00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't protect anything. First thing I want to talk about, honest is a thought of us day because I was on the airplane. There's a dude next to me who wants a beer, but he only wants to beer. Like it's provisional on what beer they have. Okay, sounds like me, yeah, but what is the world coming to. It's like like people like I want a beer, okay, that you decide you want to beer, and it's it's like if you decide you want to beer, it's like you decide you want to beer absent what beer is available, and then you would hone in on now that I'm now that I've just side that I want this beer, which I'm going to have. I want to know what ones I can choose from. But this guy was like, I don't know if I really want a beer. It depends on what beers I can get. And your dead is like driving around somewhere and you're like, man, I love to have a cup of coffee. I'm like, there's a Conico right there, and you're like, yeah, you know, gass Asian coffee. Let's look for a Starbucks. Let's go so far. You can't because he's on an airplane. He can't go look elsewhere. It would be like knee waking up in the morning in a remote area with one gas station and me saying, my god, do I want a cup of coffee? And you're saying the only coffee you could possibly have is from Bob's gas station. To me say like, never mind, I don't want a coffee no way. It's like the world. It's like something's got to give with this beer situation. Yeah. See, for me, it really watered down a cup of coffee anymore. There's certain breakfast joints I don't go to because I got really watered down coffee. So I would not have a cup of coffee rather than not have one at all. Yeah, I don't, Okay, come on, please in your camp. Yeah no. The other day, in fact, we were, um, we're out in a small town in Montana. We're out specifically for bear hunting, and um, I was like, I want a cup of coffee. The hotel we stayed at, awful Coffee, went to another place awful Coffee. I went to three places awful coffee. Didn't drink any of it, about three cups. I'm not gonna touch it. Yep. And the first thing I said on the third place, I said, can you make me a good cup of coffee? He's like yeah, he goes back there pours a huge, tall cup of coffee that tastes like cardboard walked out. Can't do it. I'm in that camp. So if you're in a restaurant and you're like, man, a beard sound good for dinner with dinner and then they're like, yeah, you take a look at the menu. If they're like and if all they have is I don't know your you know, beard choices. But let's just say all they have like the big giant macro bruise and would you say, I'll pass? And how cocktail glass of wine? I'll pass because they made too many of those. They made too big of a container of that beer. No, it's the flavor, bro it's carl No, nothing, it's it's so ridiculous, man, I don't know. I guess there's times where, you know, for example, I'm thinking about working outside on a real hot day the end of the day, all right, so I'm thinking, you know, like biling. Hey, al right, you're out throwing bails and you're sweaty and dirty and you got you got hay and like every crevice of your body and your clothing and like, man, a brew at the end of this day would be like heaven, you know, I could go for one. Uh, in that circumstance, you pull out like I'm not going to name brands, but any brand my least favorite beer, if it's cold and you're like, here you go, I'm gonna I'm gonna be very grateful for that. On the flip side, there are times where it's like I could go for a beer if there's the right beer, the right beer, and if it's not there, I'm I'm good without. So I don't have a strong opinion. I think it's more contextual, and I'd say on the airplane, you're kind of a captive audience, and depending on what kind of day you've had, maybe you're in Camp A or maybe you're in Camp BE. That is why I was reserving my contribution here. Okay, On a somewhat related note, I have multiple times, I have multiple times said that I wanted that a great name for a bar would be the Wet spot. Turns out that a lot of guys rolled in, and there are already multiple wet spots around the country. There's a wet spot bar at mile marker on the Highway forty nine and North Dakota, and there's a wet spot Barron, Texas. So I know what the moral of that story is. You might go check him out. You might have to go check him out. And just because you have a good idea and you think it was yours, oftentimes it's not. Um pete munich are you are? You? Can you guys talk about your new thing you're making you guess still be all like a squirrelly about it? No, we can talk about a couple of things, talking about tent. Yeah, okay, so now you can say that because for a long time you've been like like tippy toey No, not a tent. Oh, there's there's other things tippy toe about now, but you've tiptoed. You've like now tippy toe about but you've tiptoed. You're not tiptoey about how you guys are gonna make a new tent. Correct tent is available for preorder right now and there's shipping in a month. There on the way, so genuine stone glacier tent. Tell me, um, tell me what's awesome about? When were you last on with us A long time ago? No, no, not too long a year ago with Roscoe, because then you guys will be in tiptoey. You were like, let's just say it might be a thing to put in a backpack. There's a lot of things on the drawing table right now that go in a backpack and out of a backpack. Do you have to be tiptoey or not? Um about a couple of things. Yeah, we're not. We're there's a couple of irons in the fire, some things on the drawing board that we're not publicly talking about yet. But the tent is uh is ready to go. What's awesome about the tent? Strength to weight ratio, super lightweight tent and super strong um generously sized two man four season tent. I'm pretty sure everybody in this room spent a lot of time in a tent and being in a small one not too much fun. So it's a it's a generously sized genuine two man tent. Dual vestibules, big vestibules. Four pounds four rounds is minimum trail weight? Was it way like all in four pounds? Tell bounces sub five pound four season tent and uh when it's all scrunched up like how big? Is it pretty typical looking tent stuff? Sack mm hmmm. I don't know. It's acting like he's hold a loaf of bread right now. Yeah, big loaf of bread. But there's only one and if I was you guys, i'd give one to me. Yeah you got you got one comment? Okay? Um, but people can go on and order it right now. Do you feel that when you look at you, like, wow, it's different than most tense Yeah. There's a couple of things I really like about it. Um, I'm six ft two. Most people are home with their tall guys too, so I do genuinely like the size of the tent um. There's a lot of canopy space. When you sit up in it, You're not crowded by nylon. There's a bit of space around your head that helps with condensation and moisture. It's a light color nylon. I spent a lot of time in Hilliberg tense. Hilliberg's are notoriously dark green nylon, which can create a bit of like a dark cave vibe on day seven of a bit of a terrarium inside area like a hothouse. Yep. So we have white and gray nylons which a lot of natural light comes through. Stuff I didn't think about before I was using this tent, but it actually makes a really big difference. Um as far as just can't mark. That's a good point that I never thought of. Is I thought of, like how much the dark ones can just like you're going there in the middle of the day to grab something, You're like, you know, because like what what happens inside there? But I never thought about light transmission. Yeah, you spend a lot of time in a tent on some of these hunts, and it's important be comfortable in there. So yeah, man, a length is key for longer people because when you get in there and you sleep bag is touching the end of that tent, may you wake up with wet cold, your feet are wet, and your hat's wet. Right, So it's got a nice garage on it. What do you mean vestibule, Yeah, super big vestibules, And I love them because when your backpack hunting and you have a rifle backpack boots, vestibules are super important, and having a generously sized one that all of your stuff can comfortably fit in is really nice to have and not where you craming in there and the fabrics laying on it all correct usual last year on your sheep hunt. Yeah, I've been using it for about a year now. Yep, put a lot of miles on it. These ten is pretty pricey. I'm guessing five, don't. They're cheaper than we were not allowed to use that word. It's less expensive than Pete went off the competition. Pete went off the went wild there And I'm not allowed to use a couple of adjectives. It's the hue glacier that's one of them. That's a good one not to use. Um, you were just out bear hunting with the buddy years can can? I can I talk? I'm not gonna give away your spot, but we used to do endless amounts of that. Is it fair to say? You guys are out hike and closed logging roads? Correct? And when they unclosed logging roads, we just walk mild I mean miles of those things. But it works right because when they stabilize those picture if you will in your mind's eye, listener a logging road. It's like a two track through the woods, through the mountains and where it switched backs up hills. Uh, you have an erosion issue, can have an erosion issue along some of these things. And so they grade out, they grade out the banks, and they go to stabilize the banks with certain types of vegetation. And one of the types of vegetation that they stabilize a lot of the banks with as a grass called smooth brown grass. And when that comes up in the spring, it's just like what the doctor ordered for bears. They love it. You find their ships and it's just as like greasy. It's like black grease. Picture taking a ball of grass and then dipping it in the thickest, nastiest black grease. And those are the droppings you find because when they come out of hibernation or eating all that grass to sort of get their digestive system cleared out. Yeah, I'm telling Carlos like a something he doesn't lovest, right, Yeah, you are, you are. And they love that smooth brown brass. Yeah. And we've talked, you know, about the adaptability of their diet, how they have this kind of menu that shifts over the course of the year, and that initial boost in productivity that comes with the spring is something not unique to American black bears either. Um, the work I did with Asiatic black bears the same kind of thing. They get that early flush of really nutrient rich spring forage in the form of vegge. And for people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about bears or around bears, you know, you you kind of picture the classic like bear on the stream bank eating a fish or something like that, But you don't envision a bear that's almost in like col mode, just grazing, just sitting there like like a college, just taking mouthful after mouthful of that grass. People have ideas of bears, Like the idea that people have of bears is like something usually that happens to the bear now and then like yes, now and then that bear catches the salmon. Well, that bear does a lot of it's walking in the woods eating vegetation. Uh So the bear you got, like I would say, over the years, we had a walking clothes which were called walking closers, probably a ratio of I bet we walked a hundred miles of closers per bear that we got. Though you would know the spots of the bears used oftentimes to be like they're coming down because they're coming out of the snow and they're coming down drainages. So you'd find concentrations of like they're following drainages down where those drainages would have to be like a culvert going over the road, and the would be like a bunch of stabilized areas, and then you find grass patch and then you'd find droppings on one of those in the next year that be like droppings there, And there's like certain spots they go. How many miles did you guys walk to find one bear? About half of one? Really? Yeah, we shot this is right away. Yeah, we got pretty lucky that night. We hunted. I hunting bears pretty much every day in bear season, and we we knew where we were going. We were going to a good spot. And uh we started our hike down the closed road and I was telling you earlier that there were morals growing in the road and that was a good indicator that no one had been out. Yeah, it's really good spot. Put it in the show notes. He was picked a couple of Morrel's walking out throad like nobody's been up here. That's a good sign. And then the cats started. Oh so you knew there. It was just blanketed on the I mean you couldn't. You couldn't walk thirty yards without finding a pile of bear scat. And so you just have this feeling like, well, there, there are there here, They're definitely there's definitely a bear or more within a short distance of us. And yeah, I just came around one of the first turns in the road. Yeah, we made an eventually made like a conscious decision to stop hunting closers two boring. I just felt like we weren't like really learning anything, weren't really learning anything, and then started hunting avalanche slides and other kind of stuff. Yeah, I would say that's my preferred method as well, to hunt them in the mountains and avalanche slides and play the spot in stock game. Did you notice how we'll move on from that for a minute. You know what I've never asked you about, Michelle. I just noticed, can I ask you about what's on your wrist? Like take a left turns out that means no, not well kind of symbolically in a way, Um, it's a broken arrow, it's a brand of a ranch. I was really young when I did this. It's a brand of a ranch that kind of signified my transition out of northern California. I left my life and my career there and was like, I want to go Berienced Wyoming, So moved to Wyoming. Side Unseen worked at this ranch, had an amazing Yeah it's um. That was their original brand from nineteen o two. It was the second oldest dude ranch in the country, and it was just kind of a big life shift moment. And you know, why didn't you brand the brand right? Maybe? Um? Yeah, no real answer for that one, but yeah, it's it's a little misperceived and left turn, but kind of symbolic right, super left, super right wing and the sharp left. Did you notice how I used the word squirrely earlier? I did? Yeah, I missus. The guy actually wrote in to clarify a point about he had a couple of points who wanted to clarify. Um. Two are just observations that you can feel free to comment on. One is that he says, I'm missing an important distinction between squirrely and western. Mean, when someone says things got pretty western or thing he's got squirrely. Okay, I was arguing that there's sort of one and the same. He's saying absolutely not. He says Western is distinct and that it implies a sense of physical danger or even violence, and squirrely lacks this. Says, squirrely simply means movements or actions that are erratic or without obvious direction. Western is more sinister. For example, the arrow has shot squirrel, he's using in the sentence, the arrow has shot squirrelly ever since Johanna has stepped on it. Versus things at the Dirty Shame Saloon got a little Western when Cal made a pass at that logger's girlfriend. She says, as a writer, you should know that there is a nuance here that you need to be aware of. I think you hit the nail on the head. I think the the element of the chance of physical danger is what makes things western. If I was in a bar and the next I said, man, things got a little squirrel in that bar, you wouldn't think that. I'm no, it doesn't really doesn't work. It doesn't mean that someone got no fight broke out, No, yeah, just got squirrely. Another point he has is he thinks, oh you know what I forgot? This has ben long you know, Ben Long, you know um. Ben Long also says he thinks that the use of the phrase grand slam beyond baseball came from a guy like grand slam and hunting stuff like the turkey Grand slam, sheep sheep grand slam. Um was really the only too like really recognized, no, really recognized. But it's a dear one. Yeah, I want to start a squirrel grand slam. I want to talk about the world the words squirrely, just real quick here because your way back on that. Just go ahead there with me. But when you're meandering through a nice grow oaks, you might be like, man, looks looking pretty Yeah, if someone says that to me, I don't think that things that someone's gonna come up and sucker punched me in the side of the face. I think that, uh yeah, just make it sure we're covering the applications of these could be down in the area and be like, it looks very western down here, meaning that it evokes the West, so grand sol Fritz of the Boone and Crockett Club used grant that he thinks the earliest used to grand slam for hunting. Boone and Crocket Club. He used to describe the fort to described to killing the four varieties of