00:00:09 Speaker 1: From Mediators World News headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. This is Cal's We Can Review with Ryan cal Callahan. Now here's Cal. 00:00:20 Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to Cal's weekn Review. This week's special drop is with Chris Gasner and Ben lamp Now, these two folks are hunters here in the state of Montana. They do a bunch of other stuff, But what we're talking about this week is Joe blow citizens coming forward and you know, rounding folks up to propose regulation and season changes at the state level for mule deer, specifically in the state of Montana. So a couple of things you should learn this week is how you could do this in your state. And if you're like me, you want to know why a couple of folks who say they're hunters in the state of Montana want to change our mule deer seasons because they are super liberal. We gotta start hunting mule deer about the second or sorry, first end of the first week of September and roll at this point pretty much all the way through January with this muzzleloader smoke pole season that we added, so a lot of opportunity. Why would a couple of hunters want to change that, Chris, what do you do? 00:01:32 Speaker 3: I'm alignment here in billings. 00:01:34 Speaker 2: And so as alignment and billings. What makes you think that you can mess with their mule deer seasons? Your linemen aren't typically biologists. 00:01:43 Speaker 3: I'm not. 00:01:44 Speaker 1: I'm far from. I'm just a guy who likes to hunt a little bit. I just in the last ten years, the steady decline from what I've seen where I hunts. 00:01:56 Speaker 3: We can't sustain the way this is going. 00:01:59 Speaker 2: So you're feeling like they're is an overall population decline or opportunity decline specific to mule deer in your zone. 00:02:09 Speaker 1: Well, I mean on a good weekend, we used to see like fifteen to twenty bucks a week, and now we're seeing one or two, you know, maybe three. 00:02:18 Speaker 3: It's the same amount of people. The deer number are just down. And I you know, it's it's time for a change. 00:02:25 Speaker 2: And and Ben, Ben Lamb, please jump in here wherever you can if we're talking about changing mule deer and Ben, you're not a biologist either, correct? 00:02:42 Speaker 4: Uh, just just when I'm on the bar stool like so many of. 00:02:46 Speaker 2: Us, Okay, just a just a hunting citizen in Montana. What where are you guys at how do you go about changing a season or or changing Mueldier regulations in the state of Montana. 00:03:05 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:03:05 Speaker 4: So, you know, Montana, like so many states, whether it's you know, east of the Mississippi or west, there is a public process to allow for citizens to engage in season setting, to engage in the management of wild animals, wildlife and the way that we hunt those and so, you know, from my perspective, I think it's absolutely well within the rights of citizens to put proposals together to address things like this. And I think if you look at the history of Montana going you know, back to you know, the elders, like the Jacks out of but Tony Shoon and Jim Poswitz, those boys, you know, like the State Lands Coalition is a great example here. There was a group of guys who felt like Montana should be able to hunt and fish on state trust lands, and they led a citizen's effort to get that instituted through some legislation. You know, that's how the public trust works and public land, public wildlife, all of that falls under the public trust. And so you know, we're we're really fortunate in the United States that you know, because of the North American model, because of the way that our state legislatures have set up wildlife management, like that wildlife belongs to the citizens of that state to be managed for their benefit. And so you know, those folks, residents in each individual state, have an outsized voice. 00:04:44 Speaker 5: And how that management occurs. 00:04:46 Speaker 4: And so if there's a chance to bring people together to try and find a way forward that's better than the current model, then you know, more power to them, right, Like it's the power of democracy and it's the power of citizen engagement. 00:05:01 Speaker 5: It's really kind of cool. 00:05:02 Speaker 2: So where are you at? Did did you send a proposal that just says, hey, I want to change the seasons because I'm not having success and he sent that to the Montana Fish and Game Commission? Or where you are? Is there research behind this? Chris and Ben? 00:05:20 Speaker 1: Before we even get to that point, I think it would be worth mentioning that everybody who's worked on this proposal. We brought people in that are outfitters that work with MOGA. We brought in private landowners. We brought guys in from the whole across this entire state to represent every person aspect. We have private landowners on the group, like and everybody came together, representing themselves as a citizen to find a compromise for what we wanted, how we'd like to try and help the meal there. This wasn't just like we sat down and just jotted some stuff on a paper and it's like, let's send this up the ladder and see what happens. 