00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming in you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You Can't Predict Anything presented by on X Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on x. Okay, we're joined here today by special guest Carter Smith, Executive director of Texans Park Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Yeah. Great to be with you all. Uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna like ask ask them easy questions to start. The first question I have is not easy. You're aware of how um, how people who don't live in Texas are often baffled by Texas. The the the number of um animals and just it's bewildering to be. Yeah, the scale, the diversity. You had a bit of a mythology around all that in there. Yeah. Yeah, And you can be driving down the road and there's a zebra standing there. It's just we hear. It's that's why it's gonna be down here, because we hear from so many people, you know, people right in and we here from so many people who have they speak about like people from the Northern Tier States whatever speak about Texas as though they're asking about another country. Yeah. Yeah, and so it's good to come down and talk to the official I don't like to go by the official voice of Texas. Yeah, I'm not quite that formal formal stage. So yeah, yeah, well I'm gonna ask you to cut that immediately. You're you're from here, right, I am, Yeah, grew up here. It's got up one foot in the shitty, one foot in the country called Allston home our family right and farmed in central and South Texas, and and so it was kind of the best of both worlds. Ran a cattle ranch. We did, yeah, calfe operation and and um my really uncle took full responsibility for that when we played a part is as well. Um it was kind of interesting growing up to see my cousins really gravitate more to the bag side. You know. I was always a lot more interested in you know, trapping hogs and you know, catching bull frogs and that kind of thing. So so let's just support your cafe operation. No, no, that was a separate operation. And so there was there was just a dry land row crop operation, Sorghum and corn um Lee sat out to a neighbor that have been there forever um and so and then we had a little cattle operation off on that off to the side on that place as well. And uh and so you know, that's really where I discovered the outdoors growing up. All my my friends love to punt and fish and be outside. That was pretty pretty natural, you know. Thankfully I had this blessed childhood where I had places to go and could also take take friends. But um, it was a pretty easy assimilation into the outdoors. Not so much for kids today. Did you guys on your guys properties, you guys involved in the oil and gas to impression tests. Yeah, yeah, well, and you know, obviously you know, you look right now what's going on in the Permian um and it has dramatically changed the energy landscape. Just a huge voluminous production of oil and gas out in out in West Texas. You know all of those notions of energy independence, um. And you know the fact that you have now the US as an exporter of oil and gas. You know, the the amount of production that's coming out of West Texas, it's just astronomical, um. But yeah, the the ranch of my father grew up on UM and that where I spent a good part of my childhood. You know, there was legacy production that um you know went back to the forties and fifties and some that was you know, during during our lifetime, and UM, you know it was always the trick is to balance that with the other things going on at the ranch, um and uh, make sure that there was a a coexistence. But I certainly don't want to give the listeners an impression that all of Texas is covered with pump jack's. You know, it's not their hot spots where oil and gas is produced. It's it's it's a critical resource for the stake generates lots of revenues, you might imagine lots of lots of jobs. But UM, it's not as if that's an activity that blankets the entire state. It's localized obviously, where the oil and gas is and where it's viable to get out of the get out of the earth. Did you when you were young, did you know you're gonna go into wild I didn't. Um, you know it's I really I didn't have a good sense that, um, you could pursue that is a vocation later on, Yeah, you know, it's funny. When we were kids, like some man of the kids, like the Hunting Fish, the only thing you could think of is everyone would say that they're gonna be a game Yeah right. It's like, I don't know, it seems like is aware of yeah well, and you know, to be fair, I had that too growing up. UM. There was a game boarding in Zalez County and one of Williamson County that were you know, at the palace and the farming ranch all the all the time. They're wonderful mentors, wonderful role models. But you know, Steve, really i'd say it was college UM, and I was sort of mandering my way through trying to figure out what I wanted to do. No one full well, I didn't want to go to law school UM. And I sat down one evening with a Parks and Wildlife game boarden and a Parks and Wildlife wildlife biologist and that was really the epiphany that you know, I could pursue that is a is a vocation. And I wouldn't talk to a couple of my biology professors at the University of Texas and UM, and they said, you know, if you're really interested in pursuing wildlife biology or wildlife management. You need to transfer to another school that has more of an applied resource management program. And so one of them said, go west young man to soul Ross. And I said, well, where's that And they said, that's an alpine in far west Texas. And so I, you know, dutifully looked it up. Small school, this kind of rich history and geology and wildlife and transferred to soul Ross and and then left school for a while to actually come work for Parts and Wildlife on one of their wildlife management areas. And a couple of professors from Texas Tech who were doing research on the wildlife management area convince me that, you know, Luck, you really need to go back school, finish up your degree and wildlife management. Why don't you come to Lovebuck. Let us show you around campus. Um you don't have that much to go. That's thee was a rule, now, isn't it. Yeah, it really is. It's you mean to get it like administrative level stuff, and you know it's there's certainly a lot of folks that have taken that trajectory. UM I wouldn't but the graduate program and certainly if you're gonna get employed, UM as a biologist with a state fish and Wildlife agency, you need a mattress degree for sure. It's just so hyper competitive. UM. And then candidly here, if you want to be a game board, you've got to have a college degree. Now that there's no requirement that it's in criminal justice or fisher reaeson, wildlife management or psychology or maybe any of the other fields you might think of or phil with with UM law enforcement. But you gotta have a college degree. UM. And that's a very important, I think distinguishing factor for our force. But yeah, the the advanced degree if you want to go into the biological sciences and and get into fish reason wildlife management. It's just so so competitive these days. It's just about imperative. That's what drives it in your minds, is the competition. Yeah, not like a not like a it's not a prerequisite for applications. Well, there is a prerex sid I mean typically we'll say preferred UM, you know, and so and you know, we've got plenty of biologists that UM that have undergraduate degrees and excel inside the agency, and then we have plenty of post docs. So it it runs the gamut on the continuum. But on average, I'd say, UM, these days, competing for a state Fish and Wildlife agency job, that that that at least a master job is going to help, UM, give you a little extra chance, and in in what is a very very competitive field. And you went off to Yale, I did, I did? There must have been a real shots, yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. If somebody said I took a wrong turn in Waco. Uh, but you know that? Did I feel pretty? We were you well traveled or were you pretty to spent your life around Texas? No? No, I mean I I had. I wouldn't say I was well traveled, but I've been outside of the state and now outside the country. Um. And I was excited about a challenge. Um, and candidly when I was kind of making my mandors through college, which was a very circuitous um, of course. Um. Before leaving Tech, I had applied to Yale and gotten in and then decided that I didn't want to do that, finished up my degree, came to work for Parks and Wildlife UM, and was here for oh, I guess almost two years, and realized I needed to go get that advanced degree, and Parks and Wildlife was looking at creating a position where I could go to a and m U, pursue my masters and continue work full time with the department, which was a huge opportunity. But I went ahead and decided to UM pursue UM admissions again into Yale end UM. I went in to talk to Bob Cook, who was the Wildlife Division director at the time and interestingly enough was my predecessor as the executive director and UM, and Bob said, Carter, We've got a terrific opportunity for you at college station. UM. I think it would work out very well. But I'm gonna take my parts and whild iife had off and if you were my son, I'd tell you to go east. UM. You need to go do that. You need to have a different experience in your life. Go go experience a different culture, group of people, different type of education. UM. And I think it will put you in good stead. And what you did so I did? I mean, I was terrified, absolutely, yeah, but I loved it. Uh. You know, wonderful university. UM. Lots of people from all over the globe, very stimulating intellectually. UM. And there I had a chance to meet a professor that really became a professional mentor for me Um a guy named Steve Kellert Um and Dr Kellert and E. O. Wilson and wrote that biofella you work. Yeah, that would be a stretch, but I did how he popularized that term biophelia. We talked about him my brothers in the college. He reads a lot of Oilson. Yeah, yeah, well you know what he was that he passed away? No, No, he is. He's still he's still alive. Um. And I think he's retired from Harvard. I mean he's probably still a professor emeritus or something. You know, I'll never forget. He's written so much on so many subjects. Just what an intellectual giant um and uh. And there was something that he wrote one tie that always stuck with me. The little guys, the little guys that ruled the world, you know. And of course he was an invertebrate biologist, and so I loved dance and all the little things. And when you think about you know, soul health and just the criticality of of of of microbes and the huge amount of biological diversity in our soil, and how that's just really the foundation for for everything. He was certainly spot on people that I mean just listeners that are curious for your talking about you can look up these comparisons of you know, if you took everything if you imagine all animal life like in an area and made a put in the pile, and then took all animal life out of the soil and put it in a pile, like the comparison of sizes, and then you get into stuff like if you took all the beatles in the world and put them in a pile, that the pile is bigger than all the humans and large mammals, and you know, pretty dramatic and it's funny, like you just you don't perceive the world that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well another good comparison to that is like the tall grass parrot. You know, you look at those big, expansive tall grasses and then you dig up the root system and uh and what's on top of the whole pales in comparison to what's beneath iceberg. That's right, that's right. Yeah. The other issutingly thinking about Yale that um was was um. I mean I knew it before going there, but of course it's were aldo leopolg um, and so in the university very proud of