North American wild sheep recognized by BNC records, but which are doll sheep, stone sheep, rocky, mountain, bighorn, desert bighorn um. It's said that he later regretted coining the phrase, and Ben Long editorializes here and he says, I think that if he were alive today, he would regret it even more. I don't know about that, because like as a proud turkey slam holder, I can never remember what kind of slam I had, slam holder, why do you think he would regret he doesn't. I don't know. I don't know why Ben. I don't know why Ben Long fields that Grand sol Fritz would regret it today. He must be referring to why he regretted in the first place, because I think that he feels that we guess on my part would be a guess would be that it would be like it's like the golf if occation of hunting. Mm hmm. There's a strong argument to be made that a lot of conservation dollars are raised for wild cheap conservation because this grand slam exists and it's something obtainable that these affluent guys can go after Without the Grand Slam, I don't think there would be as much interest in collecting all four of these species and subsequently raising all this money for conservation. Yeah, there's some dinky heart of my brain that knowing that, um you know, uh, knowing that were I to go to Guatemala or southern Yucatan Peninsula and go out in the jungle there and find an oscillated turkey, knowing that that would make me a World Slam turkey holder, like that that that idea of resting my head somewhere I was like and added benefit would be that I would become a I have no idea. I'm almost half joking, but I'm not. And I think that the squirrel Slam is interesting because I don't think people I think it would help promote the squirrel because I don't think people realize how many damn squirrels there are. Who would you include in this squirrel Slam. I'd put a pine squirrel in there. I'd put a gray squirrel in there, eastern and western with color phases. Yeah, you know what, I would put a black face, black face gray squirrel in their eastern Western gray squirrel black phase fox. Put the fox squirrel in there. You can't put the del marv a squirrel, right, Abert. I would put a it's in there, damn sure. True would be all the tree squirrels because it's not e s. It's not an e s, a listed species anymore. But it's far from being. It's far. It's it's recovered, beyond threatened. But it's it's not a there's not honible numbers of you know how you get a mountain goat slam shoot one. It's both grand superan world. Right. Um, he's got a question though, well, listening to the show, Oh it's cool. So he's listening to the show and cooking what he describes as a freezer fossil. There was some pronged warm meat that had been a bottom of this freezer for quite some time, maybe less than a decade, maybe not any tips for cooking freezer fossils. Is there a point which freezer fossils should be discarded? There's it's like my input on that. It's like that's something should really try to avoid having happened. Your brother would say no, my brother would eat it. I would eat it. I guess it somehow became unwrapped, and it became unwrapped, and slowly um just turned to like that white freezer burn, freezer burn, and it yeah, just you're kind of like you you're it's sort of becomes uh, it sort of becomes freeze driving over time. I've had six year old elk though that you when we served it, you couldn't tell. It's amazing. That's one of the reasons I kind of quit putting dates. I don't usually date it sucks, I was remember anyways, Like I kind of like know what it is and how it looked, and you know, just like the idiosyncrasies of the marker used and the animal. I just kind of have a sense. The reason like to put dates on it is not only my wife always seeing the dates, because if it's two thousand seventeen somethings two thousand fifteen, Like, why invite the scrutiny. There's no difference. She's not gonna know, but in never she's gonna look like, right, that seems odd. So I don't even put dates on that. And I don't need to hear about it or have anyone noticed about it because there's no difference anyway. So why like open it up to discussion. It's like a thing that happens in marriage. I think if you start doing those things like like, it just isn't worth my time explaining it, Like why even why even invite the question? There's nothing to hide, but why invite the scrutiny. I'm still gonna keep dating. Yeah, there's lots just like it in my head to know that last year's meets going out, new fresh meats coming in, yea. But I still do the same thing. But I do it. Here's the other things. I have two freezers, so when it's in my garage freezer, it's on standby, it's not in the run. If it's in the kitchen freezer, then everyone that knows everyone knows that that's what you're supposed to eat. Only I go down into the main freezer and I constantly move stuff into the running. So I'm sort of sequencing it anyway. But the minute I put dates on there, people are gonna go in there and they're gonna see dates and shy away from dates that they feel to be outdated. Good strategy, you follow me um quick news tidbit or if Carl has anything to say about this, you're talking Wyoming. Mhmm, chrisly Bears Wyoming. I was guessing that's where you're going because that's so fresh. Okay, No, what are you talking about? But we can talk about that. They voted on it, just they tags you're coming up. They're still doing the one female quota though, right, I've got the details. I can pull that up while you ask the other question. No, this isn't a question. This is just a news thing that that's interesting. So the Interior Department UM under Secretary Zinchie kind of making a cool move where they are opening up more than two forty eight thousand acres two hunting and fishing that were previously unavailable for hunting and fishing. So this has taken like thirty units of the National Wildlife Refuge System acreages in twenty two states are going to be expanded to allow hunting and fishing access. So it brings the number of refugees, the number of refuges open to public hunting to three seventy seven and the number of refugees available for public fishing to three and twelve, which is cool, increasing hunting and fishing opportunities in the refuge system. What's interesting about that, maybe it's just it's got to be a function of the opportunities available. But I was expecting the fishing opportunity to be higher than the hunting opportunity when you started going down that pack. When I was talking to my brother who's a federal who works at a federal land management agency, he was he that was the first thing he It was like, how could there be that are on the same wave and I and I thought, well, maybe just has to do with like availability kind of land. Yeah, especially in the dry West, you know, there's not a lot of availability. But again, you think of refuges, right, and maybe this is just a Midwestern bias. I think waterfowl. I associate the idea of a refuge being kind of a wet well. Their symbol is the Canada goose right on for the system, I thought, or what was the bird on a Michelle? What's the bird on a The National Wildlife Refuge was their icon. It's a Canada goose, right Yeah, sure that was a swan or something. It's one of it too. It's a long neck. It's a sweet logo. So I got a flat back last night. Hopefully it's either way that I think. Hopefully that's a Canada goose. Right, it's Canada. Um. What's cool about um the proposal? Right now? The status is folks can actually weigh in on it. Um. Well, what we actually have an article up on the mediator dot com period and folks can go to the link that we're linking out to you, put in the docket number and voice their public support. Sweet, and I'll just give you a couple of quick quick stats on this development in Wyoming. So if we've got it right, Idaho also plans to have a hunt, but it's for basically Idaho is having a symbolic thing where they're exercising their their exercising their management. Yes, in Montana, my understanding is kind of sitting back and waiting, knowing it's a contentious top. Yeah, I think that I think that they're reluctant to step into the reluctant to step into the into the fray, into the fray. Wyoming, on the other hand, can I real quick? So uh, I'm trying to think of how deep I want to go on this. At the time of European contact that there were you know, you had grizzly bears ranged from I don't know, like roughly the Meridian, maybe a little bit west hand from Meridian, so range from portions of the Great Plains all the way to the Pacific Coast. UH. They were from through habitat destruction, poisoning, um, unregulated slaughter, conflicts with sheep grazing, cattle grazing, every bad thing that could happen to a species. They were eliminated across the bulk of their range and existed only in a few wilderness strongholds in Wyoming, Montana. UM. They were when the Endangered Species Act came into play. When President Richard Nixon signed in the sign the Endangered Species Act. In the law UH, the grizzly bears listed in the lower forty eight the grizzly bears listed at as an endangered species. UM. Later manager wildlife managers kind of hit on this idea that we would instead of looking at the grizzly across the entirety of it of its historic range, we would identify distinct population segments and sort of manage bears according to these habitat pieces that could possibly hold bears. Because bears and humans are grizzly bear, particularly grizzly bears and humans come into conflict, and so there's a lot of areas where we're never gonna have them, like Golden Gate. Uh, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is grizzly bear country. It will not We will not be able to recover grizzlies in Golden Gate Park. We will not be able to recover grizzlies in downtown San Francisco. So we look at like where can we recover grizzlies? Where do we have populations? Now, we create these distinct population segments, and what we later realize, what later came to be, is that you could declare certain population segments as recovered and removed them from Endangered Species Act protection and then shift your focus on recovering other populations um that that still need assistance. So if anyone of the follows the news on grizzly bears, it wasn't too long ago. The Greater what's called the g y E or Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is a chunk of land the size of Indiana, UM that population segment of grizzly bears were delisted because they had reached recovery objectives. You know, twelve years ago or more years ago, they released they hit recovery objectives. So long time ago people look at what would it looked like to recover bears in this area, and we came up with ideas of how many, how many females, total numbers of bears, all kinds of things. We hit that point. So then the US Fish and Wildlife Service that was in charge of managing the bears are recommended that the bears be delisted and handed back to state management. And so now the states that have the states that are within the g I, which would be small portions of uh small portion of Idaho, Chunka, Montana, pretty big Chunka, Wyoming, now have the legal authority and legal right to manage the bears as a c fit. And they are going to are toying with the idea, some more than others, of allowing a very limited hunting opportunities for these bears, particularly with with kind of the focus of it being um focusing efforts on areas where you would be like reducing conflict between the bears and livestock, but still with still with the recovery objective of growing bear populations in other areas so that you do listen the greater also an ecosystem for instance, doesn't mean anything with to do with current management practices of bears, and like the Cabinet Act Northern Cascades, I don't know. So with all that said, Carl, yeah you cooled all that. I'm cool with all that. And I think, you know, this is one of those issues that is going to evoke strong emotions in the non hunting public. But it really is a glowing success story when you have that transition of the management of a listed species result in the removal of said species from protection under es A, and have that management returned to the state, and it's being driven by the scientific information that justifies the decision to delist. Um. Whether you're somebody who is a okay with having grizzly bears hunted or not, you have to acknowledge that there's a conservation success story to be told here. And also, I think a story that warrants some morning, you know, the fact that we had historically so much more robust populations in such a such a massive distribution spatially. You know, I spent a lot of time in New Mexico's where I live now. Historically a lot of my favorite places in New Mexico to hunt and fish were grizzly habitat and they are not there now. Um. Whether or not they'd ever return is an interesting thing to debate and philosophies about. But um per personally, I hope so yeah, I share that. You know, I've been spent a lot of time in the HeLa lately. I just had a great nine day family trip chasing turkeys down in the HeLa. And Um, I was reading this book Black Range Tales that covers a lot of history of the Southwest, and it wasn't that long ago. You're talking like the eighteen sixties eighteen seventies, and these miners and market hunters who were living in that country are bumping in. They call them silver tips. That was the terminology. You know. They had this um coloration kind of the silver tip guard heres um. And it was an animal. You know, the conflict was very real, and it's an animal that understandably you know, it's struck fear in the heart of these miners. But Um, I share your perception about something missing from the experience when you know that animal that historically existed on landscape is no longer there. Um. But I also acknowledge my attitude about you know, having my my wife and her friend um out turkey hunting together in that landscape with grizzlies, I might feel a little bit differently about it, you know, understand on their own. I understand those fears, and I think there's many people who would agree that we should recover the bears an all suitable habitat. The details most everyone I hang out with would say like, yeah, man, I agree we should recover grizzlies and all suitable habitat. And then the minute where things would start to fall apart, what I would say is like, okay, let's all define suitable habitat. So in my back well, you know, but but even uh. And this was like another surprise move, a surprise move. Uh. Interior Secretary Zincy came to Seattle and announced his support for recovering grizzly bears in the Northern Cascades, which was surprised to me, but not as surprising if probably was the cattle ranchers up there. I thought it was like, I'm all for it, man, um, so I'm I'm all There's like I have like a dual pronged approach in thinking about grizzlies. I'd like to see grizzies recovered in suitable habitat, and once the recovery objectives are met, I like to see them delisted in the hand of the state management and some people that can't get all these ideas in their heads at once. But I'm playing like I'm thinking about it in the terms of I'm thinking about it in terms of like the long game of where I think things should settle out. And to your point, this definition of suitable habitat, I think there's there's a really relevant nexus here with respect to the the upcoming hunts both in ho in Wyoming Um. Thinking about suitable habitat in the context of social acceptance and having the ability to target hunting pressure in places that are prone to conflict with the species, I think is one of those management tools that will pave the way towards social acceptance and having more places on the landscape where we can strike that balance between your kind of approach of this definition of ecological suitable habitat social suitable habitat. I think hunting has the potential to be a really critical ingredient in that mix and all of creating social acceptance because because for people who are living in these locations and whose lives are impacted by these things. They're experiencing it very differently than you are from say, Golden Gate Park totally. And you're talking about the opportunity to manage any very surgical, precise fashion. Right, It's not like you're gonna have a whole bunch of tags available and a bunch of people out on the land escape. You're gonna be able to issue tags and target hunting pressure in a way that is very focused in places that are prone to that kind of conflict. So I think there's you know, there's a real tension and a lot of these natural resources management issues um between what the public would like to see in the places where they're actually directly interacting with the animal versus what the public would like to see happen from AFAR and the ability for local managers to be able to make decisions