00:06:03 Speaker 2: So can you speak a little bit more to the to the group, Chris is it sounds like you had a diverse set of interests and like, roughly how many folks are involved in this? 00:06:16 Speaker 3: Believe we're at nine right now. 00:06:18 Speaker 2: And I imagine you're you're trying to cover a large portion of the state. In addition to you spoke of outfitters that are involved in MOGA for everybody is Montana Outfitter and Guides Association. And you got folks on the on the private side of the fence and the public side of the fence. 00:06:39 Speaker 1: We want it to work for everybody. This isn't just a single person. Me, me, me, I want to see bigger bucks on the landscape, Like that's not the concern. This whole thing wasn't put together to try and grow trophy boxer. This whole proposal would have been wrote differently and we'd have a lot of limited entry units where the only limited entry units are. 00:06:59 Speaker 3: The one that are currently available right now. Like, we didn't change any of that. 00:07:04 Speaker 2: So that's kind of the meat and the potatoes of the proposal, which which I do want to get into. 00:07:11 Speaker 4: Yeah, just to finish what Chris was saying, it's you know, the idea was to have somebody from each region, you know, somebody who can speak especially to the public land hunting side of things. You know, have somebody from each region, you know, to represent what's going on in that region. And then you know, we had a couple of outfitters who are really interested in changes as well, and so they fell into that and that's where the nine comes from. And then myself and Rob Arnaut who's with the Conservation Society as well, we're just kind of the administrative staff. We help them do some of the research, you know, talk to certain folks whatever. And so to the question that you had, like, you know, is their research behind this? You know, the FWP's got some really good research on their website. You know, happy to send you some of the stuff that we've been looking at, but it's you know, it's really an issue of what kind of quality of hunt do people want rather, you know, because opportunity is awesome, and we've got you know, six to eight months of opportunity to take guns for a walk. But when you start to look at the overall harvest rate and how many hundred days it takes to get there, like, you start to see where some of the imbalance comes in, especially when you start looking at like how elk hunting interacts with meal deer hunting, and so it's you know, like to Chris's point about wanting to see better meal deer populations increase the hunt quality and the success quality. You know, like we had to look at everything, and so I think these guys have done a really good job, you know, like figuring out the interplay between elk hunting and deer hunting and trying to bring something to the forefront that really kind of shows the the concerns and the desires of the three major stakeholders when it comes to deer and elk management, which are outfitters, hunters, and landowners. And so that's just kind of you know, building off of what Christmas saying. 00:09:16 Speaker 2: Thank you for that, and uh, you know, nationally, Mule deer are threatened in several different ways. We have encroaching chronic wasting disease, we have encroaching development. Mule deier typically aren't like white tails, where they're highly adaptable and they love like that that fringe environment. These deer are more open landscape, native habitat, native forage based species. And we're also seeing fragmentation in regards to migration corridors, which depending on your area, can be very very long, like we like to highlight in the Wyoming Migration Initiative of hundreds of miles, or they can be short. Be they long or be they short. Putting a housing development or any sort of obstacle in that path costs those deer calories and time as they're moving on the range between winter range and summer range. So we are seeing some declines in mealier population across the across North America because of those things. So adapting regulations and seasons, we could say proactively isn't necessarily something I'm opposed to. But for me, when I hear like, well, I'm not seeing the success that I would like, I have to take that with a grain of salt, right, because I don't know how really anybody else hunts. But you can jump to some conclusions as far as like well, how much effort are you putting down, which is where that data has got to come into play. And what is like the big sets of demands Chris and Ban in your proposal, like what would it do? What are the major changes? How would it alter our hunting opportunities here in the state of Montana for mule deer. 00:11:42 Speaker 3: So the goal when I started was to move meal deer season. 