that connection and that that ethic, and you know Gifford Pincho's time there, and and so there's been a lot of folks along history that went to school there, and you know, a lot of them you know, more in kind of policy related um um positions. But Steve Keller was just one of the brilliant thinkers, really interested in the human wildlife interface and people's attitudes towards wildlife and nature. And you know, I think for anybody that goes into a career in fisheries or wildlife management or conservational law enforcement, you quickly find out that most of your work has spent dealing with people, not creditters. It's really funny you mention next. We had a leading mountain lion biologist on recently and he like in being circumspects. Yeah, He's like, you know, I mostly deal with people. Yeah, I'd rather deal with lines, but I'm dealing with people. Yeah. Yeah, I'd rather deal with deer, but I mostly deal with people. Yeah. Yeah. Were you familiar with the writings of Aldo Leopold before before you went to school Sad County? You know, I grew up all that kind of stuff. Well a little later, I you know that that that came to me in college. I think the Saint Kenny Almanac was was actually a literature class. I had it at first all I went to Swann University of South and UM and it just really resonated with me. I mean his prose was so elegant. I mean it was so compelling, and he just wrote about the outdoors in ways that really spoke to me, um and in ways that no one had done and no one had done. Yeah yeah. And what's interesting about that writing is it's timeless, right. I mean we read it today and we thank god that was written, you know, seventy years ago or so, and it's as relevant today as it was in anything in there. I reread it now and then anything in there that feels dated, it's not actually dated, but it almost feels prophetic, like like the most of it feels like everything feels relevant and now, and then you read something and it feels like, man, he really was looking kind of forward or and I say, it's so much prophetic. We're talking about things that wanted being proving to be pretty timeless. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I think the whole stewardship ethic, you know, and of course at a private land state like Texas. Um, that's very Germaine to what we what we do. And I think Aldo Leopold wrote very very persuasively and movingly about the criticality of that ethic and making sure we do everything we can to help foster and engender that in our in our private lands managers and our private landowners. And so when you say private land state, US are in the nineties, yeah, and you know, proudly so, I mean that's part of the kind of the rich tradition of of Texas and so um, we're a very proudly private lands state. And and also you know, certainly from a conservation perspective here in Texas, if you're gonna get anything done any kind of a meaningful scale in Texas, it needs to be in concert and partnership with with private landowners. And so that's a big driver for us. Well, I imagine, I mean just that you know, you have to be realistic about it. I'm sure there's plenty of people that would like to have some more public land opportunities in a state like this. Wildlife conservation is gonna happen. It's gonna happen on private lands. It's where yeah, yeah, you bet. I don't want to skip too much, but you wanted with the Nature Conservancy. I did. Yeah, yeah, I worked for the Nature Conservancy and that was kind of an interesting transition. I um. When I left Yale, I was up in Canada for a while, up in the boreal forest, um way hoose work, which is pretty interesting and uh. And then I got talked into coming back to Texas from some interestingly enough, some parts and wildlife biologist friends that were really concerned about the development of the Katie Perrie west of Houston and just a waterfowl mecca, historic prairie wetland areas, lots of rice farming at the time. But Houston was, you know, on its inexorable march westward and um and there was a need for kind of a nature conservancy like organization that could work with parties to try to help protect some of that habitat before it all became impervious cover. It's so I got in pervious so so so just like this tabletop, you know, the parking lot, the asphalt, nothing gets like yeah yeah and so um and so Houston's moving west, You've got all this valuable rice farm habitat, wetlands, residual prairie, tons of waterfowl. UM. But you know, the concern was it was gonna get paved over unless there was somebody actively working to go out and work with landowners to try to figure out a way to conserve it. So interestingly, a group of waterfowl guides uh, rice farmers UM, a couple of developers, real estate attorneys, UM, and some of Houston's got the middle of the road conservationists said we need to create a land trust like organization. That was the coalition. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So they credit this Katie Perry conservance. Real quick. Oh you know what, hold that thought, all hold the thought? What were you looking at with moos? So we were looking at a variety of things and is kind of this concept about trophic cascades and whether or not systems were controlled top down through her beavery or more bottom up through nutrient related considerations. And at the who's in the driver's Yeah, kind of who's in the driver's seat and so in and you know how our forest management practices UM contributing to either um, you know, helping or hurting moose populations. And there was this this this Kotaria Universities that was working up on a Cree Indian reservation UM with funding from the National Science Foundation, and so they were looking at a wide variety of things. And it was University of Saskatchewan, University of British Columbia, University of Washington, Harvard, Yale, a couple of couple of others, and so there were there were professors and grad students from all over UM and we lived on this Kre Indian reservation and UM and and worked very closely with the First Nations Community, UM, the Saskatchewan provincial government on a variety of kind of research related topics. And my job was to help kind of keep all of that going. There were certain uh numbers from the community that we had to hire for jobs associated with the research. When researchers in their grad students would come up, I'd have to help them kind of get acclimated and help them get their research projects get get set up. And so he was a pretty eclectic mix of things that we were we were we were studying the moose stuff, obviously is what caught my attention the most, because I knew so little about moose before I got up there, and it was just interesting to be around a big game animal that was so you know iconic um in those in those in those forests, and yeah, I'll always treasure that time. Just uh but the culture shock was about like going to New Haven, Connecticut. Uh so in the other direction, in the other direction. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, and I ended up making my way back to Katie at the behest of of of folks here to help start this land trust, which I knew absolutely what was the Yeah, when you talk about the land trust for Katy Prairie, what was the what was the developer participants? You know, so the developer participation were really a couple faults of Syrah Club was suing everybody over you know, development of wet lands, violations of the Clean Water Act. I mean it was World War three over there on the on the on the Katie Perry um. And so they were trying to find, let's create some organization in the radical center that can apply to everybody that's doing something applied, pragmatic, getting something done. It's not just a purely litigation oriented strategy. And um, you know, and I would say it the the the area was was pretty agricultural oriented, so it wasn't like a fit for an organization like the Nature Conservancy. And so that was the genesis for for for the land trust being created. You mean men, the nature conservants is generally associated with less disturbed less disturbed lands, Yeah, exactly. And and then I think folks wanted wanted a group that it was a local um. You know, it was locally driven. The board was local, people knew who they were, representatives from these different sectors that you know, kind of aligned around a plan to help protect parts of that, Katy Perry. And you know, to your question, the real estate developers saw it as a as a quality of life issue. They saw it also as an appreciation to real estate is there was going to be development out there. There is development out there, but having open spaces, parks, wildlife areas, they saw that, or at least some of them saw that as a value add to what inevitably was going to be the you know, future growth of Houston. And so having some of that preserved, they saw that as a as a proverbial win win playing yeah, playing the long game. And I'll tell you what's what's proved interesting about that too. If you look at um Hurricane Harvey, UM, when it perched over Houston and West Houston and dumped, you know, fifty inches of rain. You know, that area west of Houston, you know, becomes the receiving ground for all of that rain. And the more that can slow down, the more it can can penetrate into the soil percolate down there. As opposed to just running off concrete into a buy you, the less flooding it's gonna cost. So so as it turned out. You know what the Katie Perry Conservancy was doing when I started there, you know, it's all about waterfowl and waterfowl habitat. Um. Today it's a whole lot more about UH kind of an unconventional flood control strategy and preserving open space to help with attenuating UH floods into Houston in addition to protecting open space and wildlife habitat and places that people can can go to get outside people. Yeah, yeah, they still do, which is terrific, you know, And um, we don't have the huge amounts of snow geese that we used to have. When I was there, those rice fields and wetlands were just absolutely covered with snow geese. There was one of them. But even that was an anomal though, right, well, it was an anomaly because you know that rice attracted him, and UM, I like that that. Yeah, yeah, just the Yeah, a lot of them, Yeah, a lot of them, but you know, lots of ducks of all stripes. You know, we're here at the tip of the funnel on the Central Flyway, so we get lots of waterfowl that that come through here. And we spent a lot of time here at the agency working to conserve waterfowl habitat and and make sure we're doing our part along the along the flyway and um. And so that Katie Purry provided a pretty unique point a little further inland from the coast. Um. But yeah, those big flocks of snow geese have kind of gone away. Um, they seemed a lot of them moved over to Arkansas where you still have a lot of rice country. And yeah, we just don't have the numbers. Did you. Did you keep up as an angler through all this Yeah, yeah, no, I never lost that. Um. And you know that certainly was my immersion in the out of doors is loved up, you know, hunting fish growing up. If I could, you know, died funding, I you know, I would be the peppist, you know, A way to go. I think from my perspective, I just I just love that, UM. But I've always tried to make time for it. UM. Now, you know, to be fair, you get a lot of folks that I love to hunt fish and so I want to, you know, go get a a have a career as a wildlife biologists or a game warden. It's not like you've got a lot of copious free time to do all that. Yeah, so people get kind of disabused of that notion. It's a professional job and you're gonna have to make time just like anybody else to do the things you love. Then you came here. Now, then I went to work for the Nature Conservancy and UM, and so I was recruited, UH go work for the Nature Conservancy in South Texas and Northern Mexico's a project in the Lagana Mata tom Alepis and look at the madri in Texas. UM