Ep. 51: Andy McLaughlin - A Life Lived Outside

Andy McLaughlin joins the show from a remote island in Alaska where he lives off the land enjoying a true subsistence lifestyle. Having grown up with grandparents who were passionate about the outdoors, Andy became interested in nature at a very young age. Spending much of his childhood on farms in the Midwest, his early connections to the land ranged from farming to hunting, fishing and foraging. 

Well respected for his culinary skills and creativity in utilizing wild game in the kitchen, Jesse Deubel first met Andy on the “Hunt, Gather, Cook” Facebook page. This page was created by and is run by famed wild game chef and author Hank Shaw. After years of communicating and sharing recipes, Andy traveled to New Mexico to hunt javelina with Jesse in 2024. The two hunted an area that Hank Shaw would also visit as he did research for his newest book, “Borderlands.” “Borderlands” highlights recipes and stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. It’s a must have for every kitchen. 

In spring of 2025 Jesse traveled to Indiana to hunt and fish with Andy on his family farm. In this casual conversation Andy and Jesse recall these experiences as they discuss the critical importance of healthy habitat for sustainable wildlife populations. They also dive into the role hunting plays in effectively managing wildlife. No topic is off limits as they delve into the challenges of climate change and the current threats to public lands. Andy is an incredible outdoorsman with a background in wildlife management. His knowledge and experience are sure to both educate and entertain. Enjoy the listen! 

For more info:
NMWF Website

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Jesse Dubell here, executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation,
bringing you another exciting episode of the aiv OP podcast. Today,
I've got my good friend and turkey hunting partner, actually
Andy McLaughlin on the show. Andy is coming to us
remotely from a pretty remote area of Alaska. Actually this

(00:22):
is more than just a remote podcast. This is a
very very remote podcast, I would say. But I was
recently with Andy in Indiana as we were hunting eastern
Turkey's had an unbelievable time. But going back, Andy and
I first met actually on Facebook. We were both members
are still are members of the Hunt Gather Cook facebook page,

(00:42):
which is a page that's started and moderated by my
good friend, wild game chef and author Hank Shaw. And
Hank recently released his brand new book border Lands, and
he spent some time with me in New Mexico back
in August of twenty twenty four. He was working on
that book and I've got a couple copies of it,

(01:03):
and it's a fantastic book, like all of his are.
You might be familiar with books that he's written, like
Buck Buck, Moose or Duck Duck Goose number of others,
but Borderlands is really really a unique book, and I
encourage everybody to check it out. But I first met
Andy because we both would share recipes and talk about

(01:24):
different aspects of wild game cooking, gathering, hunting, all things
related to procuring protein from our public lands. And then
later Andy came out and spent some time with me
in New Mexico, and then I went out and spent
some time with him and Andy Indiana.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
The New Mexico Wildlife Federation presents the Aahiva podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Without further ado, Andy, why don't you tell our listeners
a little bit about yourself, where you're from, your upbringing,
and what caused you to have such an unbelievable connection to.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
The natural world. Yeah, thanks for asking.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
And I got a double dose from both maternal and
paternal grandparents. They even joked that they overtrained me, but
you know, they had survived through the depression and stuff,
and we're both avid outdoors people, especially my grandfathers as

(02:20):
major role models. Of course, my father, I was lucky.
He took me under his wing to learn trapping, fur
bear trapping, and a lot of different types of hunting
and specifically fishing as well for basically everything that you
could possibly hunt in the Midwest, including Michigan and Indiana.

(02:45):
Family farms in both of those places, and then I
would also spend time in Florida with my mother's parents
and my grandfather there was into archery and consequently got
me into bow hunting at a very young age in
the seventies and recurve with recurve before compounds got pretty popular.

(03:10):
But so that kind of was a double dose hunting
and fishing on both sides. It just became very apparent
to me that I liked being in non man made
places out in.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
The wilderness and in the wild woods there.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
You know, also uh, you know, farmland. I hunted upland
quite a bit quail and pheasants before those populations kind
of plummeted, but a lot of upland type thing grouse
up in northern Michigan, a lot of squirrel hunting, rabbit,
small game, but I kind of went deeper down the

(03:48):
rabbit hole. I was endo up gigging frogs, to catching turtles,
to doing whatever you know. In Indiana farm kid could do,
and and my father was a prof are of medicinal
plants at Purdue University so that got me in the
woods a lot, and hearing a lot of the Latin
terminology for the different genus and species and families and

(04:12):
stuff of everything from mushrooms to plants to animals, and.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
So it was kind of a shoe in.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
By the time I got out of high school to
go to Purdue to get a degree in wildlife management
from Purdue University, and then consequently got a job with
the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, and that was a blessing.
It was really great. Worked a lot with birds. I

(04:42):
wasn't specifically focused on birds, but that's kind of ended
up happening. I monitored all sorts of things from mourning
doves to pheasants, to wood ducks to there's a mark
project of getting Canada geese in the summers there, at

(05:05):
least there used to be.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
This was in the late eighties eighty.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Seven ish eighty eight, working for the Department of Natural
Resources both in the South Region and the North Region.
Indiana was divided at that time into two different regional
sections for the DNR. But then I went to California

(05:29):
and worked for the Forest Service in northern California around
the Tahoe area, and that was in fisheries and wildlife
at first, and then it switched over the fisheries. So yeah,
I've had a little extensive history of that kind of thing.
Then I moved to Alaska and started I had a
big dream of being a biologist in Alaska, but jobs

(05:52):
were pretty tough to come by there. Early nineties ninety one,
Ish worked at salmon hatcheries and that was like seven
years of hatchery work, raising salmon for an aquaculture corporation
up here. And consequently I already knew I was coming

(06:15):
to Alaska. I have a friend that in my fifth
grade yearbook, he signed, maybe someday I'll visit you at
your cabin in Alaska. And I look back in that
old yearbook from fifth grade, it's pretty telling that that's
where I was headed way back then. This was my
dream and I made it happen, you know. So, and

(06:37):
I just like hunting and fishing, and I liked being
in the proximity of a wilderness or a wild place
where I reside. So I kind of chose ended up
choosing this remote island. I've been here over thirty years
in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Man, that's such an awesome story, Andy, And there's so
many parallels between your story and mine, you know, interestingly,
I think it's a seventh grade paper that I wrote
that my mom still keeps a copy of it, where
I talked about living in Alaska when I was in
seventh grade, and ultimately I did do that. I went
and spent some time living in Ketchikan. I didn't last
as long as you've lasted out there, but there's some

(07:15):
similarities between our stuff, and I think that's probably why
you and I get along so well and enjoy each
other's company as much as we do. But your current
situation in Alaska is essentially a subsistence lifestyle, or very
close to it.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
Is that accurate, very fortunate to be on this island.
And I was invited many years ago, over twenty years ago,
late maybe twenty eight twenty nine years ago, to move
into the native village here, and that was a real
blessing to I had already lived a subsistence lifestyle to

(07:53):
a great degree, just hunting and fishing in every waking
moment that was free and possible for me to do that.
Then I got to Alaska, and you can dial that
in a lot more A lot of your food depends
on that and gardening. I do a lot of gardening.
I have two super huge greenhouses and whatnot.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
But yeah, I try to.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
I strive to live off the land and see and gardening.
I do a lot of gathering, but primarily moose. Now,
I mean, I grew up eating a lot of deer
and a lot of fish, but now it's like salmon
and haliban. And since I'm on the coast, I get
saltwater fish, very lucky to get that, octopus, shrimp, crabs, clams.