00:11:46 Speaker 5: Out of November, which is the rep Yeah, I. 00:11:50 Speaker 1: Mean the only thing I could really feel comfortable hunting them with is about a wrist rocket. Some of the deer it is so dumb you get out throw rocks at them. Done that before, like get away from the road and driving back to camp. 00:12:03 Speaker 3: Like somebody's gonna shoot you. You should go run and hide, you know. 00:12:06 Speaker 1: It's it's not fair to hunt them when they're that vulnerable. And that's the like all of the shifts that are in this is because of how long and liberal our seasons are and to try and still keep everything as long as we could and allow opportunity without having things go to a draw tack. 00:12:25 Speaker 2: And and are we seeing kind of your classic bookended harvest reports. So we're seeing a lot of deer taken in that first week of the season and a lot of deer taken in that last week of the season. 00:12:43 Speaker 4: I think for yeah, I think for rifle, that's that's pretty true. You know, archery, you know, Chris is the archer in the group, you know, and so's another guy, just not not necessarily me, but you know, archery guys are mostly you know, they're primarily interested in the elk and can be an afterthought, you know, chasing chasing muldeer in velvet on summer range is actually kind of a cool hunt. But but yeah, you know, like there's the opportunity to kind of put a little bit of a pressure relief valve on mule deer by moving that hunt out of the rut when they're the most vulnerable. But you're absolutely right, cal like that the majority of the harvest comes in. And if you look at the twenty twenty three f WP Hunter survey on mule deer, like, there are some very clear things that citizens in Montana want to be able to do, and number one and number two are hunt mule deer every year and not really worried about the quality of the antlers, and I think there's I think there's something really kind of cool about that, right, Like it's it's not this you know, race to have the biggest rack. It's not a race for you know, your social media credibility or anything like that. It's just the fact that people want to go hunt mule deer. Like one of my favorite hunting photographs is my grandmother in a pleated skirt on a forty nine nash with the quintessential forky Montana mule deer hung over the fender. And like, there's there's something really egalitarian and wonderful about the fact that everybody. 00:14:25 Speaker 5: Gets to hunt. 00:14:27 Speaker 4: And so that was the That was one of the big things that I think these guys are really interested in preserving, is you know, under this proposal, you would still have four weeks of mule deer hunting with a rifle. You'd still have, you know, five weeks of archery hunting, and then if you draw one of those limited entry units, you get a rut hunt mule deer. Because the proposal is structured in a way that it would not make that change because you're already limiting the hunter pressure and so when you you look at all of that stuff with mule deer, the one thing that people really you know, the third thing that people really say they really love is the family aspect of that Thanksgiving hunt. And you know, the reality is by that time of the year, a lot of people are hunting down much lower than they would have. Animals are down lower, access to whitetail is a lot easier, and so you know, wanting to be able to preserve some of that rut hunt, which Montanas really do like, and put it on a species that is, you know, biologically in a better place, because you're absolutely right, multier are suffering range wide, and it's primarily a habitat issue, but CWD and you know, a host of other issues come into play. And so while the proposal doesn't necessarily deal with habitat restoration, maintenance or conservation, like I think they do recognize those are super important things that have to happen in conjunction. And so when you when you think about that from the legislative side, there's a lot of cool things you can do relative to habitat Montana. You know, any of the funding programs that Montana has to get money on the ground and work with groups like MDF or you know, any other organization that does habitat restoration and improvement projects. 00:16:19 Speaker 5: So there's it's just like this huge swirling thing. But when it all comes down to, at least in this proposal is the bite of the apple. 00:16:29 Speaker 4: These guys wanted was to go after the season setting stuff because they felt like they could they could really have an impact given the way this commission has been trending on the issue. 00:16:40 Speaker 2: By and large, people do like to hunt, but they also like to have a reasonable level of success, and that is has a huge asterisk on it. Right. So I was just talking to an old Idaho game orton on the phone right before I recall it, and he was talking about whileye you know, catching walleye and and they're having success, probably it would be a very successful day for a lot of other walleye anglers. But they're very good walleye anglers, So they've been frustrated the last couple of days despite having days that other walleye anglers would probably call very successful. When we talk about this rut hunt, that's where a ton of folks Chris, like you mentioned, they are picking up those you know, a year and a half to two and a half year old deer. They're thinking about big antlers, but they're very happy with whatever. You know, poor buck thinking nothing about ladies wanders across their path. So do you see a lot of pushback from folks just based off of that? Like that is my easy deer. See, that's why I go out in November. It's not just the big bucks. 