looking at kind of a binational conservation strategy with UM, and they wanted somebody that could relate well to landowners and would be comfortable. At the time working in Northern Mexico is a different times. Then it's flamed by now and so by national working in two countries UM and so you know what's interesting about the Laguna Madre system. You know, the one of the five largest hyper saline, super salty lagoons in the world. You have it in South Texas basically from Corpus to Brownsville. Then you've got the real Grand and then you have the Mexican Laguna Madre south of that, and they're both of them again super salty, loaded with you know, red fish and trout and redheaded ducks and peregrine falcons and kemps, ready sea turtles and shore birds and wading birds and reddish eGRID. I mean, it's just it's the amount of wildlife is stunning. Is it in good shape on both sides of the border. You know, there are um, there are there are differences. Um. One of the things that I think has helped the Texas side quite a bit is the big expanse of ranch country, undeveloped branch country that borders the Laguna Madre. So we're talking about the King Ranch, the Kennedy Ranch, some of our state's most uh fabled in largest ranches. And the fact that and in great shape and they very actively manage those ranches for wildlife and conservation and and range land health and so forth. Um. It's so the lack of development along the Laguna Madre both um, largely on the mainland side because of the big ranches, but then of course podral And National Seashore, longest you know, undeveloped stretch of barrier island in the world. UM, coupled with another big swath of protected land that's part of the US Fish and Wildlife Service Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge on South Padrea Island means that, Um, you just don't have a lot of developmental pressures in the Laguna Madre until you get deep down into the into the rear Grand Valley near the Mexico border. Um. It's so Texas site pretty good shape. Um, you know, get into Mexico. Oh that that that system um still biologically very unique. Um fished awfully hard. Um because even like the one you guys in Texas when it was such a slow down on commercial red fish netting and stuff, they probably those practices that probably continue to imagine they do they continue down there. Um. You know, they'll put these big nets across those little bayous and inlets and just hammer the fish of all kinds, and you know, candidly. Our gameboard spent a fair amount of time, um, dealing with a legal Mexican commercial fishermen coming into Texas. And so they'll come in these little pongas and they'll set these long lines and they will hammer our you know, sharks and rechnaw because you're just flirting with a with a you're flirting with a marine marine border. Yeah, and and they come over, they set their lines, and they come back, and they get in and out and and it's a real game of cat and mouse. Um. But it's that that pressure has really intensified over the years, I think is you know, some of those fisheries in Mexico had so much pressure on them that, um, it's just been worth the risk to them to come over and try to sneak across the international boundary and fish and Texas waters. And so our our law enforcement team spends a lot of work and making sure they're protecting our resources. In that record, hey uh yeah, hit him with the question you were talking about wanting to ask them what's out of order? But it's now Yeah, I didn't know we had an order. We'd like to keep it secret. Yeah, yeah, there you go. No man, we're running through like, uh, think about it like your childhood. Yeah, I say the secret Yeah, no, I got it. I got we got peeled off on international borders. Yeah, but we were wondering how much you work in concert with like the Mexican government now as Texas parks and wildlife with critters that are you know, they're living that zone, might don't care about whether yeah, exactly, they don't know migratory wat water phone. It's got to be a conversation, right it is. Yeah, absolutely, And in fact, we have a liasion that works here UM whose sole job it is to um, you know, kind of work with some of our international partners. And so a big part of her job has been with working with our counterparts in Mexico on you know, fisheries and wildlife issues. And you're right, you know, bighorn sheep or redheaded ducks could care less whether or not you know, they're in the Wevley owned um or you know, West Texas UM or the coast of Texas or the coast of coast of Mexico. And so we still continue that work fairly actively, not as actively as it once was, just you know, to be fair, the conversations are good. UM. You know, we have there's an international joint venture of the Rear Grand joint Venture works on bird related priorities in both Texas and Mexico that were very actively involved in. UM will frequently host workshops for UM Mexican biologists to come to to to come to Texas where we can help share information and disseminate information UM. But you know, regrettably thanks changed UM in Northern Mexico and that has put a damper on, you know, some of our travel and the ease of working across borders to UM share resources and work collaboratively on projects and again, whether that's UM Kim's readily seat turtles on the coast and protecting nesting beaches or working together on you know, red headed duck related management or big horn sheep or whatever. But they're still for still a dialogue and that's good when we see that things have changed, are you referring to just like the escalation of drug related violence and it also things about things about border security really really more the former than the ladder. Yeah, the escalation of the of the cartels and the penetration into into northern Mexico. You know, they're just issues associated with safety that we have to be very very mindful of, um, because of the areas in which, um, you know, our folks work. Um. You know. That's that's that reminds me of a point I like to raise with people now and then, um, where you grow up with this the idyllic cents or not even let me put it different way, like people imagine this sort of post apocalyptic situation where wildlife thrives, and I always find myself pointing out the people if you look, what like chaos does not serve wildlife? Well yeah, yeah, sure, like stable, well functioning governments serve wildlife well bad. You know, there's this idea that I used to remember going to places like going to the Southern Philippines when I was younger, and I had my snoricling mask, and I was like, oh, it'll be no one's ever seen in these and you go there and you can't find a fish. There's no regulatory structure, no enforcement, no protection, just illegal fishing, illegal methods, using explosives, using poisons, no one to say no, that's not right, not just after you're like, yeah, it's the places that work smooth, they have very well well, And I think there's three legsure that tool, right, I mean there's the biology shot, there's the enforcement shot, and then there's the dedicated fun inside. And you've got to have all three of those for those systems to function. And so to your point, I think you're right where you've got stable governments and you've got you know, hunters, anglers, outdoor enthusiasts wherever you are on the consumptive or non consumptive space, and there's dedicated funding streams to support that. You have professional scientists, and then you have a professional law enforcement force that's that's charged with taking care of that and protecting it. That's where you see the fish and wildlife thrive. Your right. You know, are you familiar We're gonna get back on tracking a minute, but are you familiar with the How would you describe Shane Mahoney we've ever had him on the show. You I know, Shannon very very charismatic, very eloquent, very very passionate. But he's like, oh, he's he's like a wildlife philosopher. Yeah, yeah, that's and that's a great way to put a wonderful ambassador for the North American. He is a deep, deep thinker about wildlife and the history of governments and conservation and what war works have done. But you know, wildlife philosopher is a is a terrific I think Moniker for for Shane and and all the good he does all around the world. He raised the point with me that that kind of reflects what you're just saying where you're talking about the system of But like like scientific management to biologists, you have a funding structure. You have private landowners who want to see wild motivated to want to see wildlife, fund their property and enjoy wildlife. And he's describing all these functions that make our wildlife system work, um, and how complex it is and interwoven it is. And he said, one of the reasons our system is resilient is you can't cut the head off the snake. There's not like a thing. There's not like some crystal thing that makes it work. Many things work, and if you if someone were to go in for whatever nefarious reason, we're like I'm going to destroy it, it wouldn't be clear what to do. Like we have a it's it's a very well supported very well yeah, thankfully, thankfully, Yeah for sure. Yeah, um, okay back contract. Now, so you got this question answered. Check, give us, give us a breakdown. Well, the lands where you're at now lands for right now. So you do that conservancy, that nic conservancy for the whole damn state. Yeah, I know. It wasn't that much of epiphany, that easier transition, to say the least. Probably thankfully I didn't know what I didn't know. Um, And but no, I I was happily doing my work at the Nature Conservancy. Really enjoyed the conservation work. It felt like it was impactful in Texas, which was really my UM area of focus. Although you know, as I said, I'd worked in northern Mexico for a while as well, But you know, Texas being my home ground, that's that's where I was interested in in in in focusing. And and then I got recruited, Uh, kind of gauged my interest in coming back to parks and while life in this in this job, and um, you came back to serve the rouler in I did. I did? Yeah, And um and what a privilege, I mean, really, what a privilege. I Um, I care deeply about my home ground, just as I expect most people care about theirs. And so you know, the opportunity to work with a group of colleagues that are so passionate about you know, place and our natural heritage, in our in our history, UM and our wild things and wild places. UM. I love that about this agency and so UM the people were a huge attraction to me just because I've I've i've always held the department in very high esteem because of the professionals that I knew that worked for the department in different quarters UM, And so that was appealing to me. And then just the opportunity to do things at a little larger scale to give back, not just in the stewardship related side, which I'm particularly passionate about, but also the outdoor recreation side. I I really believe firmly that if we're going to grow the next generation of conservationists, that we've got to figure out ways to immerse them in the outdoors. Now. It may not have been and probably won't be the same way I was immersed in the outdoors or either of you were, um, but wherever they are, wherever they're at, we need to figure out ways to introduce them and connect them. And I felt like Parks and Wildlife understood that from a from a state agency perspective, and if there was an opportunity to help grow that and expand that, and that really that really appealed to me is a is a way to give back to the state that's given me a whole lot. You probably can't even answer this. Do people come along and never vet you as an interior secretary as Oh gosh, their their their bar is much higher uh than next. I feel that's your next place. Oh you know, I love Texas and you have to dynamite me out of here. I think it's or shoot me out of here, which others probably a line of folks want to do. That give me an