00:00:00 Speaker 1: M well, yeah, first day I ever mad him. That's what my buddy said that he was a game warden, and I think, yeah, he said, yeah, I have guys good right in and live with them. You know what I'm thinking, Yeah, that's what we do. Wow. We're on our third and final episode of our Secret Agent Man series with undercover Ohio wildlife agent RT Stewart. On part one, we learned about the big picture mechanics of undercover stings and how RT was a pioneer in the early nineteen nineties for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. We learned that humans don't do well with chronic stress and discuss the personal toll placed on undercover agents and their families because of it, And in a colimactic moment, I asked RT a cutting question, Was it worth it? You're too good? No? No, it was no. I look back at it. If I had to do it over again and I knew what I knew right now, i'd to say no. But at the time is the only thing I new and the only thing I wanted to do. On the second episode, RT told us about his biggest thing, Operation Redbud, where twenty six men were convicted of over two hundred and seventy five wildlife crimes. They were taken by total surprise. Probably, I think we ended up resting that day people. That's a major it was, and at that particular time, it was the largest turkey poaching ring in the country. And on this third episode, we're gonna hear about some close calls where Urt was almost found out and explore the idea of human instinct or having a sixth sense or a premonition, but also how that compares with just pure wit. Many believed decision making is purely based on observable data, but it sounds like some of our subconscious decision making mechanisms are hardwired into our d n A. We're gonna hear about that from Dr Matthew Sharp's from the University of California and Fresno. So we're gonna explore some of Art's best stories of how he handled trouble and how he used this uncanny wit and intuition to de escalate situations. I really doubt you're gonna want to miss this one. RT is calling a bird and uh, the other officer just happens to let it slip out. Good calling RT. So within a few seconds he comes back. Yeah, that's why they call me a real turkey RT. Just that quick. He smoothed it over so quickly and so well that there was no question. And he did that time after time after time. My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. The art is working undercover at Lake Erie and the uh the two main fish up there that people are poaching as walleyes and yellow perch. So people are coming to Art. They're selling him illegal walleyes, illegal perch, and at one point again one of the bad guys accuses him of UH being a wildlife officer, and he's got a somehow get out of it and prove that he's not so. At that time, and he wore a white cowboy hat a lot, especially when he gets dressed up, which I think is very symbolic. You know, the guy with the white cowboy hats the good guy, but that particular day, he had a wire under his cowboy hat. Okay, so he's recording this conversation, and so now he's got to put on the front that he's not the wildlife officer. So he accuses the other guy of being one, and he said, he said, and I'll prove it. Let's strip Let's strip down and we'll see who's wearing a wire who's not. So he strips down to his underwear and there's other people watching, and he demands the other guy do the same thing. They both look at each other, they both don't see a wire, and they go back to being buddies a drinking beer. The only catches RT had the wire in the in his cowboy hat, which he never took off. That's a great story. So that's the types of things that when I talked about how he could react so quickly, very very few people couldn't do that. He did an absolutely a great job. That was author Chip Grows. He wrote the book about Artie Stewart's career called Poachers Were My Prey. Aside from cruising around in the poach Coach is four by four undercover van equipped with state of the art surveillance equipment. During Artis time undercover, he was a master at thinking on his feet and appearing to keep his cool under pressure. However, just under the surface was the constant stress of being found out by the bad guys, causing Art to live in a constant state of fight or fight. Human response to stress and unusual situations is interesting to analyze because it's during these times that the veneers of our personality or any cheap socially accepted front we put on our cleared away and we see what's really inside of us. I often find myself disappointed when the outer layer of this human shape puppet I live inside of is stripped off. Often I over calculate my abilities to respond to stress. However, when the systems are overridden and we flow on autopilot, amazing things can happen. Sometimes. It's incredible humans have been tropping around and getting themselves into pickles for so long. I wonder if we have mechanisms at the DNA level helping us. We've all heard about humans having a sixth sense, but is that even real? I need to find out, And, like I've said so many times before, I'm interested in things that control us that we're completely unaware of. Here's Dr Matthew Sharps of the University of California, Fresno. He's analyzing arties stripping off his clothes at a party and demanding that the bad guy do the same. Dr Sharp's is going to talk to us about script violations. That's really brilliant. Yeah, because when you're suddenly surprised like that, you go immediately into a very high level of fight or