00:18:05 Speaker 1: To me, this thing seemed like we've got one of three reactions from anybody that's seen it. They either absolutely love it. We get the this is great butt, or you guys are out of your mind, and the this is great butt is usually where those guys land where they're like, well, if we could do a little of this and leave it so I still get my brut hunt, that would be awesome. It's it's basically the way we put it together is everybody makes a sacrifice to be able to move this to help the deer. 00:18:40 Speaker 2: And and how widely distributed is this plan? Like where can people find it? Is it? Is it publicly available? 00:18:48 Speaker 1: So far, we've had one news article do a story on us or the gazette here and Billings ran a story which Ben might be able to quote. 00:18:57 Speaker 3: Us they ran through more than just billings with that. 00:19:00 Speaker 5: The Lee Enterprises. 00:19:01 Speaker 4: But we we don't have it hosted online yet. I'm I'm still working on that. I'm just way behind or usual. Once we do, that'll be you know, we'll we'll shoot you the link to it. But right now, you know, anybody that wants to see it, they can shoot me an email, you know, Ben lamb one at gmail dot com and I'll gladly ship them the latest version of it. But you know, for right now where you know, it's gone to a variety of the nonprofit organizations that work in this space. Landowner groups have it, outfitters have it, hunting organizations have it. Uh, it has been sent to the agency. They you know, they're very cautious and they're not talking about it because it's not you know, something that's you know, coming up within the next while. And that goes back to your early question about the process and how long it's taking. You like, the vast majority of stuff in here is geared for the twenty five twenty six season setting process, which will happen in I'm sorry, the twenty six twenty seven season process, and that happens at the end of twenty twenty five. So yeah, there's there's a lot of conversations ongoing, you know, talking with various landowner groups, sunning organizations. 00:20:23 Speaker 5: You know. 00:20:24 Speaker 4: I yeah, I think Chris nailed it with the kind of responses that we get. There's there's support and there's opposition, and there's a lot of interest, and it's you know, it's not just one subset that likes it or hates it. It's been pretty mixed, which is really interesting to see. You know, like people are honestly thinking about stuff, and it's it's kind of cool. 00:20:50 Speaker 2: I imagine there's there's there's gonna be plenty of folks who are like, I want to keep this runt hunt until it goes completely bad. 00:21:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, right, Like that's just that's human nature to not want the change, and especially you know like Montana, where where the six and five week season structure is. I mean that's almost like church, right, I mean, our our entire lives are built around those weeks off. 00:21:18 Speaker 2: Well, that's things. You're not changing someone's hunt, you're changing somebody's Thanksgiving. Yeah in Montana, right, Like, that's that's part of the season for everybody who works on a ranch. Don't worry about hunting until we get our couple of days off. Right at Thanksgiving, family comes in, we get to go hunt, and that's really their season. 00:21:47 Speaker 1: Well what happens in a few years if we don't do anything and then everything goes to a draw tag and now these guys just can't hunt at all. Thanksgiving they're still sitting around the TV because they didn't draw tags. At least this way, we're still getting an opportunity to hunt. 00:22:04 Speaker 4: And it's I mean, you know, you've still got the white tail rut hunt going on during that time, and elk are still open, and so I don't you know, I think I think it does change. It certainly changes the way that people hunt. And that's it's a big thing to give up. It's a big thing to ask people to consider changing. And you know, the truth is meal deer at the bottom of a ten year cycle. They need a little bit of a break and this is a way to do that. And the one thing, like you know, you look at every other state, like regulations, hunting season structure changes a lot from year to year. Wyoming is a great example. You know, Montana has taken a different approach to where you're looking at you know, the calculus on on the end of the proposal is are the current season structures giving us number one, the kind of quality of hunt that people are looking for? And number two, does it have the management outcomes the agency is looking for? And I think from that aspect, I think, you know, six and five may not be doing exactly what we think it should be, especially when you throw an elk overlay on top of