overview on um just like the scale of Texas Parts and Wildlife Department. Well, so you know, we cover the whole state, you know, two hundred and fifty four counties, hundred and fifty million acres or so a terrestrial wildlife habitat um Our boundaries go out nine nautical miles into the Gulf of Mexico, two hundred thousand miles of rivers and creeks and streams, you know roughly, you know, with our Mandering shoreline a little over four thousand miles of that. So it is, it is big, and it is vast. You know, you draw a straight line, I think it's three hundred and sixty seven miles. You do all the you know, bays and estuaries and so forth, and it's it's scaled up considerably along the along the coast. It is an interesting statistic about Prince of Wales Island and the Island of Hawaii, Prince Will's Island. It's half size or a third size, best twice the coastline. Yeah, yeah, exactly the same phenomena. But you know, the scale is is fascinating. You know, ten or eleven different ecoregions, um, you know, from the deserts to the coast, to the subtropics, down into the Rio Grand Valley, the southern terminus of the High Plains, the southern terminus of the Rocky Mountains, you know, the Edwards Plateau, and the central part of the state. A place at E. O. Wilson of all people, called the twenty six bow diversity hotspot in all the world, just because of the proliferation of interesting fish and wildlife organisms and plants that that reside there. The Big Thicket, which is you know, more like the south over in the eastern part of our state. And so it is big, and it is diverse. Is an artifact of the size, you know, kind of the accident of geography thing. It's situated a pretty interesting part of the globe all and you've got stuff that from a passing glance you can think it was tropical jungle. Yeah, and then you have it's amazing cause you go up and you have the like short grass prairie right off at Texas Panhandle, right because guys would guys would talk about traveling for days without seeing a tree. Yeah, and did and it looks like the Great Plains. Yeah, absolutely got those rolling, undulating hills. You know, maybe you'd hit a little bottom with some cotton woods and a spring fed creek and and and you know, a lot gamier than people realize. But yeah, there are parts of the Panhandle that you know, I'd pluck us all down in and you'd say, sure, I'm I'm here in Kansas, I'm in Nebraska. But you're in the Texas painting or conversely, parts of far West Texas where you get up in some of the mountains um and you get some ponderosa pine and aspen, and you know, I think you're in New Mexico or Colorado and So that's that's fun to be able to work in the state that has that level of diversity of kind of plant and animal communities and to play a role in helping to manage them and conserve them. What's you guys best guests on how many deer? Say? You know? And our best guess is a is A is a good way to put it. But you know, maybe in the five million range. I'm gonna look at what I told here about twenty eight million people. Yeah, so you know, we grow by about a thousand Texans a day, so as you can imagine, seriously, seriously, Yeah, yeah, it's impressive. Our our growth rate has just been um, pretty high and pretty because roughly, yeah, what's driving it? Yeah, it's the economy. Yeah, the economy. Um. I mean people come here for business quality, quality, alive. Um. You know, eighty six percent of us live in nine major metropolitan areas, so you know, Texas spite of all that vast rural nature nature um empty in the middle, empty in the middle, um um or populous in the middle and in empty on the on the fench. Yeah. Yeah, so five million, roughly five million deer. If I be a deer, if I've made white tails. Someone then came and said to you, um, like they wanted to make a bet with you, a bout how right the number was? Yeah? Like how how how possibly wrong could a number like that be? Well, and you guys sit around trying to like, because five million sounds like a pretty convenient round number. Yeah, and I and you know take that again? Is it from looking at densities and then multiplying. Yeah, So our our our biologists are actively involved, you know, with survey of all kinds of animals um year round, you know, depending on what the species is. You know, certainly why tell deer surveyed very very extensively, not only by biologists with this department, but by private landowners and others. But five million is an estimate, and so that's a rounding number from me um and so is that accurate within plus or minus ten properly? We got a lot of deer um and in many cases too many deer. And so you know the issue is not so much how do we bring back deer in our state. We've already done that very very successfully. The challenges is how do we get hunters to shoot enough dear? How do we get landowners to accept allowing hunters to shoot enough dear without being concerned that you know, they've shot all my dear. You know, really interesting because a friend of mine this, I don't want to say who said this because because it sounds cynical, but he was this is not you talking, it's me talking, but a friend. And I was, like, he says, I'm always baffled. I hear someone say white tail conservation, white tail conservation is shooting white tails. Well, but to be fair, you know they're parts of the South and parts of the country and where white tail numbers have declined. Uh, and so you know why that's happening. Um, you know, probably myriad reasons. In Texas, that's not the case. So when you say too many, too many by what measure like too many according to who? Yeah, too many according to what the habitat can reasonably sustain. So it's not egg it's not car insurers. No, it's you know, I mean, we hear from you know, some farmers in certain locales about about deer densities being too high and concern about crop depardation. That's really a very very small part of what we deal with. Um. Occasionally we'll hear uh from an insurer about you know, dear vehicle accidents. But that's really an anomaly that that does happen. Oh, sure, I mean occasionally, but it's you know, it's it's really more the poor motorists to you know, hit a deer and then well that's the state's deer, and so the state needs to pay me for the damage to my car and my lost trip and this and that there. Everybody's dear. Uh it's so uh yeah, No, we don't have any liability associated with that, I mean always, so that's something people test. Oh, it's occasionally, you know, it's uh, It's probably been a couple of years since since I've heard somebody make a vigorous case in that in that regard. But um, but you know, we do have a lot of dear vehicle accidents. It's something you can have a lot of dear Ferrell Hawk accidents. Um, you know, you gotta be mindful driving in rural areas. It is hitting your car, yes, yeah, and that'll call serious damage. I mean you look like hitting a bear. Um. In fact, there's right around Austin there's a a um a loop that was that was built a new tollway and when it put in, It was put in. It seemed like there was a vehicle Ferrell hag collision every single day. Um, you know, And this just happened for a year or two, and finally a couple of the counties got together and said, you know, we've got to start working on some Ferrell hawks lost. That's a public safety problem. Um. You know, there's all these other myriad problems associated with Ferrell hawks, but um, you know, a a a loop around Austin and San Antonio with a eighty five mile hour speed limit and somebody hitting a Ferrell hag, that's a recipe for real problems. Um so um so, yeah, deer hall collisions are up? Are are are? Is it? One of the things that keep us laying awake at night about the things that let's talk about hogs because I had a bunch of hard questions. Let's just do them now. Um, what's the ballpark on hawgs? Can you even venture to guess? Do you have more hogs and deer? I don't think so. You know the numbers that that that I hear consistently, and you know, you listen to the margin of ara this or somewhere between two to four million hawks. So how accurate is that? Nobody knows we were They're hard to count, you know, because they're largely nocturnal UM, and they're not really good methodologies UM that are established and that are being practiced on a regular enough basis to estimate numbers. And again remember with you know species, I there a lot of arrested as trends over time, right, the exact numbers are less important than the trends and in other specific um um into season in in metrics. But lots of hogs every we have we have farall hawks and every one our counties now um so counties, you guys got two hundred and fifty four and that's not so your hog distribution map is the state. It is the state. It is the state. And I even on that like crazy West Texas, Yeah, where you couldn't think there's there's a country there, avelena country, very little surface water, UM, not a lot of top soil. It is astounding how adaptable and resilient those feral hogs are. Well they displace have alena. Yeah. I think that when when hogs will come into an area and really take over UM, oftentimes that will disrupt UM. You know, those those very strict social structures that um that UH have alna live in and will displace them from from a from a habitat utilization perspective. So we certainly see that. Let me ask you if you could um wave a magic one. This is our favorite question when it comes to pigs, because a lot of times we have people who even work in the hog or adication industry and we're asking if you can wave a magic wine and have pigs go away. They'll say no, I wouldn't waive it. And not only and not just because I do this for a living, but they just come to appreciate them all the time. They're a fashioning animal archtype. Yeah, so let's say, here you are, I present you with this wine. As much as there's an industry in your state, it people come here. I got friends that come from Montana to Texas. Yeah, it would you would you waive the one and it would be absolutely gone from the state. You know, that's a that's a great question. You could have to put me in that camp that's decidedly mixed professionally and personally. You know, professionally be the right thing because you've probably been hunting your whole life my whole life. I grew up with him and I do have a deep appreciation for him and they are fun to chase, and we've got a lot of landowners that enjoy that. But we certainly have an equal matter more that um are just run over with hogs, huge problems. So how do you how do you like? There's no such thing as a balance between these two things. No, and there's it's a it's an interesting push pull. But you know, professionally, UH, we are pushing hard to to do everything we can to UM encourage landowners and hunters and others to UM trap as many hogs, shoot as many hogs. You know, we're working on a fascinating uh natural toxicon that is derived from sodium nitrite, you know, food preservative, and our biologists have been working in concert with scientists from UM Australia and New Zealand and here in Texas in U. S d A to test that toxicon. It's a toxic and it's a it's a bait. It's a pellet um that's got a very specific delivery mechanism to preclude other non target spec not lethal to deer, not lethal to birds, not lethal to cattle, and so we're still in the testing phase. Yeah, I got to Yeah, I mean I clearly we UM. I don't want to have some unintended impact on all the other species of wildlife and things that we that we care about. But it's been a fascinating study by our biologists at one of our wildlife management area and so they've gone back to the drawing board with UM. The size of the pellet, UM, the amount of the toxicon and the pellet. And what's interesting about this is sodium nitride hogs that eat it in a certain quantity, it stops the oxygen flow to the brain. So they'll eat it and then they'll go off and kind of go to sleep. So you know, it's not like other kinds of pesticides