flight, and that means a lot of the blood resources you'd have for your prefrontal cortex and part of the brain you actually think, the part of the brain that is involved the cognitive flexibility. Sudden you don't have that. So what are you gonna do a lot of people suddenly they start stammering you, I'm not one. Maybe maybe you're one. I'm not one, And suddenly there they've had it. But that idea of shifting it into not only like the rage like my friend in the anti drug world, but into something very surprising. This this might be interested in human beings often out in fact, pretty much on automatic. You know, if I pick up a coffee cuple I'm doing right now, it's not it's not something that I'm thinking about. I just do it. But you have what we call a script, the automatic automated sequences behaviors. Now, if we say, okay, fair enough, here's a guy who doesn't, somebody whoses it the other way. Okay, he has breakfast before he gets up every day? Is he Richard poor? Everybody knows he's Wretch's butler brings it to him. Right, Well, here's a guy who had breakfast before you get up today, but only today? Okay, is he's sick or well, everybody goes sick. Now, nobody's been asking those questions before, but we all know them because of the automatic scripts that we deal with in our in our world. So that what the challenge did was just brilliant. Okay, Because suddenly, when you're challenged like that, stripping off all your clothes and demanding that everybody else does too, that's a huge script violation. It's a script interruption. You turn the tables, the bad guys don't know what to do with you. Then this sounds like a superpower being able to scramble the bad guys social scripts, so they don't know what to do with you. Who knew the bad guys were such delicate social flowers. Social scripts are so deeply ingrained in us that we don't even recognize we abide by them until someone breaks one. The script change can be so destabilizing that it re routes the focus of the moment. You might try this in a benign situation when someone confronts you on something. Do something surprising and put a subtle question that demands response back from them. Don't be a jerk or be deceitful. But sometimes people want something from you that you can't give them, and you need a way out. It's worth a shot. Our fight or flight responses, though often not consciously calculated, are usually connected back to our training, whether formal or informal. After interviewing our Tea and seeing how many dangerous situations he was in, I wondered if he was ever in any physical altercations like fistfights. So that's exactly what I asked him. Our t in this next section is going to refer to an article that was written by Chip Gross in The Midnighteteam nineties about Ohio's new undercover Wildlife Department. On episode one, Chip told how the bad guys showed RT the actual magazine article when he was undercover got him in some trouble. Here's our team. Did you ever get in a fistfight or any kind of physical altercation? Just in the rough life that you had to live? I realized your your cover never got busted, never got busted. But did you ever? I had a couple of times where they were they a matter of fact that that letter that the article about undercover brought it up. Well, yeah, the first day I ever made him. That's what my buddy said, that he was a game warden. Really nothing. Yeah, I said, I don't even like to be called that anymore. You know, they never bring him back up. But you know, I felt I had enough confidence I could say that to him, And he said, yeah, guys, go right in and live with them. You know what I'm thinking, Yeah, that's what we do. But did I ever in any uh? Now? Would I have if I had to? Absolutely? I wasn't afraid to fight. I was fairly good shape, fairly good size, so I didn't get picked on too much. But I've been confronted a few times, but I was always talking my way out of it. Yeah, And I'll give you one example was he was drunk drinking and I was there and he apparently didn't like me or whatever. He said, Uh, I believe I can take you. I said, you're pretty good, so hard, but I believe I can take you. I said, you ain't. Yeah, I'm gonna try you for the night's over. You know, I'm think of, oh boy, here we go. And I just said, I'll tell you what, buddy, I guarantee you'll probably win, but you'll know you've been in a fight. He never never said that that. Those words just de escalated the situation. And you were kind of a master at that. I didn't know it was the time, but I look back at it now and I think, yeah, that's pretty good. That's pretty quick because there's a hundred of different things that you could have said that and that gave him an out. Yeah, that you gave him some honor. You absolutely like you probably wouldn't beat me, but you didn't. But you're not. You're so let him. Yea, I'm going to use that style. Yeah. Yeah, and it worked. It work. It gives him an owl, you know, because you know, would you have won, probably not. You probably would have taken A wise dude named Solomon, said to be one of the wisest men of the ancient world once said, a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. One version of the quote says, a gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flair. This is exactly what Artie did, and he threw in a little extra so he didn't sound so much like a sissy. Artie, however, was pretty sure he would have won the fight. And here's why he had so much confidence. Let's just say he was experienced. I remember when they