and number. Right?
That's it. Same thing withhunters. And so back in the day before
social media, before theadvent of social media, that's what
you did. You send photos inthe mail. You put your photo up in
(30:48):
the. In the. The local outdoorshop. Right. You had that pin board.
Same thing with fish. Everyonechecked it out. Why? Because the
people that were going intothose stores were your people. Now
think of those, those littlethings, those outdoor shops as greenhouses.
Those greenhouses now exist inthis world of social media. They
(31:11):
still exist. You still shareyour pictures, right? But now they're
on devices and the world islooking through the glass of the
greenhouse and seeingeverything that you're sharing. And
they're like, we don't likethat greenhouse. Look at the stuff
(31:33):
that's happening in thatgreenhouse. It's not anonymous anymore.
It's not just tied to ourcommunity anymore. It's out for the
world to see. And so we haveto change some of the imagery. We
have to change some of thethings that we talk about. And it's
difficult because thecommunity upliftment, the person
you just employed, theschools, the medical, the meat distribution,
(31:57):
the sunsets, the camaraderie,the fire, that's all not very sexy
communication to our peers. Sowe don't naturally do it.
Yeah, it's interesting. Andfrom my perspective, that's all the
most important stuff to talkabout, right?
Yeah. But I'd even challengeyou, like, if you do hunt and you
(32:19):
do all those things, how manytimes have you spoken about it?
I talk about it, but I also,too, I generally don't share, like,
fishing and hunting pictures.Right. Like, I was just up in Pennsylvania,
I just shared a cover bridgepicture. My theory on that is not
that I've got any greatcommunication strategy. My theory
is that I have enough picturesof me holding fish and that they're
(32:42):
plenty, they're plenty for mykids. And when I can't remember anymore,
it doesn't matter. So I don'tneed to take the time and, you know,
do all that sort of stuff. Andso I generally just try to kind of
stay out in the moment. Soit's no great, you know, insight
on my part. Although I willsay, you know, you generally now,
with Instagram Carousel, youcan have some really nice kind of
storytelling montages ifyou're deliberate about collecting
(33:02):
the pictures. But, you know,it's interesting too, right? Because
your management philosophy, Ithink I remember doing research for
the interview that, you know,you were pointing out how incredibly
complicated the wolfmanagement issue is out in the Rockies.
Right. And you have, you know,it's not just a hunting, not hunting,
you know, one of sevenmanagement tools, but also you have,
(33:22):
you know, an incredibly broadcross section of interests.
Right.
Ranchers, BLM managers, youknow, and to say that we live in
polarized times is a prettymuch an understatement. You know,
how do you kind of keep thefortitude to have this nuanced approach
for sustainable use andcommunication and the onslaught of
(33:43):
this, like, you know, it'seither good or bad. There's nothing
in the middle. There's neverany gray. Because I think, I think
that's a really challengingplace to be as a communicator today.
Yeah, it is. And. But I thinkwe have, if you. I think in any issue.
And we'll use the wolf as anexample. I think in any issue there's
enough data and logic to showthat, hey, where I live, that isn't
(34:11):
the shoot, shovel and shut upof wolves. And the other opposite
side, which is never shoot awolf, ever. You sit in the middle
and you go, I think you'rewrong. And I think you're wrong.
And so if both sides arepissed off at me now, I've actually
found the place where I needto be. So let's just talk through
(34:34):
it. With wolves. I likewolves, so that means I'm on this
side. I like them on thelandscape, which means I'm on this
side. But I also believe thatstates have to have the ability to
manage wolves, which means I'mon this side. Now I think that you
look at the data and thescience of wolf reintroductions and
(34:58):
wolf repopulations across thewest as well as in Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, those objectiveshave far been exceeded in terms of
recovery objectives for Fishand Wildlife Service, which means
they do not need protectionsanymore, which puts me on this side
(35:18):
again. But I'll also say thatI believe that because of all the
policies that we have, all theregulations that we have, the ESA
and all the things that comeat a state and federal level, that
we will never go back towolves being extirpated from the
landscape which sits me nowand very much now in the middle.
(35:41):
And they say, well, how do youknow, Robbie? There's an example.
Look at Idaho. Idaho has athousand two hundred wolves. They
have every single techniqueunder the sun to manage those wolves.
They take 400 a year, yet thepopulation of wolves maintains at
(36:05):
1200 every single year. And soI think there's this, there's heavy,
heavy emotions on both sides.I think sometimes I look towards
more of our side and say, man,this should shovel, shut up rhetoric
is not good for us. Like everytime you say that, that's sort of
(36:27):
like a dart that I have topull out of our skin because this
side is saying, see, see, lookat you guys. You guys don't care.
But I think that there's moreand more of me in the, in the digital
media landscape than therewas. And I think that that sentiment
is growing and growing. Lookat the ranches in Colorado. The ranches
(36:50):
in Colorado before the wolfreintroduction happened were totally
against wolf. Wolves being onthe landscape. But wolves are on
the landscape now. Are theystill in the shoot, shut up and shovel
model? No, they are. Okay, wehave to deal with this. How do we
deal with this? We need tohave. We, we're trying, doing our
(37:11):
best here, but we also needthe opportunity and the ability for
lethal management because it'sgoing to get to a point where it's
like, we've tried everything.Help us. Like we need help. And that
help could be pay us, we'velost 50 cows. Pay us half a million
dollars. We'll live with thewolves. Same as the elephant example.
(37:33):
Marvin. So there's obviouslyvery, very, very divisive topics,
but we approach it every topicthe same way that just described
it to you. Wild horses. Hugelydivisive topic. Maybe the one I don't
approach, the way that I justdescribed is feral cats. I think
feral cats are just terribleon the landscape from a biodiversity
(37:56):
perspective. Luckily, we don'thave a much a big issue here in the
States, but Australia, like,it's a. Decimating. It is the number
one decimator of biodiversityin Australia. Yeah.
Interesting. Do you ever worryabout, you know, hunters that don't
share the values you're tryingto espouse of the Origins foundation
kind of riding your coattailsand kind of using you as kind of
(38:19):
a useful mouthpiece, but not,you know, kind of standing behind
the values that you want to embody?
It's a good question. I don'tthink we've ever experienced that
yet. The people that will bewith us are our kind of people. But
the people that do say, that'shypothetically somebody goes, yeah,
(38:42):
we're with you, we're withyou, we're with you. And then do
something unethical. You know,we, we, we're getting to points in
our community that people arestarting to say things. And in that
scenario, if I knew theperson, I'd be like, dude, you've
got to say something like,that's even, that's even worse when
(39:02):
you're unethical and don't sayanything or, or like, no, no, it's
fine when you know it isn't.So I think also a sign of maturity
and a sign of character is,yep, I messed up. Like, that was
wrong and sort of just youknow, put a flag in the ground. Yeah,
it's, it's you, you arebringing up a great point. And we
(39:25):
are very cognizant of. We havean image, we have a character, we
have a thing that is what wedo and how we do it. And if somebody
like, oh, that's me, I dothat. And then they go and do something
counter to that. As long asthey're not, you know, one of my
(39:46):
board members affiliated withme, hired by me. I think there's
enough gap there to say, okay,you said you believed, but did you
really?
Yeah. Whether it's overcommercialized and I mean that in
the sense of like notembodying kind of fair chase in the
process or things like that. Icould see, you know, times to basically
(40:09):
say, hey, this isn't how we do this.
Right?
Yeah. There are things thatthey're very clear like that's not
us. Fair chase, you know, eventhough defined by Burchase, is very,
a very gray, slippery slope inmultiple directions. In those kinds
(40:35):
of situations, we prefer totalk them out to try and understand.
So for instance, somebodywould say, I think Boone and Crockett
even has it in theirdefinition. You have to be within
the radius of the animals likepurview for it to be fair chase.
So what does that actuallymean? It's a very gray area. So for
(40:56):
a white tailed deer, does thatmean I have to be within 50 yards
of that deer before I kill it?So what happens if I shoot it at
300 yards? Did I just exhibitnon fair chase principles in what
I just did? So we, we willalways have that thought process.
We'll always talk it out.We'll always ask big questions. Because
(41:18):
I want people to think aboutit, right. I want people to really
question if you're sayingsomeone's unethical because they
shoot game at 500 yardsbecause they're a long range rifle
shooter. Why is that unethicalin your mind? I want to understand,
I need to understand why youstand where you stand. Oh, because
(41:40):
the animal doesn't know you'rethere. Okay, so what if they went
to 320? What's that number?That. And how do you know it's that
number? Is. Has science provedthat deer can only see this far or
they can only smell this far?What if I did a really good job and
got, you know, upwind and ifthere's just lots of questions in
(42:04):
that, in that scenario, wewill always talk it through is what
I'm trying to say.
Yeah, it's interesting. It'salmost like you have to kind of come
back and ask yourself if theway you're pursuing the animal is
plugging into that broaderstory arc that you kind of philosophically
agree is kind of, for lack ofa better words, the hunt. Right.
But, yeah, I mean, it's acomplicated thing. But, you know,
we have that in fishing too,where, you know, you'll see people,
(42:27):
whether it's an etiquetteissue or, you know, I mean, people
don't read anymore. Right. So,you know, God forbid you would actually
know what the fishingregulations were in that whole way
of, like, how do you talk topeople on the river in a way that's
constructive? Right. That'snot. Or even like, you know, younger
kids. Right. They're on theriver, they just don't know.
Right.