that you hear about that you know, have some pretty dramatic effects and UM and so we're you know, advert into those kind of concerns, but we're particularly concerned about I want to make sure we've done everything to attenuate impacts on non target species, right, we want to focus on hogs. So we're not ready for UM to have EPA approval yet and have that that would require that would require ep approval Yeah. Yeah, So we're rigorous testing and we've been working on the is for eight years or now, um testing different pellet formulations, a lot of cooperation from other entities, right, there's been a lot of interest in that, a lot of interests. You know. Similarly, though you know your point earlier, we've got you know, landowners in part of the state that have operations that you know, hunters come in from from from out of state in state to hunt Farrell hawks, and so you know, they'd be real concerned about controlled and and a landowner's choice. And really, at the end of the day, people have to get comfortable with the fact that you're not gonna you're not gonna radicate Farrell hawks. You can manage them, you can try to control them, but you're probably not gonna radicate magic one scenario you don't not realistic. Yeah, how far out might be? I mean, let's say you got there, you know, let's say toy and I tried. Yeah, let's say you got there. Like, how far out might something like that be? If you know, I think runs a normal course in the process, I think we'd still be several years away. And by that, you know, say a minimum of three there's more field testing that would have to be done. You know, we've been doing this in a in a in a setting on a Wildlife Management UM area in which we've been able to test it in pretty controlled environments. We've gone out with UM Wildlife Services and done some preliminary field tests and that's caused just to kind of go back and again look at that baked formulation, the palatability, look at the level of the toxicut um in there, and so probably we'll go back out in the field sometime in the next year to test that again, but we're several years away from that. You say, sodium night not tried. Yeah, My question is does that start kind of the brining process, so that is it safe for human consumption afterwards? Like you can right to the smoker. Yeah, there's yeah, just right there, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, No, I don't think it does that that for you. But but obviously we are concerned about you know, somebody shoots a feral hall that uh ended up eating some of that, babe, other animals eating that. Yeah, you bet, you bet so. I we're making sure that we're we're looking at every facet of this both from a non target perspective, but also the human health and say it would be it would be wildly irresponsible not to right. So, um, you know, it's a state Fish and Wildlife agency. We have to we have to do that. And this is a pretty unique area of research for us UM. And so we've got a real dedicated team of biologists and scientists again working in active partnership with U s d A and other research institutions on this. But there's a real hunger out there for some kind of a solution to the feral hog problem. Um. You can't shoot your way out of it. You can't trap your way out of it. That's interesting. So you would say within Texas, like more than fifty of your constituents would say, let's try to make less hogs. Yes, yes, what are the main what are the mean wise? Like, what are what are the main arguments against hogs? Yeah? Destructive, you know, a lack of real kind of meaningful predators on them. Their populations just go up and up. You know, they're tearing up fields, tearing up roads, tearing up tank damns, you know, displacing native species. Um, I'd say those are the principal ones. It's just kind of their their destructive and unchecked nature in terms of how they grow, you know, with their gestation period is what three months, three weeks and three days, so they're having litters all the time, and their litters you know maybe you know, ten, twelve, fifteen piglets, and so it's just hard to get the brakes on them. And a deer, a deer is gonna kick off, yeah, but she was gonna kick off one or two funds a year, that's right, That's right, And she's gonna kick off what Yeah, And so they're gonna they're probably gonna have you know, two groups of hogs every year, sometimes three, um, And they reach sexual maturity at a very young age. And you know it in coots will kill hogs and mountlines will kill hogs, but but not in a way that's keeping those numbers in check. And certainly hunters aren't doing that either. Explain what exactly what is the regulatory structure around shooting hogs from helicopters? How does this work? How does that work? So UM's a lot of confusion about that. Sure. So first off, the pilot has to have an aerial wildlife management apartment, and remember everything the overarching governance for that is the Federal Airborne Hunting Acts. So there's a there's a federal regulation which governs what states can do. Now, states can work within the parameters of that federal act, but there's an overarching federal Airborne Hunting Act that basically says you can't hunt from a helicopter or a next wing aircraft. Now, so how does that translate into people shooting hogs out of a helicopter in Texas which aerial and then our coyotes here and yeah, right, so UM in Texas UM, the Texas Parts and Wildlife Department, we essentially serve as the agent for helping to permit activities under that Airborne Hunting Act. And so we'll issue an aerial management permit to a helicopter operator and so that's an annual permit, has to be renewed. There's certain reporting related requirements and that's required if you're gonna you know, count wildlife from the air, if you're going to talk photograph wildlife from there, if you're gonna trap wildlife from the air, if you're gonna shoot hogs or coats from there, you've got to have that aerial Wildlife management permit. You also have to have what's called a landowner authorization agreement or what we call the acronym and l o A landowner authorization Agreement LAY and l o A is approved by the landowner on whose property you're flying over and say shooting hogs or codes out of the helicopter. So the landowner has to approve it has to approve the activity. So whether that's a wildlife census or maybe it's a trapping of exotics um um or shooting codes or hogs out of a helicopter. And then there are agents and sub agents of the landowner that are approved on that landowner authorization agreement, and so those can be observers and they can be shooters on the helicopter, but it's a it's jail referenced. The landowner has says, you know, within these boundaries, I've approved this map. You have this letter authorization agreement to conduct those aerial management activities, whatever they are. So that's kind of the regulatory permitting structure, um that we have put in place here. Um, there's been a real uh boom, i'd say, in the last um three to five years of helicopter companies marketing to people to you know, come be designated agents and and and shoot um out of their helicopter to shoot hogs out of a helicopter. But it's critically important that um, that that you've got that landowner authorization agreement and you're identified again as as a as an agent or a sub agent, and that you're only flying and shooting over property which you have permission, and that your pilot is properly and that you're and that your pilot is properly licensed. And again there's reporting requirements and other compliance things that they have to they have to meet. We've um, UM. It's been an important tool for landowners. Yeah, yeah, landowners will use that and particularly um like a guy can realize a guy can realize real movement of a problem. It can. But but I think you look at it seasonally and temporally know and so so let's say, um, you know, you want to target hogs, and you you go up in the air and you've got some shooters, You've got a good pilot, and you find number of sounders and you hammer those hogs. Um, you're gonna knock them back for a while. You may chase him on to somebody else's property, but you're gonna realize some relief. Now that's not permanent relief because they're gonna come back right nature a bore as a vacuum, So you're gonna have to manage them, you're gonna have to stay after them. But it can help give a temporary reprieve. So you know, when we're recommending those activities, again, from a feral hog perspective, it's you know, shoot shoot off and um. You know, you can hunt year round, there's no limits. UM. Legislation passed in our recent legislative session that if you're a landowner or a landowner's designated agent, you don't need a hunting license to hunt feral hogs. UM. But if you're us out shooting Farrell hogs or hunting Farrell hogs and you're not witnessing them in the act of depredating livestock or crops, uh, you really need a hunting license. So there's a little bit of a dichotomy um there from an enforcement perspective. But again, we we encourage the harvest of Farrell hogs. And so you know, we've tried to throw everything but the kitchen sink at it in Texas. UM. But but it still feels a little bit like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill at times. To what extent do you agree with the statement that enthusiasm around hog hunting actually drives increases hog numbers in Texas. Well, I think that's fair in parts. Yeah, I think that's fair in parts, Um, because people love coming to Texas to hunt hogs, and that's great. We want folks from out of state to come give us a chance to showcase our state, just like you know other states would like to do that or do that as well, and do it very very well. But yeah, I know we welcome and want folks to come to Texas to hunt hogs or deer, turkeys or quail or doves or waterfowl or whatever. Does that drive increased numbers or helped to artificially problem up? Well, I guess in the sense that is opposed to a management philosophy in that area in which people are really working to actively control them keep the numbers down. Yeah, it probably works against us. Um, is that the principal reason why hog numbers are just off the charts high in Texas, Probably not meaning high rates of reproduction, no real significant perdation. We don't shoot enough of them to be able to keep up with their biology of of of of reproduction and so um. Those factors have much more of a bearing than um the fact that you may have landowners in certain areas that you know, see see wild hogs as a resource for them. They are people who pay good money, need to come stay at their places and have a having experience hunting. Hogs love it. The great revenue stream for them, diversifies their operation, maybe makes it more likely that um, you know, they're able to manage their land, keep the family the property and the family and so forth. But I wouldn't say that as a big tipping point for why we have so many hogs in Texas. And imagine too, once they're established that it doesn't really matter. But you're I'm sure you're familiar with this that some states that are on the edge of the expansion of hogs will preemptively band hog hunting, Yeah, to de incentivize individuals who might think it'd be cool to bring them home. I don't blame them and cut it loose, yeah, And I will worry about that. Is some you know, disingenuous person comes and traps up load of hogs and Texas and then illegally transports them across state line and thanks, wouldn't this be fun to release them on my property? And you know state accident. I mean absolutely has happened, and it absolutely has happened. It does happen, um, and that's problem. But you guys have probably had hogs since then. We've had dogs for a long time, you know. Um, it's essentially like this place at this point, it's one could almost start to think of it as almost a native and not really. But we've been here hundreds of