(08:39):
I get a lot of seafood very readily where I live.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
So yeah, I enjoy a subsistence lifestyle.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
It ended up getting to where i's over ten years now,
I've been on the South Central Regional Advisory Council for
the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It's a subsistence board
where we help make decisions to enable rural residents to

(09:11):
be defended by ANILKA, which was an act in the
seventies National Lands Claim Act by Congress, so that rural
people can have a preference to subsist off the natural
resources in the environment in the proximity of where they

(09:31):
live and so having a knowledge in our an education
and a degree in wildlife management has helped me utilize
the jargon and buzzwords and things that to help people
be able to fill their freezers as long as that

(09:52):
resource can exist in perpetuity and conservation ethic is used
and that.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
People can gain food.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
We affect things like method, means of take, timings of season,
things like that. We are like the eyes and ears
of the main Us Facial wildlife service. People such as myself,
we live in a remote place, have our finger on
the pulse of what the population dynamics are doing of

(10:24):
a lot of species of wildlife, and so we help
influence the care of those resources.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Man, that's really remarkable, and I can't imagine.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
What a huge benefit it is to have someone with
your scientific background serving in that role. I mean, I'm
sure there's a lot of very knowledgeable and interested people,
but to have your on the ground knowledge and personal
connection to the place, but also your scientific background, that's
really huge. I might have told you this story before,
but in twenty twenty, I did a float trip for

(10:59):
caribou across the Yukon Charlie River's National Preserve and I
was floating in my alpacaft forager and it was about
a month long trip.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
It was a really.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Lengthy trip, but I ended up harvesting a real nice cariboo.
And when I came into the village of Circle, which
was essentially my takeout off the Yukon River, So the
Charlie River feeds into the Yukon, So I floated the
Charlie until I hit the Yukon, and then it was
about eighty miles down the Yukon, which is a lot
of paddling because that's a pretty slow moving river until

(11:29):
I got to the village of Circle and I took
out there.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
And where I took out, I was.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Met by a Native man in the village of Circle
Aguicha in Native and the meat from the cariboo was
all inside the tubes of the raft. The way that
forager Alpaca raft is designed, there's a zipper that allows
you to open up the actual tube so you can
store stuff in the tubes. And I'd been storing all
of my caribou meat inside the tubes of the raft

(11:54):
to keep it cold because it was on that ice
cold river water, so it's a meat preservation technique.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Can then I just the antlers.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Of course, at this caribou were far too large to
fit inside the tubes of the raft, so it was
strapped on top of the raft. And when I got
into circle, this elderly gentleman was very, very upset because
his perception of my situation was that I'd killed this
caribou and taken out the head and had left the
meat behind, which of course wasn't the case. But the

(12:21):
meat wasn't visible because it was inside the tubes of
the raft, and this was a design that this man
had never seen before, so he didn't expect that to
be the case. And so it resulted in kind of
a pretty interesting altercation between me and this native elder
who thought I was trophy hunting and taking one of
his caribou off the land for the sole purpose of

(12:43):
having these beautiful antlers. And it wasn't until you know,
probably five minutes into the discussion that I realized what
the issue was and that he thought I'd left the
meat in the field. And then when I was able
to open up the zipper and start extracting the meat,
which I'd cared for very meticulously, the entire conversation changed,
and it was just really it illustrated very well the

(13:08):
ethics that you're talking about. You know, these people who
live a subsistence lifestyle cared deeply about the resource, they
care deeply about the populations, they care deeply about these
animals that they depend on for their livelihood. And I'll
never forget that experience. It was pretty remarkable. But I
have to say, Andy, it's probably fairly rare for someone

(13:30):
who's non indigenous to be invited to live in a
Native community in the way that you are. Can you
talk a little bit about how that came to be,
the way that you forge those relationships, and what took
place that allowed you to be invited in this.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Very special situation, really unusual for a region like this.
I feel blessed and lucky and honored.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
I had bought land on a nearby island and built
a cabin from scratch. There actually small home like sixteen
by twenty four two story place, and boats would go by,
and you know, I'd wave and they'd wave, and I
didn't really know the names of folks here at the time,

(14:15):
and you know, a couple of them would stop in
and say, Hey, you want to see who's in the neighborhood,
you know, and I'd you know, explain who I was,
what I was all about, and very commonly I would share,
like like one time, in particular, there was a man
John m towed him off and he stopped in and

(14:36):
I met him on the water, I think, and I
had a deer in the boat and a nice buck,
and I was like, you want some meat, and he said.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Oh, I'd love some meat. So I just pulled.

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Out my knife and skinned a hind quarter real fast
and cut a hind quarter off and handed it over
into his boat, and that that was a He thought
that was great, and then word got around it was
interesting I'd come over for there used to be a
fishing game representative here. One of the native men named
Mike Olshansky ran a fishing game liaison type office here

(15:10):
to get your licenses and stuff and your tags. And
I stopping in to get that, and he was like, oh,
you're Andy. So suddenly people knew my name and and
so it ended up just befriending people here, and they
befriended me and accept me and and invited me in.
I went to Peter Solandov's house and other people's houses

(15:32):
where they were like, oh, come to our house.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
You know, and and.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
And I just hit it off with people. And subsistence
is very largely sharing the resources that you you catch,
so you know, that's hand in hand. Like the elders
get the best cuts as soon as you get something,
that's how it works, you know. And if you get
you know, like one big animal, they get you know,

(15:57):
the best cuts or or you know, you go around
and serve the people who can't provide for themselves first.
So if you get like a bucket of rockfish or
salmon or halibit or whatever, and you filly it, how
you show up at people's houses and you deliver it,
you know. And so that's kind of how it all
panned out here. And I was lucky at the time

(16:20):
the council lived here and they voted my wife and
I to be able to get our own home, which
was rather unheard of here. So so I've been very
lucky to reside right here on the coast. I can
look out and see the salt water right now, and

(16:42):
I've got a beach, i mean, grouse walk through my yard,
bears walk through my yard.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah, it's a wild place. Man.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
That that's such a cool story. It's so inspiring about
the power of community. You know, if somehow we could
harness that level of community and spread it across the
United States as a whole, it would really do a
lot for the way this country is right now. So
that that community is really really powerful, Andy, I want
to back up just a little bit though, and go
back to Indiana. So I was out there turkey hunting

(17:16):
with you back in April because you invited me out
after a trip that we did together in New Mexico,
which we'll talk about a little bit later. But while
we were out there, you were telling me a little
bit about your involvement in the translocation and the re
establishment essentially of wild turkeys in this country. So I'm
curious if you go back to your time with the
Indiana dn R and talk a little bit about your involvement.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah, I feel really wild turkey program.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
That I got to be involved in that The South
Regional director was Carl Eisfelder, the turkey biologist. I think
he recently retired Steve backs he he. They hired me
to help what I did in the Hoosia National Forest

