00:00:08 Speaker 1: The Hunting Collective is presented by Element. I guess I grew up on an older row. Hey, everybody welcomed episode hundred thirty nine of The Hunting Collective Big Show Today. Say hey, Phil, Hello, how are you doing? Sir? Doing well? You have maintained your skepticism. We're just before we hit record. Your your skeptical of almost every decision I make on the show. You know, I'm just here to balance things out. I am. I am the show's devil's advocate. Uh, that's my job. Thank you well. Thanks the return of Janice the Eagle patel Us A lot of an eagle patel Us. Hello, Johanni, good morning, how are you. It's I'm wonderful. I'm wonderful. Now before we go anywhere, thank you to Element for being the title sponsor this program. Yanny, is this your first time trying Element? Yes? What do you give your thoughts? Because you you do a lot of running. Um, I hear tell from Maggie Mary Magdalen that you guys are gonna run at an actual race of some kind. We had many races plan but they've all been canceled. And well, what do you think of the salty deliciousness. That is, it's exactly that. The first gulp you're like, whoa, yeah, did I just jump into a refreshing ocean? But then the second gulf you're you're used to it. Then by the third one, I'm thinking, man, I could really see how that salt would help my calves to not cramp, probably on a mile. It's become essential for me. If you want to learn more, drink element Ta dot com slash meat Eater. There's pictures of us hunting and doing things and drinking elements so you will like that. Go there, Do I get to take this whole box home? Yeah, and drink it a whole box for you. I'm gonna grab a couple of those before you. Let's yeah, that's the orange flavor Orange salt, Orange salt. I gotta say that. Raspberries by far my favorite. It's good, by far my favorite. I like it because just a little little little pack of there's not much in there, maybe a tablespoon. It does a whole court. Yeah. Um, I might even dilute it just to even a little bit more while I'm running. It's full of electual lyce. And as you said, some of the other similar products out there on the market are just full of sugar point where the it's just it's this unpleasant and so drink Element dot com slash Meteor hit it up. Now, we got a lot of to do today, Yanni, do you want to kind of tell the twisting and turning tail of asked the Eagle. Do we want to leave that behind the scenes? Phil and I have been I don't know if there's a lot of twisting and turning. I was trying to give some dramatics to the when I when you asked about it over email, I replied, and I used the word stasis. Stasis. I feel like it's a perfect descriptor. I would agree. It's just busy over here, Meteor and um, yeah, asked the Eagle. It just was taken a little too much time. That's true. That's true. So we've opted here at th HC. Will swaddle it, take care of it and help it to grow. Um. We we'll do as many, asked the Eagle, segments as possible. Now we're all busy, we should I do want to talk with you about the old fall hunting schedule. What's're up to? So what's the laid out for us? That's the most exciting because I know you've had some things canceled, right, like all of us have. Kind of, no, not right now, not yet, not yet, But I gotta tell you about my weekend. Man, I went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. Kind of I'm being a bit dramatic, but I was shooting field points. I sent you some pictures just like the you know, yeah three inch group at forty yards, just feeling great to look out elk. Yeah. Threw on some broadheads and just really what broadheads? I tried three different ones and I'm just spraying broadheads. So, um, I think I've got a tuning issue. I've gotten friends, so I'm gonna go and try to get that take care of today. But I always wait too long to switch over to the broadheads. I've gotta have two weeks until my first hot. Yeah, I feel you. I feel like that's probably what most people do. Well, I don't say probably what most people do wrong, but it's a common occurrence. So I have gone to probably overcompensating and just destroying my targets by shooting broadheads or they destroy targets. Yeah, you and I have been sharing some targets, but yeah, I I I probably do it. Wait earlier, I doll out of the whole pack of broadheads and destroy my targets in an effort to not be in the situation room because I've been there so many times, so many damned times. So but you know what, I'd rather be here than have a good, good shooting broadhead and not have my form and strength down, which is where I think where I feel. I feel like really good, like I can. My draw cycle feels good, my release feels good. I'm shooting well. I just need to Hopefully it's just gonna be a couple of minor tweaks. I gotta admit here. I feel my arrow is going where I wanted to, and I'm shooting. My groups are fine. I've been shooting out the fifty yards is I can shoot the fifty six in my backyard. So I've been shooting out the fifty six by the byby standing on the sidewalk in my little suburban development, and people walk by, and some some are very like, oh what kind of bow was that? And other people just kind of wide berth that baby and go across the street give me that look like should you be doing that. I feel like that's gonna come to an end. Yeah, probably probably whatever somebody's gonna be like, isn't there a covenant against that? Are you in city limits or no? Yeah you are? Yeah yeah, But I just feel like it's both. There's lots of archery targets around the area, and so I just feel like it's I just know it's one of those things where you should ask better, ask for forgiveness than permission. That's right, unless, of course, forgiveness is when you fence. Sorry about your friend, Well, it's all fenced, so they're like, the worst thing I can do is probably plunge one through somebody's fence, And so I just like, hey, dude, can I can I buy you like seven extra vertical pieces of your fence so in case I put an arrow through it, I can. There's a guy in my neighborhod place that does the exact same thing. He's got his target like the back of his backyard. He has his massive open gate and he goes to like the sidewalk and through the gate. Yeah yeah, I mean you gotta do that, um, but I will, I admit to like, I felt I feel really good about accuracy but my form, like my mental archery games is so far off, it's off, and I can't. I mean, I'm to that point and I have friends that are do this and like serially do this, like do this every year, where they're just switching everything up, change my stabilizer, put more weight on it. And that's where I'm at right now. But it's not that I'm shooting portally. It's just I can't get comfortable. I can't get to the point where I'm not worried about something. And I think it's just mental, but I'm not. It's and it's not that I'm it's not that I'm jumping the trigger. It's nothing like that. It just feels like not comfortable. It doesn't feel it's almost like you want to be not comfortable. Yeah, maybe maybe I've tried all the tricks that that you know, some of the experts have taught me over the years, which you know, like I play, put a little speaker behind my my elbow, my back elbow, and then I pull towards that like instead of help you not jump the trigger, you pull towards that music, just like send your elbow towards that music. You try to feel that muscle in your back pulling. I've done all that, and I've switched to releases about six times. I have three different styles and releases. I keep going back and forth. So anyways, anybody that wants to write in th HC the meter dot com and help me. Maybe this is kind of like the first asked to like ask the Eagle practice what would you do to fix your brain? Oh? I thought you're gonna say this is the Eagle asks where you have been? And I are like, dude, we don't know what to do. When we call somebody and they help. I like this idea. We call a listener, like, hey man, we can struggle them. What we can call your boy John Dudley. John Dudley's man. He's a sense a man. And I've never shot I've never been more comfortable. I've never shot better when John was available, Like when I could talk to him and say like, hey man, what's going on? He'd be like, oh, we'll do this, send me a video and I'll tell you. And I think that kind of like that thing has helped me to know what I'm doing wrong when I'm doing it. That doesn't help me fix always fix the thing and that's That's one thing that I tell a lot of people that are new to it as the one thing. I'm not the best bow shot in the world. But learning from people like John Dudley and others, it was like, now I know what I'm doing wrong. If I'm shooting low left, I can tell you where I close my eyes and tell you where the air is gonna miss. You know, when I released that area, be like, oh that was low left, hope that was high right. Hope, that's dead center. And so at least you have that knowledge where you're not guessing why that air didn't get here I supposed to go, you know, in terms of your form, So you know, maybe right in and help Yoanni with his broadhead problem. Did you shoot mechanicals fixed everything? No, No, I don't. I'm gonna I'm gonna ready for an elk hunt, and so I don't think I'm gonna shoot mechanicals, not an elk. I know people do with great success, but I think that'll be an enduring debate in the hunting world. Just fixed. I've got a couple of different fixed blades I'm messing with. Like I said, I think a little bit of bow tune and I'll get there. Okay, All right, well let's let's let's give people a little precursor. What asked the eagle? What has asked the eagle? That's right, okay, that's where how I don't know how we got you actually asking me about my fall? Another step back, and but you want to you want to take okay, go back to my hunt's middle step. Uh so yeah, Colorado Elk. I'm going with Jason Phelps. Phelps games calls, which is gonna be awesome, gum. Nothing nothing like having a dude that builds game calls calling for you. But the flip side of that is that if I shoot one or if I get my opportunity call for him, then I have to call for him and I have to really, you know, step make sure my aimes on points. So again, two weeks before the season, guess why I did last night? Put it. I'll call in my mouth, but I will say that for me, making sweet Elk sounds is a lot easier just to pick back up and shooting that bom. Uh you're feeling that for me? Eater hunts. Yeah, okay, watch out for that on YouTube. That's right, be out when they come back. In a quarter of one. Probably next year when finally we're out of the pandemic, we're gonna rease this baby. Uh let's see what else do I have? I drew a really bit and uh Montana elk rifle tag, which I'll be hunting like late October. I got ten days set aside for that. I'm gonna have a big wall tent. Hopefully many many friends calm to help find a big bull for me. I'll come help you. Okay, yeah, I'll be there and I'll be there for the opener, luring your binos and a dryp on easy. Um. What else? Going to Wisconsin for white tailt hunt with my dad archery, which I'm very excited about. I'm gonna swing around in a tree saddle for a whole week. Body. Yeah, I think it's great. Yeah, I think it's great. I got the kneepads set up going. Um yeah, you really can shoot three sixty degrees out of one of those things, and like there's no drawback that I've seen that I that I can figure out yet, Like you can sit there. Last year I sat two full days during gun season in November. Um in it super comfy all day. What I like about it. The best is that there is no slack. You're always under tension, So it's not like if you fall asleep or slip or whatever, there's gonna be like this drop or the sensation of falling and then it, you know, picks up. You're just always under tension. So even if you slip out, like you'll kind of depending on how far you've leaned out from the tree, you'll swing back to the tree and that's it. It's very reassuring. Oh yeah, you just had to get used to trusting. Uh, you know that rope that it's holding you there. There's a long debate tree steps or climbing sticks. Man, I'm gonna use sticks because they actually seemed easier. I mean, I don't know. There's probably new screws these days that go in super super fast and you can zip right up there. That is satisfying. When you get one of those things going, it just starts rocking in the tree. You know, I should probably bring both. I don't have any problem with putting a couple of holes in a tree me either. I've I've had I've had very experiences both ways. Last year at then on the back forty mark Kenny gave me these climbing sticks I was unfamiliar with, and boy did I struggle because the tree was just one of those trees that had a serpentine pattern going it's all. I mean, it just seemed like it was way too loud. I'm like, dude, if I just had a handful of tree steps and I could just screw them in real quickly, I'd be up this tree and you know, fifteen minutes, but instead of forty five minutes of banging these sticks against the tree trying to wrap yourself around a big tree and then get get the straps. But see, I think your problem there is that someone gave you those things like the hour before you're going into the field. Just yeah, yeah, so if you yeah, that's another debate right in dot com. Maybe we'll do that for us to eagle. But anyway, yeah, any other big I'm going you'll there hunt with Steve from an episode of Metia dur in Colorado for fourth season, which is pretty special. I've never gotten hunt. Yeah, and this year it's late and so we're hunting, like I think it's like the tow of November, which is way late for Colorado. So we should have some pretty good action. Uh. And then I'm topping finishing it all off, rounding it off with a trip to Arkansas for a double um where I'm gonna go and do some raccoon hunting with Clay Newcom and then after that I'm going to do some speckled belly goose hunting with Danielle Pruett and Jonathan Wilkins. Black Revival. Oh really nice? Yeah? Oh yeah, man, that's a good it's a good time. And then all like a lot of Mediator Hunts episodes at all, all of them well, well besides that mule deer hunt with Steve Um