years. They've naturalized, right, I mean, that's how I think they've naturalized. You know, you think about hogs being brought over by the spaniards, Um, some of those practices, you know, I mean they turn them loose in the bottom lands and let them get fat in the winter and eat acorrange and uh and then looked up, you know, round them up such as it was. And and obviously then you had those feral hogs. Hogs that were originally domestic, get out, reproduce, start to rewild, produce a subsequent generation, produce another one. Next thing, you know, we've got wild hogs and and and in those numbers have just grown, and their geography has grown since I've had this job, which will be twelve years in January. Um. Again, no badge of honor here, but UM I think when I started, there were still maybe fifteen counties or so that we didn't have feral hogs in and would have thought, well, there's no way they're gonna get to El Paso, right, I mean, what's the what are they going to do there? And and then all of a sudden, well, it's seven counties that don't, then it's three, then it's one, and then pretty saying Okay, we've documented hawgs in every countyon and no one's come looking to kick you out of here. Oh. I'm sure they look for other reasons, but I don't think I've been blamed singlely for that that problem. One more question for you. I was reading the piece one time and I was talking about that somehow there's been like an oversight and shooting hogs some hot air balloons. Yeah, wasn't the what had was somehow illegal in the state? Remedied this is this true? Yeah? Yeah, No, there was someone someone identified a problem that like once they looked at the rule books, they realized they couldn't hunt from a hot air balloon. Yeah, and you know whether that's happened, I guess, but it's just so it's such a funny thing to realize. Was like like the when you look at the detail, you realize that hot air balloons are excluded. Let's go close time on that guy's hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Uh. Tell me about elk a little bit, because I know from I'm a member of Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation every year and I read I did a lot of greg work. Yeah, I read their their magazine. They come out with Bugle, and I think it was in there that I read a piece where Texas had a weird situation where elk had been extrapated out of Texas. Wasn't They've been gone for hundred plus years. There's some elk back now, and there's some sort of pro and on. There's pros and cons to whether elk would be regarded as a native animal in Texas and arguing about to what degree were they really present and where? Yeah, can you break this down talking about no, no no, no, I'm I'm acutely familiar with with that. And by the way, Rocky Mountnel Foundation just does terrific, terrific work. Um. I don't remember that. I don't remember it being I don't know that it was super critical of Texas. No, I mean, but it but it's but it's been a topic of interest for a while, I think because it helps explain wildlife politics. Yeah. Yeah, So, you know, historically they were elk in Texas and and probably covered a fair amount of the states. I mean, they were in the bresh lands, you know, UM, kind of down through the central part of the state. You know, maybe even along part of the part of the coast, um and um. And then you're right sometime in the you know, mid the late teen late eighteen hundreds, they really contracted and you know there were some relic elk up in the Guadalupe Mountains on the New Mexico border. UM. Probably some free range in elk that still wandered through the Texas Panhandle and parts of other parts of West Texas, but largely extirpated from the state. But we as an agency, we consider elk to be native historically they were here. As an agency, they were, they are they are a native species of wildlife. Now here's where the rubber hits the road. You translate. That will show me where elk are in Texas and how they get there, if they always been there, where they introduced and that, And it's a really eclectic mix of situation so like um like, for example, elk absent largely from big parts of Transpacas or West Texas are mountainous country historically no, no, no, in recent time, yeah, and so and so let's say forty years ago, Parks and Wildlife works to then go get elk from rocky mountain states to restock elk in parts of West Texas. And so we've got elk in the mountains, and that was going on. Was that going on four years ago? Yeah, Okay, already forty years ago, so that was certainly certainly going on. Um, you know, lots of efforts of course, is biologists were working to restock fish and game populations that had been um pushed lower for a variety of and sometimes with the kind of a cavalier approach and in in in some as you look back on it, uh, some of it looks a little bit that way. Clear everybody out and drive off. And then we've come a lot, we've come along to what we've got a long way, Uh, in that in that regard, particularly with disease concerns and you know, concerned about health related issues, capture related, my apathy, all those issues that that translocating animals has come a long long way since the wild West days and when you're referring to. But so, the department did a lot of restocking of elk in the in the state. Um, in state, in the we're treated as a game animal up until I think the mid nineties, and the legislature was petitioned by landowners out in West Texas to declassify it as as no longer being a game man because that would mean what So what that means is is no longer it now became classified as an exotic and so no seasons, no bag limits, you need a hunting license. But basically, as a landowner, you could manage the hunting of elk or opportunity to hunt on your on your property or ranch without worried about, well the elk season is only a month long or I'm only going to get three bull tags. Um. You know, basically you had the ability to decide how you were going to manage elk, how you were gonna hunt elk, and so how how is the state. If someone proposed that, for dear, you wouldn't like it. No, So how is how what is the argument? I mean, I understand, just I understand on the individual land on their basis, most people and I would be included in this. Probably most people are gonna want a higher degree of autonomy on one's own property. But like I said, someone Canden proposed that to you, Like I said, you know what for no on um, I want you to just give me the okay to do what I want with mallards that are on my property. I want a hunt the year around as much as I want. You're gonna say no, way to resist. But but here's what I didn't finish on the history of elk in Texas. What also began to crop up were private individuals bringing in elk from captive elk farms, and essentially, um there were all of these kind of high fence hunting ranges in which you know, elk might be placed on in in areas where probably historically there weren't elk, or they were intermittent at best, And so you had kind of all these captive elk herds, and so the state became kind of a grab bag of of of elk from different locations, managed differently different settings. UM. So we've been in this situation now where elk, while we consider them native um statutorially, they're still considered an exotic and so you don't have the same kind of regulations that um, you know, traditional big game have and you have like you don't have management authority over we we don't have management authority. They continued to do. They continue to thrive in areas that would be regarded as potentially historic range. Yeah. So the elk are doing pretty well in parts of West Texas. So for example, you know, the Davis Mountains is a very popular area for people to go hunt you know, free range elk in a mountain setting that looks like New Mexico, and so you know places you might have a legitimate chance at a four bull um, so pretty significant bull elk. You know, it a at what people would think of you know today is kind of a traditional Western kind of mountain mountain hunt. Um. But that dichotomy that you mentioned about, you know, some groups would like to see him reclassified as a game animal and have the state takeover management of them. Others want to make sure they stay in their current form where they've got that kind of autonomy that you spoke to that tends to split landowners right down the middle and West Texas. Some of them, Yeah, we like the way it is. We want to continue to have that independence. Others of them say no, we'd like to see it be a game animal. The elk farms, the kind of the elk ranches, that's a whole separate deal, separate and apart from you know, free range elk populations in in far West Texas. I think you'd have to treat those differently. Um, just very very different settings in in in in circumstances from a management perspective, and uh and so that in fact that the state's Animal Health Commission has really the regulatory jurisdiction over elk is an exotic not the not fortune Wildlife Department. You just mentioned the difference between elk herd that might be rolling around freely and the elk herd that might be contained an offense on one individual's private property. Explain to me the regulatory difference. Let's leave elk aside, and let's just talk about deer or something else. How does the state view those two things differently? Where free ranging deer um that are you know, it could be on county land, that could be on an individual's private farm. They're moving around the state. You know, the people own them. And then you have deer herds that are privately held and held in to a specific land owned property by offense. Does the state have to treat those two different deer populations differently or is your view that it's it's all dear and it all falls under the same regulatory structure. All all deer belong to the people of Texas. The public trust doctrine in this notion of public ownership of wildlife prevails, UM and there's a long history of that, not just in our state, but all across the country. That's the foundation for the North American model UM, and that's what we subscribe to. And certainly legally and UM philosophically. You know, we believe that all dear, irrespective of whether they live behind a low fence or a high fence, or in a captive game form or out you know, in a completely free range environment, those deers still belong to the people of Texas, and so so in a high fence atmosphere, even where you bring in you might bring in like introduced for genetic purposes, introduced new deer by dear move them around. That still has to be managed according to rules set by the state. Yes, And the reason for that is that is that interface between you know, free range populations of deer and captive populations of deer. The release of active bred deer into you know, high fenced ranches or what are called release sites, there's still ample opportunity for those deer to connect and and and have connections. And of course we all know fences are are are anything but infallible. You know, it's like blow out, a water gap goes down, a tree falls on them. You know, a bull runs through uh a fence, um, whatever, the group of hogs runs under whatever. So you know, by by no means or those impenetrable. So high fence operation in Texas there's still an opening day. Yeah, there's still a there's still an opening day of of of of deer season. And you know that's one of those great traditions, rites of passage. And and I wouldn't think of all high fence properties is somehow radically different than all low fence properties either. Um, you know, because because the scale, yeah, the scale of them. That's a that's a great point. And don't think and and and you know, our listeners shouldn't think that because somebody has a high fence around their ranch that they're involved in the breeding of deer, the captive breeding of of deer. That's that's that's not necessarily the case. I mean, we have two hundred and fifty