(18:01):
with three other guys, Ralph, Ralph, manship Kenny. I forgot
Kenny's name, her last name Larry Allen nicknamed Skeeter, but
we were grouse trappers, so we trapped roughed grouse.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
In the Hoosia National Forest.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Each of us had our own line. We'll go off
different ways and trap these grouse and h and we
would box them up and trade them to Missouri for turkeys.
And because Missouri had a good population of turkeys and
they were catching them and swapping to places that were
wanting to re establish turkey populations and the natural ranges

(18:45):
where the populations have been extra pated from their natural range.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
And so.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
Then Iowa cut us a deal. I believe we had
to do one grouse p two turkeys, and then we
got three turkeys for one grouse or something like that.
With Iowa made an undercut Missouri's deal to us and
got us more turkeys.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
More bang for our buck.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
So we switched to Iowa from Missouri and we stocked
these turkeys and the main initial bunch of them went
into Crane Navy Base near Bedford, Indiana. It's a weapons
depot area, very large tract of woods and rolling hills,

(19:31):
a nice wilderness area in Indiana. We stocked them in
Turkey Run State Park and Park County, and these populations
ended up doing so good in their natural range and
natural habitat. They like, they breed like rabbits type thing,
where you know, each hen's got thirteen babies, and then

(19:53):
half of those are females, and then the next year,
each one of those has thirteen, you know, and so
it kind of just exponentially grows. And then I was
a a trapper in the South and then I got
hired by a man named Randy Showalder. He was the
director of the North Region for the Department of Natural Resources,

(20:13):
and he had me become the North Regional Turkey trapping
Coordinator for the state. And that was great. It was wonderful.
I got to drive around and interview farmers and people
in rural areas and ask them if they'd seen turkeys
and find out where the bulk of the turkeys were.

(20:34):
And then if I'd find turkeys that were in flocks
of twenty to one hundred, I then would get permission
to trap them. I actually welded up the Indiana DNRS.
I created the cannon net boxes used to be the
net would be spread out across the ground and be

(20:55):
anchored in the corners and shoot it over the bait
pile when the turkeys are on it. But I researched
the Pennsylvania Game Commission had some cannon net things that
were in a box, so you could like run in
with a box and camouflage that box up and that
and put these little tracks. I welded the little tracks

(21:16):
on the top and it would shoot the rockets from
the corners and the sides and one in the center
and dragged that net out with some anchors of chain
that would drag and uh So I got to do
a lot of practicing with this turkey cannon net box
and welding it up and prototype and changing some things,
and and uh it got to where these things were

(21:38):
super effective. And we'd get these turkeys hitting a bait
and would shoot a net over them and box them up.
And we were we at that point in time National
Wilde Turkey Federation was gaining power. Randy Showalder eventually left
the DNR and.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
I think he became.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
CEO of the Indiana Chapter of the Net Turkey Federation.
But anyhow, these boxes we would box up the turkeys
and then different counties, we had different district biologists that
had different counties three or four counties assigned to their region,
and they would research the best drainages, the best riparian

(22:19):
habitats interspersed with farm agricultural land, and they would tell
us where they thought the best place. Then they would
liaison to a landowner. You mind, if we release turkeys
on your place, places like in Tippecan, New County on Purdue,
We released them in Martel Forest. We released them in
some wildlife areas like Pigeon River.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Way up in the northeast.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Section of Indiana, some along the Eel River north of
Kokomo near Peru, different places, and the rest is history.
These turkeys just spread out. Some of the turkeys I
eventually hunted in Michigan had come across the border from
that Pigeon River release, I believe, And and my farm

(23:06):
in Vermilion County got turkeys within just a very short
period a few years.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
You know.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
My father showed them, Hey, that's turkey tracks. There's gonna
be turkeys here someday, a lot of them if they're
here this fast. Because they went down Sugar Creek from
Turkey Run, hit the wall, bash went up the drainages,
you know. So so yeah, they follow those Riparian corridors,
and they go back out into there where they belong,
and and they do really well.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
It was.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
It's wonderful that it's like a success story, kind of
like how pheasants were for North Dakota or something. It's
like how turkey's in the Midwest just everywhere now they're
and and a lot of that is influenced from the
National Wild Turkey Federation and the hunters dollars that helped
create that, all these conservation efforts to protect your habitats,

(23:58):
and and and.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
The rest is history. Man, that's such a cool story.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
And you know, in April with you, I killed my
very first Eastern gobbler, you know, the very first Eastern
wild turkey I've ever hunted and successfully harvested. That turkey,
I mean really is offspring I mean so many years later,
but is offspring from the efforts that you originally started
that many years ago, right, I mean, had it not

(24:26):
been for that translocation project, that turkey probably not entirely
farmland happened.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Now, other states were the same thing around the same time.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
And now these populations that have come from everywhere like
they were good. You know, Illinois, I think gone from
Pennsylvania and other place. So all these turkeys have like
intermingled in their natural ranges of habitats. There's points where
there's like little islands of forest out in the middle
of agricultural farmland that's not really much streams or anything,
but there's turkeys running around everywhere, and they've entered bred

(24:58):
amongst all these other popu relations. So yeah, that one,
I mean, I would bet because it was right real
close to where I saw tracks three years after that
Park County stuff. So yeah, they moved out and followed drainages.
I remember doing gobble counts in Rockville, which is about

(25:22):
halfway from my farm to Turkey Run, and you know,
some of the stuff was just like you just drive
around and monitor gobbles and try to triangulate and get
some population studies going as to where the habitats that
they were adapting to first and whatnot. Some of the
initial gobble counts that I did, and also ruffed grouse

(25:46):
drumming counts were down in Hoosion National Forest out around
Monroe Reservoir and tower Ridge Road, the Mammee area. That
was some of the first real successful turkeys are.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Doing good, you know. And yeah, so anyhow, who's the
National Forest is.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
Probably the first big bastion of the grouse, of course,
and then the turkeys now habitat Loss farmland.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Edge.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
They grouse in particular thrive on small stem density close together,
grown together, so like a.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Burn or a clear cut.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Is a high requirement for grouse productivity because aerial predators
can't fly through that small stuff that's thick and grab them.
And the young poltse can survive without predators is taking
as many of them.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Out because of that.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
So the grouse actually has not done not fared very
well at all in southern Indiana now.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
That habitat Loss.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Uh, it just hasn't been what it used to be
about that small stem density stuff.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
From from the way it's been explained to me. Yeah,
is that?

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Is that the same reason that we've seen such an
incredible decline in bob white quail across so many areas
of the country. I mean there are places where bob
whites used to be super abundant.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Now, yeah, really depressive for me.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
We had Britney spaniels and bird dogs and we hunted
grou i mean quailed northern bob whites, and like I
would be sitting in tree stands hunting deer, and there'd
be coveys walking under the tree, you know, and you'd
hear them calling all the time.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
He'd be like, okay, Bob White's cool, and you'd flush
coveyes quite regular and then I, uh, you know, my
grandfather always taught us never shoot a covey below like
seven or eight birds. And it's kind of sad because
I'm like, oh, there's only six birds in that. But like,
nineteen seventy eight was a really bad winter, and everybody
kind of wants to blame it on that seemed like
pheasants kind of bounced back, and sometimes I saw quail,

(28:09):
but southern Indiana didn't get that severe winter. So on
into the late eighties, I was still hunting quail in
Southern Indiana in covees that had fifteen birds, you know.
And so yeah, I don't really know the exact reason.