who else? Oh yeah, I also drew a rifle pronghorn tag here in Montana. No, not far, only an hour away Montana. I didn't draw anything, and then they were sold out of surplus. I know, crazy, first time maybe ever ever. Yeah, that's so I I had. I had a fallback plan. Don't worry, everybody know you're worried. I had a fallback plan, wyomings, I will be hunting pronghorn here. Yeah. No, man, the demand is high. Its crazy, that's and you know there's a whole another conversation about good and bad of of promoting the outdoors in the way that we do, and and what the pandemic has caused and all those things. But I thought, I feel lucky to live in a state like Montan, Like although we're friendly to nonresidents, we kind of limited and it's not like you go to Colorado and everybody's just like, well, I didn't draw anywhere else, So let's go out to Colorado and just pack the woods. Do I love I love I love Texas. I love everybody listening in Texas. But that was, you know, in the Texas p h A chapter. That's what these guys did. You know that most most of them we're going to Colorado. Well it's close, it's close, right, you can make it. You can zip up there really quick. It's pretty easy to get. It's it's you know, decently easy to draw. But then if you don't draw, you can, you know, famously just getting over the counter teg. So we won't mention some of the other states that have good over the counter opportunities, but there are many. So I'm getting to you guys will enjoy um. In a couple of weeks, I'm gonna go down to Louisiana do a gator hunt with Troy and Jacob Landry, the swamp people from the History Channel. I've been down there a bunch of times. That's fun. So we'll do like an audio experience for that for everybody. There's no chance that isn't hilarious. Hold on audio experience. That means Phils included. I invited Phil. I said, Phil, you're welcome to come, and Phil was a little I think he has some trepidation. Well, it was just kind of a last minute thing. It was. It's just tough because school starting and it's hard for me to be like, hey, I'm going to Louisiana for two weeks to hunt gators with that over weeks. No, not two weeks, it's like two days. No if into it's just kind of like like a like short notice short So I don't think I'm gonna make it. Yeah, but I I wield the the little recorder pretty well. I feel so we're gonna get wool and should just think it would be a great way for to fill something outdoor experience experience, and it is. It is one of the more gnarly experiences that that you can you can have in the outdoors. You basically if you've ever seen the show. You basically put a rotten piece of chicken on a hook, you drop, you to tie that hook to a tree, hang a hook down on the water. You do about twenty thirty of those, and you go back, have yourself a cocktail, wake up early in the morning, get on the boat, you go check those. If that if that tree is shaken, as Trey Andrew says, it's a tree shaker, then you have to get the rope. And you're literally pulling up a giant dinosaur out of the water. And some other dude is there with a twenty two with no sights, and so if you can get that alligator's head out of the water, he puts you have to put that twenty two at the exact right spot boom, right between the eyes. Then you pull it up into the boat. And if you if you fill all your tags for the day, you end up with a fairly small boat full of gators. So you end up either sitting on a dead gator or at least sitting on a on a seat and putting your feet on the gator. And it's just even after they shoot him, do they take their mouth shut. So you need me to call your gal. I mean it might help, honestly. All right, let's get to ask the Eagle. Hopefully everybody's now excited for our hunt with with Troy and Jacob Landry. Um, but yeah, my dad's coming actually to Montana ton Elk and opening day. So well then you can't come and help me like you just promised, you know this opening day archery. Oh so I can come help you. Okay, I help you there. But then yeah, I got Missouri Brakes archery tag, got my Wyoming prong, worn Idaho mule deer. I'm feeling pretty good. Feeling real good about it. Um, little Charles Rodney action later in the year, nice rabbit hunt. All right, asked the eagles, give us give us the full now we're finally made it there, give us the full rundown of of asked the Eagle is going to be a podcast? And you did a few? Yeah, very much like based on like a not an old timing. They still do plenty of them, but just to basically like a call in radio show where folks would call in and we would they would just ask hunting and fishing questions to me and do my best to answer them. Yep, and Uh, it's it's you got Metator hunts, you get Metator TV. All the stuff that you do, we just can't find. Maybe one day you'll turn it to its own podcast. Yeah, we'll see. I'm hoping that we can breathe, breathe enough life into it that'll excite the This will be fun though, just to do a couple here and there and plug him in And yeah, as and as I told you, you you need like i've every time we've had a listener on this show, almost every time, and Phil can attest almost every time. The listeners do amazing. These people are thoughtful, they're funny, they get they get our humor, they get what we're trying to accomplish, and they always come through them. And so no pressure on Brandon, who were about to call? Who wrote in um, But we're gonna do our best to answer questions and we'll see where we get to. You ready to call Brandon? No telephone needed, no skype Hell Brandon, Ben O'Brien, how's it going? Man? Hey Danny, how's it going? Can you hear me all the way in Canada? Yeah, it's a little little okay? Phil? Is this okay? Can you hear Brandon. Yeah, we'll make it work. Cands great brand. Say hi to Phil. Hey, Brandon, how are you fantastic? Buddy? Is there anything you need to say to Phil? I know we we did. We talked the other day, and is there anything you need to say to Phil? Would you like to to try to get film motivated for his first hunt? Just just floor is yours to an outward profession of my unconditional love for you, Phil, and I just I really hope that, I really hope that your first time goes great whenever that happens, so that we can like milk for it until then. I I appreciate that. I gotta say that was a lot more um effective than Chuck Norris and David Hasselhoff combined. You've given Brden the power of Hasselhoff and Nora. That's right, Okay, that's fun. The rest of my life is going to be pointless. So thank you for Hey, we're making people's lives. Brandon, say Hoti, Yanni Patellis, Hey, Janni, how's it going. It's going well, man. Thanks for calling in or thanks for accepting our call. Yeah, either way, for these I wouldn't miss it for the world. The radio shows of the twenty one century. They call you, we call you, Yeah, exactly, that's that's funny. I was talking to my grandma about it, and I have to like, you know, you have to explain a podcast. She goes, you know, anything new in your life, Like, well, yeah, actually something really awesome. But then you have to explain what a podcast is and then make a cell phone for how you get the podcast. You can take a radio show just it's like a radio show. When you were a kid, and that's how you've watched TV was over the radio. It's like that. Yeah, podcasts are reverse radio. It's like it's the radio, but the opposite. That's fine. Now, Brandon, you're you've made it onto the first ever actually aired asked the Eagle segment and Yanni. And Yanni is prepared to take your question. He's prepared to answer it and to the best of his ability, I will assist him in any way that I can, and so give us a little bit of backstory and then, um, briefly your question. Sure, So, I've been hunting since forever. Part of I guess third or fourth generation uh Northern Ontario hunter. Um, and I wasn't really introduced to the idea of back country hunting until I've watched Mediator on Netflix when it came out on Netflix. So, um, I've been really inspired to kind of take that route with my hunting career because I was always really inspired by the way Steve talked about, uh, the ethics involved and the connection to your food, right, which is something that you know, you go to deer camp and you get deer and you shoot moose, and that's just kind of you know that we hunt because it's cheap food, right, rather than looking at the broader ethical background of it. So, uh, this year, I actually just accepted a position at a separate I've been selling cards for three years, just accepted a position and management another store. So I'm gonna be pretty short on time, so i won't be able to do the typical week at the camps. So I thought, this is how I'm going to get my back country start. I'm gonna do a three day back country archery whitetail hunt on public land, of course, because you gotta. Um. So my question for you on and anybody really is how sorry, what are some things that you would suggest for a first time d I Y solo back country hunter? Um? Anything dear lessons you wish you would have learned before your first hunt instead of on it or out it. Um, anything that you think would be important to know going into this. Yeah, how it sounds interesting. Back country white tail is something I've never done, but I should probably add it all my to my bucket list. How far you plan on going in? I should be about four to five kilometers, that's kind of you gotta get past the you gotta get past the moose to get to the deer that they don't cross too much habitat up here, which I should mention I wouldn't be going for moos if it were possible to get a tag, which it's not good. Well right the side impossible right hunt anyways, Um, so yeah, probably four or five kilometers in nice um and you're archery hunting. Yeah, yeah, uh, definitely bring an extra release. Yeah, here's a rule. Two is one, one is none. It was a rule you must follow up. You know, there's a lot of items that you're always trying to figure out, Like, you know, if you're gonna bring it, you need at least to have like two or more uh reasons or uses for that item, which is a good way to think about your you know, bad country gear, and that prevents you from doubling up sometimes or having two items that are kind of doing the same thing. But the release, man, I mean, I just I've yet to lose one myself. I'm sure it will happen someday, but I definitely saw it quite over the years, quite a few clients that would lose a release and not have a backup in camp, and so we would be forced to, you know, lose a day of hunting because we had to run into town and uh and go and buy a release and definitely bring a couple of those. Um. But I was thinking about it over the weekend. We we knew your question on Friday, so I gotta think about what I was gonna tell you. But I was thinking about my first solo back country hunt, and I was chasing elk around, and I just remember how heavy my pack was, and I remember like halfway through the first morning thinking like, you know what, this isn't gonna really work with what I have on my back, Like I literally cannot chase elk around. So I'm either gonna have to drop my stuff and make a camp or I need to lighten up so much that you know, I can actually still chase with with my backpack on. So that's something that you need to figure out, is if you're gonna like make a camp and then just you know, bust off with just like a smaller pack and uh come back every evening, or if you're gonna try to be light enough where you can actually hunt um with the pack on. So I don't know if you're doing ambush or spot and stock or what your strategy is going to be, but I have a plan for that because Yeah, I was in there with I don't know, it was probably fifty five sixty pound unpack, and it was just impossible to chase elk with that pack on my back. That's a great point to about. Wait, when people think about I've heard people throw out eighty pounds and and and this is in terms of packing out an elk or or whatever, which you probably won't have that issue with them with a white tail, but if you're packing the whole thing out, it'll be it'll be fairly heavy, that's right. But sixty pound pack is imp Like that is impossibly heavy to move around with. I don't care how much you you can you can roll down the trail, no big deal, you know, Lottie Dotty. It's it's a nice stroll with sixties pound pack. But when you started getting off trail and jumping logs and trying to make quick moves to get out in front of an animal, it's gonna be much different. But I'm guessing your white tail hunt's not going to be quite as it won't be quite as much chasing as there isn't an elk hunt. Um, what do you what's your strategy for the hunt? Brandon so whearing Whearing going. I've only been there once, um, and it was it was a few years ago. But I know they're I know they are allowed to deer there on other on other hunters account. Um. So that being said, I mean I suppose I'll find some sign and try to hunt over it, But I also did I did plan on doing some moving around, um, rather than having a base camp, just because I'm not sure where I'm going to find the most like the highest concentration of deer. Yeah, now are you gonna Are you gonna somehow getting get into a tree when you say hunt over it? Uh? No, I I imagine that hill is there. No, I I don't have a something like an interested in uh because while listening to Kenyan talk about it, um is saddles your saddles. But it's not something I I don't know anybody who uses one personally, so it's kind of hard to get that the exposure to it. Um And I mean I do, I have a climbing stand, but but be bringing it be much too loud and heavy. It's not exactly a new style. It is probably the very first one ever since Yes, you plan to find an overlook and then be able to glass and try to find where some critters are moving. Yes, yeah, exactly, I mean sort of sort of see if I can pick out it's a little swampy back there. Um. So I don't know exactly how much success I'll have with classing, but I hope, I hope probably able to find something at least semi open. I mean, it's really it's still very full like a follia right now. So I know once I get into the falling and I have a lot like it's the big