And you have an opportunitythere to help, to help them and not
(42:50):
educate them in some reallykind of nasty hierarchical way. But,
you know, you give them anexperience, it makes them appreciate
the sport more and actuallywant to fish more. Kind of, I guess,
in consistent with the norms.
Right.
Yeah, it's, you know, you hopethat youngsters are learning from
(43:12):
their elders or others thathave decided to mentor them. And
my job is to help, I guess,mentor those mentors. Right. Is help.
Like, here's. I want you to. Iwant you to think about these kinds
of things. I want you to thinkabout how you interact with people.
I want you to think aboutcharacter and your interactions and
(43:35):
respects and.
Things like that.
Yeah, well, we're going to goto the lighter side now. We're going
to talk about the fun stuff.Right. So why don't you tell us about
some of your kind of recentand upcoming documentaries and conservation
projects, because you got somereally cool stuff that's, you know,
I don't know what's in thepipeline, but I see what's on the
website and you got somereally neat stuff. You want to share
(43:57):
that with our listeners?
Yeah, we've got some, youknow, we work all over the world.
We've got, I'll tell you acouple of things. Working on, obviously,
the world's largest cheetahrelocation project right now. We
moved 17 cheetah. We've gotanother three permits in place. Not
in place yet, but we'reprobably going to move another three
cheetah in 2026. And that'sjust a fun project. It's tickling
(44:19):
the science side of me. I geekout every morning. Our cheetahs have
satellite collars on them, soI can see their movements every day.
I can think about like whythey're moving, why they're moving,
what are they doing here? Whydo they split? Please don't go across
to that area. We don't wantyou to be in the human habitation.
But then at the same timewe're like, you're going to have
to learn, like, don't go inthat area. So that's cool. That's
(44:42):
at least a five year project.We're at the end of year one right
now. We have a documentarycoming out in June of next year.
It'll debut in Paris, Francecalled Savon Bambi. And Savon Bambi
is about the originalnarrative that sort of started an
anti hunting rhetoric, whichis Bambi. And it's the. A lot of
(45:03):
people don't realize that thedeer in Bambi is actually a roe deer.
It's a very common species ofdeer across Europe. And roe deer
babies, baby fawns have spotson them and they get hidden in hay
fields between the middle ofMay and the middle of June. They're
typically born in thattimeframe. And so mom hides them
in the fields. Well, it's alsothe same timeframe, based on weather
(45:26):
conditions, that farmers cuttheir fields for the very first time.
And so they chop Bambia. Andso the only people that actually
care in this scenario arehunters and hunting organizations.
And so these guys go out everymorning with thermal drones and they
find baby roe deer and theypick them out of the fields and move
them. And the guys come in,the farmers cut the fields. There's
(45:49):
no PETA, there's no Humanesociety, there's no NSPCA doing any
of this work. And so that's acool documentary that we've got.
We've got another really,really emotional documentary called
In My Footsteps that's comingout in 2026. In my footsteps about
an individual who received thefirst education monies from a hunting
(46:11):
charity in South Africa. Andbecause he was number one, he had
to be successful. If he wasn'tsuccessful, then the program would
have collapsed because what'sthe point in investing in kids if
nothing's coming to fruition?Well, this individual is now a very
accomplished architect in avery accomplished architectural firm
(46:33):
in East London in PortElizabeth. Sorry. And we followed,
we went and told his story andthen we took him back to where he
started and made him walk thesame streets that he walked as a
kid and the hostels that hestayed in. And it is a powerful,
powerful piece. We got aveteran turkey hunt coming. That's
(46:54):
again a very powerful pieceabout how healing helps these veterans,
helping in the outdoors helpsthem. We've got work on rhino trade,
we've got a lion conservationpiece. We're investing in building
schools and clinics in SouthAfrica and Zambia next year. We've
got a lot on the go. Marvin.
(47:14):
Yeah, I think the interestingthing too about the cheetah relocation
is that, that you're notrelocating them to then harvest them
later. You're relocating.
No hunting.
Yeah, so it's. There's nohunting, you know, there's no harvest
there. You're actually movingthem because the species is incredibly
endangered.
Yeah, incredibly endangered.Requires new habitats, requires open
range systems to berepatriated into. And truly it's
(47:38):
a range expansion project. Youwant cheetahs to be in broader habitats.
And we know that there's acouple of transient cheetahs in this
system, not very many. And weprobably think there's probably six
to 10 in the area based on allof the anecdotal information that
we've gathered. And now we'veput 17 into the system and we plan
(47:58):
to put more into the system.And the system, really, our area
is a 500,000 acre area just onthe border of, in Mozambique, on
the border of Zimbabwe. But itbuffers up against probably 10 million
acres of adequate cheetahhabitat that's all protected, whether
there's some huntingconcessions, there's some photographic
(48:19):
concessions, there's somenational parks. So it's a really
beautiful blend of all the, aswe mentioned in the beginning, all
of the uses. Sorry, all thetools for wildlife conservation in
this landscape.
Very neat. And so as I kind ofcome back. Right. So I'm a, I'm a
fisherman first and we havesimilar issues. There's a little
(48:40):
bit of difference, you know,so we've got like wild fish hatchery,
we've certainly. There's alot, particularly on the saltwater
side, like with striper andredfish. You know, there's a lot
of commercial recreationaldivide. And you know, we've got the
public private issue and kindof catch and release versus harvested,
but all that stuff kind ofgoes in the soup. And I was kind
of curious, you know, yourthoughts on how we, the fishing and
(49:04):
the fly fishing communitycould use your approach to kind of
open the aperture to getbetter solutions. Right. Because
it's not, you know, there'ssome places that have to be private
to be protected. There's someplaces where you have to harvest
fish. You know, people have tomake a living. So, like, how do you.
Moderate commercial versusrecreational harvest, you know, Kind
of. Any thoughts about, youknow, how people can apply what you,
(49:26):
you know, you've learned andyou're implementing on the hunting
side to their fishing communities?
I think we've already, we'vealready sort of worked through that,
which is you need to. We needto get away from just sending and
talking about the number offish you've caught and how big the
fish is, to really taking the,the, the idea of all those things
(49:51):
by the scruff of its neck andsaying, here, like, make it public.
Like, this is what happens.Like, this is why it's private. Anybody
know why it's private? Hasanybody talked about why it's private,
why it needs to be privatehere? Let's talk about it. Let's
have a podcast about it, let'shave a field day about it, let's
have a documentary about it.Let's build some infographics that
(50:14):
show the changes inbiodiversity as a result of that
effort. Hey, let's talk aboutthe economic upliftment that comes
because of this. Hey, let'sgive you the data of the fishery
and how well it's doing,because we did X, Y and Z, and that's
why we need X, Y and Zimplemented in, elsewhere, because
(50:35):
the same thing's going tohappen. And I'm sure CCA is doing
stuff like that, and I'm surethere's other organizations, Trout
Unlimited, doing things likethat, but maybe not at the scale
of what's needed like we'redoing. And so it's just, it just
takes a different mindset,Marvin. That's all it's going to
require is somebodyapproaching it from the mindset like
we do, which is we're notactually interested in the fishing,
(50:58):
but we're in your camp, we'rein your community. Like we. I'm not
interested in the hunting. I'minterested in all the things that
come as a result of you doingwhat you're doing. And how do we
take all of that informationto defend why you do what you do
and help you keep what you do,protect what you do, grow what you
do?
(51:18):
Yeah, it's interesting. Ithink we're going to have to fight
a similar battle on the socialmedia front, because I don't think
that, for lack of a betterword, the influencer culture we have
going on in the fly fishingcommunity is really lending itself
very well to that richer narrative.
But they could, they could.They're prime, too.
Yeah, well, something on thelist for 20, 26. There we go. So
(51:43):
to sort of come full circle,you know, you, you had this great
public land experience as yourfirst hunting experience in the US
and, you know, obviouslythere's a lot going on in terms of
access. Public. Public landaccess in the United States. But
also too, I think there's alot going on in terms of funding
the infrastructure to managethe public land. And so I was kind
(52:05):
of curious if you kind of hadsome thoughts. I think it would be
great, you know, given whatyou do, but also the fact that you
kind of have this benefit ofknowing, like, what it's like to
grow up, for lack of a betterword. I know you were in South Africa,
but that's kind of theEuropean model, like the king owns
land and you don't get to goon. On the land, but kind of share
your thoughts about where weare in terms of managing public lands
and funding the stewards thatwe pay to basically make sure we,
(52:28):
you know, sustainably,basically reap the benefits of those
lands.
Yeah, as I said, the publicland system in America is what makes
it amazing, what makes itgreat. I think, obviously we've seen
on this administration aconstant attack on public lands and
changing potential uses ofpublic lands. And again, you'd expect
(52:51):
this from me. I, I sort of getit, which is this whole energy independence
component of the strategy.Like, hey, let's take care of our
own. We've got things here.But we shouldn't sacrifice what we
have. The greatest riches inwhich is public land and the ability
to access public land. All thebenefits that come from it. Spiritual,
(53:11):
physical, mental, feedingyourself, that kind of things. I
do, though, believe that wehave forgotten about the management.
We've forgotten about thestewardship component of our public
lands. The agencies that arein charge of our public lands, usda,
Forest Service, Fish andWildlife Service, blm. Those agencies
(53:36):
are severely underfunded to dothe work to maintain these areas.