(28:31):
I would bet it's habitat loss. It actually may also
have to do with the pesticides that are used in
agricultural fields. And there's a lot of talk about how
you know, bugs.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
Aren't on the windshields of cars a stick as they
used to be.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Fireflies are going down you know, certain numbers of things
that constituent in the lower trophic levels of the food chain.
Protein is the main thing for like turkey bolts and
grouse polts. Maybe turkey are more adaptable and they're young
eat other things like omniverous type things, but that could

(29:11):
be a factor in the quail.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
New Mexico just last week we passed our state Wildlife
Action Plan, which is renewed every ten years essentially, and
for the first time ever, we've on our Species of
Greatest Conservation Need. We actually now have invertebrates, arthropods. I mean,
we have insects included on the list, which we never
had before. And the New Mexico Wildlife Federation was really

(29:35):
adamant about fighting to get some of these insects species
included because they're so critical to ecosystem health.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
I mean, if you want to.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Have a strong food chain, you have to have the
foundation of it in good shape. And our insect situation
here is I don't want to say that it's terrible.
I just think we don't really know because in our
state Wildlife Agency we currently don't have a single intomol
just employed. It's just something we don't pay any attention
to or put any resources towards. And it's it's something

(30:06):
I feel like is a lost opportunity. I think if
we don't focus heavily on that, then it's going to
have cascading effects on down in the.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Coal mine, kind of like frogs. You know, frogs got
kind of you know, a permeable, amphibious skin, and if
there's pesticides or bad things, and suddenly, oh, just not
as many frogs there used to be. You know, things
at lower than that, all the bugs. It's it's it's
things are changing, and we are, as humans, are affecting

(30:38):
the habitat.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, you know, that's the the most important thing that
I find myself trying to help people understand is that
in almost all cases, when you're seeing population level declines,
the answer is almost always habitat. I mean maybe not always,
but they talk about adjusting harvest limits, they talk about
this thing and that thing. I mean, when sage growl

(31:00):
were a big issue in Wyoming, there was this proposal
to just raise them in captivity and then release them
into the wild, like that's going to fix the population
kind of, and you know, it was so frustrating to
be involved in some of these discussions saying, guys, the
answer is habitat. That's the issue. If we don't fix
the habitat, we're not going to recover the population. It's

(31:21):
it's I mean, I don't want to say it's that simple,
but at times it feels like that's the answer, and
everybody's trying to find alternative solutions.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
When you say major answers stories is the Pittman Robertson funds,
you know, and the Dingle Johnson stuff from fishing, you know,
the conservation like.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
That was all about habitat.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
That was all about using those funds from conservation minded
people and hunter and fishermen's dollars helped protect things. This
is kind of how Ducks Unlimited, you know, monies helped
do all the pothole regions and the Dakotas and all
those kinds of things are all kind of historically prove

(32:04):
and that habitat is the key factor.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
You know.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
It's like the mountain lion thing. They're like they're humans are.
Urban sprawl is moving into these wild areas, so like
we have to coexist with these mountain lines.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
And if they're cutting the hunting season on them, you know, uh.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
I think in general we need to look at the
population of wildlife as a whole and not as the
individual animal that people like to focus on.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's I think that's key. One
thing I want to bring up. So you you spend
a portion of your year in very rural Alaska, living
a subsistence lifestyle in a harsh landscape, and then you
spend part of your year in Indiana, which are drastically
different environments. Certainly you know that there's a big difference

(32:55):
between those two landscapes. But as if that difference isn't enough,
you last year and maybe previous years applied in the
New Mexico Big Game Draw to come out to New
Mexico and hunt here in this arid western desert state
to get even more diversity of experience as it relates
to your public land experiences and hunting.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
And so on and so forth.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
And so last year you were successful in drawing a
Hovellina tag, and so you traveled all the way from Alaska.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
I think a lot of people are going to find this.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
A lot of people in New Mexico in particular, are
going to find this really impressive that you traveled all
the way from Alaska to Luna County, New Mexico, down
near Deming. South of Deming, we were staying in Columbus
to chase Hovelina in our desert. And I'm curious if
you would talk a little bit about what motivates a

(33:45):
guy who hunts as much as you do and already
diverse habitats from Indiana to Alaska, to be motivated to
come all this distance to chase Hovelina with me in
the desert.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
I think that's a super cool story.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
I'm a collector of experiences and habitat is different, and
as a hunter, in order to succeed, you kind of
have to become one with that habitat. You have to learn,
you know, you learn like where a tree stand is
and get a good white tailed deer, or if say
I was hunting acoust deer or something, or or elk
or you know, like an oregon or someplace, or caribou

(34:24):
on the tundra, you kind of have to learn that habitat.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
That's their living room and you've got to become part
of that.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
And so there's a lot of relativity and all the
diversity of huntings you can do because each thing has
this habitat component, but it has the species component, and
it's like what are they eating, where do they sleep?
All these different you know, bedding areas and all the
things about them. So I truly enjoy, you know, learning

(34:51):
different like the I got the Osceola turkey in Florida
many years ago, like nineteen eighty eight or something, the
Rio Grande, the Miriams, I did Mariams in New Mexico a.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Couple of times.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
And I just my sister lives in New Mexico too,
So that's a big factor, is probably why. But I've
I've hunted pigs in Florida, Texas, Hawaii that type of thing,
and have Alena are similar to pigs, different branch of
the evolutionary tree, I believe, but they're similar in kind

(35:30):
of their eating habits and what they do. But that
desert was a completely different thing. I learned that hunting
turkey's a long time ago, like, wow, gotta have water.
Like by the time I got back to the car,
I was by ready to drink out of the radiator
because I didn't bring enough water, you.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Know, many years ago.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
And so now I've learned from that type of experience
and hunting in various places that are hot.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
But yeah, that I just enjoy it. And and the
have Alena.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
Was a different kind of pig. I put in for
all those things. I put in for the Big Horn
and the Orcs and the Ibex and everything that I
possibly can, hoping something would work. And finally I think
it took four years to finally get to have Lena tag.
I've been putting it in sense and I didn't didn't

(36:17):
didn't get drawn yet again, but I sure would like
to do it again.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
That was a lot of fun. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
One of the things I'll never forget.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
And this kind of going back to the introduction how
we met on you know, hank Shaw's Hunt Gathered cook page,
is when you came down, you brought with you some
octopus that you brought from Alaska. I mean, you brought
a lot of things, but I remember you cooking octopus
for dinner one evening.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
That was absolutely spectacular. That was that was such a
cool thing.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
And so I'm interested to hear how your love for
hunting kind of transitioned into a love for cooking. Because
you're one of the more prominent members I think of
the Hunt gathered cooke community. You're someone who's very very
well respected. You do a lot of recipes. You do
a lot of incredible food prep from building your own
customs smokehouses and smoking fish and preserving meat and canning meat.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
And I mean all kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
And I'm curious to learn if that was something you
started as as a very young man or something you
got into later.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
But that octopus be prepared I've ever had. Well.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
I like seafood, I like to share. I think there's
a big social factor and the wild foods that I
like to prepare and eat. Historically, though, grandparents on both
sides again were like culinary masters at you know, snapping turtle,