woods, so I don't have a lot better visibility to take advantage of. Yeah, I would say that'll be probably the easiest way to do it. I would say to you talk about like specifically. Something I think that's probably more universal for everybody is organizing your gear, and to me, like a stuff sack, like you gotta have I go with anything I need to to dress and clean. An animal kids goes in one. I'll call a stuff sack, but you can call it whatever. Dry bag doesn't really matter. I got a medical kid that goes in a small dry bag, and so organizing your gear in that fashion, that way you're not rummaging through your pack and there's a bunch of stuff at the bottom. I always put my food in one dry bag. I always make sure food wise that I got um, a jet boil or some such item, and then m R Eas and I always pack myself some like gummy bears and snicker bar. You actually eat m R. Eas. Yeah, well, I mean that's what I call them. You're talking about freeze drive freeze, dried meals whatever m R Eas meals ready to eat, yeah, um, And so that's that's what I just try to make sure you're organized that way you don't have a that It also helps for the shifting weight of your pack, if you're able to put certain things in certain spots and lay it out in a way that makes makes that pack feel more comfortable and you can keep your gear dry. That's something I definitely do now religiously. Is that just about everything in my pack? Besides I don't know my water bladder and stuff. It just doesn't matter if it gets wet, but everything is packed into dry bags, like within my backpack, even though I'll have a rain cover over it. All my clothes are in a dry bag. The food is probably in a dry bag, which that kind of take out easily to hang in a tree in the dry bag. Um, obviously you're sleeping bag should be in a in a dry bag. Tent doesn't need to be but I think for did you say it's just three days, Yeah, yeah, I would just you know, three nights, three nights, yeah, air on light and bringing less because it's not like you're gonna starve or or you know, like it's it's it's not like a major expedition. So just in knowing that, you'll be so much more comfortable and it'll be you'll spend less energy, will be easier getting around gold light. If you're looking at something and you're him and han about it, like leave it behind, like don't bring camp shoes, like just living your boots for four days, you'll be fine, you know. Um, I was gonna mention I saw in your email that you're bringing a jet boil. I don't know if you've already purchased that or if you've already taking it out of the packaging, have you? No, I haven't. Actually, it's funny I was. I had meant to go buy it after I got off the bone with Ben after work. I'm probably not right after um, and I was thinking, like, well, I fair waiting to see what they say. Yeah, man, I got a recommendation for you. We all just recently over the course of the summer. I say we all, Steve and I, Um, I forget who had one, and we used it, and then Steve bought one and I borrowed Steve's for a trip. But the MSSAR reactor stove, it's basically the same idea as a jet boil. And maybe jet boils, I mean we I think the last one we bought was a couple of years ago. Maybe they've changed their product, but I swear it seemed like this reactor, like you couldn't walk away from it before the water was boiling. It was just that much faster and just like the way that it closes and locks down and kind of the lids a little bit tighter and better on it. It's got a it's had a built in handle. Um. I'd highly recommend checking out that ms ARE reactor stove. It's not awesome. Yeah, I used MSR water filters. I was an Army conduct for a while, so I have very limited back country experience. But it's all it's all been in groups, right, so it's time. It is much different. Um, because I was an Army Cup for seven years. I didn't eight team day expedition through alcome part you're in Ontario. But yeah, I mean that's different because you have so many people to carry so many different things. Right, well, this is just me, Right, how do I itemize what I'm gonna bring in that sort of thing? Um? Well, and I would say, you know, tent wise and talk about tents tents where sometimes weight gets unwieldy. Um. I carry the the stone Glacier sky air ult It's just basically a you know, a nice little tar if you put your try to use this wrecking poles tent poles you tied down to the ground. It's it's a nice shelter. It sounds like the time of usually be going. You're not gonna be looking at a bunch of snow or any you know, you just be looking to get out of the wind, to get out of the elements, and and that this thing. Only ways I've been looking up here, only ways ten point three ounces and that's that's a huge that's a huge deal. So if you're only going for three days, Yeah, so that's that's a big sometimes a big weight, a big weight issue. So anything else he anni as we as we uh give Brandon all the confidence in the world to get going here. No, man, I think more than anything, you just got to go out there and uh experience it and um you know you'll you'll learn from doing. You know, there's there's no substitute for that. So good luck out there, man Um. I hope you do get a get a big one. But I would strongly consider man. I know it's it's coming down to the wire and it's it's hard to buy a thousand bucks worth of gear right before you go. But man if I was going to archery whitetail hunting, just knowing how spooky those buggers are, and how tough it is hunting them on the ground, you might consider getting yourself into one of them tree saddles. Um, I've been shooting out of one last couple of weeks, and boy am I excited about using it this fall. Well, they just it looks so much more convenient, Like, I mean, we all love a tree then, but I mean, at the same time, it's not like I'm about to go carry a ground blind in there with me. So I mean that thing is so it's so easy to pack around. It looks like like the pack I've got. I've got a badland, which because I read a bunch about it and then I immediately saw one come up on like the next day. Um, I don't know if you guys talked to you down there, it's like we don't. That's all I want to use it once. So it's like a hundred bucks. Yeah, between between that and the kilometers, we have no idea what you're saying. Man, so confused complete Greek? Yeah, well yeah, I mean I made used to pick one of those up and I was just like score. So I'm like, well, it's like you know, I man, you gotta try to explain to the life like, Hey, so I saved all this money on the bed, which means I get to spend this much text on everything else right now. Well, cubic inch pack, Brandon, Um, you're gonna be tight man, I've done I usually. I used to have that pack, and I did an overnight once in that pack, and uh, you know I made it work. But boy, you're gonna have to pack light buddy, real life. It looked big. And when I was picking it up, line and stuff up to putt and I was like, oh, I may have may have overestimated this. Yeah for sure. Hey, quick question for you. Um, since you're a professional car deal wheeler and dealer, I'm looking at it, can you give me like a hot tip for making sure I get a good deal? Yeah, I mean at least this. So here, here's what I do. If I get somebody's really grinding me down on price, I asked them what I'm allowed to make? You know, what do I gotta do? Everybody wants to brkness, everybody wants to put a day together. Nobody wants to lose money. So if I was you, I'd say, is that a thing? Interruption? Brandon? But is that a thing. Does anybody actually ever sell a car and lose money? Yeah? Really yes, and you guys just make it up on another vehicle, that's right. Yeah, And sometimes, I mean it depends to if you if you look at it. If you're working at a franchise dealer, you know you want to sometimes you wanna get somebody, say, somebody's stopping out of town. So say if I if I work for a forward store and I've got somebody who I know lives in my town and they bring me a quote from another town's board dealer, right, it's actually more detrimental to my business to have more vehicles running around with another story sticker on it because they think, oh, well, that store has given a great deal. So it's so great that people don't want to shop at the local Ford store. Right. So if if I have a chance to keep somebody business in town, I might take a dump on that deal, just you know, because if you get it back in service, or maybe they'll buy a warranty too, and that might help your break even or or something. You've got to kind of trust your staff that way. But yeah, it happens. It happens more than you think. To um, I mean a lot of the time. I mean, I've in three years of sales and I've taken plenty of deals that I shouldn't have, and I mean it all really comes down to when someone's business is more valuable. I mean, if somebody comes from three hours away and they say, oh, you know my local dealer is doing this, Okay, we'll go there, I'm never gonna see you again. You know you're not gonna come spend money here to get your truck six and you've probably not going to come back for your next vehicle. So yeah, all right, So what's the what's the hot tip? What's the hot tip? When I'm wheeling and dealing, I would say, if you can, if you can really nail down what kind of truck you're looking for before you had through, I've got to nail down to to like mileage year, everything I'm going to use. I'm going for an old truck because I'm a I just love my UH two thousands have O two Tundra, and I'm trying to buy an O six Tundra, which is the last year that they made that body style. I'm trying to find with less than a hun less than a hundred thousand miles. I want the crew cab needs to be forward drive. I don't care what color it is. If it has a top runic great, If not, I'll find one um, but that's it. You know, I'd rather not have a limited version. I mean, leather is nice, but all the other bells and whistles I could care less. Four And I don't need those running boards that I feel like they're just gonna get beat up in the woods. But I know exactly what I'm looking for. And you're you're a tall guy. You're a tall guy. You don't need running boards. See I have a seventeen Silverado and I'm like five ft nothing, So I yeah, it really sucks not having But if I would do, if you can, if you can land land yourself on a particular unit, you know, say that Jim's Used Cars down the street has your exact Tundra that you know you want, just walk in. Save the guy at the time, just say hey, I'll buy this right now if you give it to me for five bucks overcast you know, and you know a hell oftentimes I mean at least me personally. If somebody does that and say, yeah, I know this is a truck I want, I'm going to buy it? Yes, right, because now he's got an offer. It's a lot easier to work with an offer. But how do you how do I know what cost is for that guy? So it depends on how he bought it. The chances are most people and at least this is up here most used cards. You're looking at the market. So he should bring you back that sticker price. Mine is two grand question that you might be able to jam them for a little bit more. And I mean find out if but like you know, if they sell a warranty, maybe say you know, I I'm sitar and going with an extended warrant. You what can you tell me about that? Give me a chance to sell you on something else. Right, they're gonna they'll they'll sell you. They'll sell you the truck at a lower profit, just hoping that you're going to make it up in the in the financial services office. Where did you do that or not? Doesn't not, It doesn't matter to get to the PRIs on the truck. This might be the most useful segment of THHC of all time. I was just I was just thinking the same thing. I don't even need a truck and I'm about to go buy I'm afraid. I'm afraid for Breedon's life, like he's gonna get taken out by like this like a shadow cabal, because for divulging all these secrets, these secrets. Yeah no, and who's the who's the guy that who's the guy that got got taken out over the morale recipe? Yeah you're that guy. Well, thanks, Brandon, Man, I might be um, I might be even test driving one this afternoon, So I'll apply what you've taught me and uh, let you know how it goes. We'll report back on the next asked the Eagle. Segment there, yeah, there you go. Let me know, let me know what close on Instagram. I'll get the message right on. Well, hey man, good luck all your hunt and thanks for calling. Thanks guys, and thanks so much for the opportunity to you know, actually talk to you guys that really appreciate it. And I wish you well. I wish you will in your truck purchase, Johnny, and uh so I wish you walked on your first Thank you so much. All right, man, Thanks, we'll talk to you soon. Good luck out there, alright, asked the Eagle, number one down in the books, done one of many. I hope that helps. Is it Brandon or Brandon brand Man? I kept calling him Brandon? I hope, I hope that helps. And sorry, sorry for the name that you took over my station of calling people the wrong name consistently people at email into the show, Johnny now just put out of the phonetic the phonetic version of their name besides their last name, because I can never get it right. It could be Smith, and I'll be like smithe, it doesn't really matter. Um. All right, Well, we're gonna keep rolling on as the Eagle, you know. I hope hopefully you guys got a little bit out of that. If you're going on a back hunter, and it doesn't matter if it's white tails, doesn't matter if it's elk, there's always that how do you pack? How do you you know? What do you do? Um? And so we'll I like those questions that are a layered. That one had a lot of layers to it. Yohnnie talked about that for days, for days and days. All right, Well we're gonna get into We're gonna switch gears here, We're gonna get into the great and powerful the legendary doctor Valarious Geist. I had Dr Hilarious Geist on probably a year you know, a little bit less than a year ago. Last, I believe his last October phil if if I remember directly, sounds about right. Um, And we went through everything. We weren't really prepared for him last time. We literally