Right. You just look atcatastrophic fires. That's just the
reason we have catastrophicfires is because we just don't have
the money and infrastructureto implement a fire regime that is,
(53:56):
from a management lens, that'sit. So if we gave them more money,
we'd have better public lands,we'd have better wildlife, we'd have
better resources. To me,that's. It's a huge. It's a huge
thing. The management elementis huge. Think outside the box. Let's
(54:18):
think really outside the box alittle bit. We can think a little
bit of the public privatepartnership. The public private partnership
works very, very well all overthe world. Are there small, like,
are there small wildliferefuges no, that are duck refuges
that an ngo, local NGO cantake over the management of and they
(54:40):
co manage with the feds andthe private entity. It happens everywhere.
We shouldn't be afraid of thatmodel, we should embrace it because
now you've got access to moneyand people who are interested in
doing the work. So there's,you know, carbon credits, biodiversity
credit schemes, tapping intothe world banks, tapping into big
(55:03):
companies that need thosebiodiversity credits or carbon credits.
Could we not again create apublic private partnership there
to help our public lands getbetter, become healthier? That's
where I stand.
Yeah, it's interesting, right,because I always, I'm always so disappointed
that the framing now is sosimplistic, right. It's either A
(55:24):
or not A. And there's likeall, I always tell my boys, like
all the hard work is in themiddle, all of it like. And so, you
know, we can walk and chew gumat the same time, I think. And you
know, I think it's kind of, Imean where we are now is, you know,
people are, some people arescared to death. They want responsible
management but things arebeing so aggressively moved in the
other direction that they're,they're becoming maybe overly protective
(55:46):
and not as thoughtful as theycould be. But I think it's a, I think
it's a super complicatedissue. I mean, you know, I've, I
mean, gosh, I, you know,rarely, you know, fish on private
land, right. Go get to go outwest, right. You just buy your out
of state fishing license inMontana. You can go all over creation.
It's an amazing thing. Youknow, as we kind of wind down, I
know you're not speakingbecause you're going to be hunting
(56:07):
for the next three or four weeks.
No, I'm not, I'm not hunting.Oh, I'm working business. It's all.
So this time of the year inSouth Africa and in the southern
hemisphere are all the annualgeneral meetings of all the professional
hunting associations. That'swhy every year I miss Thanksgiving
because the professionalhunting association meetings of South
Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia,Zambia, all happen almost like in
(56:31):
a three week back to back. Soyeah, I wish I was hunting.
Yeah, well, so, so you're nothunting. So you know, obviously none
of my listeners will be ableto join you in South Africa for any
of those. But you know, as wekind of look, you know, in the fly
fishing world, you know, thewintertime is a big show season for
consumer and B2B shows, youknow. Or do you have any speaking
(56:52):
engagements in the States orAny trade shows, I know you like
to go to those as well.Anything like that, you want to alert
folks to where they maybe getto kind of come out and talk to you
about this stuff a little bitmore, shake your hand, all that kind
of good stuff.
Yeah, we're at all of theshows, like, you name it, we're at
it. You know, small chaptershows to the Wild Sheep foundation,
(57:13):
to Dallas Safari Club, toSafari Club International, to NWTF,
we're pretty much 90% of them.So you, you will see on our socials
when we're moving and howwe're moving around this world. And
you know, if we're in yourarea, if you're in your neck of the
woods, we'd love to have acoffee with you. We'd love to shake
(57:33):
your hand. I just had thisexperience in Australia. I was doing
a road trip through Australiaand I just put on my social, like,
this is my route today.Anybody on my route have a pie or
a coffee together. And I hadmultiple people that I stopped on
the side of the road. Youknow, we just. And they had, they
had bought the coffee alreadyand we stopped and we had a coffee
together and chatted and tooka selfie and off I went.
(57:56):
Yeah. It's kind of cool toowhen that happens because it kind
of tells you that all thathard work of the last five years,
you're not crazy, right? Thatyou're actually reaching people.
Marvin, we were halfway aroundthe world.
Yeah.
And that happened. Which blewmy mind.
Yeah.
Which again is.
I always say, folks, you got$1,000 supercomputer in your pocket.
Don't look at cat memes onInstagram. Go. Reach out and connect
(58:17):
with people.
That's right. That's right.
Before I let you go, is thereanything else you want to share with
our listeners?
No, I would just encourageeveryone. If you are in the hunting
space or even if you're in thefly fishing space, you know, think
about those things that sortof made you become a fisherman or
love fire fishing or lovehunting and, you know, talk about
(58:37):
them. Talk about them on yoursocial media, on the digital media.
Learn about them. Learn aboutyour why. Learn about the upliftment
that comes as a result of theactivities that you love to do. Because
you never know when you'regoing to be in a situation where
you have to defend. May be adinner party, it may be your mother
in law, it may be Thanksgivingdinner, it may be on social media.
(58:58):
And if you've educatedyourself enough and you've watched
videos, if you Listen topeople, you'll be confident enough
to make your point and knowunderstand why you're making your
point. And I think that'll goa long way in our community. I'm
seeing it happen every singleday. So I just, I would challenge
(59:22):
people and if you feel likeyou have a question, you're like,
man, I just don't quiteunderstand this. From a hunting perspective,
we are not hard to find. Youcan find us on all the social media
platforms. You can directmessage us on all the social media
platforms. 90% of the timeyou're going to be talking directly
to me. So it's, it's, I likethat personal interaction. I'm not
going to give up that personalinteraction. So yeah, reach out.
(59:46):
Very neat. And so if folkswant to learn more about the Origins
foundation, support your workand kind of follow your adventures
in the field, where shouldthey go?
Just type in the Originsfoundation into every platform will
come up Google, Twitter,Facebook, Instagram, you name it,
you'll find us.
Well, I will drop all thatstuff in the show notes folks, so
(01:00:08):
it'll be a whole lot easierfor you to find those links.
Well, I appreciate that,Marvin, really do.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate youcarving some time out before your,
you know, your multi weekconference expedition to South Africa.
Yeah, I'm one of thoseprocrastinators. My wife said to
me this morning she's had youpacked. I said, I haven't even started.
That's because you're aseasoned traveler.
(01:00:28):
Three and a half weeks oftraveling packing is going to happen
the next two hours.
Well, thank you so much formaking the time. Safe travels.
Appreciate you, Marvin. Thank you.
Well folks, we hope youenjoyed the interview as much as
we enjoyed bringing it to you.Remember, links to all this episode
sponsors are in the shownotes. Check them out. Tight lines,
everybody.
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash,the host of The Articulate Fly. On
this episode, I'm joined byRobbie Kroger, the founder and Executive
Director of The OriginsFoundation. Robbie's vision is to
advocate for hunters bypromoting sustainable use of wildlife
and communicating specificallyto non hunters. Join me as Robbie
shares his hunting journey,the underpinnings of his approach
(00:25):
at Origins, and the great workOrigins is doing around the globe.
Think you're really going toenjoy this one, but before we get
to the interview, just acouple of housekeeping items. If
you like the podcast, pleasetell a friend and please subscribe
and leave us a rating andreview in the podcatcher of your
choice. It really helps usout. And as 2026 approaches, just
(00:45):
a reminder for our industryfriends that the Articulate Fly offers
consulting services. Whetheryou need help planning for 2026.
Help figuring out how AI can boost.
Your bottom line, or just needhelp with some old school blocking
and tackling, we would love tohear from you. Check out the link
to our consulting page in theshow notes. And finally, a shout
out to our sponsor. TroutRoutes we all know streams are getting
(01:07):
crowded and chances are you'renot the only one at your local access
point. Get away from thecrowds and busy gravel lots by using
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artfly20art f o y20 all oneword for 20% off of your Trout Routes
Pro membership atmaps.troutroutes.com now on to our
interview.
Well Robbie, welcome to TheArticulate Fly.
Marvin, thank you. Iappreciate the opportunity. I know
it's been a little bit of aschedule mumble jumble to try and
(01:49):
get me to this point and Iappreciate the patience. But here
we are.
It's all good. I mean, youwere telling me your travel schedule.
You're going to be in multiplecontinents for just a span of about
two weeks. I know you'retraveling. You're probably a million
miler on some airline, right?
I'm not a million miler yetbecause I was in the beginning of
our travel I wasn't very loyalto one airline. I just sort of picked
(02:12):
wherever we could go becausewe had no money, right? So it was
I would get the cheapest,cheapest, cheapest ticket or we would
drive everywhere really. I putyou talk about Million Miler. My
truck had 230,000 miles on it.And it was like an eight year old
truck bought brand new. So weput the miles on the road. But yeah,
(02:35):
I think I'm a Delta guy. SoDelta is my hub. Out of Memphis,
head into Atlanta that way.And we're certainly loyal now. And
every year we're probablydiamond medallion by the middle of
March. So we travel a lot.
Yeah, well, the importantthing is to get those flat seats
for all that transatlantic flight.
Right?
Well, I don't get those. Weare not that kind of nonprofit. So
(03:01):
I get a nicer seat than thecattle class, but that's about it.
Fair enough. Well, before wedive into the Origins Foundation,
I wanted to learn a little bitmore about what initially drew you
to the outdoors.
You know, in South Africa, aboy growing up in South Africa, you
know, you, you love the bush,you love nature, you love seeing
all these, all the wildlife.And you know, kids in America aspire.
(03:25):
Young boys or young girlsaspire to be, I'll just call it young
boys aspire to be firefightersand policemen and all that kind of
stuff. But so in South Africa,we want to be the same thing, but
we also want to be a gameranger. We want to be that guy that
drives people around, drivesAmerican tourists around and shows
them elephants and shows themlion and on walks, you know, stops
(03:46):
at a certain bush and says, ifyou chew this leaf, it's going to
give you a numb mouth. Soyou've got a toothache, you can chew
on this leaf. And so I wantedto be that person and I became it.