(37:42):
frog legs, whatever it is that we gathered dandelion greens
to moral mushrooms to also belit us different different types
of everything birds, you know, ducks and whatnot. So you know,
my in in Florida, my grandfather had a smokehouse for mullet.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
He was a cast net or. He liked to get
mullet and smoke it. Blue crabs was a big deal
for my family every family reunion, you know.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
So so those kind of things have been with me
a long time, paying attention to what grandma and grandpa did.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
And now that I'm.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Kind of reaching this level of elderhood, it's just evolving
into something I do. I kind of find cooking therapeutic.
I could spend half a day doing a bunch of
step heavy processes of some type of dish and experimenting.
I do a lot of fusion. I blend, you know,

(38:46):
one type of maybe a Japanese thing with something that's
Italian or whatever. I mess around with a lot of
stuff just to and then I find some home runs
amidst that, and those become my mainstays, you know. But
you know, like you know, there's Hank stuff is sweet
and Sira rockfish and certain things that are like such
a home run that like you're gonna go back to
that a bunch of times, you know. So yeah, I've

(39:09):
got I don't have the new book, but I have
his other books, and and yeah, I just I find
it therapeutic in a great degree, you know, spending time
and making something delicious out of these these things. I
make probably eight kinds of sausage from whatever meat I have.

(39:34):
I do like hog fat, but deer, venison, moose, caribou
are all things that I get quite regularly, and they
go into different types of sausage, different cuts of meat.
I like to play around with curing. I mean bresciola
to all the sausages I make, ham, I make bacon.

(39:58):
You know, you know, I just I just like doing
all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (40:04):
Man.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
I have to believe that those culinary skills somehow played
into your uh invitation to remain.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
In the native village where you currently reside.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
You know, I think giving giving a quarter rear quarter
of a deer's part of it.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
But I think some of the stuff that you've probably prefer.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
I have some of the red salmon that just came
out of my smokehouse as a matter of fact today,
and uh, yeah, so I smoked and stripped some salmon
and smoked them and then I kippered some of them.
So I pressure canned them and they came out of
the pressure canner today and uh and then I had
some dry ones that are like little jerkys. And then

(40:47):
he was just like, man, this is the best I've had,
you know, So it's uh. I feel lucky to spend
enough time refining some of these recipes. I know, you
know you're hear over time kind of what my grandparents were, Oh,
too much salt or too much this and that whatever,
and then you kind of adjust things until you hit
the mark and get a home run. And so yeah,

(41:09):
I'm really happy with a lot of the mainstay recipes
I've got. I need I do record a bunch of
it and write it down, But some of them, like
my brine for that salmon, is all just in my head,
you know, But every time it's it's out of the ballpark.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Man.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
That's that's really awesome, Andy, And I feel so fortunate
to have had the opportunity to experience some of your
fantastic culinary expertise. One of the things I'm interested to
hear about because obviously you've got the family farm in
Indiana that I was fortunate to be invited to and
spend time on, and really just shaish that experience and

(41:48):
the time that we spend together and the opportunity to
experience that place, and look at what you've done for
the habitat and continue to do for the habitat and
the improvements and all of these things, and such a
remarkable property. That's a parcel private land obviously that you're
very connected to, but you also spend a lot of
time hunting on public land. And I'm curious if you

(42:08):
have any thoughts or comments regarding what's happening right now
in Congress with the Reconciliation Bill and this proposal to
mandate the sale right now of three million acres of
public land across the West. Eleven Western states would be
subject to having some of their public lands sold, in

(42:29):
New Mexico being one of those states. My personal opinion
is this three million acres is just the start.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
You know, this is the beginning.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
But if the Reconciliation Bill was to pass as currently written,
it would mandate the sale of It's complicated because what
they're what they're actually mandating is the sale of half
a percent of all BLM land and half a percent
of all National Forest Service land, and it could go up.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
To three quarters of a percent on each of those.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
So if it was three quarters of a percent, it'd
be well, it'd be over three million acres. There's half
a percent to be just under three million acres. But
I'm using three million acres as kind of a ballpark
figure of what would be mandated to be sold if
the bill passed. The Reconciliation Package bill passed as written,
it would be required that sales started within sixty days.

(43:18):
I mean, they want to make this thing happen quickly,
and all of that land would have to be disposed
of within five years. So I'm curious if you have
thoughts about that particular prevision of the reconciliation.

Speaker 1 (43:33):
Beyond tragedy.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Catastrophe, that that is our public resources. That there are people.
I mean, I have a lot of friends that are
like you know and myself. I mean, we utilize these
public domains, whether it's forest service you know, or be

(44:01):
these giant public tracts of land and small ones too
are I myself require proximity and contact with nature and things,
and not all the public has access to a nice
family farm, private parcel like what I do. I mean,

(44:24):
but I grew up as well, like asking neighbor, hate
you matter if I hunt on your place and getting
permission in a lot.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Of private land.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
But not everybody can do that, and at times have
changed and there's a lot of no trespassing. When I
was a kid, we could just release coon dogs and
take bluetick counts across the county and nobody really cared,
and you could be in this wood lot, in that
wood lot and get raccoons in the middle of the night,
and it wasn't like a trespass trouble.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Now there'd be like lawsuits and all sorts of trouble,
you know.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
So people need that, the public, the vast bulk of
the public needs those last bat questions of public accessible
places to go to. Whether it's a half a percent
or not, that's that's a travesty to even think that
those need to be privatized.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
What we have going on in the United.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
States is corporations stand to gain so much from profiteering
off of acquiring these things. Okay, whether it's for mining
or for forestry or for grazing or whatever the situation
is that happens. I remember one of my I think

(45:35):
I mentioned this to you, one of my professors. It
was like, anybody introduced a theorem or whatever, and I
was like, I'd like the McLaughlin theorem of resource.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
That they industry.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
If there's money to be made to profit off of resource,
the profits from that resource will be used to continue
the exploitation of the resource until the resource can no
longer be exploited. That's going on everywhere with fisheries, you know,

(46:13):
with or that's in the ground, with wood resources from
our national forest that places like Georgia Pacific, and you know,
all the timber company stuff that's in the pocket of
the industry.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
And I mean certainly a.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Lot of people like use work at sawmills and run
logging things. I mean there's employment involved with a lot
of that. And I have a lot of friends that
their grandfathers did that and their family livelihood is that.
So I get that some of that is necessary in
a moderation level, but there's a point where corporations in

(46:54):
general are privatizing everything and then utilizing their power through
through Congress and through governmental agencies and politicians to push
this agenda so that their cronies and their partners or
business people can continue to profit or excel in profits

(47:16):
at the expense of little.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
People who would be.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Benefiting in a priceless way of being able to go
into a park or a section a national forest or
some preserve area where hunting is allowed, or utilizing the resources,
and if they privatize that and take that away from
the little people, I can't be on board with that.