that and you start to see problematic concentrations of elk on private land. You know, we've had landowners tell us that they get elk on their property the first day of archery season because those elk are now conditioned through that repeated six and five pattern to head to sanctuary. And so, you know, and that's why elk are a part of this, is if we want to try and increase hunter's success, because right now hunter success on public land for Montana elk hunters is twenty percent. That's it's about where Colorado is, and Colorado's you know, already looking at doing a big curtailment, especially on the non resident elk side. 00:24:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that passed, didn't it. 00:24:02 Speaker 4: I think you're right, Yeah, I think it did. I think that was what earlier this week or late last week. So you know, I think other states are starting to see a pressure problem, and that's what the proposals really trying to deal with is how do we how do we spread that hunter pressure out to a point where elks start to select public land more during the regular seasons. We're not just you know, throwing pressure at elk from August fifteenth to February fifteenth, because it's just it's just compounding that concentration issue in some areas, some areas shoulder seasons, you know, they're having the intended effect, and in like Region two, some of them are going away because they've worked. But you know the fact that we're now what almost ten years deep into shoulder seasons, which are a temporary effex and we're still plowing forward with them. You know that that means we're still not getting the kind of harvest during the regular season where we used to get that level of harvest. To you know, give landowners a break from constant hunter pressure, to give hunters a better experience in the field where they actually get to bring something home more than two out of every ten times, and you know, you start to kind of bring those stakeholders together to figure out a problem where you know, if it's problematic concentration. You know, the hunting community has had solutions to this for decades, but they don't get implemented because they don't work on the rancher end. But now suddenly ranchers, outfitters and hunters working together, ranchers are able to you know, it's a peer group. It's just like we go talk to other hunters about ethical issues. Landowners get to go talk to other hunters or to other landowners about Hey, look, you know we're trying to do this thing. We're trying to get these people in here. Can you guys help? Can you do X, Y and Z like it? You know, it starts to build that broader community when these guys sit down and talk to each other. And I think we're starting to see that too. You know, the outfitter guys going around to brandings this year have all, you know, reported back a lot of positive thought from landowners who you know, allow public hunting, whether they're in block management or it's you know, friends and family or whatever. You know, they're all saying the same thing as hunting pressures too much. We got too many olt concentrating. We got to figure out a different way. And so when when you take that global view, that fifty thousand foot view of like the hunting season structure and for the three species in that timeframe, what is you know, what does that timeframe look like from the hunter perspective, outfitter perspective, landowner perspective, and then from the mule deer perspective At the central piece of it, I think this proposal really kind of works as that catch all, not saying it's you know one. 00:27:02 Speaker 5: But yeah, that's just kind of the reasoning behind how. 00:27:06 Speaker 4: It kind of blew up from let's, you know, let's save some mulder bucks to what it is now. It's just the more you start pulling threads, the more of that sweater starts unraveling, unless it's a first light sweater because they're made too well for that. 00:27:22 Speaker 2: They're all thank you, Ben, thank you BN. Well, you know it's not a traditional knit. That's you know, it's not gonna unravel anyway. So this proposal has been put together with a diverse group of stakeholders that's trying to represent the stage as a whole, which is very difficult to do. Everybody knows that the object is to give mule deer a break, ideally at a time when they need it most habitat stuff aside. Like you said, they're at the bottom of a ten year cycle. And we just like we would with like predator management, right there's cyclical, we would come in and manage a predator population. The predators in this case would be hunter pressure, which basically when these deer the most vulnerable to rut, we're going to take the general hunting pressure off. That pressure would still exist in our special management units. The proposal as it's written right now, has been circulated to conservation groups Montana Fish Wildlife and parks. And then where does it go from here? Does it go to a general public It's available on a website, sign up here, we need signatures on a petition, or does it just get formally submitted with those conservation groups as