went over to an unglick conference that was at a hotel across from our office and begged him to come over and sit down with me, and then it went. It was like three magical hours and I wasn't sure what happened in those hours. Um. So now he's back and and we definitely want to talk about last time. He talked about predator pits, a lot about predation. He has some controversial within the within the wildlife biology and management world, at least the modern world. He has what I think are some controversial opinions. But we talked through those and we got him to a point where, um, he was speaking about what he believes to be um intelligent intervention and something that conservation really needs to understand a little bit more. So I will just say before we get into this, I have to issue an apology, a pre apology, because I feel like my interviewing skills were way off on this one. I did my best to shepherd through, but it's hard to be on the phone and Valarious just has so much in there that he wants to get out, and so we will do our I'll do better next time, Johnnie. I promise I'm gonna drink more element and be more hydrated. I think more clearly. I promise I'll do better next time. But anyway, don't let that dampen your enjoyment of Dr Vlarious Guys. Dr Guys, welcome back to the show. Sir, thank you. I'm moving forward to this yeah, very much. So. Uh first, I guess we should start by just saying, um, I hope everything's going well. And co OVID, how are you over there on on Vancouver Island. We're doing very well. The island is virtually COVID free. I just think we haven't had a case for a little while. But we're an island and I am living off in the Boonies, very far away from everybody else, so I'm very safe and I'm treating this as a big vacation. What are you doing on your vacation? I know you told me the other day you were salmon fishing. What what I wish I could be vacation with you my vacation. Well, I'm now eighty two years old and I'm working on a very big consuming evolution that's a heck of a lot of funk, and I've been working at that for almost two decades. It's called Condemned to Art and Insanity our natural History. I don't know if we'll ever see the light of day, because at two years of age, it's rather difficult for so when that bloody thing gets published. But anyway, I'm on that and working on all sorts of problems pertaining to wolf predation and wolf survival. And I've got several things in press and have also published the things. I'd be rather busy, so that's good to hear that you're busy. Tell me a little about the human evolution studies and kind of the core of that. I didn't expect to talk about that, but I'm very interested in the topic. Well, I published my first book on human evolution forty three years ago, Condemned to Art, and I retained an interest in human evolution because as a program director for environmental science at the University of Calgary, I was trying to find something that would unite in my lectures, something useful for engineers, for architects, for urban urbanists, for industrial designers, and so on to forth. And I thought the best thing I could speak about is how to maximize health environmentally. So I started looking into humans, and I realized that evolutionary history has something to do with our current health status, etcetera. And the natural result was that I wrote a rather lengthy book which is entitled Life Strategies, Human Evolution, Environmental Design Towards the Biological Theory of Health in nineteen seventy eight. The interesting thing about it was this was an interdisciplinary piece of work. In other words, I went sideways into different disciplines in order to link things that were significant. And there were nineteen reviewers of that book, and eighteen of them wrote that they could not review it because it was too broad. It went so far beyond their own reading that they could not judge the scholarly validity of it, although it looked okay. So what happened was that the Springer Press, which finally published it, um started calling other scientists that do something about me and asked them about my reputation, etcetera. And on that basis they published the book that tells you something about the reviewing process. Yeah, we'ren't publishing here too, So I absolutely no old publishing. But do you feel like, um, you know, as we move forward as is a conservation community in the hunting community, do you feel like there's enough out there on these subjects of our connection with human evolution? You know, as as it's very much you have. Indeed, because like it or not, we're an oxymoron. We're meat eating vegetarians basically. In other ways, our evolutionary history unfolds very much like that of other large vegetari mammals that feed on vegetation primarily. In other ways, we're very similar in our evolutionary pattern to deer, to elephants, to horses and so forth, and not at all like primates. We differed tremendously from primates, but at the same time, we differ also tremendously from prime It's because we have had a long, long history of eating meat, and that is deeply, deeply ingrained in our physiology. So UM, as I said, we are an oxymoron, we are a meat eating vegetarian. That's a good way to put it. I knew we were axiomaronic. I just didn't didn't think of it in that way. So we we display axiomoronic characteristics in lots of ways, I think. But do you as you look at where we are? You know, I know you said, um, yeah, you're in your eighties, you're over there on Vancouver Island, but you're still working, You're still thinking about critically about you know, the conservation, hunting, fishing community. Um, where do you think we are today? I mean you've seen, you know, you've seen. We're in a very distressing situation at the present time, and that is because a rather malignant environmental movement has become politically dominant and is ruling the roost at the present time. The really wonderful system of North americ and wildlife conservation could not have existed, incidentally, except by the virtue that you had exterminated wolves in the Lord forty eight. We are now learning that if you have uncontrolled wolf populations, you basically decimate while that to such an extent that hunting is indeed a questionable activity in the future. Yeah, I want to That's one thing that as we've we've gone through since last time we talked we've We've talked to a lot of folks who both I think agree and disagree with you on on wolves specifically. Well, it's not agreeing or disagreeing. There are certain facts. And let me allow a little bit to open up on what I've been doing lately, because I've got several things. For instance, I am right now writing a paper with a Russian um ecologists who is probably the greatest ecologists on Siberian matters, um and Lenny Baskin in Moscow. Uh, what we are seeing is in Siberia and in northern Canada and also in parts of Alaska, very large areas they are almost depleted of wildlife that there's simply biological deserts or and we've been trying to find out what was the reason behind it. So it's a lengthy piece of work in which my colleague and I are in total agreement on and it turns out to be that the primary cause is a combination of wolves and grizzly beare predation. You see, wolves in under normal circumstances were a rather rare animal because they were controlled by large caps. Basically, we can still see some of that today if you go to Manchuria, whatever. There is our Siberian tigers that are virtually no wolves. And the tong goose, which honored the tiger greatly in the past, made sure there were lots of tigers around because that means there were no wolves and there was wild that available for them. But if you destroy the tiger, wolves come back. And while that virtue disappears completely, now you have an indifference. In an interesting situation, wherever you have large cats like tigers like the girl forest lion, like leopards like snow leopards and so on, you have no wolves at all, or so very few in the North that they're considered endangered. You see. So what happened in price to see extinctions is that the big cats here on this continent died out. We used to have lions here, We used to have saber tooth cats, we had scimitar cats here, and even before that, we had Siberian tigers, believe it or not, in Alaska, and wolves are relatively rare animals in the fossil record, and what it shows is that once they the natural enemies of wolves are removed, they are a very very destructive element, and together with grizzly bears even more so because grizzly bears are superlative at killing neonate, that is, baby baby elk, baby caribou, baby moose, and so ons the forth. And some beautiful studies have been made of this in Alaska where they instrumented bears with with cameras and so they were able to follow the visually what the bear was doing over a month's time for thirty days. Well, it turns out that their champion killed about fifty caribou caps at that time point, and the one that killed least of all in twenty seven days killed only seven, you see, And that raises the question how many did that particular that a champion grizzly bear killed before he was instrumented, and how many did he did he kill after he was instrumented. So what basically we are saying is that when you have a combination of wolves and grizzly bears, you generate a biological desert which stays that way, there's very very few ungular available, and the grizzly bears do well because the vegetation is still available. Wolves do very poorly under those circumstances. They eventually virtually vanished completely that the grizzly bear is able to keep the populations of hunger it's extremely low by being able to hunt extensively during the time when they're giving birth and that combination. But by the way, this is not exactly news. The Alaska Department Fishing Game has come up with something very similar to that. Where do you when you think about wolves? And I know last time we talked, we talked about things like I'd added disease and predator pits and some of these other issues that you've brought up in some of your talks and some of your writings before and after UM and then we also I also visited Yellowster National Park and also a hunt in an area here in Montana where I got a trail camp picture of a wolf not three weeks ago. Have heard them, Yeah, I've heard them. It's it's it's that a pretty rare thing. I come to well, wolves are relatively hard to find, very hard to see, very hard to hunt. I've shot a few myself and I've dealt with them. And let's uh, of course, they are, in from one perspective, a magnificent animal, particularly the ones that I saw during my studies of mountain sheep in Northern Bridge, Columbia. They were giants, absolutely giants. Yeah, and that is very appealing. But when you look at the disruptions that we have caused in the global ecology. Yeah, what we have done, it's basically unleashed here a predator that is extremely efficient because it was so severely suppressed in earlier times by the large cats. Basically that's why this wolf is able to reproduce at a very high rate. This is why they're so very efficient in their hunting. And yeah, it's just simply what we have forgotten in our wolf man in and so far is the word ecology. What we have to do is to look at all the components of the ecosystem and manage them and not simply do as the environmentalists now do have total protection of wolves, or have total protection of grizzly bass. That is a disaster as well as we think about that in the Greater Yellows and ecosystem, I said, I went to Yellows National Park with a with a biologist protor biologists say, a month ago and we track the mountain lion. This mountain lion had killed seventeen um meal deer and elk about fifteen elk um to mostly neonates and then to meal there a couple of adults thrown in there. It's extremely efficient. Yeah. Yeah, And and as we're talking about this, I still find that this and this is why I wanted to talk to you again because I know that you know there are some divergent views here, but but I want to make sure that we kind of get to the center point of of where do we really think wolves fit in? Because the biologists that I talked to as we went through this, his appreciation for wolves on the landscape was was absolute. And so that's that's what I took away from it. I want to speak for him as well. There is whether there's something missing in this, and that is the following. Um. The number of elk before the wolves were released in Yellowstone in the northern Hood was about nine five hundreds, uh the the total number where it came down to around four to five thousand. But the most important thing is missing in this statement, namely, about three quarters of those elk moved out onto private land where they were protected from wolves. Now, the words Yellowstone is a very poor example because here predation cannot go to the extreme limit because the wolves because the elk are able to take rect huge on private land. Well, yellow Stone is the very interesting example, and I'm very glad you've introduced wolves there, believe me or not. And that may sound odd, but yes, indeed, because this is a time for us to learn and to learn thoroughly about what is going on and to take consequent steps. And I must say that the Alaska Fish and Game Department has gone to the full length of it. They basically recognized, Yes, yes, we have in Alaska last areas in which wolves and grizzly bears keep the moose and caribou at a very very low level. But that doesn't really matter because there's no people there where we require caribou and moose. Because people are there, we can't control both of those predators, and we do, and that's exactly what they're doing. And by the way, I better tell you something else, which is rather cute. I've been looking at human evolution, as you are aware of, and I noticed that UM particularly focus my attention on the colonization of Europe by modern people and the decline and extinction of neanderthal Man that happened thereafter. But there was something that became rather odd, namely that the geneticists were saying that with the entry of human beings into