that address the concerns of the local constituents who have to coexist with that species day in and day out. I think it's one of the critical elements of being able to talk about a broader recovery beyond where they currently are and where they currently are. So that being said, here a couple of details on the Wyoming hunt. Under the Wyoming proposal, you've got the potential for up to one female and ten male grizzlies killed this fall inside the states section of federally designated demographic monitoring area, so they'd have a cap at at one female, ten males, well, one female, everything ends, that's right, and and that's similar to other states where you have UM like in New Mexico, for example, most of the units have unlimited hunting opportunity up until the quotas met, and it's the hunter's responsibility to keep tabs on where we are with respect to the the total um cap and also the female cap. So if either of those are reached, boom the season closes. And then outside of that demographic monitoring area there's the potential for another twelve grizzlies to be taken, and those could be male or female. So they're being really careful, very very conservative hunt inside that designated portion and then beyond that, which again this would be the area where the bears are starting to expand out beyond kind of that core prime habitat, i e. The places where there's more likelihood for conflict with humans. Those places you've got more flexibility, so a similar number of bears twelve bears, but they could be male or female. So that's the plan in the season is set to start September one, and you know, again getting back to the different values that people have around wildlife. UM, I don't see it as being unreasonable for somebody who lives far far away from Montana two have some consternation about it hunt like this happening. No, it's not surprising to me. I think there's a there's a ton of perspectives on it that are all not surprising to me. Um. And I think that if you're like completely removed from it, you might look and just if you're completely removed from it and you just know the bear from looking at calendars and stuff and and and social media pictures and you don't you don't have like three hours to go take a look at like the history of this whole thing. Absolutely you're gonna it can be like what Yeah, And that's why I think that's why I think the biggest talking point here if if if people have an opportunity to communicate one thing to someone who will listen to him for ten seconds, it's that the reason these hunts are being opened up is a conservation success story. The species has rebounded, at least in this small portion of its historic range to the point that the states are able to manage it guided by sound population ecology, and they're going to be able to have a sustainable hunt that helps address some of these conflict concerns. But there's not anybody who works for these state agencies who's not passionate about the recovery of the species. I mean, you're not gonna find a commissioner for the Wyoming Department of Game and Fish who doesn't think it's cool that grizzly bears are delisted and recovered to the point that they can have a hunt, a sustainable hunt. So I personally have a lot of admiration for the professionals that work at these state game and phish agencies. And I know, based on all the personal friends that I have who work for these agencies, that they come at this work with a really strong conservation ethic and passion for the resource. Um. So I view this, this delisting and opportunity to hunt as um evidence of a really cool story that I hope we can replicate us we're on the landscape. Yeah, man, I've spent a ton of time around grizzlies, love being around them, have had mix ups with them, have never killed one. I'm not gonna apply from one of the tags, but applaud, applaud the work and effort that's gone into this, and applaud the path they're taken on it, and uh wishing the best of luck on it. And and I hope it goes well. I have concerns about how this might play out, but hopefully my concerns won't be found. And you pointed out an interesting thing, like and I think this thing people struggle with. It's like, but they're not recovered across the entirety of the range. Well, you know what I'm sorry with neither our elk. Elk are still absent from their historic range. But no one's running around saying like, hey man, we don't have uh, you know, a healthy herd of elk in Iowa. How in the world are you hunt them in Colorado? It's absurd. Yeah, elk used to exist across Like if you look at a map of the US, it was all elk country, excluding like the Florida, probably the Florida Peninsula, probably parts of Maine. Elk. We're everywhere. We've recovered some chunks, and we hunt elk in those chunks, and we're still simultaneously trying to work to put them back on the ground in all the places that they belong. And I'll point out that the people who are doing this are hunters. New Jersey cat ladies are not doing a ton of work to put elk back in Iowa. Right. Uh? What what kind of things you guys make a pete the tent? You can't. It's all the rest of it's all the rest of it's all secret. Huh. I suppose it matters when when the podcast is gonna be posted. Um, give a little hinty hint some No, we're gonna rush some technical performance pieces of gear that you put on your body to touch your skin or not. You know, it might touch your boots. It might it might touch your boots. It just might touch your boots. Does it cover your ankles bigger than a bread box? It's about a loaf of bread and it has to do with your ankles. That's uh, that's one of the irons in the fire. Okay, here's something someone wrote in UM. I like this guy right off the bat because he said he listened to seventy episodes of the podcast in a month's insane must do a lot of driving. Now. He takes great with a number of people who have come on the podcast, and I think what he's thinking about is Pat Durkin, are good? Are our good friend? The lovely Pat Durkin, who argues that he draws the question like just what okay? He says how Pat Durkin, who he doesn't name by name, is always saying that coyotes don't kill many deer. I think what Pat was saying is that coyotes are probably not having a very dramatic impact on total dear numbers. Right, he's saying they don't kill deer, But I think he's saying, like when you look at dear numbers, so like numbers of adult deer on the ground, um that kyles don't seem to be having as dramatic of an impact on dear numbers as some people like the claim. But this guy goes on to have some pretty compelling anecdotal evidence where he says he has but he knows about a couple of coyote dens. He mounts some trail cams on these kyote dens, he's got two trail cams posted up over two different kyote dens, and last year alone, he caught images of coyotes dragging in thirty nine different fonts. So he's having a hard time believing. Um, he's having a hard time reconciling that with the idea that they're not impacting local populations. I feel like it would be nice to have Pat here to kind of defend whatever it is he did or didn't say. And I would not ordinarily speak for Pat Durkin, but I will speak for Pat Durkin and saying he certainly did not say he doesn't think coyotes kills some deer um coyotes. In like studies out of Pennsylvania, coyotes and domestic dog are the number one killers fawn mortality. Number one fahon mortality is kyles and dogs. And the reason you have to say that is because when you do a knee cropsy, do you say new crops or knee crops? When you do a knee crops, he's hard to tell the difference. Yeah, it's hard to tell it it feels killed by domestic dog or yeah, and coyotes. I mean, Pat, everybody at this table would agree. Kyotes certainly do kill a fair number of fonds and a whole lot of other creators do. I mean, in the in the Upper Midwest. This guy was from Minnesota, I have that right. But let me look here, does he say where he's from? I had it he was. I had in my head that he was in. Uh, he's up on the Canadian border. I'm imagining like boundary on northern Minnesota, ninety miles from the Canadian border. So yeah, black bears are gonna be killing a bounch of fonds too in that country. But a couple of points I would make one is you know there, this is a species, the white tailed deer is a species that has eat that adapted to um withstand very strong predation pressure on fawns that occurs in a very short period of time. So there's this this idea of predators swamping. And that's the reason why you know, the deer hunting up in that neck of the woods probably in late October early November for a couple of weeks is really really good because all those does are in estrous and all being bred at the same time. That translates into a very narrow window of maybe a couple of weeks. The same kind of duration of time that the rut would last would be the amount of time that all those all those pregnancies would be would be coming to parturition to birth. And so you have a landscape that suddenly has a whole lot of food on it in a for a very short window of time, and everything is eating those fawns. Coyotes are eating them. I mean, one interesting question would be, I'm not doubting this guy's story, but if you've got trail cams providing pictures of coyotes going to a den with fawns, how he arrived at the count of the number of fawnds he's actually seeing versus pieces of fawns being carried around. You know how you come to like there was thirty nine fawns through a series of static pictures. I believe the guy though, that there's a bunch of fawns getting dragged back. The point is you're talking about an animal that has evolved to flood the market with lots of offspring predators swamping. It's the exact same thing that oak trees do when they massed every few years, right there, just dumping tons of acorns out all at the same time, and the predator in this case would be something like squirrels um and over the or deer um and the the driver there would be that over the long haul, those oak trees or that deer herd is able to support a relatively small base of predators by occasionally flooding the market with offspring, as opposed to trickling out a corns or fawns over a longer window. Like like put in an extreme Like to put in an extreme sort of scenario is imagine you have a let's say you have an enclosure, right, just just a picture like the idea of predators. You have an enclosure, and then this enclosure you put a black bear, and you put ten white tailed dos uh and the does all ten of those doughs all dropped their fonds on the same day, and they're gonna be vulnerable to predation for forty eight hours. That black bear is gonna eat one or two in that forty eight hour window, and the other eight are gonna be by that point up and running around. Now, picture that those doughs came in and they spread it out so that one had a baby every two weeks, probably all those fonds will be dead exactly, so which just in this predator swamping is something that takes place with like bird nesting colonies. Yeah, so having having those those carnival or is consuming some fonts as part of the system. Um. You know, another interesting question for the guy would be how's his deer hunting ben? Has he been able to fill his tags? As you see in Dear it sounds like you know a guy who's paying attention to the local landscape. My guess is he's probably a on the upper end of the distribution tail in terms of hunter success. Right, he's curious, he's active in the outdoors, so he's probably a good hunter. Um. But here there's another thing too that you gotta get into it. This is, uh, there's there's the idea of like carrying capacity, So how many adult deer can the landscape support? And oftentimes you're gonna wind up with a somewhat. I mean, there's all kinds of variabilities and things are happening in mass crops and weather and all this stuff. But you're gonna have a sort of sense that that that the area can support x number of deer through the winter, and if and that number is going to stay relatively fixed, and you could be losing tons of fawns to coyotes, but still finding that at the end of their most vulnerable stretch of time, so that every year in March or every year in April, you're gonna be you have that same number of deer have made it through the winter, and that when you when these fawns are getting killed, it's just making room for the next one, because they're gonna find there there the bottleneck that they're gonna pass through, is they're gonna pass through a bottleneck usually like white tails and northern climates are passing through a bottleneck in the late winter, and only a certain number going to fit through that bottleneck anyway, that's right, And there's usually disproportionate mortality for those young of the year, right, So those those are the ones that typically have less likelihood of passing through that bottleneck. And the ecological term you're touching on is the idea of compensatory mortality versus additive mortality. So the idea that um, if a fawn is killed by a coyote in the summer that would have otherwise made it through the winter, there's potential for that to be an additive source of mortality. But if you say the coyote wasn't there, you had let me back up, I'll simplify it. You've got ten fawns, okay, and only five of those fawns are going to make it through that bottleneck you're talking about late in the winter. So there's enough resources for five of them to survive. And you have no coyotes in the system. So you have five of the ten that die as a result of hardship in the wintertime. If you have coyotes there that kill those five during the summertime and the other five make it through the harsh times of late winter, you would say that that's that source of mortality. The five went to the coyotes was compensated for you had higher survival a hundred percent of the remaining individuals. Those five individuals made it through winter, as opposed to only fifty of those individuals making it through winter. So there's all kinds of things that kill fawns. Um the fact that they've evolved with these predators, the coyotes and others and have these reproductive strategies. And you know, another another um form of defense they have is the fact, as you touched on, it's not a long window of time that they're super susceptible to being killed by coyotes. It's a matter of a couple of days that they're able to run and be up on their feet. Super success. Super success was the word super susceptible. Susceptible Like when you're off hunting morals and you find a fawn just laying there. Yeah, like that's a pile and stumbled across at at in a very narrow window of time, and and you know when that's the case, I mean, everything on the landscape is fat and happy. The bears are doing really well for that narrow window of time. But there aren't too many places that come to my mind where you know, as a biologist, I'm thinking, man, I'm really concerned about a lack of abundance and white tail deer. You know, I know there's places that the numbers are higher and lower, and everybody likes to see deer when they're out there hunting, but um recognizing there's going to be some predation on the landscape, and the fact that this guy gets to see that on his trail cameras, you know, I'd be fascinated looking at the pictures and think cool to see the coyotes doing their thing. Hopefully I'm still seeing some some deer in the fall. I guess as this guy is. If he's in a situation where the coyotes are able to capture that many fawns from that small area, chances are there's a heck of a lot of deer kicking out fawns. So it doesn't sound like a situation where the white tail numbers or something anybody should be really worried about. It did man, I was going to roll through it, man, just play a little. But uh, I'm good. I'm good at a place called Stone Glaciers Old, I gotta I got a little follow up on this before we jump back to pestering Pete. Just I'm not getting the kind of answers out of them that want to get out of them, But go ahead. Talking about this brings up this thing that I hear a lot in our community about. And it seems like hunters are kind of talking about out of both sides of their mouth on this one, because at one one Instagram post is hunters are such a big part of controlling these populations. So there's not too many deer and not too many elk, and you know, we're like the ones that are keeping all this and check and then out of the other side of their mouth, it's and that's why we gotta kill all the wolves and coyotes, because if we don't manage that population, they're gonna kill off all the deer that we're also managing. And so you don't mean to tell me that there's some hunters who has some squirrel justification, squirreling justification. Yeah, just say you like to go out and hunt a bunch um, And yeah, I like to hunt a bunch and I hope that there's like maintains, like good