signees to Montana Fish Wildlife in parts? How does how does the process work? From here? 00:29:04 Speaker 5: Yeah? 00:29:04 Speaker 4: So so the process is pretty loosey goosey, quite frankly. We're going through the feedback that we receive from individuals and from the various organizations. We are going to incorporate that into a new draft that'll be out in a couple of weeks, and that draft will have a bibliography as well as a compendium of the comments that we've received. We'll have that on a web page, a landing page for it that will get pulled together once I learn how to do that. But you know, if if I learned how to set up a fish finder with site imaging, I figure I can set up a web page pretty quickly, So you know, like that's kind of the next thing. And then there's there's some legislative components to this that we're going to be talking with some legislators about, We're talking with the agency about them. Some of them are going to be a little controversial, some of them. I you know, I think we may have a pretty good shot of getting them through, and so I think, you know, the next big step is the legislature, which is suddenly six months out, and then you know, AT will continue to talk with the agency, talk with NGOs everybody else. But you know, I think everybody in the group does not feel like this proposal is in a final form. They want feedback, they want to see what other people are thinking. You know, huge kudos to the folks who have stepped up to do that, and you know, like the you know, like anything, I think people feel like they're kind of screaming into the wilderness until they see their name in print on a document that says, hey, we heard you. But you know, I think that I think people have really responded well to the call for comments, and ninety to ninety nine percent have been pretty substantive in good comments. 00:31:09 Speaker 3: I think it probably be worth mentioning too. 00:31:12 Speaker 1: We haven't had any organizations yet come out and like full on thumbs up, this is phenomenal. We're backing you guys, but we've got we're being looked at. 00:31:23 Speaker 3: Everybody's just kind of got an eye on this right now. It seems like. 00:31:26 Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's it is really early days. 00:31:29 Speaker 2: And are you just to clarify, are you looking for legislative support or does this actually need this season setting regulation change? Does this need to go through a legislative approval process? 00:31:48 Speaker 4: So the only thing that really needs legislative approval within the proposal itself for the change in season structure would be to make a very small modification to the Muzzleloader Statute to eliminate the prescription of when the agency should hold it. Because it makes the agency hold a season in a very specific timeframe. You know, not that anybody thinks that the muzzleloader hunt needs to go away or that it isn't a great opportunity. 00:32:20 Speaker 5: It's just we. 00:32:22 Speaker 4: Want the agency and the Commission to have the flexibility to put that season where it's not going to cause irreparable harm. You know, like there's a lot of concern about, you know, over snow travel with snowmobiles, going after mature bowls in the back country type stuff when those closed for service roads open back up. You know, it's things like that. The other three pieces that are in the proposal that require legislative work. When you again, when you look at it, you know, en Mass, it all works together. But the other three pieces in there are remove the orphaned deer license over sell twenty fifteen f to BP was given the authority to resell the deer license that gets turned back in with the deer ELK combo, and so they could resell that as a new B eleven or the deer combo. And that's that's where you see the biggest growth in non resident opportunity in Montana. And it's almost doubled that sixty six hundred. It's technically not a new license, but up until twenty fifteen you turned it in, it didn't get reissued, so it's a it's a reissuing. The issue with that is we have to figure out what the pay for is and you know, we think there's about a four to five million dollar loss and that's that's really important conservation funding that can't be lost. So you know, there has to be a pay for it there. You know, traditionally that's been you know, countered with resident license fee increases. Those are really difficult to do, but you know, that's one of the pieces that's in there, and that would cut about I think about sixty five to seventy five hundred non resident deer hunters out. But it is a significant hit to the budget. So we've got to be careful with that. And then the other two pieces, you know, improve retention for f WP biologists and wardens. I think that gets to the biological aspect. You know, Montana is not really that much different than other states. You know, it's tough to recruit people into those government positions, especially if they're not the highest paid positions regionally, and so f WP's pay scale is on the low side for the wharden and biologist, and so the guys wanted to take a look to see what we could do to you know, help improve that situation. You know. Plus, if you look at you know how some other agencies are doing housing as. 00:35:05 Speaker 5: Well as other states. 