interviewed me, they said, uh, to take this job. I had a little experience in that fighting. When they did my background investigation, they said, also, i've found out you like to fight. I said, no, Now you got me mixing up with my brothers, which they was big into fighting. He said, all right, so how many fights you've been and I'm keeping mud. I was thirty five. How many fight you been into in your lifetime and I'm a lifetime I'm thinking school yachts, you know. Yeah, I said, I don't know, maybe forty fistfights, fistfight, real, real fistfight, joking around, Okay, I didn't think nothing like man, I'm I'm the I'm the gentle one of the brothers. I was my brother. They go to town just to fight, you know, but I mean, seriously, my brothers were bad about it. And that's when I said, you got me mixing up with my brothers. And when I told him forty and I went home. I told my girlfriend at that time, I told her about the interview, and so fortunate she said, I said, well, yeah, did you got any idea how many men go through life and never been in a fight in their life. I just thought that was natural. You thought that was normal. Well, I can tell you that's not normal. Well I discovered that after that. I can say that's so I wasn't a rookie at it. Yeah, you know, that's probably to what gave you some confidence. I mean, and not that physical strength is gonna really be what somebody would need. But you knew you could take care of yourself. And it goes back to originally what you told me, that you had to be self sufficient. And you know you're in you're in the roughness of the rough places with criminals, people plotting to kill other I mean, this is like, this is a criminal world. That's a criminal world. You're living in and you're supposed to be the criminal. But if they find out who you are, your life is a jeopardy. And I never thought anything about that. I never thought. I just felt that I could take care of myself. I got into a situation. Yeah, I remember Chip asked me one time, did you carry a gun? No? No, I never carried a gun, But I said, He said, what was somebody doesn't pulled a gun on you? I said, well, it depending on the circumstances. I said, if a man we're sitting here across the table or in proc's close proximity of that individual, and that man pulled a gun on me, I had trained and was confident enough in myself that I would own that gun. I had that much confidence in training, in in weapon takeaway that I would own that from I'd take it from me. There was no question in my mind I could take it from me. But now, I said, if I walked in the door from here to there and the guy's got a gun on me, I wouldn't want to call on tactically disengaging going back out the door, because you know you ain't got a win sace. We're within arms reaching somebody with a gun. I'm taking it, I'm owning it, and that that kind of confidence and even that you have to this day is what it would take to be successful in that kind of situation, you know. And and when I hear you talk like that, I think sometimes about these uh like active shooters that are that are happening now, and how a lot of guys concealed carry and the potential for having to use your concealed carry to remedy a situation. I realized, there's so many wild, possible things that could happen. But I think most of us that aren't in law enforcement probably when it came down to it, we'd like to think we could do it, but maybe we'd lack of confidence to be able to. And I had I had raised with guns all my life. I had competed in combat shooting. I was very proficient, and you know, I can't say what would have happened had I got in a gun battle, and just like combat, you don't know what you're gonna do. But I felt in my mind that I had enough confidence that I could control about any situation. Training builds confidence, and confidence is extremely important in all areas of life. Research the jest that confident people tend to be healthier and live longer, and it's likely correlated to the effects of the positive emotions associated with confidence, happiness, optimism, and satisfaction. I asked Chip Grows to tell me one of his favorite stories about RT and I think this one will help us see some of Art's instincts in action, which will lead us to a bigger question. And here's one of the examples from the book. Uh, he would play cards two or three times a week with this group of poachers. They're playing cards one night, and you know how conversation goes. Well, there had been a bald eagle shot along the Ohio River and the FEDS were in on the investigation. Of course, the Ohio Divisional Wildlife which on the investigation. Everybody's trying to figure out who shot this eagle. And the bad guys were talking about this and didn't directly say to Urt, but they said, you know, I think I think I knew who it is. And they were trying to draw Ourt out there, thinking if he's an undercover officer, he's gonna want to know who kills this eagle. So they didn't really know who killed the eagle. No, I don't that. So they're watching for his reaction, and he wanted to ask in the worst way, Okay, who is it? But something told him, some intuition told him, don't say anything, just keep playing cards and just fluff it off. And that's what he did. So it comes back then a few weeks later from the bad guys that, Hey, you remember we were playing cards a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about the eagle. He said, yeah, he said, uh, you know, we were. We thought maybe we're a game war and we're just testing you