Europe, the wolves went into a genetic bottleneck, and that always means that they were very, very severely reduced in number. And what happened next was I found from from another paper that the size of the wolves after human beings modern people entered Europe became very large. They increased in the dimensioned by at least ten percent, which means they virtually doubled in weight. Wow. So if you reduce wolves and you have an increase in giant is um well that's what I experienced in the past. The at the same time, I'm the human population uh increased by about tenfolds two maybe fifteen fold or more compared to the Neanderthal population. So you have here an interesting set of circumstances. The human population becomes very very large, and all they're living on is primarily reindeer. The bones we find is franger bones. They also eat mammoth, They want to eat horses and bison occasionally, but most of their food comes from the reindeer. So what the logical logical explanation is that these modern human beings forty tho years ago came into the landscape occupied by Neanderthals. And the difference they made was they went after the wolves and controlled them. And the way they controlled them was of course the first we can guess about that, because the universal way to control wolves is to go after the wolves dens and destroy them. And but at the same time, these early modern people in Europe began had a cult of um associating with lions, and something rather interesting followed. I began to look around, what is the relationship of large cats with human beings? And I just told you the tung goos in Manchuria loved the tiger because they kept the wolves down. And in Africa we discovered that wherever there are hunting dogs and woo and lions, lions love to ambush hunting dogs, kill them, carry them around like trophies, but don't eat them. And then there was a very interesting study which is documented and deposited in Washington with this Newsonian Institute. And this was a study there which is now impossible to do because the circumstances have changed. Where cool bushman in the Kalahari Desert lived around a war, the whole together with the pride of lions and humans and lions got along completely well. There was no predation on the lions, there was no killing by humans, there was a mutual respect relationship. When the anthropologists first arrived on the scene, the lions were roaring. Didn't like it, apparently, and they discovered the following morning that there were pug marks around every single sleeping bag of the anthropologists. They showed they filmed an interesting situation in which the kung had wounded and disabled a wilder least with poisoned arrows, and by the time they arrived at the wilderbeast, it was surrounded by lions. Well, the hunters went in with their spears, killed the wilde beast, talked to the lions, dismembered the wilderbeast, and walked away with the wildebeest, and the lions did nothing. So what we're having here is the first hint of how human beings made use of predators, which was court later undone when we already the gravitition, which is still modern people thirty thousand years ago. So in Europe they began taming wolves into dogs, and then subsequently to that we've had falconry where we've made use of a predator to our end, and we've also tamed cheetahs in order to make them superlative hunters of gazelles and antelope. The most astonishing example from came from Australia, and there are two books written about this, is where killer whales cooperated with fishermen in the hunting of belleen whales and even helped the fishermen tow the dead whale towards shore. And the reward for the killer whales was they got the lips and the tongue of the baleen whales. So we have here predators and humans cooperating. And I have aggested and it's been published in English already and it's right now in publication. And women that in the upper in the Upper Pliolithic, early Upper Polytics, these first people in Europe, the organzations made use of lions. Uh. Actually, it doesn't take much to find out how you could make use of lions. If lions ambush wolves, then human beings can help them with the ambush. All we have to do is imitate the howling of wolves. So you're saying lions, lions and humans work together. Yeah, exactly just like in the Colahari Desert, lions and humans were together and the humans said, the lions are protecting us at night from predators, from panthers and from hyenas. I have never set up in this episode institution. Yeah, well, you know, we haven't looked at that angle. We've always thought of wolves and lions and predators in the negative sense, but we've also used them in a very positive sense. And the net result of that is that wonderful creation that we made out of the wolf the dog. Yeah, the two at all. Oh yeah, I've got a little one looking at me right now, and I wouldn't be and I'm so glad she's not the wolf. The irony, I love it. Um Well, you see this is ironic. But this is what happens when you do some homework. And this is what we need and what we cannot have in the but we do have in modern society. But anybody with or without any background is shouting off on social media, and how do you tell the difference. Yeah, well that's what that's what really what I'm trying to do. Um As I said, I'm a layman. I I am count myself a conservationist. I now live in a place where I'm among these charismatic predators, and I appreciate them on both the levels we we kind of touched on earlier. And there, as you said, there is this complicated history where we obviously you know, worked with them, and then you know at the time in the turn of the century, we were vilifying them everything from kind reifying them a hell of a lot earlier because wolves without control, yeah, were a scourge of the land. And some of the best modern scholarship and this comes from out of France, where they had in record, now, in detailed record, over ten thousand cases where wolves attacked human beings and uh soa is the name of the professor that's leading this work. In an interview, he said that if the documentation in France were not so badly damaged by wars, because so much of the documentation was in churches, for instance, many of them were burned down during the many, many wars that the Europeans had there, he was sure that they would have a documentation of over a hundred thousand, ten times what they have today. So the we have also excellent documentation right across the globe. Whatever wolves and human beings have come together. The only way that we could exist is by very very stringent control of wolves. And one of the most interesting things is Japan. The Japanese um farmers eulogized wolves because they were the only way they had to reduce the damage to their fields. You see. Uh, the Japanese disarmed their citizens, and so the farmers had no weapons and they could not kill and hunt wolves or part of me. They could not have pigs and deer which were ravaging their fields. So what they did is they attracted wolves, and they eulogized wolves to the point of making them a deity. So that was a very very positive outlook of human beings towards wolves because they were helping them to maintaining their crops. And then then came brabies. Now rabies is a horrible disease, absolutely incredible when it strikes. Yeah, and what did the Japanese do. By nineteen o five, they had exterminated the wolf. You see, you don't have to exterminate anything. When I was in the Northern Bridge, Columbia, we had unbelievable wild of the populations, but we also had wolves, and we do not have wolves. When you allow so called nature to take its uh course, and you allow wolves and grizzly best to multiply because eventually virtually have only grizzly Best and then a very very very few wolves and a very very few ungulates in that system. And it is for all practically while that that's unusable by human beings. You know, bring it even back to to our relationship with predators, specifically wolves and every other apex predator that we've talked about carnivore that we've talked about. There there is you know, just by all the stories that you've told and all the readings that you've done, and the vast analogy of the natural history of this continent and in the world, that we are just left with this very complex, very interesting that's why we talk about it here, so much, very interesting relationship with these animals. You know, what do you think we should be doing in North America when it comes to but I think we should be doing is maximizing by diversity and maximizing productivity on the land so that people can take advantage of that. And there is absolutely no reason why we should not have wolves, okay, or mountain lines. But what you have to do is you have to have a system of controls that makes that ensures that everything is alive and well, and we had that in the past when I was the youngest zoologist. Well, the first day I went deer hunting, I saw twenty six deer. I missed eight bucks because I was then not very skilled at running shots. I had the wrong image in that and I killed my five point buck. The next day. You've seen when I shot my first and last, very very large bull moose on December twenty three in Wealth Great Park, I was lying on top of a snow corners looking down the slope onto a bar large burn and my friend was my away with the spotting scope. While looking towards me, he counted thirty six mouths on that slope. Well, this is almost unbelievable. Today we were seeing at that time thirty bull moose a day, and there were wolves in that countryside. We heard them and saw them too. We are perfectly capable of maintaining a great while they've been great abundance and diversity with all the large predators included the grizzly bear, the black bear, the cougar, the wolves. We can have them all, but we cannot have a single species so called protection is UM, which protects grizzly bears at all costs, which protects wolves at all costs. Then you get into the president of situation. That's when you get the wildlife deserts, and that is when Native people suffered because they don't have anything to hunt. I think it's a very important that you know, as we go through. We talked a little bit about Colorado. I touched on that. I mean, they are about to in this November vote on Initiative one oh seven, which will effectively reintroduced wolves into Colorado. It isn't a very very stupid thing to do. Should again to show you that, And so I want to kind of there's a coalition of of of these nonprofit protectionist groups as you as you say in Colorado that they were led by UM, the Foreign Rocky Mountain Wolf Project. They spent nineteen They tiresly gathered support. You could see them on on sides of the road. There's pictures of them. They got two d THO signatures and they delivered that delivered that the Secretary of State. So these are people that don't be of costs of that introduction. It's the ranchers to do, and it's the huntless. We the Democrats or Republicans that also do You're gonna you cannot, you cannot maintain your North American system wilt conservation with the free for all for wolves and grizzly bears. You can't possible. What do you what do you say to those people? If if you're right, if you let's just say, you run into one of these guys on the street, it's hold the sign. With this protectionism for wolves, we need more wolves for this state to be wild. Put it this way. I have been writing a book on human evolution. I guess I told you the title Condemned to Art and Insanity. Yeah, I guess your I guess very Yeah. Well this is and these are belief systems. I mean, there are people believing in good faith that protecting the wolves will be in nirvana. Well this isn't r Vanna. It's an empty landscape, and it is so empty that even the small disappears. I know that because I've had here on Mancover Island and living it right now. All the deer are basically in the cities. Some of the elk have been able to maintain themselves more or less, but the elk here are giants because there are a few numbers compared to them out of food, and they're silent. They don't call, and they don't bugle, because if you bogle, you get on top of yourself's wolves and cougars and bears. And I have eat bugled in black bears myself. At the same time, look at the same thing. What we've done now with the marine environment, total protection of whales, seals, sea lions and so on, has resulted in very large burgeoning populations of seals and sea lions. A kayaker just a few weeks ago told me he was quite amazed. He came to a with his kayak to the entrance of a small creek into the ocean, and this was all surrounded by seals which were busily picking up all the little salmon that were coming downstream into the ocean. Gone, when I was a young students at Juis of Bridge, Columbia, we had still a control of seals, very large amounts of salmon and salmon populations everywhere of faltering. Well if you don't, if you have predators that feed steadily on salmon, what do you expect. In other ways, we can enter as a regulatory agency and we can ensure that everybody survives, including the prey. We have the means to do that. Yeah, sustainable use of a natural resource. When you speak out like this on wolves that people feel feel so passionate about them and protecting them and seeing more of them on landscapes, do you feel like people aren't listening? Do you feel like people I don't want to hear. No, I know people are, people are listening. The bit of the problem is, of course, the your news services. Yeah, I guess they are afraid that there subcription rates will tumble the report something that is not exactly in the right now. Environmentalism is a very very popular notion and the great dream of some of the environmentalists is to see what they call wilderness around across everything, with human beings confined to very small spaces and so that nature could once again range supreme or much of the land. That's part of their dreams I see, and what it means is, uh, well to achieve that. I don't know how you could possibly have any number of people without the use of the land in the economic activities. I mean, it's a very