(47:42):
We already have a small amount you know, to do
that with and I don't think we need to be
losing any of it myself.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yeah, thank you, Andy.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
I really appreciate those remarks, and I think you and
I are certainly on the same page as as it
comes to that. But I think it's important to hear
sometimes from people who have a stronger connection to private
lands than what I do. You know, I'm well known
as kind of a public land advocate and a public
land hunter because I live in New Mexico, which is
primarily public land, and I don't own really large tracts

(48:14):
of private land on which to do those activities, so
I depend entirely on public land. But I feel like
our priorities and our values are super well aligned, and
I just think it's I think it's nice to hear
that perspective coming from someone who does have a strong
connection with private lands, because you know, as you know,
my background is as a general contractor as a custom

(48:35):
home builder, so I completely appreciate and respect private property rights.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
You know, this is not about private property rights.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
I respect those, but this is about having access to
the places that provide us with opportunities that without public
lands we simply wouldn't have. And hunting would largely, in
my opinion, become an activity exclusively available to the wealth.
You know, the average person would have the ability to
enjoy that. That's been a historical a lot of places.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Eons of time.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Royalty privatizes things, doesn't let the people get in there
and get nourishment for one thing. But there's two kinds
of nourishment. It's not just this, you know, sustenance that
we get from the nutrition of eating and utilizing these
resources and certain wildlife populations that we enjoy, you know, harvesting,

(49:30):
but it nourishes your soul, you know, like I have
to have something wild. I have to be in a
non man made place in order to keep some sanity,
you know, like like that Japanese word, I forget what
ch can roku or something like that is like a
shinroku thing where forest bathing. They go into the woods

(49:50):
to smell the chemicals of the trees and to phytochemicals
that actually calm our nerves. And and you got to
have some of that wildlife stuff in your life.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
And and if.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
They keep privatizing this stuff, pretty soon the normal person
is no longer going to even have a connection multi
generationally you know, like urbanite stuff doesn't even mean they
go to a park or something, but they're not going
to get a flavor of what truly that peace and
sanity is when you go into wild places and just

(50:25):
relax and see natural things occurring.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
That's that's priceless.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
That is more valuable than the profits that are going
to be made quickly and temporarily by some corporation stuff
that is utilizing and profiteering off of a resource that's
going to be exploited and then no longer exploitable.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Man, that's really well said, Andy.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
You know, right now in New Mexico, we've got a
number of different wildfires burning. And as a as a
guy who cares deeply about habitat and as a person,
as a as a as a trained scientist, can recognize
that there are certainly beneficial wildfires. Wildfire historically has provided
a lot of benefit to the landscape. But for a
variety of reasons, many of the fires that we've experienced

(51:11):
in the Southwest recently are not beneficial. For one thing,
we mismanaged fires for a lot of years, you know,
just lack of knowledge, lack of experience.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
We would extinguish every.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Fire that started, and then the result was this huge
build up in fuels, to the point where when a
wildfire would start, the fuel load was so intense that
the fire burns with an intensity that essentially sterilizes the
entire landscape. I mean, turns the sand to glass, and
kills the seed bank and does all kinds of these things.
So I don't always like to talk about fire as

(51:44):
though it's negative, because certainly there are benefits to fire
on the landscape in many situations. But some of the
fires we're experiencing right now, i'd say are not beneficial.
They're catastrophic essentially. You know, the trout fire that's happening
right now a Membrous valley.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
I don't know whether or.

Speaker 5 (52:01):
Not his sister's places, nations kind of in that region.
It doesn't bode well for what's going on right there
right now. Yeah, Yeah, it's a scary situation.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
The Blackfire happened a few years ago in the HeLa,
burned over four hundred thousand acres, burned some of my
favorite spots in the world, those kinds of things.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
So I'm seeing changes in New.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Mexico, And you know, depending on people's political affiliation, people
like to use the word climate change, or they really
don't like to hear the word climate change. But I
would just say that regardless of anyone's political opinions, conditions
are changing. I mean, the world is changing, weather patterns.
Things are definitely different than they used to be. I mean,

(52:45):
I'm looking at precipitation levels, I'm looking at temperatures when
I you know, I grew up in New Mexico, lifelong
New Mexico resident, but I moved to Alaska, as I mentioned,
for a short time, and I moved to Colorado for
a short time also, But ultimately, you know, I was
born and raised to New Mexico, where I still reside.
When I bought my very first house in nineteen ninety nine,

(53:06):
it was in Edgewood, New Mexico, and Edgewood's just a
little bit east of Albuquerque in the north end of
the Manzano Mountains. When I bought that house, all of
the homes in my neighborhood had snowmobiles. I think in
Alaska you would call them snow machines in different terminology,
but they all had snowmobiles. You know, everybody had those
because in the winter time, that was what people did

(53:27):
to recreate. They'd run around the dirt roads and ride
around on the snow machines, and it was just it
was cool and I always wanted I always wanted one,
never did buy one, but today not one single. You
would not find a homeowner in Edgewood in the community
that owns a snow machine or a snowmobile. There's no

(53:48):
reason to have one. You would have no use for it.
I mean, you have to put it on a trailer
and take it up to Colorado someplace if you ever
wanted to use it. So that's just an anecdotal observation
about how things are actually changing in New Mexico. And
I'm curious if you're seeing significant changes in Alaska, where
you currently reside, and if things are changing there, and

(54:09):
if so, how they're changing, and what the community might
be doing to adapt.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Very much so the further north or south you go
in latitude, science just knows that the changes are more
rapid and close you get to the equator, the less
extreme it is. Switch gears to Indiana. Same story. That
farm you hunted turkeys on with me all winter long

(54:35):
years ago, when I was growing up one foot to
three foot of snow, it had this lake effect from
Lake Michigan and stuff. And now if you get six inches,
it's gone in a couple of days. And the three
inches maybe two inches sticks around for a little while.
But it's not the snow conditions that used to be
in the Midwest. I can tell you that for sure,

(54:57):
you know. I mean, we'd get like eight six feet
of snow commonly way back when, through the seventies and eighties,
and so now up here in Alaska, this is a
huge concern.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
We on this.