that night. That's the kind of instincts he has, okay, And I don't know where it comes from. It's probably a combination of now tro ability and just working on the job and knowing when to push for information when not. But that's the kind of person here. You can't teach that, I don't think, so you can't teach that kind of instinct. This brings up an interesting question about the source of what we often call intuition or a sixth sense or a premonition, basically making a decision based upon data that doesn't exist. Dr Sharp's is about to tell us that some of our instinct is actually hardwired into our d n A. But let me say that even with this information, I absolutely believe in the supernatural as it pertains to a humans connection to a divine source to get information that can't be found from anything in the Earth. Western thinkers often frown on and belittle things that science can't prove, but I think that rationale is hogwash. Sign it's by its very definition, is only geared to explain the physical, observable and repeatable things in the universe. And the stuff I'm talking about isn't that. But I have personally experienced the delivery of information impossible for me to have known and disconnected from any other piece of earthly knowledge that came directly from the great creator of this universe, the l haf A himself. I believe that with all my heart. However, I do believe that some of our intuition, premonition, our sixth sense comes from stuff that's deeply hardwired into us because we've been rambling around on this planet for a long time, and to understand where the origin of some of this stuff comes from, we have to look at the very fabric of our DNA. Here's Dr Sharp's with some info on how humans respond to animal tracks and looking in the eyes of serial killers. Stay with me, Yeah, because he had broke his own script. There. If you're an investigator and the bad guys dropped something like that in your lap, there's a tendency that maybe you circumventent, but you want it. You want to find that out. It's amazing how much behavior is under the surface that we don't even know about me. But I did a paper some years or twenty years ago. Good I got interested in the psychology of hunting, and so I started asking us, Okay, what's the most complicated thing hunters do? What would you expect to have hardwired into the brain? The most complicated part of hunting is tracking. So would it help in the ancient world to have animal tracks? Though in your head would have to have a sort of be born with encyclopedia of animal tracks. Now it wouldn't because savor tian tigers don't longer exist, mammoths no longer exist. To be worthless, what you need is the ability to learn animal tracks. Well, I got urban college students. They have in general no experience, interest, or understanding of animals, hunting, track, or even being outside. They still learn animal tracks three times better and faster than other equally unfamiliar stimulating human beings are geared to learn some of the scripts of hunting. We did another one, another study is not not not going to con gear to hunting, but serial killers. You want to avoid them until you invent cops. Okay. All we do is show the eyes from the eyebrows at the top of the cheekbones of serial killers and non serial killers to people. They didn't recognize them to serial killers, but they didn't like them, they didn't trust them, they didn't want to work with them, just by looking in the eyes. There's all these audible autobi Oh yeah, yeah. I've pushed that as both as a search paper and in my blog to forensic view. There's all these automated things in us that we expect other people to behave in a certain way. We expect that if we behave in a certain way, the other people will treat us in the way we want. And in the undercover role, much of that is reverse. It feels like there's a whole bunch of data and intel working inside of us. Just because we are essentially a highly successful and I believe we're much more than animals. I do, but but from a scientific perspective, where a very successful mammal on planet Earth. There's a bunch of stuff that's flowing through us that we don't even understand that we do all the time. And people describe it as like a sixth sense. But maybe it's more mechanical, more explainable than just this kind of mystery of having a sixth sense. A lot of the stuff is under sort of you know, it's automated in us. It's not conscious, but we come up with things. Professor's how I got interested in the hunting stuff from personal experience, but also from a professor named Gordon Orients. And all he did was measured the distance between people and trees in paintings. And of course it's pretty much random as either where the artists wants somewhere they are where they actually saw. But if it's plenty of sunset, Oriens found the artists wants to paint people close to trees. Well, what happened at sunset Ascipe it gets dark is the back of the day the big cats came out. There were pretty are cats that are extinct now thank god, that specialized in eating humans or human ancests. Yes, today cats are nine inches tall. You know, you call them Mrs Fluffkins getting fishies back in the day when they were in Savard tooth. Yeah, like a lot of big cats can climb better than we are, but a lot of them more heavier than our ancestors. And there are no danger now. But you still have you still loving you know, put a painting on the wall. You want the people of trees pretty those together? If it's since that was what I