stable, huntable populations of animals out there. That is funny that you're like, no, man, we gott a hunt deer because I'll be overpopulated, and we gotta kill kyles because they're killing deer. Yeah, totally. And the only reason I bring it up is because like I just think, like that argument is full of holes. And so if if you're also of the group that is like saying like, oh my god, hunting is dying right now, Like it's not good to be going out there with arguments that don't really hold up. That's right. I've been following some Australian hunters and they they got the whole other weird thing there Elwyes doing. Or they're always saying like, um, hey man, this is all non native. We need to kill all these animals because they're non native and we're doing a great service to the you know, the biota of Australia by killing all these non native animals. But then they're like, damn do I love these animals? This is all we eat all the time, love being on the wild with these animals. But man, we gotta kill all these animals. Or they always shoot there like it's big males, so they're shooting like stags and bucks because we've got to control the animals. Like, if you want to control the animals, I don't know if you've taken while they biology one on one yet shoot the females. If that's really what this is about, shoot females. It doesn't do any good for anything in terms of number control to kill males. And people are smart, man, you've got to be I think authentic in these conversations. There's there's nothing wrong, in my opinion with really liking to hunt and havn't it be motivated by a desire to be outside getting good food, all that kind of stuff. But if you're just trying to argue points that are all all the holes, somebody who has no affiliation with hunting or the outdoors is going to pretty easily start picking at this idea of talking on both sides of your mouth. And I think, you know, it's a really good observation you made. Be honest with respect to the predator control versus the key role of hunters. If you were to pull every hunter in Americans say, hey, man, if we could snap our fingers right now and have the full the full cast of of predators back on the landscape and have these systems function with natural predator prey dynamics, no need for human beings to be part of that equation anymore. It's gonna be wolves and bears and lions and coyotes bobcats doing all that work for us. We can wipe our hands, We're we're good to go. How many hunters are gonna be like, oh yeah, all right, that's cool. I don't think any of them. So I was only doing it to make sure everything was going to be the reality, actually hate hunt. I actually hate hunting, but I was just very worried about too many deer. So this is there's nothing wrong with saying this is something you know that we deeply enjoy and we you know, identify fundamentally in our our personal identities as being hunters and people who are connected to the land and participatory. And I would make the argument too that if you want to talk about the full cast of North American predators or global predators, that for many, many years Homo sapiens have been part of that cast of characters, and celebrating that point um and this desire to maintain a connection to who we are fundamentally in our species identity, I think is a much stronger case than saying, well, we've got this job to do and you know, we gotta we gotta make sure there aren't too many deer, and oh yeah, we got gotta make sure there aren't too many predators. It's like, no, man, celebrate the fact that we are maintaining a strong personal connection to the land, a personal connection to our identity. The species that we evolved as would is one of that, you know, one of the key species in that cast of predators. And be able to, you know, to share authentic stories and authentic information about what we do and not try to not try to paint it with some inauthentic brush, because you have to give credit to the people with whom are communicating about this stuff. They're going to be perceptive, They're going to be able to poke holes. And if you're in a thoughtful conversation, my hope would be people are eager to question and pick and ask. And I think a lot of our our community of hunters, you know, we point to these kind of tired, um, overused justifications that we maybe haven't put as much thought into. And it's absolutely okay to really enjoy hunting and have that be a primary motivation and not feel like you have to talk about it. Is this what we've got this job to do in the ecosystem, because I think, frankly, that's one of the weakest arguments that we have. Yeah, but I think it's helpful to point out, though, to to to focus on your particular love of the natural world, your love of being out of doors, um. Could be your love of hunting for food that you feed to your family, your interactions, um. And it's helpful to point out and say, and in addition to all of that, the system that we've developed in this country makes it that my participation in these activities is normally is like enormously productive in terms of land management and funding for wildlife work. Yes, it's it's it's a it's it's a valuable thing to point out. It's not that I don't think anyone's gonna say like, I'd have a hard time. As someone said, dude, the only reason I hunt is because when I buy a hunting license, that provides the funding for my state Phishing Game Agency to work on disease issues and enforcement of wildlife regulations and land enhancement projects. That's why I'm out, Because if that was the case, you just send the money, You just send them a check. Right. So I guess like, there's what I personally like about this, and you can take pride in the fact that the systems that we've developed over time make it that my participation in the activity is actually productive for the land and the animals. I'm not a problems there's no problem with that at all. What I what I think. What I think shines through though, when you have somebody making a justification like Joannie was talking about where you're saying simultaneously, I need to be able to play a role in helping control the white tailed deer heard for example, and then meanwhile, yeah, we've got these issues with too many coyotes. If we don't manage the coyote numbers, we're not going to have any deer to hunt. Um. That kind of a conversation where holes can be poked. I think that's coming from a place of and and this might frustrate some listeners. I apologize, but thoughtful discourse here. It's a it's a selfish kind of mindset, right, Like I want to have deer on the landscape so that I, as a hunter can get a deer. It's coming from a place of I'm totally comfortable centrism. Okay, yeah, but but okay. But my argument is the problem is saying like, no, I want there to be deer because I like to hunt deer. Yeah, let me finish my my point though, because I I like getting a deer as much as the next guy. But I'm also interested in having that resource available to support other species on the landscape that have evolved there to be part of that system. So for me, I want to have deer on the landscape because I like to get a deer. I mean, if there there has not been a year in a long time. And this is not some braggadocio about my hunting prowess. I'm not the greatest hunter in the world, but I have a steady I appreciate the kind words. I have a steady supply of hard earned game meat in my freezer, like all of us here at the table, do okay, And that's a fundamental element of my identity. If you took that away from me, that would be a major impact to me and my family in terms of our lifestyle, how we eat. Um. So I like having a deer as much as the next guy, but I would submit to you that on an equal level of appreciation in my mind with my own use of that resource, I value the fact that that dear herd exists and is supporting a whole cast of other awesome animals in that trophic web, that food web. So I this is the selfishness that I was touching on. It's not saying I have a problem with somebody saying they really want to get a deer. What I have a problem with is somebody saying, I feel like I have the corner around the market for deer, and these deer are all here for human beings, and I don't have any tolerant. It's for all these other animals in the landscape that are also working hard two transfer those deer into their calories. So I love the idea of sharing my deer hunting spots with the full cast of species that evolved to be part of that system. And if you gave me the choice of hunting in a place where I could easily kill a deer every year in the absence of that sharing, or another word would be that competition versus a place where maybe I'd kill a deer every other year, but there's this robust community of all these other organisms that depend on each other for their existence, I would take. I would take the latter option. And I think the extreme example of you know, the ease of killing something every year and in the total control you could talk about like a high fenced deer kind of operation where there's no predators, very high likelihood of success, and increasingly artificial. Yeah, I'm looking for a situation where you're experiencing the ecosystem and it's full complement of species, and if that comes with potential for a lower degree of success in my hunting, so be it, because I would rather have an intact ecosystem in which I can be an active participant, maybe with a lower success rate, than a situation where there's a whole pile of deer out there and I'm going to get two bucks and four does every year without a whole lot of work because the system has been so manipulated that that opportunity exists. I think that that's the thing we've touched on the past is I think that's why I kind of like caution people against assessing the health of the lands gate by looking at how many deer I have, how many turkeys I have, Because you could go into a property, go into a chunk of ground and scrub it of its bio diversity. In scrubbed of like well, you know, Leopold's cogs and wheels, right of the natural world. Scrub it all out, and you've got like the right ratio of soybeans to multi flora rose, you know, to blow down timber and have a ton of deer and all other you've gotten rid of all other native much of the other native fauna and flora, and you go out like, look it's healthy because there's deer here. It's like you could be looking at a very unhealthy landscape. It's got a shiploaded deer on it, and it has been another way to measure it. So I agree, like, there's there's nothing you're saying that I think even like borders on like a controversial sentiment. I don't know, man, I feel like there's an element of our community of hunters that is um overly focused on simple measures of what success looks like did I get a deer? Did I not get a deer, as opposed to being more considerate of the health of the systems that they are participating in. So, you know, I do believe there's an element of our community that's fairly self centered and selfish and the idea of scrubbing every predator from the landscape so that they could have more dear, which has been something that the hunting community has wrestled with for a hundred plus years. Um, I think that's still alive and well in some quarters. And for me personally, I'm speaking you know, about my own philosophy here, I think it's I think it's flawed, and I think it's detrimental to our ability to have thoughtful conversations with the non hunting public about the activity when it's coming from a really selfish place. If you're saying, and this is getting back to Yanni's observation about um, you know, I'm playing this role as a as a deer manager. I'm playing this role as a predator manager. I think what starts to come through there is just this idea that the deer are here from me, as opposed to I'm a participant in this system that I treasure, that I cherish, and that I know something about. That's a very different conversation. And I think that conversation about being an active participant in a community that you know something about, and by community I mean an ecological community where you're a predator involved in this system that you've come to understand and appreciate and cherish. That kind of conversation I think can resonate, should resonate with a whole lot of people who might never want to hunt. And the days of us, you know, arguing about this stuff from a position of feeling like we've got these really strong rights. You know, we exist in a democrat out of society, and I think we are our ability to continue participating in these activities, maybe not in our generation, but maybe in our grandkids generation. It's going to hinge on whether or not we can communicate authentically and effectively. And that conversation about being an active participant who's immersed in the systems that evolved us as a species, I think that's that's an argument, that's a set of observations that's going to continue to resonate with the non hunting and hunting public in perpetuity. Whereas a conversation about I need to manage the deer so they don't get over abundant, I need to manage the coyotes so they don't need all my dear, that conversation is gonna gonna fall flat on its face. I'm tracking. I'd like to point out too, very quickly that you know, hunting, the animals that we take as hunters are compensatory, right, yes, And in most you know, unless they're really trying to down a population of said, you know, certain animal, where they're also they're like, O could kill a bunch of dollars, kill a bunch of this, right, most most of these systems we manage so that we're sort of like, not like extra doing extra killing. We're like, if you took us out, you roughly have the same population. It's not quite that simplenny. I mean, what drives the establishment of quotas is gonna is going to be a combination of ecological science and social science. The reality is, in any one of these systems, we could be managing it up or down potentially um for more fewer animals. And it's a matter of yeah, making sure it's sustainable, but you could have a sustainable number of animals on the landscape that is higher or lower than what we do. So not all the hunting associated mortality is going to be compensatory or additive. Yeah, this is something that comes up all the time. Um. And we've talked about a bunch of times when people say, like deer overpopulated, it's kind of well by whose measure, right, because it could be that oftentimes from a hunter's perspective, they're hardly overpopulated. Like I don't see it. A matter of fact, I didn't even get one last year. But from a from the automobile insurance industry might think they're way overpopulated. When you look at how many claims they're handling for deer car collisions. Agricultural interests might say they're overpopulated when they're looking at orchard damage or people who are losing whole orchard plantings two deer, and they might argue that it's overabundant. And so I think that they're that the wildlife managers are always needing to manipulate the valve because on one hand, they're they're hearing from hunters, we want more deer on the landscape, we want hire success rates, and other people, you know, automobile insurance, egg and the host of others. In some places, even like the landscaping industry is saying like, man, we've got close at valva and and you're you're making like constant microadjustments. Yeah, and they're rooted in different value sets. And and for me, you know, as somebody who um as a trend ecologist and somebody who values a system in which you have all the all the players present and interacting the way they have evolved to interact. Another criterion by which you could you could measure deer over abundance would be are there so many deer on the landscape? That they're having a negative effect on other species that are part of that ecosystem, and there are plenty of examples where that's been shown to be the case. So like the big drive to lower snow geese numbers has as much to do with protecting their habitat Arctic like Arctic coastal habitat as it does grain fields in Louisy in Texas. And there are places where that's true for white tailed deer as well, where um the idea of trying to bring deer to meet a particular objective, um bring numbers down, is driven by trying to protect other elements of that ecosystem. So I think it's the the Canada. You as a plant up in northern Wisconsin that historically was much more abundant, and it's it's, you know, like candy to the deer in the wintertime, and it's basically been eliminated from much of northern Wisconsin. And the only places you have little pockets of it are on the Apostle Islands, where the the deer densities are either zero or really low. So there are plenty of examples for a variety of species where they're over abundance has resulted in major implications to the ecosystem. So you have these criteria that are social, like