00:35:07 Speaker 4: You know, like Wyoming offers housing to wardens and bios who live in expensive areas. You know, Montana could do this again. They used to do something like this. I think a few places there's like I think the Sheridan FWP office is the biologists house. So, you know, try and figure out some incentives for staff to you know, keep good people and bring in replacements. As you know, folks retire out and we start to lose a lot of that institutional knowledge. 00:35:40 Speaker 2: Huge deal here in the Gallatin County, I know, I know a lot of people are excited to get the job until they realize they have to live in their truck in order to serve the people of Montana because of the cost of living in Gallatin Valleys. 00:35:55 Speaker 5: Insane. 00:35:56 Speaker 4: Yeah, we tell our wardens here's a yeah, here's the three eight and a forty go police aside a place the size of Rhode Island. And by the way, you don't have backup or affordable housing. It makes it tough, right, It's you know, we've I've had biologists tell me, like every week I look at other states and you know, then they all say the same thing. But then I saw the sunrise and I think, I just can't leave. But those you know, those folks do so much and they really deserve an honest wage. And so that's that's one of the things that we're interested in. And then the last is mandatory reporting. You know, the thought here is we need some better data. The phone surveys have been good, but they've probably outlived their usefulness, especially in a digital age when you know, not everybody's picking up. 00:36:53 Speaker 5: The landline anymore. 00:36:57 Speaker 4: So, you know, the mandatory reporting thing, we still go back and forth with a lot of people on who don't feel like it's needed. But I think the vast majority of you know, I know, everybody on that's worked on the proposal feels like it's a necessary thing. 00:37:12 Speaker 5: I think with you know, with the new website, with. 00:37:14 Speaker 4: The new app, with all of that, the technology is probably there to figure out a way to do. 00:37:19 Speaker 5: It and give the agency the tools they need to enact it. Yeah. 00:37:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, I like more, better, more data. Yeah, as we're seeing in a lot of other states that lack of data can be weaponized to eliminate seasons. Yeah, so why not get it while we can while it's easy. So I like that. Well, guys, where should folks go to find more information if they want to be more informed and eventually way in on season setting regulation change here in the state of Montana. 00:37:57 Speaker 4: For right now, shoot me an email. Will We'll have the landing page up in the next week or two. I will shoot that information to you. It's just not done yet, so. 00:38:11 Speaker 2: And give me give us your email one more time. 00:38:13 Speaker 4: Be sure it's Ben LAMB one B E N L A M B the numeral one at gmail dot com. 00:38:26 Speaker 2: Awesome, Awesome, And I think this is interesting for all of our listeners that are not outside of the state of Montana, or are that are outside of the state of Montana, because I didn't hear a whole lot in here. That's villainizing non residents. But if you like spending money in the state of Montana, you need to pay attention here because you got skin in the game, and everybody within the state of Montana. Your ears should be perked up on this one. If you don't get informed and you don't weigh in, it's still gonna affect you. Maybe not this proposal, but the next one. So uh right in to a s k c A L. That's Askcal at themeeater dot com. Give me all the questions you got on this and we can always circle back with Chris and Ben at a later date and see if there's been any changes to the proposal and address those questions. So, guys, anything else you want to say before signing off here. 00:39:28 Speaker 5: Not for me. 00:39:28 Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having us on, and congratulations on your recent elevation to the b h A board. 00:39:35 Speaker 5: That's awesome. 00:39:36 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, everybody likes a good volunteer, right, that's right. Yeah, I appreciate that. 00:39:42 Speaker 3: I appreciate it. 00:39:42 Speaker 5: Cal. There's no mule like a free. 00:39:45 Speaker 2: Mule, that's right. That's right. Is old Randy Newburgh likes to say, Uh, you don't don't give a good mule a break, You pack them heavier, right, So, guys, thank you so much for for weighing in on this mule. Deer regulations or looking out for herd health is not your day job, but you're spending your own personal time to do it, and I appreciate where your concerns you're at, So thank you so much. That's all I got for you this week. Thank you so much for listening and right in ask c A L. That's askal at the meetmeater dot com. Let us know what's going on in your neck of the woods. We appreciate it.