didn't discovery, that was discovery Gordon orients the artists want to sell paintings. People tend to buy paintings of if there is a sunset and there are people of trees, and if they seem to want to have the trees and the people pretty close together. What is what Orients found the painters doing. We've got to rehash the three things that Dr Sharp said because they're incredibly interesting. He said that humans are geared to learn some of the scripts of hunting at a DNA level. We're hardwired to be able to identify and remember animal tracks three times better and faster than other unfamiliar shapes. That's mind blowing. Secondly, he talked about our ability to know if we can trust someone by just looking at their eyes. This is scientific research proven this stuff. Think about the nuance differences in people's eyes. How could we possibly discern so much information from a glance? Is that the pupils or how wide people open their eyes, or how long they maintain eye contact. There are only so many variables of imagery that create the visible look of the eye, but it tells us a lot. The third thing he talked about was an innate desire to be near cover at sunset. He basically said, if you're an artist and are painting humans at sunset on a natural landscape, you better put them near trees if you want to sell that painting. We all subconsciously know a key part of surviving on planet Earth is being near cover once it gets dark, and even in art, we lean towards things that make us feel secure. Now that is fascinating and points back to our hunter gatherer roots. These three things don't, really, though, give us any answers when we look at a career of somebody like Artie Stewart, who had this uncanny instinct to evade bad guys, but it does tell us that the answers are often more complex than we might have thought. So here's another great story of art getting out of trouble. I count this one to pure wit. Here's Chip. He and another undercover officer, a younger officer are out hunting. Turkey is illegally with the bad guy. Okay, so Urt is uh calling a bird, and uh the other officer just happens to let it slip out. Good calling Urt, And he was caught in the moment and he was excited. Good on our t And of course RT doesn't want to be called that, so within a few seconds he comes back. Yeah, that's why they call me real turkey. RT. Just that quick, just just to come take note of it, maybe for a few seconds, but uh, yeah, he smoothed it over so quickly and so well that there was no question. And he did that time after time after time. Turkey. Yeah, So that's why I'm talking about. That's how good he was, and very very few people can do that. So we were very fortunate in Ohio to have him on our side. He could have been on the other side really easily, but uh, he was. He was a pioneer in Ohio as to what he did, and many officers have followed in his footsteps since and I think the undercover unit in Ohio is much in is in debt for what he did. You may remember from the past episodes, RT was one of the first undercover agents working in Ohio trying to catch wildlife violators. Now, some of these tactics are understood and agents are trained to do him. But Urt was flowing off pure instinct that came from living a diverse life of working in coal mines, being an outlaw himself in his early life, and just being an authentic rural Southeast Ohio broke. But he also had an intangible thing that can't be taught. You've just got to be born with him. I want to hear RT tell a story about a case that he worked, which we haven't talked about yet. So the guy he's gonna talk about is not target too, but he's gonna talk about a guy that he became pretty good friends with, so much that this guy tried to hook up OURT with his sister and RT knew that this was trouble and so one night and the heat of the moment, he found the perfect way to blow up this would be relationship. But first he'll tell us a little bit about the suspect and for all your parents out there, this story is probably a PG thirteen story Feller doing another operation. I've become very close to him, and he had children as also, and I always bring him candy and different things, and he would tell me things about the personal life that they probably shouldn't be telling. But we've become very close. He was a nice guy. He only had an eighth grade education. I did not take advantage of him by degrading him. I treated him as a human being. And uh during the take, and he called me buddy Bale. My name at that time was Bill Stone. And he borrowed money from borrowing money from me, everybody, and he always paid you back. That was another thing I told. I told my boss. He didn't know I was doing. My boss didn't. I told him later. I said, hey, he paid his gas bill all winner. He said what I said? He had asked me if the borrow money to pay the gas bill, and you know he's got kids, and I said, I'd blown him the money, and and every weekend whenever his wife would get paid, he'd help. He'd called me up and say, buddy, Bill, come down, said I forget her names, and she gets paid and we'll pay you. He was good, good for his word, good for him, good for his word on that they paid me in wouldn't wasn't no sense to tell him my boss at the time. And when when he found out you were undercover? What was his response? The guys that took him down, they he asked him who it was or whatever, and he says, and he told him they told him that was Bill and big buddy Bill, and he broke down a third cry. That hurt him that bad. And I felt sad for him or