the insurance example, or the the farmer trying to grow corn or soybeans, and then you have other other criteria that are driven more around ecology. And which one of those you put more weight on is going to be very subjective, Right, what do you care most about? If you're the farmer, you might think of deer as rats with antlers, um. And if you're a guy who waits all year to have that week of deer season and you want to be able to fill X number of tags, you might have a very different perception of what too many deer looks like. This leads into another question, Pet you cool? What I was gonna ask you men for? Um? I just wanta how bad your Australian accent was. Let's say you work at the place like Stone Glacier. Um, why do companies Why are companies secrety about? Like? What's the argument to be secrety about a product you're gonna make sure? Like? What are they afraid of? Um? I don't. I think there's just a time and a place to kind of to lay out the unveiling of it in the hype. Um that that hype is valuable and market you want to time that correctly, got with the with the delivering of the product. But look, man, when a new Star Wars movies coming out, they release trailers. They released trailers for trailers. The questions because I had one one time I asked this to a guy who works in apparel. Heugh was, explain me, there is when you announce new stuff coming out, people will stop buying the currently available stuff because like, well, I'm just gonna wait for the new stuff. And then you could be in a situation where you're left holding sure because they're like, well I was gonna buy a two thousand and sixteen, but screw it now, I'm just gonna wait for the sweet news you can see like in cars. Right. And also, you realize, man, once we told about this bit a new truck, two eighteen trucks sales every we just put it off because of waiting for the new one. But in the situation like this, where company's launching a product they don't currently make, that argument doesn't hold water. It's very true. Just think about all this. Yeah, I'm taking notes. Um, that's funny because I haven't seen you writ anything. You can give me a pen when I came in. Ah. Yeah, I think it's just the timing of the of the hype. And you know, you don't want people forget about it. You want to tell them about it when they can actually buy it or close to it. Yeah, yeah, and not just get forgotten and blown away in the wind. Can I get one of those blue hoodies? Yeah, we just came out with these yesterday. Can you tell people about it? It's a blue hoodie. It's a blue it's a bright blue hoodie, and it has the American flag on my chest and the Stone Glacier logo as well. I wear this here Stone Glacier shirt because my wife's that it makes me look a little younger. Yeah. It's got a yeah, which apparently is um something she cares about. Our shadow being a shadow lady, the shadow leader issues. That's our jersey for a softball team. Don't look like a little league player in this some badass mountain hunter man. Our softball team name is the Stone Glacier. You crushers. That's good. That's a good name. You like not you would, but you e w okay, Carl, This is a real doozy, the major doozy. All right, and it's long. It's a long angry email. Favorite kind a long angry email. And I love the guy. He owns the entire collection of the Mediator TV show, so he's not a freeloader. Wants to point that out. He is critical here where he says, boys, I know you guys generally don't find fault and biologists and over the agencies and whatnot. But come on, but come on, and you know, I don't know that's that's an entirely fair statement. I feel that I can find plenty of situations where where I have not been happy about something that the government agency has done. For instance, uh, the State of New Jersey closing bear season. That's a government agency making a move that I think is ridiculous and misguided. So we've talked about plenty of times and government agencies are screwed up. But here's his here's where he here's his angry nous, here's his problem. He's from Georgia and he keeps wanting to go up to hunt moose and Maine. And he's saying, how they keep counting moose and Maine. They're like, oh so Maine's thirty five thousand, five square miles huge place. It's got one year, they say maybe they got sixty thousand moose in Maine on the low end. Then there's account that comes out and there's someone that doesn't estimate, maybe we've got seventy five thousand moose in Maine. So he's pointing out, man shiploads a moose in Maine. But then there's some talk about how they're wondering what the increasingly warm weather and Maine kind of what kind of impacts it's having on moose, And there's a lot of worry about increasingly warm summers and what and it's concreasingly warm winters, and they're reducing the number of tags available to hunters even though they still have apparently quite a lot of moose. Like, how in the world he's wondering, could it be that the number of tags they're issuing, how could it be as low as two thousand, one forty moose tags when you've got perhaps seventy five thousand moose. Then the writer does something a bit confusing where he starts pointing out that the Canadian provinces to the north of Maine have many more moose two hundred twelve thousand, Newfoundland maybe has around three thirty thousand. So he's saying, you got all these moose all over the place, why isn't Maine killing more. I want to dispatch with a couple of that's before we turn it over to Carl and a couple thats be one. If you're the moose manager in Maine who cares what they have in Newfoundland or New Brunswick, you wouldn't say I'm gonna kill all the deer in Iowa because Ohio has got a lot of deer, right, So that really isn't like a valid point. And not only that, but if you look, Maine doesn't manage moose by Maine. They manage moose by very like micro chunks of ground, so they have, you know, you have districts and regions, and you're making like micro management decisions, sometimes down to a single valley. So it doesn't like it's germane to be like to talk about how many you're in other places. Let's focus on the core of the question. He's sort of accusing them of saying they're all worried about climate change, so they're saying we can't go kill moose, even though it's a ton of moose and they're not letting us get at as many. No, Carl, can you speak to what's going on? And it's happening in more places than Maine. What's going on with some of the trepidation around what's where moose are at, what role hunting is playing with moose? What might be happening to moose? Right? Can you dig in totally? And before I before I dig into the science side of it, I'm thinking about a strategy for trying to get a moose tag. Right, Because you're thinking about this guy's strategy, I guess Maine would be awesome. But this is getting back to the beginning of the podcast. We're talking about the idea of having a beer. If I said you want to go moose hunting, you're gonna say, well, only if it's in Maine. Well he can drive. He's in Georgia and he can drive main And Pete was just telling Pete telling me, tell these guys, tell yeah, I I also put in for a moose tag in Maine this year. Um for a couple of different reasons. One, I really want to go moose hunting a lot like this, Uh, this guy that wrote in um Phil Phil, Yeah, it sounds like Phil really wants a moose tag. I do too. I have ten bonus points in Montana as a resident in the area I put in for my draw, odds are still sub four percent. It's like three and a half percent chance that I'll draw this tag this year. There are no bonus points in Maine. It's very affordable to put your name in the hat, and I think I have a seven or eight percent chance. So Pete would argue that they're still doing a good job on giving out opportunity in Maine. I was doing a quick math in my head. I'm not real good at math, but uh, a little over two thousand tags to sixty thousand moose that seems like somewhere in the ball park of what a three or four target objective of harvest. That seems pretty normal to me, so I guess it can. It can vary. Those percentages can vary widely depending on the host of factors, but it's definitely not unusual. I think like you would know this. I think with mountain goats, I think like in excessive five percent is dangerous, correct, Yeah, like Washington manages for a one percent harvest objective of mountain goats. Montana manages for four, so different states choose different numbers to shoot for. But if moose or anything like mountain goats sounds like men on par for the course here for Phil, I'm going to criticize the state agency. I think, I think I think that the Washington I think at Washington Fishing Game, I think their perspective on harvest numbers from mountain goasts is ridiculous. And I think, and this is a bowl, I can't back it up, but I feel there's kind of a there is a there's there's a sentiment there seems that at times be a sentiment there um of of not maximizing, of not maximizing opportunity. They're kind of like, I guess we gotta allow him to do some hunting. Yeah, Yeah, I don't think you're alone in that feeling. Because the one percent is you know, or whatever it is like to be on such the low end of the acceptable spectrum. I think there's a great argument, and I've read the argument made that like in excess of five percent can get dangerous on these on mountain goat populations because the low fecundity high risk of natural disaster. You know that they die by accident and avalanches, rock slides, falling. Um. It takes a lot to get a mature nanny who's reproductively successful, right, I understand all that, So I'm not disparaging the idea of applying for a main moose teg. My point is, if he'd even limited himself to the lower forty eight, he could be thrown in. If his idea is like I want to go on a moose hunt, he should be applying. I would say anywhere there's an opportunity, and they can't do that much farther to drive from Georgia. It's not like Maine is in the backyard. It's not like Maine is in the backyard of Georgia. So he could be he could be applying eight or nine states. Yeah, And I'm coming at this from the standpoint of having just hunted moose in Idaho last year as a non resident. As a nonresident and shout out to the state of Idaho. I love the way. I'm sure some people hate it. But forcing you to choose one species and then having a real likelihood of actually drawn a tag with no point system, I think is really cool you want calling in the bull there? I called in several bulls and managed to get one at close range. Yeah, it was an awesome hunt, had a great group of friends there. It was a once in a lifetime experience, literally, because now I'm you know, prohibited from ever a plan for a bull tag and Idaho again. And you ran into our resident enforcement specialist. I did. The guy called when I got an enforcement and I got an enforcement question. Ic Crawford. Wonderful guy. He actually man. He was kind enough to come out and visit camp and register the bull for me. But um, the reason I'm bringing up Idaho is can I kind of enough real quick? Sure? Uh? Did you did you enjoy? Was the moose meat? Pretty good? It's been excellent. I'm still I mean, yeah, you use it past past tense is not appropriate here because I'm gonna be eating that moose. Did you data or when you see moose? You know what that moose was? Yeah? No, I don't have to worry about like which moose was this? And my freezer a fossils? There will there will be no freezer fossils. I agree with Steve's advice on that, um, but I have been very generous too. That's the other nice thing about having a moose is being able to dole out some meat. And this is the smallest of the subspecies to rights shiris bulls, so but still a very large animal. And my buds who came and joined me each left with a cooler full of meat. So I'm digressing here, But the point is for this listener, don't limit yourself just the main first start, you're starting out with some advice. Yeah, don't limit yourself just to Main if you want to go moose hunting and you want to drive there, because you could just go buy over the counter up in Alaska right and make it happen, which is going to be more expensive, more logistically challenging. But if you want to hunt moose in the meat home is very tough, yes, and not tough. So if you want to limit yourself to the lower forty eight, I would point out Maine is not in the backyard of Georgia. For a similar distance of driving, you could be going up and and hunting some of those other um you know, Northern Rockies States, Northwest States, and and if you're lucky enough to draw obviously, the more hats you have, your name in the higher the chances. So all that being said, UM, I like it though, all right, because you start you know what my dad always said, he didn't invent us, don't curse the darkness. Light a candle, Light a candle. Nice like to think the old man came up with that bound. I think he did. I'd like to think that maybe we're lighting a candle here and and just lit fills candle. Well, it feels lucky enough to draw a tag up in Idaho. I'd be happy to chat with him to about the planning there. It was a fantastic experience, all right. So what's going on with moose? Um? I would I would refute something that Steve said where it's not allowed. You made this. Don't worry it's it's nothing to major, But you made this comment that, Um, what's happening in those more northern provinces is not relevant to what's happening in Maine. But in fact it's part of the story because Maine and our other um moose hunning opportunities in the lower forty eight represent the southern of this species range. So when you're in that situation and you're you're talking about hunting opportunity at the very fringes of a species distribution. You're already kind of starting off on a difficult foot because you're talking about hunting an animal that is inherently existing at the limits of its capacity to exist. So moose are an animal. I'm sorry, But what's the part that I said that's bad? You said, what was happening in those in those Canadian provinces. I think you mentioned Newfoundland and New Brunswick. It wasn't relevant. You said, just because they're killing all the deer and state X, I don't need to worry about you know, I'm gonna you said, just because the hunting is great in Iowa, I'm gonna go ahead and kill all the deer here in whatever state. I'm ok. And I'm saying to set the stage for the biology the story here, it's important to recognize that there's a fundamental difference as you oh north for the moose into the core of its range. I don't want to belabor this, but this isn't That was not what I was saying. You Okay, that's true. You said for him to say, hey, Maine has sixty thousand moose, they should give out more tags in Maine because a neighboring Canadian province has three. Okay I was I thought you were saying, in essence, what's happening in those other provinces is irrelevant to what's happening here. No, okay, all ahead, Well then I'll I apologize for misinterpreting. The point is what's happening in those other provinces, thank you, is that they are they represent really kind of the core of the of the distribution. That is a place where, for a variety of reasons, moose are able to thrive in contrast to the southern limits of their range, I e. Maine. Okay, So in Maine, you're talking about an animal that has evolved to withstand very cold weather. Um, there's this idea um an ecology in species evolution of a thermo and you you talked about this actually with some of your buffalo work. But the thermo neutral zone. So if you think about being a human being, you know the range of temperatures where we can hang out and be pretty comfortable. Let's say it the lower limit is maybe fifty degrees and you know, you could ask a human um a biologist who who studies people, physiologist, you could ask what the what the actual numbers are. But let's say it's fifty degrees. Yeah, if you get below that, you start shivering, right, and that shivering comes with an energetic cost. And on the upper limit, when do you start getting uncomfortable? What do you say? You're a better man than I am. Damn, he's durable. So I started, I start breaking a sweat if I'm just hanging out, let's say whatever, you get the idea. So, whether you're trying to keep yourself warm through shivering, or trying to cool yourself off through sweating in our case, or if you can't sweat, panting some sort of um physiological response to either heat or cool yourself, those things come at a cost. So there's this envelope where you can exist without any energetic cost associated with addressing an uncomfortable temperature. Yeah, you know, and you're talking for the Buffalo. I remember you writing that. You know, it's some absurd like you can crank them down. They couldn't find it. So yeah, in my book American, that's about the study they did where they took a like