thousand landowners in our state and about a thousand deer breeders. But you know, there are lots of high fenced ranches, but the scale of them may be very vast um and and so you still have the same kind of opportunities for uh, you know, fair chase and in in in hunting. However you choose to to hunt, there may be a high fence around you know, some or all of those property, and that that fence maybe uh more or less uh effective at keeping deer in or out. Um And so, you know, folks tend to think about Texas, you know, in that way and have this very kind of negative or pejorative perspective on on on on high fences if you come from states in which that's not so commonplace. What really really focus on is the management behind the fence. What are they doing from a habitat management perspective, how are they managing it to promote habitat diversity? How are they managing the game? They're the non game, the unique species, And so the issue is more that management and stewardship, not so much the height of the fence. Can you explain some of the some of the governments around um xiotics and movement of EOCTs, Like like, I'm assuming I couldn't, let's say, somehow got my hands on a truckload of jaguars. I'm assuming I can't just turn the jaguars loose. Yeah no, So, so what is okay and what's not okay? Yeah? No, So those kind of wild dangerous animals obvious legal prohibitions on first being able to have one and captivate or much less released one into the end of the wild. Inevitably, after some hurricane or storm um in some area, you know, we may get a call about somebody that had a line that nobody knew about, and you know, obviously there's a lot of a lot of concern about that for obvious reasons. But you guys, you guys will have a list of the world's animals with a checker and x next, we don't in parts and wildlife doesn't regulate exochs um. You know, that's not that's not what we do, at least on the animal side. We have some overlap there on aquatic exotic plants that were involved in but that's a whole different, different area of management and stewardship and control. But from an exotic animal perspective, that is managed through the state's Animal Health Commission UM, and so different regulatory structure in in entity. You know, there's certainly landowners all across Texas that have got interest in exotic game. That's very popular fallow deer, access to your black buck antelope all day out, or you know, many many free range environments now um. And so a lot of folks interesting that. From a wildlife and a hunting per aspective, it's it's it's pretty popular in our state, but we don't have any regulatory authority. You gotta have a hunting license to to hunt them. Um. But what about situations where that stuff winds up impacting the things that you do have prove view over? Yeah, great, great questions. So so most of our wildlife work in Texas, as we talked about earlier, is on private lands. It's it's in concert with private landowners. It's voluntary, it's collaborative. Put this in perspective. You know, we provide technical assistance on wildlife management to landowners all over the state and we have roughly thirty million plus acres under a department approved wildlife management plan that's about of the state. So that's kind of evidence of that and that interest. You know, the first thing our biologists are going to do with their landowner partners are what are your goals, what are your interests, and so, you know, for landowners are interested in both exotics and native game, you know, we want to respect that. We're obviously much more interested on the native game, and that's what we're going to work to help promote and really spend most of our time on um. And you know, we've encouraged them to make sure that those numbers of exotics are managed in such a way that it doesn't have an adverse impact on the on the native game and particularly the native habitat um. But again, we want to be very sensitive to the goals of the individual land owner. So if a landowner is very interested in you know, his or her access tore on their property or their black buck antelope, um, to the extent that can be incorporated into a wildlife management plan because the landowners are going to be managing for that anyway, um, and they're gonna hunt them, they're gonna enjoy them, they're gonna utilize them to the extent that all that can be balanced. That's just something that our biologists have to work through. But we're focused on the native game. That's our area of emphasis. But then if someone owns an if someone has a property of private property and the owner and exotic on the private property, if that exotic animal escapes, they no longer on that animal. Correct. No, you'd have to get you know, permission from a neighbor to go and try to recapture that that animal. That that that ownership doesn't extend like a loose cow or a loose horse. So there's some some differences there. You know, if I had that you know, heard of of of of access to here and it went over to your ranch, no no, no, or come over and fly over and trap them and bring them back, Um, you'd have the ability to file you know, trespassing charges against me. So i'd have to have your permission. Yeah, But I would not be able to go run down and sell your cattle. No, no, absolutely not. Have there been cases in Texas where you guys have had to where there's been an introduction of an exotic where you had to go and sort of catch it and stop it successfully. Or is the nature of the landscape here such that when things get out there just kind of out, you know, more of the latter than the former. When we're thinking about, um, wildlife and particularly large ungulates you know again, you know, kind of deer and elk like animals that we hunt. You got to remember that this kind of history of landowners bringing in exotic game for sport and also for wildlife conservation, you know, helping to you know, bring back populations of scimitar horned ore. Yeah. It's interesting where oftentimes it's been that Texas will have more of some species than it doesn't it's native, yeah, that's right, um. And it's it helps prevent genetic extinction, that exactly, exactly. Um. But that's been going on since the thirties and forties and fifties, so there's a long history. So you know, you would say, you know, take your most most well known and populist exotic game animals axis or fallow or psycho or black buck or all dad. You know, they've really naturalized. Um, not native, but they've naturalized, so they're here to stay UM. Where today, what we would see is perhaps there is a a really invasive or exotic uh fish or a snake um or a plant that our biologists are made aware of in a localized area. More likely the result of somebody tired of having something as a pet and they turn it loose in a city park or a county park. We're gonna find it and we're gonna kill it. Um. You know. And that's the ounce of prevention is worth a pound to cure um because just as you said, you want to jump on that and stop it from being a problem. UM. And you don't have to to to look any further to something like you know, zebra muscles um or giant Salvinian water hyacinth. You know, exotic plants highly de Yeah, they just take off. So we find an outbreak like that in a like, we're gonna go hammer it with with herbicide to see what we can do to help kill those plants to keep it from getting established. We don't see that, so much in terms of big animals. But you know, occasionally our our our biologists will get a call about again a snake UM or you know something or a fish. It's localized that we can find and and and try to deal with that problem before it spreads. What is your perspective on concerns about UM with chronic wasting disease significant? You know, when you look at deer and deer hunting um in Texas and the magnitude of that, just how important it is um from you know, not just the million hundred thousand hunters that we have of in Texas, but um, how important that is to real estate values in our state. I mean basically rural land values or And that's that's a good point. I never thought of, man, Yes, because the huge owning deer properties you've got huge said that people would be become obviously less interesting. Yes, yeah, I know they'd be very concerned about it. Um. You know just how important hunting is our rural communities around the state from a tourism perspective and economic development. I mean, you go to these little towns and the central part of the state opening weekend their season, and of cafes and motels and the hardware stores and the gas stations are packed to the gills. So people on camouflage and so that's real money. UM, that that's out of county money, and it makes an impact locally. And so you guys have had a couple of positives now right, we we have. So we've got we've got kind of three nodes of c w D and our our states by no means pervasive. UM. The first node is out right near the New Mexico border, just east of El Paso and a little mountain range called the Waco Mountains, which is pretty isolated. We found it there in mule deer. Then we found it up um in the Panhandle, the northern part of our state, very close to the New Mexico line. UM. Again we think with free range animals coming over from New Mexico. But we found it mule deer, we found it in a couple of elk, we found it in a couple of white tail, and then down in Central Texas kind of the heart of some of the most populous deer country. UM, we found chronic wasting disease in four pretty large captive breeding operations and UM. And so we've been working very actively to help deal with that. UM, what are the what are the biggest limitations right now on presumably you can do everything you wish you could do. What's the limitation on from your perspective on on trying to slow it get rid of it? I mean, can you You can't get rid of it? I mean that's what you think, Like, Texas will not go back to being free in CWD. No, I don't. I don't. I don't think we I don't think we will. But that doesn't mean we're complacent about it somehow lay behind the log and say, hey, we've got it in these three isolated areas, so we're not going to worry about it everywhere else. Absolutely to the contrary. So our strategy is focused on three goals. UM. You know, first, we want to minimize the impacts of c w D to all of our dear populations, whether it's free range or captive UM. Secondly, we want to make sure that we minimize the impact from c w D to UM hunting and hunting based economies, and that includes real estate values, rural communities, tourism, hunter expenditures, all that. And then, last, but not least, is we want to make sure that our management actions are done in such a way that we maintain the trust and confidence of our hunters and our private landowners absolutely critical. So those are the three tenants of our efforts. And then from a from a strategy perspective, we're focused on two things. First is early detection, so if it's out there, we want to find it so that all of a sudden, you know, we can get mandatory testing in place, we can get carcass movement restrictions in place, we can get prohibitions on moving live dear into and out of those those those areas in place, so early, so very active. From a surveillance perspective, our biologists are spending a lot of time, you know, collecting brain samples throughout the year, but particularly during hunting season, and we've stratified the state um according to kind of statistical grids to to to sample at levels that gives us you know, varying level of confidence or degrees of confidence that we find it dependent on the sample size. A lot of a lot of effort on the early detection and the sampling, and then it becomes a containment issue. Um um. I'm not aware of any situation um in any kind of a free range environment in which anybody has really gotten rid of it, so it gets it. How do you arrest the spread of it? And the two biggest threats to that, of course, or large aggregations