very simplistic ideas. But these kind of ideas or the the Another thing is the promotion that the human beings are evil and that nature is good, and so if we constrain humans, we do something very good for nature. Well, the trouble, of course, is that you haven't had anything natural now for twelve thousand years on this continent when you look around the countryside. This is all secondarily consequences of human activity. Your native your native Colorado, your native North America vanished with the Little Ice Age top thousand years ago period. Well, we've seen this with with the COVID N teen pandemic. We've seen when you try to confine people to their homes there naturally want to go outside. They naturally want to enjoy place wonderful and and I'm all in fable, I also want to go outside. And in fact, I'm living on a very beautiful place away from the city. I'm surrounded by nature all the time. I have uh, I've had wolves here under my doorstep and cougar's on my doorstep. We don't have grizzly bears here, God thanks, but we do have black bears. And yes, I can enjoy all of it. But we have too many hugs at the present time, and so the number of rights of blacktail dealers way way way down everywhere except in cities where they've taken refuge from Hollywood. That's what do you find some of the most biggest bucks on Vancouver Island right downtown and it's a yeah, what a beautiful what a beautiful island as well. But yeah, go back to go back to the pandemic issue, because it's kind of rayed some interesting points that that you're discussing here. We've seen national parks, we've seen state parks, we've seen wilderness areas, especially in Canada, but across the United States, and you know, there are reports out of Alberta and Quebec of you know, human feces and garbage and people camping in ditches and hundreds of cars and parking lots when when folks were locked down and they couldn't travel to other provinces or states, they simply retreated to to these places that we you know, these ecosystems, these fragile environments that we try to manage and keep His pristine as we can, and it's caused lots of problems and so there's an interesting discussion there is to as to your point earlier, Um, you know what's bad and what's good here, and what's what's what's real and you know what's fake in terms of what you're being told. Well, the COVID situation is going to pass. It's not going to take. It's not We still have some while to deal with it, but it will pass and we are going to get back to normality eventually. And we also have to face something very unhappy, and that is before the COVID christis struck, we were already aware that our national parks, particularly in your country, we're losing bio diversity, and that is that it loss about diversity means that plants and animals are going extinct, and that you had a free for all in these parks for invasive species, of which according to the website of the United States National Parks, there were over six thousand, five hundred species. So irrespect of the COVID, we have a very real problem about a philosophy of non intervention in nature. As long as we do non intervention, other things intervened. And the only way to literally safeguard biodiversity and maintained a live species which are going extinct is by human very intelligent interference. I have a friend in California who about thirty years ago bought acres of land on which she counted sixties species of plants. Then he began to change the landscape in the sense that he was trying to get back by diversity and bring to light and to fruition seed which were lying dormant in the soil. And after thirty years he has two hundred and thirty five native species of plants and hundred and thirty five non native species of plants. That's what human intelligent human intervention means, whereas non intervention means the simply the decline and extinction of many of our sensitive species, reduction by diversity and take over by invasive species. That's what we have faced. Our idea of letting hands often, letting nature do its thing is a catastrophic failure. Not entirely, there are really times when you need to do it, but as a unifying philosophy of dealing with nature, it simply means that we allow other species, undesirable species many regards, take over the landscape. In order to maintain beauty and by the city, we have to come in and manage with fire, with an axe, with a rifle and shotgun and net and the times poisons. We have to do that and then we can maintain what is well. The French said it quite correctly, said, if you want to have a beautiful park, you need a very sharp axe and the heart of stone. Yeah, then you're gonna have a beautiful park. Yeah. Well, if if folks listening I didn't just hear that, rewind and listen to it again, because that's about it is, wonderfully stated. I've heard about how we can as humans cohabitate and balance the world in which we live, because that's well, we have to do it, and we have to do it intelligently, and we can do it. That's the whole point. Yes, protection ism that's brought back whales and a lot of marine life. And now we have to judge how much protection is required to generate and what protection is required and what actions are required to enhance different species so that we do have high bio diversity. We can do it. We have the means to do it, and when we have a question, we can always have an experimental setting and explore. What we cannot do is to have faith that nature is going to somehow maintained by a diversity and duty, which doesn't well, I want to I think all of this connects to your book with Shane Mahoney, the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. And I'll just tell you. I know we talked about this a bit last time you were in the studio, but the North American model of conservation is something that i've i've we speak about often on this show that i've I've really think you should. Yeah, that's wonderful, it is, UM And you know, and I know your book talks about the strength and its weaknesses and in in in great way and we wanted to UM for a long time on the show, have a book club and talk about some of these really important issues. And the Northern a model is something that I think a lot of people understand, but a lot of people misunderstand, and even more people have no idea about how it came to be or what it is or what it's meant to do. UM. And I think this book that you've put together with with Shane, if everyone I asked everyone to read it about two months ago. I said, get this book and read it and then we're going to talk to dr guys about it. So if you if you'll allow us. Well, I would like to just go through it a little bit and discuss some of what's in there, and then you know, discuss what well. I'm a little bit. Yes, I'm the core I editor of it and the author of one of the chapters of it, and I haven't looked at it for some time because I've been so very very busy with other matters, particularly on the human front. Because as I said, I'm editing now my book condemned to author insanity. I've picked twenty years on it. So that's I've been busy, and I'm busy other things. So, um, I may be u um faulted from remembering too well, let's try it. Let's let's give it a try. I think I think most of the things in here are elementary to all your work. So I imagine if you don't remember the exact sens, you'll you'll understand some of the questions and things that. Okay, I wanted to go through. Let's let's give it a shot here. Um, the book, you know, in talking about the model, the book does a lot of things, but I think in general, it looks at the model's strength weaknesses, and it considers, you know, it's relevancy and efficacy and all the things that it touches because it does touch history, politics, culture, societies and so yeah, because before we have specific questions here, when you think about the model today, what do you think of? Well, the model is basically a model that assumes that the greater population of the nation has access to wildlife and we'll use this wildlife in the consumptive fashion. In other way, it's not only do we enjoy it a life, we also enjoy it on our dinner table. That is the basis of it. It makes the assumption that going out and raising wildlife for human consumption is a good thing, and that's what it was in the past. As long as that philosophy is relevant, as long as that model will survive. But it cannot survive protectionism and it fails. Yes, well, when we when you when we start with this book, we start about you know this, This book goes all over time, um, but it talks about this revolutionary approach that in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Canada, United States came together and rather than treating wildlife for the purview of the elites, is to be used for the benefit of the pleasure. We're we're now switching this dichotomy and we're saying it's we're going use this for the people. That's correct. And that is the remarkable thing about the North American model. That's why it is so outstanding a model, you know, because what it shows that the common ownership of wildlife can be of an enormous benefit to a nation, whereas previously it was assumed that if you had a comments that comments would deteriorate because everybody had access to it and destroyed it in part. And there is a large, very famous, not large for very famous paper, the Tragedy of the Comments, which was written about it, remember in his moment the author. But the proof of the North American model is that you can have ownership of land and wild land in common, and it can be constructive and it can be a thing of beauty and productivity and of generating great wealth at the same time. It's a real blessing there really is. I mean, it shows it's such a value system as much as is a system of conservation and those things that you explained or intertwined, well, just imagine the number of people that are employed because of that model, and just think of the tremendous innovations that you have generated in archery, for instance. Yeah. Yeah, it's unbelievable how things have changed, and that has given livelihoods to quite a few people. The same thing with the firearms or the clothing or the other equipment that has to to be used. It is a tremendous boost to the economy to have wildlife. If the violet that is being used by the public at large, but it has to be used, not just simply simply you look at it's something you use. Yeah, I mean, I think as you as we You know that agreement, the agreement you talked about in the beginning, and you know it's talked about in the book quite a lot, the agreement that we're we're going forward this understanding that we are going to both conserve and use um these resources at the same time. And that's where the balance comes in. Um it's core to this and that I think that present and that ain't the North American model. It kind of gives us a vision and for me, a hopeful vision of the kind of the challenges of the future for conservation. And the book helps with that too. Yes, and I'm you see I also have to go back a little bit to a time when the use of weapons was looked at in a different way than this today. And you had it in the You had it in your rural areas where the kids took the twenty two to school and they did their hunting on the way back around the way to school, and they brought things to on the for the family table. I did that when I was a teenager in Canada. Yeah, and my grandmother and I had a wonderful relationship precisely because I was able to bring in game and fish and it was so greatly treasured and valued by the family. I'm thinking right now of some of our native people in Northern Canada that are faced without wildlife. What do the kids do if you cannot go out and get yourself a rabbit or some ducks and geese and so once of forth, if you find an empty landscape, what do you do? Do you smell gasoline? Or do you go and commit suicide? That's exactly what the kids were doing. You see. Wow, So there is a greater good to have wild left around. We are hunters, We are by nature, as I stated beginning, an oxymoron, a meat eating vegetarian, but we are that. And as long as we maintained that in a reasonable fashion, you have a world of great beauty and diversity. And we can have that all, we can enjoy it, but we cannot have most sort of single idea um preservationists attempt dealing with nature that leads to disaster. And in the book to you, as we've as we've discussed here that it almost seems like derivative of any discussion like this, that we're going to delve into the past UM. And in the second chapter of this book, he starts to ask questions like why look at a history of our humanity in these species? Why look at um the place to see? Why look at Neanderthals? Why look at um the first predation of humans? And talk about that these ideas of why we asked that question, and what we can learn from our history UM, and how that the first is a very cautionally lesson, and that is that human beings and nature have been um in a very unhappy coexistence for about two and a half billion years. The very very first humans that came about, we're already hunters, and I can descry to you what what they were. But the point was that the moment they showed up, the biodiversity of the continent of Africa went downhill and continue to go downhill. And it went downhill because eventually we exterminated the megafauna as well, and we now are in a situation where we are desperately trying to understand how human populations can possibly survive. So history is something that teaches us to be very very cautious about what we do with nature. We can't. We know that we can make nature bloom, and we have to do that, but much of the time we've been a negative force. And this is where the environment that is sitting quite correct about it. So that and then comes to the point is how did we go and interact with nature? And how was it possible that human beings were able to flourish in the first place, Because human beings are the only primate that can stay at night on the ground surrounded by large predators and does not have to climb a tree at night. All other primates have to climb