a whole stein or just some running the mill cow. They took a Tibetan yak. I think they had a Scottish highland some variety like Scottish Highland cow in a buffalo and they put them in these shipping containers with monitors on to see and they had like a metabolic increase related to the temperature so basically that it will start to shiver or start to expend energy to keep warm. And they hit it like very quickly with the regular cow. Um how mare what it was twenty degrees or whatever the hell was like like surprisingly like still surprisingly warm, and he hit it with a regular cow. And then I think the Scottish Highland cattle, the Scottish Highland cow tapped out. The Tibetan yak might have tapped out at negative thirty and they couldn't get they could never get the container cold enough to tap it out. They couldn't tap it out of the buffalo. Yeah, And it might have tried, like I don't know, I don't know if they got to negative seventy, but they couldn't find the point when it had a metabolic increase for dated to cold, meaning some bits cold tolerant as are moose, they're very cold tolerant. And can I tell no quick story, Yeah, sure, man, this is your gig baby. So cold tolerant, so cold toller that there was a there was trying to do some account on a buffalo herd in Canada, and they're out in the winter and they were using thermal imaging to find the animals. They could never find them because they're so well insulated. One day a guy noticed, when he's looking at the images, how he sees these little teeny crescent these little teeny black crescent shapes that didn't make sense. And what he later realized was the horn is their belly. That when one's laying on its side and it's belly hair is exposed, you would now and then hit a little bit of its belly, but it's so well insulated that you're not picking up warmth off of his back. It's a great a great story and a great example of how a given animal can be so well adapted to, uh, you know, a very cold envelope. All right. So moose like the buffalo are well adapted to withstands some extremely cold temperatures. But it doesn't take particularly warm temperatures for them to need to start regulating their body heat down, which is one of the reasons that in the summertime, in addition to their being plenty of good forage in aquatic habitats, you see moose in the water like all day. They're there to escape insects, they're there to access really rich food supplies, and they're also there to cool down. So the issue of keeping cool in the summer for a moose is a way bigger deal than the issue of keeping warm in the winter. So in a place like Maine, throughout the southern extent of their range, and as we have climate warming and temperature envelopes shifting north, it gets increasingly difficult for moose to thermal regulate in the summer. At the lower extend of their range. There's a a very real cost to their fitness associated with those warmer temperatures in the summer, a longer summer season. But that's just the beginning of the story, because there are a number of other complex interactions occurring on the landscape associated with relatively mild winters relatively warm summers that planned this as well. And part of the story here is with warmer winters milder winters, um the ticks do much better at over wintering. So there are there are a number of examples of kind of natural biological processes that can really ramp up in the absence of super cold winters, ticks being one another. One is um the example of some of these pine beetle infestation in the West, where it takes a really cold winter to kill off the larvae, and in the absence of a cold winter for a few years, you end up with these huge insect outbreaks, these huge insect epidemics. And another example would be um relatively warm falls and springs and wetter weather resulting in more episodic hemorrhagic disease outbreaks in white tail deer e h D. So changes in weather associated with our climate can have major impacts to wildlife and habitat look in those cases, it just doesn't get cold enough, doesn't Yes, And with the moose population in Maine, part of the story is these these tick loads getting to be so severe than portions of the state. They're clearly having a major impact on the survivorship of moose. So not only is it harder for them to last through warmer summers, but then they're they're added on with this heavy load of ticks. But the story doesn't end there either, as these as these warmer, milder conditions continue to shift north. Another trend is that you have increasing overlap between white tailed deer and moose. The deer dew relatively well. Really cold, gnarly winters are much harder for white tails to withstand than for moose to withstand, and there's limited evidence to suggest that there's direct competition for forage between the two species. Um Some folks think maybe dear are a significant direct competitor with moose for forage. Other folks think maybe not. But one thing that the white tails do bring with them are these meningeal worms, so another parasite story. And the species name of the maningeal worm is peril of strugilous teneous. So given that that's such a mouthful, you can understand why they like to refer to him as ningel worms. And them ninjis are these three layers that wrap around the brain and spinal cord of all mammals. And if you ever have heard of anybody going in to get like a cerebro spinal fluid tap, that fluid exists between a couple of these ma ningel layers, and the whole system exists to provide kind of a a shield, like a layer of protection and cushioning around these really important spinal marriage Spinal meningitis will come from the same word. Yes, yes, So meningitis just means the swelling of the ma ninji's, these three layers. So in white tailed deer, this worm, it has a super fascinating um life cycle. And I'll start with the adults laying eggs in the me ninji's in these these layers that wrap around the brain and the spinal cord. So the adults ladies eggs, the eggs on the deer's nostrils. No, so we'll start with an infected and infected white tailed deer with adults that start, and we'll come back around to it. So we'll talk about the mode of exposure. I'll let you do it, but I don't agree. Okay, where do you want to start. I wouldn't do it that way. I would start with the introduction, all right, But I'm just telling what, dude, I'll go with you. So, imagine a white tailed deer is walking through the woods, dicking around in the woods, cruising along and whirling around. Yeah, it comes upon a a tuft of it's preferred browse pick a pick a species. What do you want to be eaten? Man? See that footage of a deer eating eggs out of a bird nest. Pick something, Pick something, pick something more? Yeah, I can't pick little baby birds? Uh? Comes across it desized to um can pick a mushroom? Sure? Okay, size of Eta Morrell Okay. So this deer comes upon black or white morele Morchella canicus okay, Morchella canicus. And as it lowers its muzzle to nibble upon the head of this morale inadvertently without even knowing it has done, so, it happens to consume a gastropod. Do you want it to be a snail or a slug because it could be either snail? Okay? So this this two year old dough, which this is making a lot of sense because you find those things and Morrel's yes, you do. And it's an interesting part of the story to in terms of the distribution of this disease. And I'll come to that. So this two year old white tail dough nibbles down on this morale mushroom and then is up consuming, inadvertently and unbeknownced to itself, a snail. Okay. That snail is infected, and I will come back around to how the snail got infected. But the deer, Yeah, because we're talking about the cycles, right, So you can jump into that circle anywhere along the way. So the deer ingests the snail. The snail has an advanced larval phase of this worm living inside of itself, inside of it, yes, which it has contracted by eating the mucus on a fecal pellet from a different deer. I'll come back around to that pellet. Why you wanted to start where you wanted to Start's confusing, but I think I'm good. One thing about the listenership of this digital radio program is they're a pretty savvy bunch, so they'll be able to they'll be able to track this. So the dough has consumed omed the snail. Upon doing so, the larval phase of the worm is consumed, ends up in the stomach, matures makes it into the stomach wall. From the stomach wall travels to the central nervous system. The blood stream through the bloodstream makes it too. In white tailed deer, the meningel tissues the layers around the brain and the spinal cord, where it then proceeds to lay eggs. Those eggs hatch into stage one larvae, dislodge travel to the lungs, where they are then coughed up by the deer and ingested into the stomach. Wow, at which point in the stomach they are defecated and end up in the mucus where a snail or slug consumes the mucus that is infected with the larvae. That's another thing you see. No, then snails on snails and slugs on snails on droppings. Yeah, they eat that that mucus which can be infected. So you have this cycle of adult worm two long too digestive track, two feces, mucus two gastropods, snails or slugs consuming it to those snails or slugs than being eaten inadvertently by other servants other ungulates. The interesting thing about this worm, though, is that white tailed deer are uniquely able to carry the carry the infection without having really negative consequences associated. So even even other deer species, of course, which the moose is one, but mule deer, moose, caribou all have the potential for this infestation. This infection, this parasitism two go beyond the maningel layers and actually have the infection end up in their brain tissue. So in white tailed deer the worm is limited to existing in the maningeal tissue. In these other species it can end up in the brain and have a major impact, including causing potentially mortality. Is it is it reasonable to assume here that white tailed deer have been exposed to this for very very long time. And what's interesting and this this gets to the common earlier about you know, seeing a snail or a slug on a pile um. That's something I think you see quite a bit when you're in the east. You know, these relatively moist forests. This is not an issue that we see west of the Great Plains. So this is something that in moose populations in Minnesota and Maine has been a big issue, but not so much west. And it's thought that those grassland biomes that exist between kind of the eastern moose populations in the western moose population serve as a barrier for the spread of this disease. The arid landscapes, right, and those arid landscapes it's poor habitat for gastropods, right, So as white tailed deer expand their range northward, they bring with them this worm that has the potential to have a very different effect on moose than it has on deer. And you could understand moose that are out there foraging, consuming vegetation, and also potentially gastropods, there's plenty of opportunity for dear to infect moose. So again getting back to the idea of climate and how how changes even if it's a matter of like a one year that's particularly warm or dry, and this is why there's so much complexity in the system. If you have a hot and dry year, you know that that might be a worse year for gaster pods. If it's hot and dry, snails and slugs aren't going to be doing as as well. But if you have a relatively long window of non snow time, that's gonna be a longer window of potential infection when those gaster pods can be active. So you have changes in the distribution of white tail deer, you have changes in the web they're in the climate that have the potential to impact the activity and window of exposure opportunity. Through the life history of snails and slugs, you have these thermoregulatory considerations that the species is already existing kind of at the limit of its range, its ability to deal with those conditions, you have the ticks, and so there's no one answer, right. It's a very complex story, but it gets back to the topic of compensatory versus additive mortality. One thing is for sure, and it is that the decline of moose at the lower limit of their range is not happening as a result of hunting. It's happening independent of hunting. But it's very hard for wildlife managers to justify issuing a lot of tags to hunt a population that's in decline. And in another one of the states being affected by these dynamics, the state of Minnesota, which has a very rich history of moose hunting. Um they made the tough call in two thousand thirteen to completely stop their moose hunt, and it's some of these same drivers. My understanding is in in Maine it's much more of the ticks are a way bigger deal. But this story about the ninel worms in the northward expansion of white tailed deer, that's something in in Minnesota that goes back to nineteen twelve was the first year that they were really starting to try to figure out we've got these declines and moose what's going on. A lot of research has been done in Minnesota around these white tail moose interactions. But that's an example where UM in the state of Minnesota, they ran a population viability assessment a few years ago basically looking at recruitment and mortality of the moose population, and their projections for the state of Minnesota that it's were that it is possible within the next fifty years they might not have moose in Minnesota anymore in the absence of any further hunting. So totally appreciate Phil's excitement about hunting moose, and having now punched my card as a bona fide moose hunter, I would strongly encourage him to explore possibilities. But these questions, UM, they might seem really simple on their surface. Why won't the state of minister Why won't the state of Maine issue more moose tags? It's hard for me to draw a moose tag. And then you start getting into the complexities of the system and the specialized evolutionary traits of the moose with this disease ecology layered over it, and a changing climate and distribution in white tails layered over it, and what I take away from that are a couple of things. One, these management decisions are very complex and difficult. Two, there's huge value in having wildlife professionals on the landscape looking into this stuff, trying to figure out what's going on, and then applying that science to management decisions. And one other point I'd share is there are other issues, other interests being considered in the issuance of tags. That moose population is also UM, something that plenty of other recreational users appreciate and want to see on the landscape. And when a state is deciding how many tags to issue, they're taking into consideration providing hunting opportunity. They're also taking into consideration UM, wildlife viewing, and all the other folks that want to be UM involved in the conversation. In some states are more UM, more geared towards providing maximized hunting opportunity. Other states, like what you are saying for the state of Washington, maybe they're trying to balance a variety of public values when they're coming to these wildlife UM management decisions in terms of issuing tag allocations. So if you're sitting there in the chair of the biologist, whose job it is to say, all right, we are going to issue X number of tags this year, and you've got the social considerations, you've got the disease considerations, You've got all this information at your disposal. It's a tough chair to sit in. I think that where someone would wind up becoming frustrated is if you were looking at, well, we don't have a population problem right now, but we're concerned about what climate issues might mean in the future. Therefore, we're gonna throttle back hunting because we have a big question mark about what's going on ahead. I think that people could look at that, you get frustrated, so and they could look at it and get frustrated to and in the social consideration thing, where you might where a state might be like, you know what, We're gonna start paying more attention to people who identify as a wildlife viewer and make sure that they're having more opportunity and shift away from a user group that we used to Yeah, like I used to put emphasis on and I could see getting like really frustrated with that. Yeah, I can't to Another piece of the story that we didn't talk about is some of the ongoing research that they've done, and one of the more recent moose studies that occurred in Maine, they had very high mortality among a number of colored individuals, thirty of seventy, thirty of seventy. And that's a gross simplification of the study. You've got some information in front of you, but I'm just I'm just pulling us some filth. Yeah, so Phil knows about the study. So if you have indicators like that, you know they're investing money and research, They're they're