Speaker 3 (55:12):
South Central Regional Advisory Council that I'm on, we request
information from the Office of Sisisens Management to bring us
information about what is going on with the climate. It
affects a lot of things. Ocean acidification. There's animals that

(55:32):
have exoskeletons in the saltwater, including clamps and shrimp, crabs okay,
krill Okay. There's an early stage in the life cycle
where protein is odoalin and stuff is getting laid down
and this ocean acidification. What happens is the more fresh water,
the more these polar ice caps are melting, the more

(55:54):
fresh water goes into the ocean, and ocean asidification is
affecting the populations of these critters, these tiny creatures that
grew up to be large but at the early successional
stages of life when they're planked in and larval form
almost you know, And so that's a big deal. Also,

(56:15):
the sheep, the dull sheep in Alaska are going down,
like if you could just look at the overall population trends,
like there's not going to be those sheep anymore within
a few generations. A factor is alders. The climate change
is a little more mild, less deep snow on the
tops of the mountains, so alders are moving up into

(56:37):
these prairie and pasture areas that used to maybe have
some willows on the edge of them, and we're nibbled
off every year.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
It's kind of a grazing zones.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
They're losing that habitat component of grazing lands and having
to adapt to eat other things, including mountain goats too,
are not doing great. But these populations, they're finding things
about the cariboo. The open areas that used to be
lots of lichen, which is a main food source for

(57:11):
the caribou, are becoming revegetated with other species. Beavers are
moving way farther north into the north slope up drainages
that couldn't survive winters because those tiny streams and whatnot
tributaries to some of the bigger rivers didn't have willows

(57:33):
and alders and some of these tree species that now
are growing up into areas where they weren't existing before.
So now it gives a food component and a dam
making and a lodge making component for the beaver.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
So now beavers are.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
Moving into zones where they can dam up a stream
and then stop anadromous fish from being able to swim
to a spawning eons of time. Traditional spawning grounds they
can't reach that. So there's there is so much it's
hard to even talk about it all. You know, what's
going on in Alaska in particular, that has all the

(58:09):
people alarmed. Marine biologists too, wildlife managers, UH, you know,
fishing game people, US fish and wildlife service people. It
is a huge thing in Alaska. You can go to
these Uh there's the form on the Environment and anchorage
UH for for decades now. A friend of mine is

(58:32):
a director of that and and.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
And UH I've seen over the years a lot of changes. UH.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
I used to be able to attend those and and
UH the presentations at that type of event are un irrefutable,
science based things that prove, you know, population dynamics and
habitat changes and things that are going on.

Speaker 1 (59:01):
Yeah, Alaska has got it majorly. Yeah. I'm sure in
Northern Canada does too. Yeah. It's really scary, man.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
It's it's further frustrating that we're in a weird situation
right now where we have to be careful about how
we talk about these things, at least in the advocacy world,
and also in the agencies. You know, like if you're
working for US Fish and Wildlife Service right now, if
you're working for the Forest Service, if you're working for
the National Park Service, if you're working for the BLM,

(59:30):
you don't want to say climate change. You don't want
to say like, there's key words you have to, you know,
avoid using in your presentations and your grant proposals and
your daily conversations for fear of retaliation. So you have
to kind of talk around the issue and use a
little bit of code speak and try to make your
point without actually saying what would would be much more

(59:53):
efficient way of communicating the issue. So things are challenging
right now, Eddie, But I really appreciate having your background
and scientific perspective, but not just the scientific perspective, the
amount of time that you spend in nature in the wild,
and how well versed you are with different habitat types,
different biomes, you know, different type of ecosystem regions. It's

(01:00:17):
really really valuable to have this conversation and talk to
somebody who's familiar with so many different places, so many
different species, and has been doing this type of work
both professionally and just personally. I mean, obviously you are
a professional at this, but you spend every waking moment
essentially interacting with nature in one way or another. So
even outside of your professional life, you've established an understanding

(01:00:41):
of these systems and how they historically worked, and you're
able to recognize changes to these things. And that's a
super valuable asset that you bring to this conversation that
I appreciate you for that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
At the some of these environmental climate symposium things in town,
I recall trying to strike up conversation when you know,
I think it was in the Bush era and and
there were like military generals with all sorts of you know, decorations,

(01:01:12):
and I try to strike up conversation about facts, about
some of the presentations that were going on, and they'd
have to turn and walk away because they're under a
gag order.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
They're not allowed to talk about climate.

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
Change or use any of those speak certain words that
are factual that now are kind of undeniable. But back then,
I remember when it was like, oh, that that can
affect the industry, or.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
That can you know, corporations aren't going to profit anymore.
We better shut up about that, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
And now it's like shooting yourself in the foot. There's
a certain point where it's like, oh, we need to
wake up and smell the coffee and do what we can,
you know. I mean, you know, the naysayers want to
say climate change, is this a natural thing, which to
a great degree, I mean, ice ages have come and on,
you know, But there's no reason we need to usher

(01:02:03):
things in at a faster speed when we know certain
things that we're doing are creating the rate change, you know,
or contributing to it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Yeah, one hundred percent, Andy.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Well Man, I really appreciate this conversation. I appreciate your friendship.
I appreciate you inviting me out to Indiana spend a
little time with you and sharing your your beautiful piece
of heaven you know, with me. We had the opportunity
to experience so many things. One of the things I'll
never forget about that trip is opening up my Merlin app,
you know, when I'm sitting in the blind that evening

(01:02:38):
we're up on Goblin. I was up on goblet Ridge.
You were just down the way a little bit, and
birds were all over the place, and I opened up
the Merlin app, which I keep on my phone, and man,
I don't that probably broke a record on my particular
app with how many different species of birds were calling
at the same time. I mean, it felt like my
phone was just going to overheat with the way that
that app was going off.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
And it was just such a magical experience.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
And I can't thank you enough for that, and thank
you for taking the time this evening to have this conversation.
I want to give you the opportunity to share with
the audience any concluding thoughts that you have anything we
didn't cover that you that you'd like to go over
and thanks.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
I hadn't really start of any type of concluding thoughts. Nope, yeah,
I too like listening to the birds there that the farm.
It's every spring. That's one of my favorite things. I
just sit there and have a coffee and listen to
it all at the diversity there is amazing. I did
just make nineteen clover and brassica and rye and rape

(01:03:37):
seed plots after you left, so the wildlife will have
all sorts of.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Benefit. I know, the turkeys that polts get to eat.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
I see him eat the insects in there, you know,
and that type of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
And but.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
I hadn't really thought of any type summary or anything
like that to say so, any I really appreciate someone
like you, Jesse, who as an advocate for everyone for
the public. We need more rock stars like you that
are put in the time and have the passion and

(01:04:19):
the devotion and dedication to focus on these very important
issues in the type of lobby power that's needed politically
in the arenas that you have to delve into in
order to get hurt and get some publicity.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
Well, you know, I really appreciate that, Andy, and I
really appreciate your support because you're one of the most
hardcore hunters I know, and I know a lot of
hardcore hunters, I mean, guys that are really really into it.
But you've done it all from trapping the chasing raccoons
with hounds. I mean, you live a subsistence lifestyle. You
literally depend on hunting for your livelihood. And what's interesting

(01:04:55):
is I find myself in the situation where a lot
of kind of the more for lack of a better term,
hardcore hunters give me a lot of criticism because I
spend time working with the Sierra Club, for example, or
working with Defenders of Wildlife, or working with these other
advocacy organizations to try to accomplish wins on big issues

(01:05:16):
like this public lands sell off issue. I don't care
if you're a hunter or an anti hunter. If you
love public lands, you're welcoming to my tent when it
comes to our effort to advocate against this selloff. You
could have opposed every pro hunting bill that's ever come
up in the state of New Mexico as long as
you've been alive. But if you love public lands and
I'm holding a rally and you want to be at

(01:05:37):
that rally, I'm going to welcome you with open arms
because for this particular issue, we're on the same page
and I can put that other stuff aside.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
And what I.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Found is in doing that, we build relationships and we
get to know each other, and we start to learn
from one another, and then things get better, and then
their understanding of what it is to be a hunter
starts to change a little bit sudden. It's not just
what they saw on the Sportsman's channel when they were
flipping through the channels and they saw the guy that was,
you know, high fiving and fist bumping because he killed

(01:06:09):
a new world record deer over.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
A corn feeders whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
And I'm not opposed to I mean, no offense to
anybody that's hunting over a feet or I'm just saying
that the people sometimes who have formed opinions about hunting,
those opinions are formed based on things that are that
are a small slice of the representation that the full
activity deserves. You know, they're not seeing the connection to nature.