trees. We're the only ones who don't. So here you're right away are into an interesting question what the dickens did we do? Because previously to that, we were a prey of many predators, and when predators get a taste of human meat today, they absolutely continue going after it. Human beings, apparently are the cannibals are stating that there is no meat like human meat. It's the very best there is, and the predaceous lions and tigers and leopards in the past have verified that as well. So there's a big, big question, which is intellectual and interesting question, what did we do to survive at night surrounded by large predators without weapons of the kind that we have today. So this is one of the first things that I have to crack, and you can read in my book how we did it. We get to the point as we moved to history where we start to after the American you know, the police in a wild American frontier. The book talks a lot about what factors led to kind of the emergence of the I don't know if you would call the enlightenment of the conservation rise at the turn of the century, but yeah, you know, you see, you've put a finger on the right thing. Our conservations have to be very keenly aware of what happened after Columbus came to North America and because what happened was something honorable happened there somewhere between fifty six and twenty million people were destroyed by European diseases. Before that destruction, we have some idea what wildlife was like in North America through the eyes of the early Spanish explorers, and they tell us there wasn't a wildlife. There was an It was a continent overpopulated by human beings. It as a continent continuously manipulated by by by fires set by human beings very effectively. So uh, the Eastern hardwood forest was actually a man made nut garden. That's how powerful influence we exerted. Then came this uh, terrible mortality of native people, which already began with the Desato expedition in fifteen thirty nine. And the natives realized while the expedition was in progress that they were in danger, just getting even close to white and they fled, but they didn't save them. In the last end, our diseases followed them through. So between fifty millions and a hundred fifty six million minimal and hundred twenty million people died, and you all of a sudden had a continent that was virtually free of people, and wildlife took over in the burgeoning fashion in the six ndred and that's what we saw, That's what Daniel Boone saw when he comes down, an abundance of wildlife, passenger pigeons darkening the sky. You see cads and Devaka or de Soto never saw a single passenger pigeon. Passenger pigeons came into this massive existence once the nut gardens and the fruit trees were no longer being harvested. The human beings, after all, twenty millions were dead. So the wildlife then took over. And that is what environmentalists are seeing and not recognizing that this is an artifact. This is at the artifact of European exploitation of the continent in itself. So these burgeoning number of buffaloes, well, there is some indication that in the center of the continent buffaloes were um fairly abundant and were able to withstand the hunting pressure that was put on them. But so there's a lot more history to be uncovered, I can assure you that. But the modern situation is the consequence of very very severe happenings after Columbus Lands in North America and the idea that North America was a beautiful, untouched wilderness occupied by a few native people is simply wrong. It didn't exist. Well, then you get to it, so you know, would it be correct in your mind? And saying that hundreds of years of this understanding of our true impact on this kind it led to this, this enlightenment in in the early nine hundreds and then leaning up into well the enlightenment. Enlightenment came when people of wealth began to notice how the wildlife was vanishing, when they started noticing that there were more more feathers in the hats of ladies on Wall Street then there were in down to the Everglades. Uh. The destruction of the American buffalo was of course also something that became very very uh noticeable, and it became a factor in information of such organizations as the Boone conquer the croct Club, and I think it was six and you had your great President Teddy Roosevelt involved. Uh. What happened was the your North American system of wilder of conservation arose in opposition to this enormous destruction of while that that took place in the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century, parton me. Yeah. I mean, then you talk about some of the most in the book in chapter three you talk a lot about some of the most important pieces of legislation, some of the national parks and national forests and in in you know that really from nineteen o one all the way up till nineteen thirty five one, President frank and by the way, make sure that this was a co oppositive effort in North America between Canada and the United States. And the most amazing thing is that Canada, which was a loyal, loyal colony of Great prison did not accept the way of wild that was managed in Great Britain, but joined hands with fellow Americans in the United States to generate jointly a continental system of wilder conservation. That's what we have. It's not a U S system, it's not a Canadian It's a joint international system that covers North America. That's the glory of it. Yeah. It shows how human beings and when they want to can come together to create something useful, something beautiful, something of great importance. We can do it. And when you first you know, I think it's an important time is how when you first sat down to try to articulate what you knew to be this model. I was very interested in game branching and I held the conference in ninety one in which I invited game branches from all across the world to attend, and they attended. We had a wonderful get together, and after I was preparing the treaties, looking at all the papers and all the consequences, suddenly dawned on the Oh my god, this is not the way to proceed. And when game farming became very popular with my colleagues in the Canadian Wildlife Service, I was at one point castigating them for their support for that, and I stated that if you continue this path of promoting game farming, you're going to destroy your system of wildlfe conservation. And two senior um members of the Canadian Wilderve Service, men that have worked all their life with wildlife and we're about retired, shot back at me and said what system. We do not have a system of wild of conservation. And I said, you bloody well do have a system world of conservation, and I'll write it down to you, and I did you see. I am by background European, and I was raised in the lore of the German hunting system. So I knew very very well what the European system did and did not do, and that is what I based my my construct of the North American model on. If you take the seven pillars of the North American system and reversed them hundred eighty degrees, you have the central European system of wildlerf management. You see, I did not write a history of the North American system. I stated this is what it is, and it was. I've published in total twenty three papers and book chapters on it eventually, and it grew somewhat in model UM paper dealing with North American system is the one that has ultimately used as the definitive system for it. If it hadn't been for Shane Mahoney and Joan Organ and others, it would not have survived because the wild that Wild NFE society was very much opposed to what I had written, and I was blackmailed from conferences and oh some interesting things happened. I was vilified, and eventually, eventually saying their minds took over and they realized that you had really quite an astonishing the unique system while the conservation and now we're celebrating its God, thanks. But there was an initial there was initial opposition to it. I can assure you that. Yeah, And I remember I remember talking about that last time, and I and I remember understanding, especially from Shane in our conversation as well, that this needed to be championed. Oh it did. And he and nobody can articulately better than Shane Mahoney. He's a maul speaker and he's also the poets pretty speaking. I admire very much his competence. He's a great man. Yeah, And it's for me as I read this, As I read this book, I think about an American model. It's strange to me that it would need to be championed. It's something we had already kind of. It is something that you should be very proud of as North Americans. This is a unique system and it works, that's the point. And it is produced wildlife in abundance. And what it has done is you can take a landscape and make it beautiful and productive that system and the public participates in it. It's not a system that is based on the elite as such. No, it's a system that is open to the public as a whole. Anybody can participate and they do. Yeah. Well, there's a couple of key questions that Rosie Cooney writes on at the end of the book. I wanted to discuss with you. One of the first questions is really simple, although it's discussed in detail and the book is really simple. Who owns wildlife? And I think that's a key to to where we are the model. Well, of course it is the key to it. And violnife is in the public domain. You and I, as citizens of Canada and the United States, owned the wildlife of Canada and the United States. And that is something that you don't find in Europe because wildlife is tied to the ownership of land. Yeah, and this is is that how common in your experience is that globally? I know, very very common, very common. That is that was that was their root system of concer. People that had huge landholdings were able to conserve wildlife, and they did by the way, and people destroyed wildlife notoriously. So one of the lessons from history is when wildlife is in the ownership of the elite and there is a revolution, the first thing that gets destroyed is wildlife. That happened the French Revolution, that happened in eighty eight in with the German Revolution. That happened again in nineteen forty seven in India when India managed to get free from a great person and became independent of that people turned on violent which is completely destroyed well in the book, Dr Cooney writes about it. You know, wildlife is a fugitive resource, meaning animals don't care if you if you if you make arbitrary borders, or if you own this or that, animals just do not care, and they don't care. Of course, yeah, that has been problematic in some ways, but in our model it's been illustrative of lots of points. But then you you look at a place like South Africa where where you have these animals are put in a fence, and then that property owner owns that this happens in as long as the situation exists, as it does today. Yet yet you have much of the land in South Africa is still under the control of flights, and they're doing a perfectly good job of wind of conservation, factibility of job, wile of conservation. When I have discussed it with them, I've asked, I've turned around and said, what will happen to wildlife when every citizen of South Africa is able to go into a shop and buy himself at twelve gate shotgun in the third ye old six rifle and a forty five color pistol. What will happen to was that then, you see in the United States you can do that. We can go into a shop and you can arm yourself, no problem. That's part of your constitution and just part of the the expectation you have a In fact, wildlife had at one time in the nineteen eighties, I counted it, wildlife was outnumbered by guns in private ownership about eight to nine to one. He with this enormous armament in North America, wildlife was thriving. And I asked my asked my colleagues. Then in what will happen? But there was no discussion at that point because the frightening possibility was that there would be a total takeover of a private land in South Africa and there would be a total decimation of wildlife as a consequence. So today's situation in the Maybia, today's situation in Africa is a fragile one. Three cheers that it's holding out for the time being, but for the future, I'm not optimistic in North America. I am optimistic, and I've been known to write in one paper that the very last elephant on the earth will survive on the King Ranch in Texas. What I think, You're right, and it's such we have such a strange, such a strange dichotomy there. I lived in Texas and I often when I when I read that part of this book, and this is in the last chapter I'm going through, and I'm thinking, many parts of Texas don't abide by this North American model that we've so well, you know, that we've developed. They do in part, and they in part don't, but in part they do because Texas Wildlife Texas is still being managed by the state with authority to do certain things. And I'm quite a fan of some of the things that I've seen on Texas ranches that I'm doing, some very very good management is taking place on that very good management. The beauty of the United States is and that you have a diversity of ownerships, so that while we have wildlife entirely in the public domain, also wildlife which is coexisting with private ownership and is doing extremely well. Do you do you feel like this is this is what you mentioned earlier that I thought was so profound to me that that intelligent intervention just taking shape in different ways, and even though it may every once in a while, what you just said, intelligent intervention, that's what it's all about. We can have intelligent intervention and then we have wildlife and predators, and we have biodiversity, and we have beauty. We have the whole shamak, but it needs intelligent intervention. Is there some intelligent intervention that kind of goes against the model? No, don't. The model is in fact an interventionist model completely and entirely. It assumes that our wildlife is publicly owned, that we have agencies that are managing in the public interest, that these agencies are guided by science and history and scholarship and so on, and that wildlife is so important that