tracking the population. He provided some of the historical data and context in his email. UM, they have information at their disposal that leads them to believe this is a this is a population that is in decline. They're trying to get to the bottom of what the management options are. But it's not it's not like they're just thinking, well down the line, this might be an issue, so we're gonna make a very conservative management call today. They believe there's a need to act today, and they're issuing tags based on the information they have at their disposal. I absolutely agree with you that, UM, it would be a source of frustration if they were taking an overly conservative UM. Management call now thinking there's this long term climate trajectory that they're trying to be responsive to. That's not the case. They've got an issue with declining moose. They've got an issue with high mortality. There were about hunting being a source of additive mortality to that population, very similar to the call in Minnesota to close the hunt. Could they have a few tags being issued in Minnesota? Probably so, But at what point do you make the call that you've got enough concern, sufficient concern about the decline that you need to take action. So I think the throttling back of tags, I certainly would not UM second guests any of my counterparts there in the state who are looking at the day to day in and day out and investing time in those surveys and having all that information, all that science. UM it really puts people on good footing to be able to make well informed decisions. And getting back to something you said earlier about UM the funding and how you know, we should be quick to tell out the fact that hunters and fisher fishermen, in their license dollars are going to do all this good habit at work. We wouldn't have any of these studies occurring in the absence of support from the hunting and fishing community. Either. It's not just money going to support law enforcement and habits at work, it's providing all this scientific information that underpins these management decisions. So when you've got such a complicated life history story as this ninel worm, think about how much research went into picking that apart and understanding what the dynamics are, just so you can have information in your hands to start to talk about what your management options are. Imagine if you're trying to make a management decision about this and you don't understand these nuances about the ecology of what's happening on the landscape. So I come away with just a lot of gratitude and um appreciation for how fundamentally difficult some of these management decisions are. As opposed to a desire to cast stones. I think it's helpful too for someone who starts to think, like, man, I'm starting to detect a TI hunting bias in my state Fish and Game agency. If you if you feel that, I think you should probably go and try to find where it's a theme that you're seeing occurring across a bunch of different wildlife resources. So if you find that deer tags going through the roof, no real change, no dramatic, inexplicable change, and bear tag numbers, that's a great suggestion. Turkey season is still long, water foul season is still long. Fish trees are still right. But there's this one anomaly, Like, man, they're really cutting back on moose. You probably look at that and but like this is probably about moose. I think that's a fair assessment and not seeing some like general thing where they're generally being like, you know what, let's try to get fewer hunters out of the landscape. But anyway we can think of and will manipulate data and use you know, hypothetical scenarios that could occur in the future as a justification to throttle back hunter participation. Um, you gotta get a big picture. And that's in contrast to a statewide bear hunting closure or a statewide lion hunting closure that's not at all rooted in any kind of science. Yeah, well, you know what, Maine, I'm sure you followed this. There was a they try to do a referendum to ban uh baiting and the hounds for bears, which would basically make you know, a lot of hunting mane very difficult and it got soundly defeat defeated by the voting public. So there you even have. You still have a strongly pro hunting, yeah, voting population in Maine, like they trounced that thing, that initiative referendum. So hopefully that story helps a bit. But dude, if this guy listened to seventy podcasts a one month, I'm having to think he's gonna get to this and and and find where we addresses concerns. Hopefill draws his tag, Fee's gonna run into him and put in for I at home. Man, when Pete draws, is gonna have some other guys come in and like blow out his area and be like you na mean? Phil? Is it a quick question? Can those miningel worms transmit to humans? There is not any evidence in the literature I've come upon that um indicates that to be the case. But there is a host of other species I talked about mule, deer, elk, caribou, um, domestic sheep, and goats, And then your bro might be interested to notice, Steve, but llamas and alpacas can also be infected with miningel worm. I didn't want to have to think about quitting any more. Else. Yeah, well you are you eating him raw? I mean I have sounded very trigger gnosis like parasites swimming around in you can I give a couple of points just to just to add a little bit, a couple of points that came from at our net when I put this moose question to him. Yeah, he had a couple of good points. He usually does, so he has He bullet points out a few things to think about here. Um. He points out that residents always have top priority for special trophy animals, and in Maine only ten percent of the tags for each of the four management units. So Maine divides this moves up into four management units. Only ten percent even go to non residents. So he goes on to say that a non residents odds stay proportionately the same as everyone else and vary with how many Georgia and other nonresident guys are applying for any given tag. Um. He says that people in Maine are inherently conditioned to having a very conservative number of hunting tags. Uh, I mean, they'd like to play it safe, and proposed increases in tag allocations are often met with considerable pushback. He says there's a cultural social aspect here that a person from Georgia may not fully appreciate um because apparently a few years ago the department did get more aggressive and issued more tags, more moose tags, and happened to coincide with one of the big tick outbreaks that resulted and higher than expected mortality. It was a double whammy, if you will, and they took a lot of ship from the public. He also says, in the last ten years, they've perfected better survey methods, data and modeling approaches, and they're probably operating now on better population estimates than they were operating on in past years. So they may have had assumptions about how many moves they had that were different than what they're now thinking is true. And if you're shooting for those certain percentages, you're going to see a lowering just because you're operating on better information. He also goes down and say this where tick outbreaks have had the highest impact, the department would like to kill more animals to reduce densities. But as you might guess, the public doesn't get that too well, meaning they're gonna say you want to kill more moose who are already dying from ticks, and they're gonna push back on this good stuff, man, deadly edly. Um uh, I didn't even get to the main thing I wanted to talk about. Man, what was that? We've covered some ground, dude, Oh my god? What it maybe I want to talk about? Was the Okay, ny, how long we've been talking here. We've been going for a while. We could do one more at all if you can do it in ten minutes. This is my concluding thought. We have over the months, got many, many requests for comment about an issue that's going on in Alaska that's been generating a ton of headlines here in the lower forty eight in the national medium. It has to do with something that's happened with certain hunting practices being banned on certain lands in Alaska. UM. To give you a little bit of background, Uh, states manage their own wildlife, and with exceptions of if something is protected under the Endangered Species Act or it has federal oversight because it's migratory and actually moves very fluidly across geopolitical boundaries, right then the federal government was going to provide some management oversight so that one state is inadvertently screwing another state over, meaning you kill all the ducks. Let's just say you were to kill all the ducks in Alaska, Well, a dude in Texas is gonna have, you know, or a dude down in the you know, the valley in California. You've just screwed that guy over. So there's some insulation from one state making a bad move on migratory stuff. NASA, we might have federal oversight, but generally if things aren't you know, another example like marine mammals, there's a Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, but generally the state manages on wildlife as it sees fit um. In two thousand fifteen, during the Obama administration, there was a ruling that came through the Interior Department at the time that eliminated certain management tools or certain things that the State of Alaska at times allowed, and they limited their ability. They eliminated the state's ability to use certain management tools on federal preserve land in Alaska. This did not affect the remainder of the state. So about thirteen percent of Alaska is federal preserve and they said, on this thirteen percent of Alaska, we're gonna eliminate such things as the ability to um shoot caribou from a boat, so you'd use a boat to go shoot a swimming cariboo. Um, that you would be able to use dogs or bait for hunting bears, that you would have wolf and bear seasons that were opened during spring like denning and calving and pup raising times of year. This was like deeply unpopular with the Alaska Department Fishing Game because it would be similar to let's say you have a city like let's let's say take New York and they have all their traffic laws and their traffic laws work very well. No one can look and say, man, your traffic laws are screwed up. But we're gonna do something. If a road passes by a federal building, We're gonna give you a different set of traffic laws that we would like you to enforce. It's not based on the fact that there's a problem with your traffic laws, just we've decided that we think, um that a few things should be different. That you should drive on the uh left side of the road if you're passing federal property, and we'd like you to go in and have the little discrepancies on your landscape these management discrepancies with how you're handling traffic and the police there might be like, uh, one was the problem. You're not showing us, you're not demonstrating that we've done something wrong. You're making our jobs much more complicated. It's more complicated for the public to understand what's going on. So we just generally don't like the fact that you're inserting yourself here in this way. Um, and it created some real like states rights federal rights issues. So now the State Department, I'm sorry, Now the Interior Department is moving to correct this and they're setting the regulations back to the way they were prior to this earlier law that went into place in making it that the state can manage wildlife as it sees fit on federal preserves as they had always done except for this narrow window of time of three years when they weren't able to do certain practices of the state. As the way it's covered though, and the media is it's like they're changing the laws so that people can now go dig cubs out of the den and kill them. Okay, where does that come from? When someone says that, what are they talking about? What they're talking about is this. There are some areas in Alaska where they have a lot of black bears. Let's say they have tons of black bears, not a lot of harvest upset black bears, and for management's sake, they just say that there's no close season on black bears. A person is allowed to black bears a year, no close season. Someone might look at that and be like, oh, if that's the case, I suppose that means you could go dig a bear out of its den and kill it. But does that mean that anyone actually does this? Already right now, seven percent of Alaska is already open to people pulling cubs out of dens and killing them. I can't think of a single instance where this has happened outside of the Koyakuk and Native Alaskan group, an indigenous group who resides along the Yukon and Koyukon rivers. They traditionally hunt bears in the winter by digging them out of Den's a practice that they have engaged in for thousands of years. That's how they hunt. Now, if you're the kind of person who likes the sort of cultural imperialism that would come in and tell an indigenous group of people who has acted a certain way for many thousands of years and live in harmony with its environment. That they've got it all wrong, that they're not sportsmanlike because they have a traditional use practice of eating bear met in the winter that they pull out of den's, then go ahead and be that kind of guy. But as far as what goes on with regular hunters, like people who are operating under sport hunting licenses, it is not a practice to dig cubs out of their dens and kill them. There's no like need, there's no demand. It would be like saying this, if you live in New York and you open your trash can up and you find a little nest of rat babies in your trash can, Okay, it would theoretically be legal for you to take a dull knitting needle and slowly kill all those rat babies with a dull knitting needle. Theoretically one could go do that. So to say that people in New York are allowed to kill rats that they find in their home or in their garbage cans, you could put it that way, or you could be the kind of guy who says it's not illegal for people in New York to brutally slaughter baby rats with dull knitting needles. Because sure, I'm sure if you're the kind of person who reads that that way. Yeah, another way it would be to put it is that you're allowed to like control rats in your home. So like the constant twisting is the other thing is an article and you see news which like because you're because you're allowed to already bait bears depending on where you are in in a three percent or eighties seven percent of Alaska, it's like, now you can kill bears using donuts and bacon, Like the journalists went to such specificity they've called out like they're like, what would be the most egregious sort of bear bait? I guess it would be donuts and bacon, And I'll use that as a headline to explain my story. Or that they said you can use a spotlight to go kill baby cubs in their den. This isn't something anyone's doing. And in fact, just because the state has the ability to make it legal in this new thirteen percent of their land masks and they've already had the ability to make it legal and eight seven percent of their land masks doesn't mean that it already is you can kill caribou from a boat in a couple a couple extremely remote locations north of the Brooks Range. It's a practice generally done by subsistence in digital. This hunters who traditionally target caribou as they go through as their migration paths take them across some major rivers because other than that, these are inaccessible areas and you cannot get into the areas and transport the meat back. So they hunt along rivers, and there's certain bottleneck points where migrating herds of thousands of cariboo will come and encounter a river. It's the only place these people have an opportunity to intersect these herds of cariboo, and that's where they hunt them, is on the river. There is nowhere. In fact, I've hunted all over Laska, I've never hunted in the unit where you could kill a caribou from a boat in the water. So the fact that the state can allow it doesn't even mean that it can be allowed. Where I hunt black bears in Alaska, the state could say you can go dig them out of a den, but you can't. There's a specific season, in a specific quota. You have to apply for a permit. You would get the permit about once every two years if you apply. When you apply, you have to specify whether you want to hunt the spring or the fall season. They both have pramp date parameters around them. If you wound a bear and don't recover, you notch your tag. It's that specific in the legality of it. Okay, So it's not that now Alaska is going to make it that I could go over there and dig baby bears out of their dens and torture them to death, because you already can't anyway. But when they look at when they're trying to do these management practices of maintaining stable populations of cariboan moves often with an eye tord, providing subsistence cultures access two readily available