I did a little bit of that,but that's where my love of the bush
sort of started and my love ofwildlife, I studied it. I fell in
love with swamps at 16 yearsold. And that's what led me down
(04:09):
my career. I got a PhD inwetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry.
But my family just loved the,you know, loved the outdoors. My
grandfather was a huge hunter,lived everywhere in the world from
Russia to northern China to,you know, his final years in Mozambique.
Uh, my father the same and youknow, grew up, he grew up in Germany,
(04:35):
spent his time in Mozambiqueand South Africa, opened the business
in Brazil. So it's just, youcan see all the things like that
you see, you hear from metoday is almost like this product
of my family up until now.
Yeah, it's really neat. But Iwant you to expound a little bit
because I mean, you have avery non conventional background
for a hunting advocate. So, Imean, let our listeners know a little
(04:56):
bit more about kind of youreducational background and then kind
of all of the field work youdid before you started Blood Origins.
Yeah, so I didn't, I didn'thunt at all. Okay. So when I was,
when I was growing up, I grewup in a town called Johannesburg,
South Africa. Eight and a halfmillion people. We didn't talk about
hunting. My friends didn'thunt. I wasn't thinking about hunting.
I was the exact audience thatI speak to today didn't have an opinion
(05:19):
about hunting. I knew that mygrandfather hunted. I knew that my
father had hunted. I'd readstories of theirs. I've seen trophies
on the wall like up behind meright now. Those are my grandfather's
trophies. But that was it. Andso I have an education in environmental
conservation biology. I have aBSc, a Bachelor of science in that.
I have an honors in botany, Ihave a master's in botany and then
(05:43):
I have a PhD at the Universityof Mississippi in technically in
biology but specializing inwetland ecology and aquatic biogeochemistry.
Have been a professor atMississippi State for six years in
the Wildlife FisheriesDepartment. I published over 100
peer reviewed articles. I wasthe chief scientist of the BP oil
(06:03):
spill that happened. Thebiggest ecological disaster that's
happened on this planet. I wasthe chief scientist in charge of
standing up a restorationframework for the first billion dollars
from Texas to Florida. And inthat entire time I was starting to
hunt. I was exposed to huntinghere in the United States through
(06:24):
friends. And it was just, itwas just this natural sort of occurrence.
I started getting better,better, better jobs. My resources
were a little bit more. And soI started traveling more and I started
traveling more to hunt. And Iguess it's just this idea of, I don't
know, it just came to me likeI have two small boys, five years
(06:44):
old and three years old at thetime or four years old at the time.
And I wanted to take themhunting because I never got to experience
that when I was a kid. And Iwanted them to see deer hunting and
I wanted them to experience itand experience trapping and all the
things. And I could explain tothem biologically why we were doing
it, but I couldn't explain tothem like from my heart while we
(07:09):
were doing it. And so I had tolearn that. And for some reason instead
of just talking to people andinstead of just reading or watching
videos. Well, actually thereason I did it was because I couldn't
find anything reading, Icouldn't find anything in videos.
So I said, well, I'll juststart project a side project A hobby,
a passion project onunderstanding the heart of a hunter.
(07:35):
That's what started BloodOrigins. And yeah, I would say you're
right. It is a very nonconventional. I am not American,
I have an accent, I have aPhD. So I have the acumen to defend
positions, rhetoric. I usescience a lot. And yeah, now it's,
(08:01):
you know, we've changed thename to the Origins Foundation. Now
it's more sustainable use ofwildlife which, you know, 90% of
which is hunting. And ourvoice is the same. Our voice is science
based. Our voice is veryreasoned, our voice is very purposeful,
our voice is very measured. Wedon't get upset, we don't get, we
(08:24):
don't, we don't resort to namecalling. And again, we're rooted
in essentially the truth andan unbiased look at what we do and
how we do it.
Yeah, really interesting. Ifwe back up a little bit, I think
it'd be interesting for ourlisteners to understand why you had
to wait until you came to theUnited States to have your first
hunting experience when you'rekind of in the Mecca of big game
(08:45):
huntings where you grew up.But also too. What about that first
hunt that really lit the firefor you?
Yeah. So South Africa is avery different wildlife model than
the United states. It'sactually 10, it's 180 degrees away
from the American model. TheAmerican model is a North American
wildlife management modelwhich is a public doctrine. The public,
(09:09):
the resources, the wildliferesources belong to the public. In
South Africa it's theopposite. The wildlife resources
belong to the privateindividual. If you've got an enclosure
of adequate stature, they callit adequate enclosure which is high
fence or an appropriate lowfence, then the animals belong to
you. You can do with what youwant. So there's no public grounds,
(09:33):
there's no real access topublic wildlife in South Africa to
hunt. So it's not that I waschasing that. Just number one, wasn't
available to me or anybody inSouth Africa and two, I just didn't,
you know, obviously based onmy background, wasn't going to be
exploring that. My friendsdidn't explore it either. So, you
(09:54):
know, coming to the UnitedStates and understanding public land
and understanding the freedomsthat we have here, the rights that
we have here, it was prettyamazing to know that I could, you
know, from where I'm sittingright now, I could drive 30 minutes
and in the appropriate seasonhave a loaded weapon. Walking on
ground that belongs to you,Marvin, belongs to me and actually
(10:15):
belongs to the world. Becauseanybody in this world can go and
walk on it, which is just anamazing, absolutely amazing situation.
And so when I started hunting,I didn't start. I didn't start hunting
on public ground. A lot ofpeople do. I started with a friend
inviting me to go deerhunting, whitetail deer hunting,
(10:37):
and it was Mississippi, so itwas the classic sort of redneck Mississippi
hunting, which was stuck undera tree with a lawn chair. And he
said, here's your gun. This ishow it operates. I'd obviously got
my hunter's education class,and I'd done everything I needed
to do, had my license. And hesaid, if something walks by, shoot
it. And so I can't say that.Like, I had this sort of romantic,
(11:00):
like, amazing first hunt, andthat's what sort of sold it to me,
and that's what I wanted todo. It was just the thing to do.
It's the thing that everyonedid in the Beats. It was almost like
akin to, as I said in my. Mygroup in South Africa, we did things
that everyone did there,right? You played sports, you went
out, you did all those things.Well, the same group of friends that
now I had established inMississippi, they hunted. That's
(11:24):
what they did. So actually,I'm gonna hunt and I'm gonna participate.
And that's just how itstarted. And then it just grew and
grew and grew. I can't saythat, like, now my fire is completely,
like, lit, because I guaranteeyou the next hunt that I do is going
to add a log to that fire,because there's things that I've
(11:46):
never experienced. I'm still avery, very nascent hunter, so. Yeah.
Yeah, very interesting. It'skind of funny. So I grew up in central
Virginia, and it was notuncommon for people to skip school
the first day of deer season.
Yeah, Pennsylvania, they. Theygive it all. In Pennsylvania, first
day of deer season is off,school is out. Yeah, amazing.
(12:07):
Yeah, that's how it is in thewestern part of Virginia. But, yeah,
it's an interesting thing. Andso, you know, so you kind of get
that first taste. You're ingraduate school. You know, you're
progressing in your career. Soyou get to kind of range about a
little bit more as you'rehunting. You're having kind of more
and more sophisticatedexperiences, I guess, to say. But,
you know, do you remember thatlight bulb moment when you said,
hey, I'm going to kind ofcreate this little side thing called
(12:29):
Blood Origins?
No. Like, it wasn't actuallytied to hunting. It was more. Again,
it was more tied to my boys,was More tied to, like, reading my
grandfather's stories again.My grandfather was a prolific writer,
so I just picked up some ofhis stories and started writing,
reading some more of hisstories. And I was watching outdoor
(12:49):
television and Sportsman'sChannel and all the things that we
all watch. And I guess in mymind I was like, man, I could do
that. I could be thatcreative. Maybe in my brain I was
like, man, I see a niche herethat nobody's filling, so why don't
I try to fill it? Not knowinganything about what I was stepping
(13:11):
into, didn't know anythingabout, and I still don't about cinematography
or photography, and I leavethat to the professionals. I just
had an idea, and I had an ideaof how I wanted to communicate and
I. And I had an idea of how Iwanted it to look. And then I just
had to learn everything else.Like, you know, what is the distribution
(13:34):
strategy when it comes tomedia? I didn't know I had to Google
that. You know, how do you,how do you do Facebook and Instagram
and how do you, you know, allof this stuff? We just. We're still
learning, Marmont. We're stilllearning, even though we're, you
know, we started with nothingand we're over like 450,000 people
across all of our platformsright now.
(13:56):
So, yeah, it's interestingbecause there are kind of two things
you said that really resonate,you know, one, I kind of. I fished
as a kid, but I came to flyfishing probably in my early 30s,
because I wanted to havesomething to do with my boys that
would compete with video gamesand soccer. Right?
Yeah.
And so, so that was part ofit, but also too. I mean, I've kind
of had the same experience atthe Articulate Fly, where you're
(14:17):
like, well, let's try this.And then, you know, if you're relatively
bright, I mean, we've put outa thousand episodes, so I mean, that's
amazing. Yeah. But I think,you know, to your point, if you're
kind of bright and motivated,you know, like, this isn't like when
we were kids and you weregetting stuff in the mail, like you
can literally, on a thousanddollar supercomputer in your pocket,
talk to anyone in the worldand find out anything that you're
(14:37):
interested in. And so there'sreally no excuse for trying these
experiments.