(01:06:35):
They're not seeing the love of the species that were pursuing.
They're not seeing the love of the other species that
we encounter during that pursuit. They're not seeing the time
spent with family. They're not seeing all of the other
memories made and the advocacy and the dollars you brought
up a couple of times in this conversation that hunter's
dollars are conserving these places and these species and the

(01:06:58):
habitat and all of these things. And so by working
together with some of these organizations who have varying opinions
about hunting, you're able to really kind of change some minds.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Really.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
I did a presentation for Sierra Club just this past Saturday.
It was there the Real Grand Chapter of Sierra Club's
annual picnic, and they invited me to come be the
keynote speaker.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
And when I was invited, I was clear.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
I said, look, I can't do this type of presentation
without talking about my experience as a hunter and an
angler and what hunting means to me and how I mean,
it's not something I do. It's like you, it's part
of who I am. I mean, you're not just a hunter.
Hunting is part of your identity. It's part of what
makes you who you are. And I feel like i'm

(01:07:45):
that same way. So I just wanted to be clear
so that there was no misunderstanding. And then they were
disappointed in inviting me, but they were fine with it.
They said, no, that's great, we understand. We were fully
aware of your passion. We want to hear your you know,
your thoughts on the various issues. So I did this
presentation and it went really really well. Great group of people,

(01:08:06):
I mean, just nature loving people.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
There was some interesting conversation, a lot of questions like, man,
if you love wildlife, how can you bring yourself to
kill it? And I appreciate those questions because, if nothing else,
we share a common love for wildlife, and that's valuable
in itself. So these were good conversations. But I had
one older lady come up to me after my presentation

(01:08:29):
and she told me, you know, if yesterday a vote
was held that would ban all hunting forever, I would
have voted yes. She said, if that same vote was
held tomorrow, I would vote no, and I would encourage
everybody I know to do the same. And it's comments

(01:08:51):
like that that really drive my passion to extend my
messaging outside of the comfort zone, because it's real easy
for me to get in front of a group of
hunters and talk about hunting. I mean, I do that
all day long, every day. But what are you really accomplishing.
I mean, you're just talking into an echo chamber. You're
talking to a group of like minded people. You're not

(01:09:11):
changing any hearts and minds, You're not necessarily making any
progress in building support for this activity that you and
I love so much. But when I'm going to the
Sierra Club, or when I'm having meeting with defenders of
wildlife or even animal protection voters of New Mexico, the
opportunities to really have an impact I feel like are greater,

(01:09:31):
and you're one of the I don't want to say few,
because there's quite a few people that appreciate that, but
there's probably a lot more in the hunting community that
are eager to provide criticism and say, well, you're just
you know, a wolf in sheep's clothing or sheep and
wolf's clothing, or however that's saying goes. You know, they

(01:09:51):
make these comments like you're an impostor what are you
doing hanging out with the enemy, those kind of questions,
and just we'll really want to express to you Andy
much I appreciate your support and your understanding, and you've
always been someone who's who's really inspired me to continue
doing this work and to understand that there are people
out there that you know, Jesse hing on in our nation.

Speaker 3 (01:10:13):
Big time the networks and and a lot of the
bias and spend it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
They're promoting divisiveness. They're they're taking away our unity.

Speaker 3 (01:10:21):
They don't they're not promoting the united We stand, divided,
we fall. And you've got to side with some of
the people politically sometimes that don't agree with what you
agree with and respect that they have.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
Their own opinion.

Speaker 3 (01:10:34):
And and you know, meeting of the minds can happen
with proper communications, you know. But the strength is in number,
and strength is in our unity, you know. Uh, you know,
we we all care about the wildlife in one way
or the other.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
People just don't quite understand that wildlife management and conservation.

Speaker 3 (01:10:54):
Has hunting and and utilization of a resource and utilitarian
ways at the root. The people have to understand there's
a difference between conservation and preservation. Preservation could be a
part where no hunting is allowed and they don't want
humans to be part of the ecosystem. But the fact
is humans are a part of the ecosystem. So all

(01:11:14):
these other places like national forests and other places where
we are allowed to hunt, are you a public resource
and we utilize things from that because we are a participant.
We belong to the food chain. We are an integral
part of that. And since we are intellectually have capacity,

(01:11:37):
we got to understand that there's a population dynamic of
each species and sometimes there's target or prescribed numbers that
these populations can exist at what's healthy for them as
a population in perpetuity for the rest of existence, and
we want them to be in that number. And that's

(01:11:59):
what hunters do. We don't just like hunting got a
bad rap with the market hunting a long time ago
and the killing and the passenger pigeon and dodo birds
and everything else, you know, So they think that hunters
just kill everything, and they see that, they think it's
the whole population is getting killed.

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
It's not. It's it's just.

Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
Individuals at at typically a compensatory level, not an additive
level to the overall population dynamic that was going to
be gone anyhow from the loss of habitat. There's a
certain level where that stuff can exist, and we are predators.
So but I also you know, I'm a big advocate
for hunting and the rights of people to hunt and

(01:12:38):
participate in the natural ecosystems, but I also agree that
we also had to band together and unify with people
of opposing viewpoints and generally in public.

Speaker 1 (01:12:50):
Right now, our.

Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
Nation is not doing too great because there's a bunch
of finger pointing and blaming it the other side. When
we got to accept that the other side is allowed
to have a differing viewpoint and that's okay. They don't
agree with us, We don't agree with them, but they're
okay to have that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
We don't have to sit there and say I'm right,
you're wrong. It's just the way it is. There's always
going to be some opposition. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Well, very well said Andy. On that note, Man, I'm
gonna let you get back to your evening.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
That was super well said, though. I appreciate you very much.
Can't wait till the next time we get to spend
some time the.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
Uh there, sooner than later if you're into it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
Yeah, I'd love to Ben, it'd be a pleasure. This
last one got cut short. I had some health issues,
as you know. But next time we'll we'll go after
it hard, do some more float trips, catch some more fish.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
Uh. And one more suggestion, Man, I think you better.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
That that little school of mental lure that you invented,
that thing that's a that's a money maker right there,
and I put a patent on that thing before before
I do it. Jessie, thanks for all right, man. We
you have a fantastic evening Andie, thank you again.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Man, great to see you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:56):
Thanks for listening to the Yahiva podcast produced by Drift
without Doors.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
And then