sorry for him. He because he wasn't the money number one person I was after. He was just he was an excuse to get to the number one person. He just tapped me getting hooked up with me. But yeah, I felt sorry for him. He's having a rough time anyhow. But I had a job to do, and you know, to do it, I had to do it, all right. You were gonna tell me about this lady that propositioned you. It was his sister said that we've got my sister's coming in. I've been telling her all about you, and she wants to meet me. And and they were the ones, they were the ones that I let read the compensation papers and stuff on my injury. So they thought you had a lot of money. Oh yeah, And he said apparently he'd been talking talking me up to his sister and said, mean she she wants to meet you. You'd be perfect match for my sister. And I'm going on, how do I get out of this? I said, she'll be in this weekend. Uh. Boy, We're sitting at a bar and I said no, and there's another guy there with us, and I said, you know I got hurt in the coal mine. Yeah, and that was a real part of your story. That was a real part of that. You've already told him he got hurt. You can probably going too detail, then go in detailed. I told him I got my which I did. I got I got covered up in the coal mine and hurt my rib on my back and my hip and that actually happened. I actually it's true story. And uh, but I didn't tell him the rest. How I come up with this, I have no idea one man. Yeah, but I know that if I had told him I had an operation my back or something. And if we're in camp and take my shirt off, there's usually a scar or something, you know, there's usually you gotta have you kind of think ahead, you know that. So I'm thinking, how do I get out of this. I'm sitting there and I said, now, Leonard, I want to tell you something, but everybody don't need to know this. And he said, come here. He gets in every close. I'm holding my head down. I said, you know I got hurt in the coal mine. You, I said, but I didn't tell you that the whole story. I said, it's it's kind of embarrassing. You know, what's that be? You know I like to chase women and everything like that. But I said, I can't do nothing. What I said, Yeah, I lost my my nuts. What Yeah, that was part of my and U. I said, it's very embarrassing. But I said, nobody knows that. So will you please keep out a secret? I said, how I was able to do it? I had tears coming down. Yeah, not one time after that did He never mentioned his sister. Well that's a good thing, right, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, and it worked. While you just came up with that. Come up with that. It de escalated the situation. That was what Dr Sharps would call a script change, and a wild one at that. It was something that no one was expecting and took the emphasis off of what everyone was focused on. The only reason I knew about RT was through the book Poachers Were My Prey by Chip Gross. The book is written in the first person, meaning in artis words, but Chip is the one that wrote it. You can order this book off Amazon and it's a fun read that goes into much more detailed than we could get into on this podcast. Ourt tells about his top ten operations, and all of them are full of excitement and discussed as you see how criminals sought to take advantage of the system, but you also see the fascinating ways in which our t infiltrated these poach and rings. Here's Chip with a few words about the book. We had a fun time doing this book, and I felt privileged that he asked me to do it, and I got to hear all these stories firsthand, and to me that was super interesting, I mean super interesting. And the way we did this, you know, he lived here in southern Ohio. I lived in northern Ohio. We were pretty much each drive about an hour and a half, two hours towards the middle of the state. We'd meet. He tell me, uh, one of the stories. I'd go back home. I'd write for about two weeks, get it about the way I wanted. I call him and sa okay, or to let's do another one. We do it again. We probably met Um probably a dozen times, and that's how the book got written. It's really well done. In this Secret Agent Man series, we've learned a lot about undercover law enforcement and human nature. We've learned that criminals are fueled by ego. We learned about the social hierarchy of criminal rings. We learned that humans are designed to handle acute or temporary stress, but not long term chronic stress. We learned that the best liars often stick really close to the truth. We learned that criminals can be despicable in most areas of their lives. Some of them are, but sometimes they're decent people that are just misguided in certain areas. We also learned how much our game agencies are willing to do to protect wildlife. We also learned that these tactics that were employed pre internet and pre social media are completely different than what they're doing today to catch criminals. I think the biggest takeaway from all this is that we need to continue to craft the hunting culture in North America in a way that values obeying the law. I'm in the field a lot and around a lot of people, and I still see where foolishly the idea of breaking game laws is glamorized, even amongst good people, and that's just plain foolishness. In the end, I'm grateful for law enforcement and all that they do to protect wildlife and wild places. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece. Do me a favor by sharing our podcast this week with your buddies, and we'll see you next week. The Render