No, it isn't. And honestly,Marvin, I'm living the epitome of
the American dream. There's noother country in this world that
you could have an idea brain,fart it out and Work hard at it.
(15:05):
Right. You work bloody hard atyour podcast. We work bloody hard
at what we do and just nose tothe grindstone every single day.
And now it's my full time joband I travel around the world.
Yeah.
Who else can say that? Whoelse can build something like that?
Only in a place like America.It's just like it's. And the fact
(15:25):
that we're a nonprofit, acharity now, that's what made it
happen. That's. And it's thephilanthropic heart of Americans
that allows something likethat to happen.
Yeah, it's super interestingand I know it's an ever evolving
thing. So the challenges nevergo away. They just get different
and bigger.
Right.
(15:46):
But so you're about five yearsin. You know, can you share maybe
like your biggest surprise orone of your biggest challenges as
you're kind of building outthings to get to the Origins Foundation?
Yeah, I think we do thingsdifferently, Marvin. And it's, it's
a, it's a. In our industry,probably the same thing in the fly.
(16:06):
In the fly fishing industry.There's a lot of ego in the industry.
We have no ego. I could, youknow, if it, if I just happen to
be a face in the voice of theorganization and because we need
one, that's. It could besomebody else. I just happen to have
an accent and the acumen. So,like, all right, you're the person.
(16:27):
You're the face and the voice.But I don't have to be in. In all
of our videos. I can hireother people to be in other. In our
videos. We just don't have anego and we have an ethos which is
on I am second ethos, which isif you, Marvin, are doing great work,
I'm going to lift you up. I'mgoing to tell everybody about how
good a job you're doing. AndI'm going to look at the guy next
(16:50):
door to you who's yourcompetitor in your space, and I'm
going to lift him up too,because he's doing good stuff. And
that's an anomaly. Nobody doesthat. That's just, that's altruistic.
I want to be altruistic. Wewant to have a rising tide that rises
all ships, and that's what weare and that's what we do. And that
(17:11):
has been surprising to theindustry. And so because that's surprising
to the industry and it'sunique, that was the biggest hurdle
to climb over, is that you'renot doing this for yourself or you're
not doing this. Just you Know,I was like, no, we're doing this
for the betterment of thecommunity that we're all a part of.
And then secondly, to raisemoney, we had to break the typical
(17:33):
marketing model, which was acompany A gives you X amount of dollars,
and in return they get Y.Well, I. Before we turned ourselves
into a nonprofit, every time Iasked for money, they would say,
well, we need Y. And I wouldbe like, I'm not. Why would I give
(17:55):
you. Why? Think about whatwe're doing. We're changing this
narrative and this perceptionaround hunting for the world. It's
good for us. It's good for ourcommunity. You should believe in
me and do that. Well,everybody said no to me. Everybody.
Marvin. I didn't get a singledollar in three and a half years.
(18:15):
And because of that, we didn'tbelong to anybody. And we could say
whatever we wanted and wecould talk to whoever we wanted.
And so then when we turnedourselves into a charity, now I could
go to company A and go, I'm acharity. Would you give us X to help
support what we're doing andyou're not getting why? And they
(18:37):
said, yeah, we'll do thatbecause we have proven ourselves
now. Right. We weren't just afly by night. We had proven ourselves.
And now it's. It's juststandard. Like, people know that,
like, when they give us money,we're going to be thankful. Don't
get me wrong. We're going totalk about them, but we're not delivering.
Like, you have to give us, youknow, four posts a week or whatever
(18:59):
it is. So those are the twothings that I think we've sort of
upset the apple cart a littlebit, but that were a couple of challenges
that we had to climb over.
Yeah. It's always interestingwhen you try to do things a different
way, and it's almost likeyou're speaking a different language,
right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so for.
Obviously you're.
You're, you know, you're ahunting advocacy group, but, you
(19:19):
know, you focus on non huntersand, you know, why should non hunters
care about what you do?
Yeah. So we are obviouslyheavily advocating for hunting. However,
we do say that it's not thegolden. It's not the. It's not the
panacea. Hunting is not thesilver bullet to wildlife conservation.
(19:40):
It's a very important tool ina toolbox. That's very limited, Marvin.
If you think about the thingsthat you can do in this world for
wildlife conservation, itcomes down to like, seven things,
one of which is Hunting. Andso a non hunter, the general public
that we speak to needs tounderstand that we're on the same
team, we're after the samething. I think most people in this
(20:02):
world, the vast majority,would, when you ask the question
of what is your goal, whatwould you think around wildlife conservation?
Is that good thing or badthing? I reckon half, you know, not
half, the vast majority, 90%or more, would say it's good. We
want to protect wildlife, wewant to support wildlife conservation,
we want better wildlife in thefuture. And we agree. And we just
(20:27):
want to educate you about thistool that has a bad rack around,
it has bad PR around, it ismalaligned to say it's not as bad
as everyone portrays it to be.There's a sector of our world that
hates what we do because itdoesn't fit philosophically with
(20:49):
the way their beliefs. Andinstead of saying, we don't like
your activity, but we canstill see the benefits that come
from it, I. E. Wildlifeconservation, habitat protection,
they choose to try and get ridof the tool. And so that's why we
speak to that general public,we speak to that non hunter and say,
(21:11):
hey, that non hunter. Let'sjust make sure we, from a. We're
clarifying from a definitionthat non hunter is a non hunter,
it's not an anti hunter. So wejust want to, we just want to sway
their decisions towards themore positive side of, of sustainable
use, I. E. Hunting.
Got it. And so it'sinteresting too, because kind of,
(21:33):
as I was doing research forthe interview, I sort of think of
the Origins foundation as amanagement philosophy and a communication
strategy.
Right.
And I, and I think of themanagement philosophy as sustainable
use. And I would really likeyou to kind of expound on that and
like, kind of why thatmanagement philosophy is kind of
the bedrock of what you'redoing at the Origins Foundation.
(21:54):
It's the bedrock. And to me,the reason we're focusing so hard
on it is because we believeit's the future, it's the future
of wildlife conservation inthis world. The reason it's the future
of wildlife conservation inthis world is that the human population
on this planet is burgeoning.
Yeah.
There's certain countries thatdefinitely the human population is
starting to trend down, butthere's no place in this world that
(22:16):
the pressures on habitat andwildlife are not being felt because
of humans. And because of thatfact, we as humans have a greater
responsibility to steward theremaining habitat and wildlife that
we can look after, which meanssustainable use needs to play a role
(22:44):
in making sure that we protecthabitat and protect wildlife in the
future. Because if wildlifehas value to Joe the farmer and an
elephant raids his crop everyfortnight and that elephant has no
value, what's going to happento that elephant, Marvin?
(23:04):
It's just going to keep ondoing what it's doing.
It's going to get poisoned orit's going to get chopped. You know,
it's hamstring chopped by thelocal villages and they're just going
to slaughter it becausethey're sick and tired of their crops
being raided. But what ifthere was a sustainable use model
in that area where thatelephant could potentially be hunted
(23:27):
by someone and money generatedfor the community and the village,
what then? What has justchanged in their mind? The change
is a value. So I'm willing toaccept some risk and crop damage
because I know that thatelephant's actually doing more for
me alive when somebody comesin and hunts it appropriately than
(23:51):
not. Nobody hunting it, nobodyusing it sustainably. And I just
hate that animal. So that'sthe premise, that sustainable use
provides more value, not allof the value. Again, it's not the
silver bullet, it's not thepanacea. It provides more value to
wildlife, which means wildlifewill be looked at in a way that will
(24:15):
be sustained for our kids andour grandkids one day.
Got it. And you know, and thenthe communication strategy and we
talked, you know, you focus onnot anti hunters, but non hunters.
But you're also. Yourstorytelling is a broader arc of
the hunting experience or itfocuses on, you know, the human experience.
Kind of like planning all theway through to the harvest and after
(24:37):
the harvest. And that's one.It's very different than most hunting
communication strategy.
Right.
Like, you know, if you go toOutdoor Life Network, that's usually
not what's going on, but the other.
Speaking to a huntingcommunity. Yeah, their communication
strategy, their communicationstrategies. We talk to hunters, so
we're going to show hunts,we're going to show people killing
things.
Yeah, it's.
(24:57):
Yeah.
And so the interesting thingtoo is that's also a very different
strategy from kind of yourprofessional background. Like that's
not a, like a, that's not theway you generally talk to people
about what's going on. And soI was kind of curious how you settled
on, let's just call it thepersuadable middle for your communication
strategy.
You know, it's not that fardifferent from what I was doing from
(25:20):
a science perspective. Myscience was all management based,
so I was using my science tosway politicians and politics and
almost the general public tosay, and back then I was in the farming
space, agricultural farmingspace, and using wetlands. And so
I was using my science toconvince others that this is good.
(25:43):
Same thing. Now I'm usingcommunication strategies, whether
it's science, whether it'sblog articles, whether it's podcasts,
whether it's films, whetherit's documentaries, whether it's,
you know, commenting on socialmedia as a means to sway opinion
on this thing that I think is good.
Yeah, I get that. I guess whatI'm saying though is most people
(26:03):
generally, they try to kind ofpreach to the choir as opposed to
finding the people whose mindsthey can change. And that's a, you
know, I wouldn't say it'ssingularly unique, but most people
are not that sophisticated intheir advocacy.