we consider it as a public resource that we must maintain. When do you have a total protectionist policy, nobody gives damn about it. And while let's deterior rates. That's also a lesson from the national parks. As as we move on, there's another really important question here that I think that everybody listened to this podcast, I know UM wants to know more about and thinks about this quite often. What is what exactly in your mind is the role of hunting, and you know if you can encapsulate it in the model, well, the role of hunting is vital because on one hand, the role of hunting makes sure that there is a segment of the population passionately involved with wildlife, which is very interested to maintain wildlife, which gladly um sacrifice on behalf of wildlife. And at the same time wildlife is then being used for food by humans and the very very best meat in the world comes from wildlife. There's no if on babies about that. Yeah, m hm. And so what you have then is a public support of wildlife, and it wildlife has the future because everybody looks forward to seeing wildlife next fall and going out and hunting next fall and being able to eat it. And by the way, and just some statistics are important. At the minimum, the wolf in Yellowstone takes down sixteen elk a year. That's the winter meat of sixteen families. Have you seen Can you imagine twenty two elk or twenty four elk standing on the in the meadow, on the lawn in front of your house. Yeah, that's what wolf killed when things are good. Yeah, Well, like I said, we've I've seen anyst enormous Yeah, I've seen those things go off in areas where I have hunted, where wolves come through and and everything gets on their feet, everything is disturbed and it just changes everything and I eat it. And at the same time, we do have an obligation to conserve wolves, no tways about it. I have seen and I've lived in the system where wolves were doing well, where while that was doing well, where hunters were doing well, and we thought we were having a marvelous place which we have to conserve because we thought that was natural, it wasn't well. And then there's some you know, I'm glad to hear you say there's some there's an obligatory nature to it rather than an emotional nature to you know, we have to we have to see these things as an obligation, right, something that we have to look after everything. And the more diverse the natural system is, the greater are the opportunities for some unpopular animals to exist, something like the rattlesnakes. Yeah, not very popular, but there's a place for them in nature. And if you protect um landscapes so that the big fellows can exist. All the little ones will be there. So this is what you have done in North Americas to simply demonstrate that with the public ownership of wildlife, you can create by diversity, you can create productivity, you can create beauty, you can create a great employment and as economically, it's a wonderful model. But it depends on the utilization of Last night, I think to to to wrap things up. I mean, we could go on for so long about this, this book, and I think we we asked our our listeners to write in and and review the book and then and ask some questions um, and so hopefully yeah we have. I I read through dozens of these and I picked one from Cody tilt out of Wyoming, and Cody had one he had a question. But in his review of the book, he said he said this, He said, I feel like I never quite knew the breath and depth of my experiences outside. I never knew hunting um until I read this book. I could really understand the complex nature of what I was taking part in. And I can't wait to share this with my friends and family and every one that that asked me questionable. So that was part of his he wrote a long email, but that was part of his email and his questions. He wrote a lot of questions, but I think one of his questions was I think something I know that you thought of. It's discussed in this book. He puts it well and it's very simply. You know what is going to happen in the future to this model. What needs to change to keep it going? Well, what needs to change is keep it going is we have to get some sanity back into an and to our environmentalism. We have to get away from the extremes extremes of you protect this, you protect that, and you tried to get back to nature, and so for you have to realize that what was natural is long gone. We now have the obligation to look after nature. That's our obligation, and our obligation is to maintain every piece of nature we must have obtained by the versit t And the best way to maintain biodiversity is to have as much of the public involved with while that as possible. And when you have a public that is looking forward to the hunting season, I mean there is such a thing as a Swedish illness in Sweden. Yeah, that's when the men disappeared hunting moose. That's a Swedish illness. And when you have that kind of appreciation, you are going to have exactly that what the model has done in the past, which is now being destroyed by I think a rather ill informed and malignant environmentalism, and that is the over protection of predators or protection of landscapes. We have to realize that we have the obligation to manage, to manage intelligently, and the model has shown the way. How yeah, I think there's no better place to end because as I search for you know, we have the certain flash points and we discussed them here. We discussed uh, you know, charismatic megaphone and predators and there's certain like flashpoints that, oh boy, you should get into how Neanderthal hunted. You know, you are a hunter and you take it for granted that you go out and take a weapon and you start. Neanderthal was a super predator that was nocturnal. He hunted at night. He had big, big eyes, bigger than your own mind. He had a brain that was larger than mind, and but it was not large in the front. It was large in the basement parts. That's where vision is located. In the brain and other ways. The parts of the brain that support vision were huge in neander top absolutely huge, and they Neanderthal hunters men and women suffered own breakages and the bone breakages resembled that of cow rodeo cowboys. And what they were killing primarily were very hairy beasts, beasts that you could hang onto when you put your hand into it. Yeah, basically there were two hunters involved in the killing of a large hairy beast. Uh, the one who hung onto the beast to distract it and the other one who killed it with the spear of very sophisticated design. I mean, history is a lot of fun, and here we have a hunter that survived for about four thousand years. Eventually they died out for various reasons, but I found them quite fascinating. This is why it's interesting to go into the history of human beings. Human beings have been incredible, absolutely incredible, And just as incredible is really our system of wild of conservation when you think about it globally, because it's so unique. But by the way, the Russians for a while tried to get it, but the oligarchy went out and they didn't get it. But I had several of my papers translated into Russian and published at that time. Point. It's too bad. But our model is still and it is unique. In another sense, it can only be done in an armed society. Our model cannot be transferred to China because the Chinese do not allow arms to the citizens. We're living in a on the continent in which we have so much trust in each other that we allow each other to be armed. I mean, it's wonderful, Yeah, I mean what you said. You know, sometimes when I'm talking to you, I feel like in the need end with all myself because there's so I feel like we could have these conversations for three or four hours every single time. We'd probably do it weekly. UM, You've you've read so much, to study so much. We will, We definitely will. But I just want to say that, you know again, I know we said this last time when you're here, but I appreciate your willingness to come and talk with us, and your willingness to well, really to commit your whole life to these ideas that are so important to my generation, the next generation. UM, and I think it's it's so incredibly important to hear what you have to say, and to to read this work and to continue to have the dialogue that that you've been having. I'm very glad that you have an access to broadcast your visions. And congratulations, very important what you're doing. Thank you, Thank you very much, Dr Geist And we will definitely catch up soon and hopefully, yeah, hopefully I'll be able to come over and we'll hang out in your in the will COVID nineteen will not last forever, that's right. And and could you just quickly describe before we go, what's your set up there? What's the cabin like or what you know, what's the house like? Deep in the woods? I have a house on and I have I have been filmed during a number of times. And you're looking at a room in which there are quite a few ants us hanging on the wall and pictures and so on the four. Uh. It's those that have filmed have told me that it's an ideal to set up so you can come and visit here. We have got excellent facilities in our little town which is about um twenty minutes away or so. And uh, as I said, uh, it's not the first time that people have come and visited me and we've had films taken of me. Well that's beautiful. Well again, I just want to say thank you very much for all that you do and all that you've done. Okay, and thank you. Till next time, I will SI say goodbye, bye bye, goodbye. That's it. That's all another episode in the books. Thanks for sticking with us for Yanni Patelis has asked the Eagle and conversation with Dr Valarious Geist again. Hopefully my the precursor to the interview where I kind of apologize for poor interviewing performance didn't dampen your enjoyment the larger points of Dr Geist because that book, the North American Widdle Model of Waddle, I said, North American Waddle, North American Model of wildlife conservation book that was edited by Shane Mahoney and Vlarious Cast but also includes many other impactful individuals in the conservation space. Is an important book. So if you haven't read it, go read it. And if you read it for the TC book Club and your question didn't get in there, sorry about that. It was hard to get a question in Edge of Wise with Dr Geist because he has so much to say. But it's a book we should all take a look at I was actually Phil. I was up camping with the kiddos over the weekend by a nice lake and this backcountry lake here in Montana, and I brought that book and I was I was going to read it like when everybody was resting or fishing or sleeping. I was going to read it. Um. But that never happened because everybody was running around. But I did read a few paragraphs to my kid and he was he was interested in what this is all about. So don't read it to your kids. Oh, I would never. Never if you want to put him to sleep. It's a very technical book, I will say that, but it's but it's essential knowledge, essential knowledge for every hunter an angler out there. Um, pheels you feel like? Asked the eagle went well, yeah, I thought that was great. Brandon was a great first guest. Canadians. Yeah. Nice, nice play individuals. Speaking of nice polite individuals. Um. Next week is and Phil just can't every time he knows what I'm gonna say, he can't contain himself. Next week we're gonna get into Now, We're gonna get into uh, it's an opposition show. We had doctor guys talking about intelligent intervention and that we should be managing predators, that we should be actively managing them through hunting and other means. And next week we're going to kind of address the opposite opinion, and in this case, the opposite have been belongs to Dr Barry Kay Gilbert. What now, let me just explain myself, Phil, Okay, because you're still you know, as the residents skept it. You told me about this, uh a few days ago, and I just I was telling you, I think I think it might be the better idea to just keep this book closed. Man. Well, I'm not I like to uh, I like to embrace my bad ideas. Okay. So I emailed Dr Barry kay Or. We hadn't spoken since, you know, briefly after the last show. He was very upset by some of the responses that he got from our program. But I felt after we named after the salty Gilbert, after the element salty Gilbert that we came up, I had just he is on my mind a lot. It's thinking about him. Um. The inter actual interview guests from next week is again named Chris Dermont. We'll talk about him, but he brought that interview up when him and I were talking about some of these issues. And as I was telling Phil, a week doesn't go by where I don't either have an email about or think about Dr Barry K. Gilbert. And I thought, well, what a relationship I have with this man where he is? He is a weekly part of my life, and yet we don't talk. And so I reached out and I offered to bury the hatchet. Basically said, hey, like, come on, let's have some fun. Let's bury the hatchet. Let's talk about our core values and where they align rather than arguing about what we argued about prior. There's a lot of a lot of ways that it could go. And so next week you'll see how it did go. So hang on to your seats, right Phil. That's great? And Phil is conspicuously go on a vacation right after we finished it up, So yeah, you might need it. I mean, I just assume that that everything's gonna come crashing down after this interview. Well maybe this is the last or the next to the last episode of th HC. While I'm at it, go give us a review on iTunes, Subscribe, tell your friends to subscribe, do all you kind of support the show. We certainly need it to support my bad ideas. There's also a new podcast on the met eat podcast network Ben Oh, Yeah Bent ben CNT check it out, Get Bent, check it out Yeah Fishing Podcast Miles Nulte, Joe, Sir Mellie. You'll hear the ads, hopefully you'll hear the podcast. It's a good one. It's different than anything you've ever heard. I guarantee it, So go give it a listen and we will see you next week for Barry Kay Gilbert Talking Bears. But because I can't go a week without doing right way wrong, I'm waiting wrong, drinking in Heaven. M