protein sources, and these are things they can do in certain cases when they decide they might want to. Doesn't mean it's gonna now be like the wholesale slaughter of baby animals everywhere. It's just it's egregious how poorly represented this has been in the media. Yeah, some of the headlines are outrageous. It's almost become like a joke to kill bears with bacon and doughnuts. It's like, yeah, it's probably not gonna be bacon and donuts, it's gonna be dog food. Oh my god, it drives me nuts. I don't even. It's like, I don't, I can't even. I don't even know where to begin when talking about this. I read an article that, uh that there was an animal advocacy group from Florida that traveled up to Anchorage to protest all of this, the bear cup killing, and um, they were met with a group, a college group of kids that were all indigenous Native American kids that changed their mind. I think the group is called Protest one. I'm remembering it correctly, and two advocates are going up to protest for it and uh publicly speak out against it in this like college club explained it to them their traditional use practice correct, and they went to Florida and had a public statement or released that they change their position on it. This NBC News article points out, well, it kind of the right of the NBCY article kind of goes crazy because pretty soon he's like talking about all of a sudden, it has something to do with how Donald Trump's kids have been up to a lask on it. It's like this guy is like grabbing its straws right, like trying to drag anything in and in it. He says, like things that are cruel. Okay, so let's let's talk about that for a minute. If there's if there's a group of people who traditionally hunt cariboo as they're swimming across the river, do you understand anatomy and ballistics and stuff so much that you're saying that that's cruel or are you talking about something else? Because I don't really know. I don't really buy that that shooting a caribou at point blank range out of a boat they're usually shooting in the head when they do this, that that's more cruel then when he's standing on the ground. So you're like, you're trying to like introduce these sort of you're trying to introduce these sort of like subjective words into a discussion where they don't really fit, Like it's not a cruelty issue that you kill a caribou in the water versus on land. I think what you're trying to get at, what this writer is trying to get at as some idea of like sportsmanlike and I'll ask them to like, Okay, Are you really concerned with what sportsmanlike or not is that? Are you honestly concerned with that? Are you honestly concerned with what's cruel or not cruel? Or do you kind of just hate the idea? And I would love to know if the sun bitch eats me, because I guarantee does. But you just kind of like hate the idea of people utilizing like renewable resources, and you're gonna jump on any little point you can find to make it seem bad. I sent that to the buddy of mine sent that article to me, and I've already seen it, but he's like, oh, you mean to tell me that NBC News wasn't open to nuance. It's just, oh my god, it's maddening. Michelle, what are your concluding thoughts? I agree with you, it's maddening. Um. But I've been thinking about how our discussion on identifying and sharing our values and motivations of why we hunt, how that kind of should be introduced and tied into the hunt purity scale. I think those should be some variables that we add and uh, I think by the end of this grand experiment and UH with meat eater, um, we're gonna end up with a really refined tool scale the problem. And I love the hunt purity scale idea introduced my my brother. I think that it's gonna wind up needing to have like a lot of emotional factors. In fact, you know, I have to start capturing state of mind, right, Yeah, Like how do you define success? There's variables within that, Like it's it's really have their own personal scales scales. There's like it reveals a trem in this amount of bias. So in crafting a hunt purity scale that doesn't reveal personal bias or regional specific activities, like it might be like a person in Texas would uh like inherently they wouldn't get a high score on my brother's Hunt Purity scale because he puts he puts the land management on his own hunt purity scale. So he if he kills the elk on public land, he considers it like harder and more rewarding. But if you live in a state that's privately held, his hunt purity skill doesn't do you any good. It's a lot of personal a lot of personal bias, but super interesting to think about how those how those subjective values play into that whole idea. Carl concluding thoughts, well, you had it, you had when you wanted to get into like a real one. I do, I have a concluder, so ye can you? Can you hit your concluders off? Quiet? You still think about those cold beers? Depends what kind of beer it is. Oh no, if I get side tracked right now, it's still still Turkey, still golblers. But John No, I'll just go ahead and in the name of time and efficiency, I'll pass today because we have a lot ahead of us today. So beat beat. Yeah, I don't have any any singers here, you know, nothing can drop that product. Big epiphanies. Yeah, stay tuned, that's coming. Um yeah, thanks for thanks for inviting men, So stay tuned at stone Glacier dot com, lots lots of coming. Is that what it is Stone Glacier dot com. Yes, yeah, hell of a website. Good backpacks, Yeah, like them, they're backpacks the formative website. Lots thanks to Pete Man. Like info videos. You go there, you know exactly what's going on with your pack. They're good, man, I'm telling you man. The packs though, it's like there's a little bit like when you get it packed, you kind of gotta like that does stuff. At first you're like, uh what, But to me, you start like figuring out how it all works. It's like a whole different deal. But some people just want like a bag hooked to a shoulder strap, right, which is the kind of backpass we had when we were kids. Are like canvas sacks with two leather straps on them. But once you get a bag, at first you're like, oh, man, like I got a mess with it. But once you learn to mess with it, it changes everything. Yeah, it's a technical piece of gear, and like any piece of technical piece of gear, there's a learning curve with it, and we certainly encourage people to master that learning curve before you you're standing over a dead elk. Yeah. That it's like an adaptable it's like an adaptable type of backpack that like does a bunch of different things. Yeah, they packed meat. Holler yeah okay, Carl. Literally all right, So yesterday was a long day. I had like a full work day and then flew up from Albuquerque to Bozeman And can I interrupt you from it? Yeah? Yeah, it didn't take long, man, But I'm not gonna say another word appens. But I want to point something out. I'd like you to justify this. I like to think that when someone does a concluder that it's informed by what happened here today. But you're throwing a concluder at us that is like a preconceived concluder. Yeah, it is has your So this is my question. Is your concluder? And I don't care, but do you feel that your concluder has been influenced by today's conversation? Oh? Yeah, Oh really, Okay, go ahead, I'm done. Yeah, because you know, you've had a chance to talk a little bit about um kind of the the psychology, the the spiritual aspects of being involved actively in these systems. We've talked about that a bit today and I did take the conversation there because it's been on my mind. And UM, where I was going with my concluder is that yesterday was a long day and when I finally got into Bozeman last night was putting my head on the pill. I had a hard time falling asleep right off the bat, and I had these these few sort of recent um pieces of information floating around in my head in in an interesting concoction, and I'll try to lay it out so folks can follow me here. But what happened was I got picked up by a by a hired car at the airport and was driving along with this dude, you know, making some small talk apt apot dependent uh ride ride hailing service. And you know, I'm making small talk with the driver, a nice guy, um, talking about our families, and he mentioned he'd been married for thirty six years, right, and I'm coming up on my tenth anniversary this year. I was like, he's still yea. And so when I meet people, you know, I'm a fan of trying to tap into the wisdom of our elders, you know, So if I meet somebody who's been married for thirty six years, I'm always interested to hear some words of wisdom. So I took the conversation there, and he, I think, saw that as an opportunity to proselytize a little bit about his faith. And he's like, as long as you're asking me for advice, I'll tell you what I think is the main piece of advice. Yeah, yeah, which is cool. I mean I'm open minded, and I've got friends from all different religious backgrounds and secular backgrounds, and I'm always interested to hear what folks believe at their cores. And so this guy he summarized his perspectives on his religious faith as being the goal of trying to walk through life as if you're in a crowd without pushing anybody, Like navigating through a crowd without pushing anybody, all right. And I've never heard anybody refer to the refer to their faith in that manner. So I thought that was an interesting sort of piece of wisdom. And I think right now, um, in our in our culture as a country and in our culture as a globe, there's a lot of people pushing each other, um. And so this idea of trying to navigate in a way where you're mindful of other people, still moving, still moving, but mindful, right, I thought that was cool. And then as I was trying to fall asleep less and I was thinking about that, and then I was thinking about a couple of papers, like scientific papers that will include in the show notes so people can dive a little deeper if they're interested in this. And they're both very very recent papers that have been picked up in the popular press. Um. The first paper is titled the Biomass Distribution on Earth, and this group of scientists UM basically tried to assess in terms of carbon weight, if you take all the life on the planet, how is it distributed? And then how has it changed during the time that human beings have been on the planet. And there's some incredible takeaways. And if if folks are even remotely interested, UM, please take a look at the paper itself, because I'm going to do a very huge disservice by just skimming. Give us, give us a zinger, a few stats. Okay, so right now today, and and this is the units here are giga tons, which is like a huge amount of carbon. It's some if you imagine one kilogram and then put twelve zeros after it, that's a gig a ton of carbon. And the reason they chose giga tons of carbon is because it it controls for all the creatures who have like a lot of water in their bodies, so it kind of normalizes among plants and animals. But a couple of takeaways are that humans represent an infinitesimal fraction of the total weight of biomass, but during the course of our existence, we have influenced this distribution of biomass, unlike anything that has ever existed in the history of the planet, right, And we've done that by reducing the amount of wild animals and dramatically increasing the amount of domestic animals to the point that today um livestock represents zero point one gigatons of the biomass compared to wild mammals representing zero point zero zero seven gigatons. And that's for mammals. If you look at birds, domestic birds zero point zero zero five compared to wild birds zero point zero zero two. So there are more and this is in terms of biomass, more bio massive domestic birds more than twice as much biomass of domestic birds as wildbirds. The other day, my kid was asking me if there were more roly polies or people, there are more roly pollies. I said, there's more roly polies in your state than there are people on Earth. But then we got into like adjusting for size, and I was explaining that as far as large mammals go, there are far more people than any large mammal of comparable weight. And if you if you want to go with weight, if you take humans and our live stock and put us together, we outweigh the entire world. Of vertebrates except fish. There are more humans and livestock in terms of biomass than all of their vertebrates if you put fish out of the equation, because there's a there's a lot of weight and fish, and it's in the water covers our planet. Right, So the paper talks about our contributions to species loss and biomass loss during the coortinary mega fontal extinction. We get a back up from it. Yeah, everything with a backbone on land, everything with a backbone, it's not a fit. Does all the whales? Yeah, the blue whale being the largest creature. To check this out, marine mammals, if you want to go to marine mammals, they have declined from point zero two giga tons to point zero zero four giga tons, which is a fivefold loss in marine mammal biomass as a result of human exploitation. So this paper is really fascinating, um and in particular the conversation about the change that this you know, horrified primate that represents just a tiny little fraction of the global biomass has contributed to just shifting the distribution. So today now the vast majority of of biomass is woody vegetation fifty giga tons of um total carbon fifty giga tons of that as plants, but based on land use change, it's estimated in the paper we have lost half the global biomass of plants. So if you consider that the implications associated with our our existence, our growth, and our ability to thrive on the planet, we have had, you know, to put it, very mildly and outsized impact on the ecology of the Earth. So I've been thinking about that paper, okay, and then coupled with the taxi driver, hold on for a minute, I promise I'm going to conclude shortly. Then there's this other paper that will also post about the changing attitudes people have towards natural resources. And this is a paper published by some researchers from Colorado State and Ohio State in biological conservation. The lead authors guy named Michael Manfredo, and they talk about people who either have domination type values towards wildlife and they also refer to these as more traditional values. So the idea that wildlife are here to benefit people. Um, you know, this idea of like the subservience of wildlife to human beings as opposed to mutualist values which are on the rise as we become more detached from the land increasingly urbanized. These mutualist values, which are along the lines of, you know, treating these others BECs in a way where we give them deference. That's on the rise now that we've completely Yeah, the people who are most likely to live in a place where they have completely displaced, well, most likely to be like, you know what, we should treat it all. We should have mutual respect now that we've vanquished it. Yes, so they talk about this paper really focuses on how this this trend towards more mutualistic attitudes about wildlife is is already driving and will continue to drive a lot of conflict around fish and wildlife management decisions. But in the paper they also talk about this idea of being a pluralist, which is someone who feels like fish and wildlife cannon should be used sustainably, but also that fish and wildlife warrant a high degree of reverence and appreciation and we need to figure out how to co exist with them. That's called pluralism. Pluralist. Yeah, so somebody sign me up, dude, totally, I'm right there with you. When they when this paper talks abou ut pluralists. I felt like that's hit in the mark and this is something we could talk a lot more about. But in the interest of my concluding thought, I had this paper about the changing distribution of biomass on the landscape on on the on the planet, the planetary landscape, coupled with this idea of a growing disconnect between our species and the systems in which we evolved, in the systems that still still sustain us, right the flow of energy from the Sun to our bodies, and having all that coupled with this idea that my drivers shared last night of trying to navigate in a crowd without pushing. And I wonder if we as a species are capable of finding a way to operate where we thrive and we can extend this idea of not pushing to all of the non human inhabitants of the planet we occupy. Yeah, it's a good concluder. I don't care if you did have that pretty thought up the warrants it. That's what when I'm when I'm up at night land there trying to fall asleep, that's kind of stuff that's in my mind. And that's the kind of stuff that makes me feel supremely fortunate and privileged and grateful to be in this line of work, to be involved on a day to day basis. Yeah, with these tough kind of questions and conversations, you know, and whether we're talking about h