Yeah, no, you're, you'reabsolutely right. I think you, you've
got to, we've got to, we, weare constantly looking at it through
a lens that this person thatwe're into. So a couple of, couple
(26:25):
of lenses. We look at thiswhen somebody engages us and calls
us every name under the sun.They typically are not a non hunter.
They typically are an antihunter. And so what the lens that
we immediately go to is one ofhonesty. We very, are very upfront.
(26:46):
Like if they're commenting ona picture that looks terrible, everyone's
seen those terrible huntingphotos, we gotta be honest and go,
yeah, you're right, that's aterrible photo. We agree with you.
And so you're disarming themimmediately. And then secondly, like,
then you say, well, let me,let me just for a second, let's talk
(27:07):
about the things that camebecause of that, that hunt. Let me,
let me talk to you about thevillage. Let me talk to you about
the person, Let me talk to youabout the community upliftment that
came from that hunt. Thatindividual that I'm engaging with
is not going to get his mindchanged or her mind changed. Okay,
(27:29):
but depending on the account,depending on the situation, there
could be fifty thousand to ahundred thousand people that read
what I wrote. Most of them arenon hunters and, or hunters. And
so for the non hunters, wehave just put our, ourselves in front
of them because again, youcan't believe the voyeurism in this
(27:53):
world when it comes to socialmedia. There are lots of people that
don't engage, they don't likethings, they don't comment things.
They just, but they want toread, they want to be in the know.
The FOMO is big, right? So Iwant to be involved. I want to know.
Well, they're seeing me do acouple of things. They're. They're
getting information out of mycomment. They're seeing a character
(28:14):
of a hunter interacting withan anti hunter, keeping his cool,
keeping his character, keepingrespectful, all of those things.
And then the hunting communitythat's watching me is looking at
it, going, oh, I want to. Iwant to interact like him. So it's
(28:36):
almost like a little peerpressure system that we're building.
And I see it every. Like we'vebeen going now, you know, as a nonprofit
for five years. I see postswhere I get tagged into things. We
get tagged into things. Thatsounds like us, but it's not us writing
(28:57):
it. So there's definitely apervasiveness that's happening in
how people engage, which ishuge. It's very, very, very important
in how you engage onlinebecause it shows, you know, it's
a. It's a broader look at whatthe community's character is like.
(29:19):
Yeah, it's interesting, too,because, you know, I know this is
your criticism of socialmedia. You know, the harvest, whether
you're hunting or fishing, issuch a little part of the entire
experience. Right. You know,like, even for me, like, I do a little
bit of upland bird hunting,and, you know, I don't really care
about the birds. I love justwatching the dogs work, right. Because
(29:40):
they're just so happy, andthey want to make the. The people
that are on the hunt. So, youknow, they want to be, you know,
good servants, basically, andthey just. They're so enthusiastic.
Like, to me, that's like, youknow, if you get to go out on a brisk
day and walk around with ashotgun and watch the dogs go, that's
an amazing day.
Amazing day. Yeah. So thereason why, you know, I. I rack my
(30:01):
brain all the time, like, whyare we, as a hunting community, not
talking more about the thingsthat I want them to talk about? And
the reason is because they'recommunicating to their. Their peers,
their community. They'recommunicating to hunters. And the
way that hunters communicatewith one another, just like fishermen.
(30:24):
How do fishermen communicatewith each other, Marvin? They send
pictures of their fish.
Yep. Size and size and number. Right?
That's it. Same thing withhunters. And so back in the day before
social media, before theadvent of social media, that's what
you did. You send photos inthe mail. You put your photo up in
(30:48):
the. In the. The local outdoorshop. Right. You had that pin board.
Same thing with fish. Everyonechecked it out. Why? Because the
people that were going intothose stores were your people. Now
think of those, those littlethings, those outdoor shops as greenhouses.
Those greenhouses now exist inthis world of social media. They
(31:11):
still exist. You still shareyour pictures, right? But now they're
on devices and the world islooking through the glass of the
greenhouse and seeingeverything that you're sharing. And
they're like, we don't likethat greenhouse. Look at the stuff
(31:33):
that's happening in thatgreenhouse. It's not anonymous anymore.
It's not just tied to ourcommunity anymore. It's out for the
world to see. And so we haveto change some of the imagery. We
have to change some of thethings that we talk about. And it's
difficult because thecommunity upliftment, the person
you just employed, theschools, the medical, the meat distribution,
(31:57):
the sunsets, the camaraderie,the fire, that's all not very sexy
communication to our peers. Sowe don't naturally do it.
Yeah, it's interesting. Andfrom my perspective, that's all the
most important stuff to talkabout, right?
Yeah. But I'd even challengeyou, like, if you do hunt and you
(32:19):
do all those things, how manytimes have you spoken about it?
I talk about it, but I also,too, I generally don't share, like,
fishing and hunting pictures.Right. Like, I was just up in Pennsylvania,
I just shared a cover bridgepicture. My theory on that is not
that I've got any greatcommunication strategy. My theory
is that I have enough picturesof me holding fish and that they're
(32:42):
plenty, they're plenty for mykids. And when I can't remember anymore,
it doesn't matter. So I don'tneed to take the time and, you know,
do all that sort of stuff. Andso I generally just try to kind of
stay out in the moment. Soit's no great, you know, insight
on my part. Although I willsay, you know, you generally now,
with Instagram Carousel, youcan have some really nice kind of
storytelling montages ifyou're deliberate about collecting
(33:02):
the pictures. But, you know,it's interesting too, right? Because
your management philosophy, Ithink I remember doing research for
the interview that, you know,you were pointing out how incredibly
complicated the wolfmanagement issue is out in the Rockies.
Right. And you have, you know,it's not just a hunting, not hunting,
you know, one of sevenmanagement tools, but also you have,
(33:22):
you know, an incredibly broadcross section of interests.
Right.
Ranchers, BLM managers, youknow, and to say that we live in
polarized times is a prettymuch an understatement. You know,
how do you kind of keep thefortitude to have this nuanced approach
for sustainable use andcommunication and the onslaught of
(33:43):
this, like, you know, it'seither good or bad. There's nothing
in the middle. There's neverany gray. Because I think, I think
that's a really challengingplace to be as a communicator today.
Yeah, it is. And. But I thinkwe have, if you. I think in any issue.
And we'll use the wolf as anexample. I think in any issue there's
enough data and logic to showthat, hey, where I live, that isn't
(34:11):
the shoot, shovel and shut upof wolves. And the other opposite
side, which is never shoot awolf, ever. You sit in the middle
and you go, I think you'rewrong. And I think you're wrong.
And so if both sides arepissed off at me now, I've actually
found the place where I needto be. So let's just talk through
(34:34):
it. With wolves. I likewolves, so that means I'm on this
side. I like them on thelandscape, which means I'm on this
side. But I also believe thatstates have to have the ability to
manage wolves, which means I'mon this side. Now I think that you
look at the data and thescience of wolf reintroductions and
(34:58):
wolf repopulations across thewest as well as in Michigan, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, those objectiveshave far been exceeded in terms of
recovery objectives for Fishand Wildlife Service, which means
they do not need protectionsanymore, which puts me on this side
(35:18):
again. But I'll also say thatI believe that because of all the
policies that we have, all theregulations that we have, the ESA
and all the things that comeat a state and federal level, that
we will never go back towolves being extirpated from the
landscape which sits me nowand very much now in the middle.
(35:41):
And they say, well, how do youknow, Robbie? There's an example.
Look at Idaho. Idaho has athousand two hundred wolves. They
have every single techniqueunder the sun to manage those wolves.
They take 400 a year, yet thepopulation of wolves maintains at
(36:05):
1200 every single year. And soI think there's this, there's heavy,
heavy emotions on both sides.I think sometimes I look towards
more of our side and say, man,this should shovel, shut up rhetoric
is not good for us. Like everytime you say that, that's sort of
(36:27):
like a dart that I have topull out of our skin because this
side is saying, see, see, lookat you guys. You guys don't care.
But I think that there's moreand more of me in the, in the digital
media landscape than therewas. And I think that that sentiment
is growing and growing. Lookat the ranches in Colorado. The ranches
(36:50):
in Colorado before the wolfreintroduction happened were totally
against wolf. Wolves being onthe landscape. But wolves are on
the landscape now. Are theystill in the shoot, shut up and shovel
model? No, they are. Okay, wehave to deal with this. How do we
deal with this? We need tohave. We, we're trying, doing our
(37:11):
best here, but we also needthe opportunity and the ability for
lethal management because it'sgoing to get to a point where it's
like, we've tried everything.Help us. Like we need help. And that
help could be pay us, we'velost 50 cows. Pay us half a million
dollars. We'll live with thewolves. Same as the elephant example.
(37:33):
Marvin. So there's obviouslyvery, very, very divisive topics,
but we approach it every topicthe same way that just described
it to you. Wild horses. Hugelydivisive topic. Maybe the one I don't
approach, the way that I justdescribed is feral cats. I think
feral cats are just terribleon the landscape from a biodiversity
(37:56):
perspective. Luckily, we don'thave a much a big issue here in the
States, but Australia, like,it's a. Decimating. It is the number
one decimator of biodiversityin Australia. Yeah.
Interesting. Do you ever worryabout, you know, hunters that don't
share the values you're tryingto espouse of the Origins foundation
kind of riding your coattailsand kind of using you as kind of
(38:19):
a useful mouthpiece, but not,you know, kind of standing behind
the values that you want to embody?
It's a good question. I don'tthink we've ever experienced that
yet. The people that will bewith us are our kind of people. But
the people that do say, that'shypothetically somebody goes, yeah,
(38:42):
we're with you, we're withyou, we're with you. And then do
something unethical. You know,we, we, we're getting to points in
our community that people arestarting to say things. And in that
scenario, if I knew theperson, I'd be like, dude, you've
got to say something like,that's even, that's even worse when
(39:02):
you're unethical and don't sayanything or, or like, no, no, it's
fine when you know it isn't.So I think also a sign of maturity
and a sign of character is,yep, I messed up. Like, that was
wrong and sort of just youknow, put a flag in the ground. Yeah,
it's, it's you, you arebringing up a great point. And we
(39:25):
are very cognizant of. We havean image, we have a character, we
have a thing that is what wedo and how we do it. And if somebody
like, oh, that's me, I dothat. And then they go and do something
counter to that. As long asthey're not, you know, one of my
(39:46):
board members affiliated withme, hired by me. I think there's
enough gap there to say, okay,you said you believed, but did you
really?
Yeah. Whether it's overcommercialized and I mean that in
the sense of like notembodying kind of fair chase in the
process or things like that. Icould see, you know, times to basically
(40:09):
say, hey, this isn't how we do this.
Right?
Yeah. There are things thatthey're very clear like that's not
us. Fair chase, you know, eventhough defined by Burchase, is very,
a very gray, slippery slope inmultiple directions. In those kinds
(40:35):
of situations, we prefer totalk them out to try and understand.
So for instance, somebodywould say, I think Boone and Crockett
even has it in theirdefinition. You have to be within
the radius of the animals likepurview for it to be fair chase.
So what does that actuallymean? It's a very gray area. So for
(40:56):
a white tailed deer, does thatmean I have to be within 50 yards
of that deer before I kill it?So what happens if I shoot it at
300 yards? Did I just exhibitnon fair chase principles in what
I just did? So we, we willalways have that thought process.
We'll always talk it out.We'll always ask big questions. Because
(41:18):
I want people to think aboutit, right. I want people to really
question if you're sayingsomeone's unethical because they
shoot game at 500 yardsbecause they're a long range rifle
shooter. Why is that unethicalin your mind? I want to understand,
I need to understand why youstand where you stand. Oh, because
(41:40):
the animal doesn't know you'rethere. Okay, so what if they went
to 320? What's that number?That. And how do you know it's that
number? Is. Has science provedthat deer can only see this far or
they can only smell this far?What if I did a really good job and
got, you know, upwind and ifthere's just lots of questions in
(42:04):
that, in that scenario, wewill always talk it through is what
I'm trying to say.
Yeah, it's interesting. It'salmost like you have to kind of come
back and ask yourself if theway you're pursuing the animal is
plugging into that broaderstory arc that you kind of philosophically
agree is kind of, for lack ofa better words, the hunt. Right.
But, yeah, I mean, it's acomplicated thing. But, you know,
we have that in fishing too,where, you know, you'll see people,
(42:27):
whether it's an etiquetteissue or, you know, I mean, people
don't read anymore. Right. So,you know, God forbid you would actually
know what the fishingregulations were in that whole way
of, like, how do you talk topeople on the river in a way that's
constructive? Right. That'snot. Or even like, you know, younger
kids. Right. They're on theriver, they just don't know.
Right.
And you have an opportunitythere to help, to help them and not
(42:50):
educate them in some reallykind of nasty hierarchical way. But,
you know, you give them anexperience, it makes them appreciate
the sport more and actuallywant to fish more. Kind of, I guess,
in consistent with the norms.
Right.
Yeah, it's, you know, you hopethat youngsters are learning from
(43:12):
their elders or others thathave decided to mentor them. And
my job is to help, I guess,mentor those mentors. Right. Is help.
Like, here's. I want you to. Iwant you to think about these kinds
of things. I want you to thinkabout how you interact with people.
I want you to think aboutcharacter and your interactions and
(43:35):
respects and.
Things like that.
Yeah, well, we're going to goto the lighter side now. We're going
to talk about the fun stuff.Right. So why don't you tell us about
some of your kind of recentand upcoming documentaries and conservation
projects, because you got somereally cool stuff that's, you know,
I don't know what's in thepipeline, but I see what's on the
website and you got somereally neat stuff. You want to share
(43:57):
that with our listeners?
Yeah, we've got some, youknow, we work all over the world.
We've got, I'll tell you acouple of things. Working on, obviously,
the world's largest cheetahrelocation project right now. We
moved 17 cheetah. We've gotanother three permits in place. Not
in place yet, but we'reprobably going to move another three
cheetah in 2026. And that'sjust a fun project. It's tickling
(44:19):
the science side of me. I geekout every morning. Our cheetahs have
satellite collars on them, soI can see their movements every day.
I can think about like whythey're moving, why they're moving,
what are they doing here? Whydo they split? Please don't go across
to that area. We don't wantyou to be in the human habitation.
But then at the same timewe're like, you're going to have
to learn, like, don't go inthat area. So that's cool. That's
(44:42):
at least a five year project.We're at the end of year one right
now. We have a documentarycoming out in June of next year.
It'll debut in Paris, Francecalled Savon Bambi. And Savon Bambi
is about the originalnarrative that sort of started an
anti hunting rhetoric, whichis Bambi. And it's the. A lot of
(45:03):
people don't realize that thedeer in Bambi is actually a roe deer.
It's a very common species ofdeer across Europe. And roe deer
babies, baby fawns have spotson them and they get hidden in hay
fields between the middle ofMay and the middle of June. They're
typically born in thattimeframe. And so mom hides them
in the fields. Well, it's alsothe same timeframe, based on weather
(45:26):
conditions, that farmers cuttheir fields for the very first time.
And so they chop Bambia. Andso the only people that actually
care in this scenario arehunters and hunting organizations.
And so these guys go out everymorning with thermal drones and they
find baby roe deer and theypick them out of the fields and move
them. And the guys come in,the farmers cut the fields. There's
(45:49):
no PETA, there's no Humanesociety, there's no NSPCA doing any
of this work. And so that's acool documentary that we've got.
We've got another really,really emotional documentary called
In My Footsteps that's comingout in 2026. In my footsteps about
an individual who received thefirst education monies from a hunting
(46:11):
charity in South Africa. Andbecause he was number one, he had
to be successful. If he wasn'tsuccessful, then the program would
have collapsed because what'sthe point in investing in kids if
nothing's coming to fruition?Well, this individual is now a very
accomplished architect in avery accomplished architectural firm
(46:33):
in East London in PortElizabeth. Sorry. And we followed,
we went and told his story andthen we took him back to where he
started and made him walk thesame streets that he walked as a
kid and the hostels that hestayed in. And it is a powerful,
powerful piece. We got aveteran turkey hunt coming. That's
(46:54):
again a very powerful pieceabout how healing helps these veterans,
helping in the outdoors helpsthem. We've got work on rhino trade,
we've got a lion conservationpiece. We're investing in building
schools and clinics in SouthAfrica and Zambia next year. We've
got a lot on the go. Marvin.
(47:14):
Yeah, I think the interestingthing too about the cheetah relocation
is that, that you're notrelocating them to then harvest them
later. You're relocating.
No hunting.
Yeah, so it's. There's nohunting, you know, there's no harvest
there. You're actually movingthem because the species is incredibly
endangered.
Yeah, incredibly endangered.Requires new habitats, requires open
range systems to berepatriated into. And truly it's
(47:38):
a range expansion project. Youwant cheetahs to be in broader habitats.
And we know that there's acouple of transient cheetahs in this
system, not very many. And weprobably think there's probably six
to 10 in the area based on allof the anecdotal information that
we've gathered. And now we'veput 17 into the system and we plan
(47:58):
to put more into the system.And the system, really, our area
is a 500,000 acre area just onthe border of, in Mozambique, on
the border of Zimbabwe. But itbuffers up against probably 10 million
acres of adequate cheetahhabitat that's all protected, whether
there's some huntingconcessions, there's some photographic
(48:19):
concessions, there's somenational parks. So it's a really
beautiful blend of all the, aswe mentioned in the beginning, all
of the uses. Sorry, all thetools for wildlife conservation in
this landscape.
Very neat. And so as I kind ofcome back. Right. So I'm a, I'm a
fisherman first and we havesimilar issues. There's a little
(48:40):
bit of difference, you know,so we've got like wild fish hatchery,
we've certainly. There's alot, particularly on the saltwater
side, like with striper andredfish. You know, there's a lot
of commercial recreationaldivide. And you know, we've got the
public private issue and kindof catch and release versus harvested,
but all that stuff kind ofgoes in the soup. And I was kind
of curious, you know, yourthoughts on how we, the fishing and
(49:04):
the fly fishing communitycould use your approach to kind of
open the aperture to getbetter solutions. Right. Because
it's not, you know, there'ssome places that have to be private
to be protected. There's someplaces where you have to harvest
fish. You know, people have tomake a living. So, like, how do you.
Moderate commercial versusrecreational harvest, you know, Kind
of. Any thoughts about, youknow, how people can apply what you,
(49:26):
you know, you've learned andyou're implementing on the hunting
side to their fishing communities?
I think we've already, we'vealready sort of worked through that,
which is you need to. We needto get away from just sending and
talking about the number offish you've caught and how big the
fish is, to really taking the,the, the idea of all those things
(49:51):
by the scruff of its neck andsaying, here, like, make it public.
Like, this is what happens.Like, this is why it's private. Anybody
know why it's private? Hasanybody talked about why it's private,
why it needs to be privatehere? Let's talk about it. Let's
have a podcast about it, let'shave a field day about it, let's
have a documentary about it.Let's build some infographics that
(50:14):
show the changes inbiodiversity as a result of that
effort. Hey, let's talk aboutthe economic upliftment that comes
because of this. Hey, let'sgive you the data of the fishery
and how well it's doing,because we did X, Y and Z, and that's
why we need X, Y and Zimplemented in, elsewhere, because
(50:35):
the same thing's going tohappen. And I'm sure CCA is doing
stuff like that, and I'm surethere's other organizations, Trout
Unlimited, doing things likethat, but maybe not at the scale
of what's needed like we'redoing. And so it's just, it just
takes a different mindset,Marvin. That's all it's going to
require is somebodyapproaching it from the mindset like
we do, which is we're notactually interested in the fishing,
(50:58):
but we're in your camp, we'rein your community. Like we. I'm not
interested in the hunting. I'minterested in all the things that
come as a result of you doingwhat you're doing. And how do we
take all of that informationto defend why you do what you do
and help you keep what you do,protect what you do, grow what you
do?
(51:18):
Yeah, it's interesting. Ithink we're going to have to fight
a similar battle on the socialmedia front, because I don't think
that, for lack of a betterword, the influencer culture we have
going on in the fly fishingcommunity is really lending itself
very well to that richer narrative.
But they could, they could.They're prime, too.
Yeah, well, something on thelist for 20, 26. There we go. So
(51:43):
to sort of come full circle,you know, you, you had this great
public land experience as yourfirst hunting experience in the US
and, you know, obviouslythere's a lot going on in terms of
access. Public. Public landaccess in the United States. But
also too, I think there's alot going on in terms of funding
the infrastructure to managethe public land. And so I was kind
(52:05):
of curious if you kind of hadsome thoughts. I think it would be
great, you know, given whatyou do, but also the fact that you
kind of have this benefit ofknowing, like, what it's like to
grow up, for lack of a betterword. I know you were in South Africa,
but that's kind of theEuropean model, like the king owns
land and you don't get to goon. On the land, but kind of share
your thoughts about where weare in terms of managing public lands
and funding the stewards thatwe pay to basically make sure we,
(52:28):
you know, sustainably,basically reap the benefits of those
lands.
Yeah, as I said, the publicland system in America is what makes
it amazing, what makes itgreat. I think, obviously we've seen
on this administration aconstant attack on public lands and
changing potential uses ofpublic lands. And again, you'd expect
(52:51):
this from me. I, I sort of getit, which is this whole energy independence
component of the strategy.Like, hey, let's take care of our
own. We've got things here.But we shouldn't sacrifice what we
have. The greatest riches inwhich is public land and the ability
to access public land. All thebenefits that come from it. Spiritual,
(53:11):
physical, mental, feedingyourself, that kind of things. I
do, though, believe that wehave forgotten about the management.
We've forgotten about thestewardship component of our public
lands. The agencies that arein charge of our public lands, usda,
Forest Service, Fish andWildlife Service, blm. Those agencies
(53:36):
are severely underfunded to dothe work to maintain these areas.
Right. You just look atcatastrophic fires. That's just the
reason we have catastrophicfires is because we just don't have
the money and infrastructureto implement a fire regime that is,
(53:56):
from a management lens, that'sit. So if we gave them more money,
we'd have better public lands,we'd have better wildlife, we'd have
better resources. To me,that's. It's a huge. It's a huge
thing. The management elementis huge. Think outside the box. Let's
(54:18):
think really outside the box alittle bit. We can think a little
bit of the public privatepartnership. The public private partnership
works very, very well all overthe world. Are there small, like,
are there small wildliferefuges no, that are duck refuges
that an ngo, local NGO cantake over the management of and they
(54:40):
co manage with the feds andthe private entity. It happens everywhere.
We shouldn't be afraid of thatmodel, we should embrace it because
now you've got access to moneyand people who are interested in
doing the work. So there's,you know, carbon credits, biodiversity
credit schemes, tapping intothe world banks, tapping into big
(55:03):
companies that need thosebiodiversity credits or carbon credits.
Could we not again create apublic private partnership there
to help our public lands getbetter, become healthier? That's
where I stand.
Yeah, it's interesting, right,because I always, I'm always so disappointed
that the framing now is sosimplistic, right. It's either A
(55:24):
or not A. And there's likeall, I always tell my boys, like
all the hard work is in themiddle, all of it like. And so, you
know, we can walk and chew gumat the same time, I think. And you
know, I think it's kind of, Imean where we are now is, you know,
people are, some people arescared to death. They want responsible
management but things arebeing so aggressively moved in the
other direction that they're,they're becoming maybe overly protective
(55:46):
and not as thoughtful as theycould be. But I think it's a, I think
it's a super complicatedissue. I mean, you know, I've, I
mean, gosh, I, you know,rarely, you know, fish on private
land, right. Go get to go outwest, right. You just buy your out
of state fishing license inMontana. You can go all over creation.
It's an amazing thing. Youknow, as we kind of wind down, I
know you're not speakingbecause you're going to be hunting
(56:07):
for the next three or four weeks.
No, I'm not, I'm not hunting.Oh, I'm working business. It's all.
So this time of the year inSouth Africa and in the southern
hemisphere are all the annualgeneral meetings of all the professional
hunting associations. That'swhy every year I miss Thanksgiving
because the professionalhunting association meetings of South
Africa, Zimbabwe, Namibia,Zambia, all happen almost like in
(56:31):
a three week back to back. Soyeah, I wish I was hunting.
Yeah, well, so, so you're nothunting. So you know, obviously none
of my listeners will be ableto join you in South Africa for any
of those. But you know, as wekind of look, you know, in the fly
fishing world, you know, thewintertime is a big show season for
consumer and B2B shows, youknow. Or do you have any speaking
(56:52):
engagements in the States orAny trade shows, I know you like
to go to those as well.Anything like that, you want to alert
folks to where they maybe getto kind of come out and talk to you
about this stuff a little bitmore, shake your hand, all that kind
of good stuff.
Yeah, we're at all of theshows, like, you name it, we're at
it. You know, small chaptershows to the Wild Sheep foundation,
(57:13):
to Dallas Safari Club, toSafari Club International, to NWTF,
we're pretty much 90% of them.So you, you will see on our socials
when we're moving and howwe're moving around this world. And
you know, if we're in yourarea, if you're in your neck of the
woods, we'd love to have acoffee with you. We'd love to shake
(57:33):
your hand. I just had thisexperience in Australia. I was doing
a road trip through Australiaand I just put on my social, like,
this is my route today.Anybody on my route have a pie or
a coffee together. And I hadmultiple people that I stopped on
the side of the road. Youknow, we just. And they had, they
had bought the coffee alreadyand we stopped and we had a coffee
together and chatted and tooka selfie and off I went.
(57:56):
Yeah. It's kind of cool toowhen that happens because it kind
of tells you that all thathard work of the last five years,
you're not crazy, right? Thatyou're actually reaching people.
Marvin, we were halfway aroundthe world.
Yeah.
And that happened. Which blewmy mind.
Yeah.
Which again is.
I always say, folks, you got$1,000 supercomputer in your pocket.
Don't look at cat memes onInstagram. Go. Reach out and connect
(58:17):
with people.
That's right. That's right.
Before I let you go, is thereanything else you want to share with
our listeners?
No, I would just encourageeveryone. If you are in the hunting
space or even if you're in thefly fishing space, you know, think
about those things that sortof made you become a fisherman or
love fire fishing or lovehunting and, you know, talk about
(58:37):
them. Talk about them on yoursocial media, on the digital media.
Learn about them. Learn aboutyour why. Learn about the upliftment
that comes as a result of theactivities that you love to do. Because
you never know when you'regoing to be in a situation where
you have to defend. May be adinner party, it may be your mother
in law, it may be Thanksgivingdinner, it may be on social media.
(58:58):
And if you've educatedyourself enough and you've watched
videos, if you Listen topeople, you'll be confident enough
to make your point and knowunderstand why you're making your
point. And I think that'll goa long way in our community. I'm
seeing it happen every singleday. So I just, I would challenge
(59:22):
people and if you feel likeyou have a question, you're like,
man, I just don't quiteunderstand this. From a hunting perspective,
we are not hard to find. Youcan find us on all the social media
platforms. You can directmessage us on all the social media
platforms. 90% of the timeyou're going to be talking directly
to me. So it's, it's, I likethat personal interaction. I'm not
going to give up that personalinteraction. So yeah, reach out.
(59:46):
Very neat. And so if folkswant to learn more about the Origins
foundation, support your workand kind of follow your adventures
in the field, where shouldthey go?
Just type in the Originsfoundation into every platform will
come up Google, Twitter,Facebook, Instagram, you name it,
you'll find us.
Well, I will drop all thatstuff in the show notes folks, so
(01:00:08):
it'll be a whole lot easierfor you to find those links.
Well, I appreciate that,Marvin, really do.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate youcarving some time out before your,
you know, your multi weekconference expedition to South Africa.
Yeah, I'm one of thoseprocrastinators. My wife said to
me this morning she's had youpacked. I said, I haven't even started.
That's because you're aseasoned traveler.
(01:00:28):
Three and a half weeks oftraveling packing is going to happen
the next two hours.
Well, thank you so much formaking the time. Safe travels.
Appreciate you, Marvin. Thank you.
Well folks, we hope youenjoyed the interview as much as
we enjoyed bringing it to you.Remember, links to all this episode
sponsors are in the shownotes. Check them out. Tight lines,
everybody.
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