of animals, right, and then the movement of an animal from an infected area to another area. You know, they move on a trailer or whatever, some artificial movement of of of of deer, So you know, working to kind of manage densities in those areas and then also make sure that we don't have movement of deer into route of areas that we know have f c w D. Again, it's a big issue for our our state just because deer hunting, deer management, enjoyment of rural land is so tied to the health and enjoyment of deer populations in our state that we have got to take an aggressive strategy in dealing with it. Thankfully, we have it in three isolated areas and that's how we want to keep it. Do you feel that you've gotten adequate federal support. I'm working with c W That coordination and support are are all the states. It is kind of duking it out on their own well, and I think that's a real issue UM that's out there. You know, historically we had financial support through U. S D a APHIST to help with UM monitoring, UM the surveillance because we're we're spending very very conservatively, you know, let's say a million and a half dollars a year on just the CWD surveillance. Remember that's time that that biologists also could be spending working with landowners on habitat management, wildlife management, you know, working on game non game whatever whatever other priorities that we have out there. So there's a real opportunity cost of time. Historically, we did have some federal funding to to help with that. Now, as I understand it, there is proposed funding this year in the House Appropriations Bill UM for the Department of Agriculture to help ensure that there's going to be some funding made available to the states to help support that that surveillance. That would be helpful. Undoubtedly, there is a need for great or coordination across our country with respect to how do we deal with it. And you know, as I look at that UM, I would say, you know, one, I mean, states have the jurisdictional authority over deer and elk UM largely there's some exceptions to that, but but mostly and we need to respect those jurisdictional boundaries, and states need to be able to choose how to respond to things just depending on what the cultural and political currents are of the state. Those are just realities that we have to deal with in wildlife politics, as you as you said, But we could benefit from, um, from additional federal funding coming to the states to help support adaptive management, more surveillance, etcetera. I think we could also benefit from a more coordinated, comprehensive look at targeted research, particularly testing and evaluating these adaptive management strategies that states are implementing kind of into pendant of one another. But you know, it's not all done in some kind of a rigorous experimental design type type setting. So some targeted research to test that. And it needs to be over time, right, It needs to be longitudinal. You can't just study this kind of an issue for two years traditional master's student and say hey, we're done. You need to commit to that over over a much longer period of time. UM. We also see capacity issues in uh in testing labs for CWD, and so you know we have the Texas A and M the Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Lab does a fabulous job. They're really good partners of ours on UM. They're they're they're testing work as CWD samples, whether that's from you know, free range UH populations or from captive red facilities. They really work hard at that, but the capacity is constrained, so there's a lag in testing those animals. So hunter kills a deer UH, it's in an area in which it's a mandatory testing area, and you know, if they have to wait six weeks for that sample to come back to no fault of of of our lab. It's just a capacity issue. It'd be nice if we could accelerate that with additional capacity. The last thing that I think that could probably get some help on federally UM is work on a more coordinated, consistent message for hunters to help explain c w D, why it is, why it matters, and what they can do to help address it. UM find that there's still a lot of ignorance out there about the disease, a lack of awareness UM hunters that may be unwittingly contributing to the spread of it through the movement of infected carcass parts. So there's just some just distrust and some distrust of of of government. Are people are using it as a sort of proxy our fearmongering, right, I mean, I you know you hear that too. It's it's a fairmongering issue. It's um, you have more dear uh killed by cars than you do by c w D. How many times have you heard that argument? And so it affects such a relatively small number of animals across the country or a particular state in some cases that why are you so concerned about it? Well, you know, it's a brain disease. It's always fatal, fatal. You don't need to comment on this, but it's and maybe I'm even wrong about my assumption, but it would seem that the livestock industry would be very interested in c w D, keenly interested, because we like, as a hunter and a person that eats a hell of dear meat, I'm concerned about the human health considerations. I mean, it would be catastrophic to the cattle industry should that disease jump a species barrier species barrier, and and also we had like the equivalent of mad cow disease, Yeah, BSc type situation. What you know the thing. And again you don't need to you don't need to get into that. But it's something I puzzle over that that you just don't hear. Maybe and maybe it's out there and I'm not privy to it. You just don't. You don't hear that industry talk about, Wow, what is this. Let's get a grip on this. We do in Texas. Yeah, Texas and Southwestern cattle raisers UM. You know, their members are terrific partners with the department. Many of them are very actively involved in wildlife management on their ranches. And you know, dear is the proverbial, you know, goose that lay the golden egg, um. And so they're actively involved, very knowledgeable about this, and they do compare the very strict testing requirements and food safety protocols on on livestock and meat um and meat related products. Because of that public safety and the making sure that the consumers are comfortable with the safety of the meat that they're eating, very very focused on that from a market perspective. So they absolutely make that parallel in terms of advocating for you know, more testing and appropriate testing in deer populations. You know, if c w D is indeed a problem. So yeah, you'd be um surprised at the awareness or linkage. Perhaps it's not verbalized as much, or perhaps it's not talked about as much and in all states, but certainly the cattle raisers in Texas have been very very strong partners with us and our efforts to help raise awareness UM and deal with this this this issue in Texas. So, uh, last thing for you, what are the biggest challenges and opportunities you see in your position? And I'm guessing that you probably put c w D among the biggest. Third Well, I mean, I think you know c w D is one of those um emerging wildlife related challenges. You know that that that transcends boundaries that you think about all these different vectors and portals and areas of commerce into into Texas, and so you know, whether it's you know, white nose syndrome and bass or c w D in in deer, some rare fungal disease and amphibians, or the introduction of you know, exotic and invasive plants that proliferate and take over our legs like a bad Alfred Hitchcock movie. You know, those issues, those are those are real and I you know, we take a lot of pride in our native plant and animal communities. I mean we we we want to keep it that way, that that that native wildlife heritage, that outdoor heritage, that diversity habitats that we talked about, We want to keep those native and healthy. Um And so there are challenges for us, and so I don't want to play let's pretend. I mean we've got a big, growing state, twenty eight million people and growing, most of them very detached from the kind of things that we love. That in and of its yeah yeah. Now, Now, interestingly, I think that most attitudinal surveys that irrespective of whether or not somebody is urban or rural, old or young, doesn't matter. What the demographic stratify er is that today people still have some kind of desire to see wildlife conserved and protected. You know, there's still there's still positive sentiments. I think what we all worry about and appropriately is that increasing generational detachment. And what does that mean? Will that attenuate, will it subside, will it go away? What does that mean for the future of you know, hunting and angling and and and responsible and ethical fisheries and wildlife management. Will we have the support from a populace that you know doesn't hunt and fish and so therefore doesn't you know, pay into the pay into the system. Will they see the benefits of of that. So that population issue, competition for what a course, is big fragmentation of ranches. You know, it's harder to keep family ranches together for all kinds of reasons. So we see them getting smaller and more fragmented, and that inevitably leads to habitat loss, and that leads to habitat loss. So UM, there there are no shortage of challenges. Uh. You know, we could we could write war and peace uh on that particular topic. All of those are opportunities as well. You know, how do we better connect with UM an urban based audience, that is that is detached from the outdoors. How do we use technology not as our enemy but UM as our portal to connect people to the outdoors and get them interested to come to places. How do we invest in more you know, parks in public areas that are close to where people are so that they have easy access. How do we create more mentor programs UM? How do we how do we help shape educational programs in the schools through all ages to make sure that people we're getting a proper grounding in natural resources related literacy. Um, you know, speaks to kind of this our three effort that's going on nationally where um, you know, I think for for the fishing side of thing, we've got a real opportunity to move to move the needle. Um, certainly getting people into the outdoors to enjoy wildlife. Maybe they're not going to be hunters, but we want them to appreciate hunters. We want them to appreciate hunting. We want them to appreciate wildlife management, understand the science behind it, the reasons behind it, and and and why that can help all of the species of interest that we're charged with with managing. So um, the challenges again are our opportunities is as as as well. And I think what's the the overriding concern for all of us, irrespective where we are, is trying to leave our home ground better than we found it. Our buddy dug during on where you stole it? But maybe he made it up. No, he stole it. It's not ours, it's our turn, our turn. Yeah, yeah, do you got the last final thoughts? No? I mean we've covered the waterfront. Uh, pretty well, there's nothing you were dying to get wedge in there. No, gosh, we have we've I'm trying to think if there's anything we didn't cover that, let me let me hear my concluder and you can do one if you've got one, and you honest is gonna go. I mentioned Shane Mahoney earlier in the same conversation where we talked about the uh, the model, you know, complex model. Uh. He was talking about the same thing he just brought up. Was funny you mentioned technology in in people's engagement with the natural world, and he made a point that you're saying guys like him and his generation, It's true. I'm forty five and this is the same thing with me. We grew up in a world the like doesn't exist, and he like talks about you know, riding off on your bike with your twenty two right doesn't happened, And it's like is he says, so many people in and his age and again and include myself in it, are thinking like for for people to engage in the natural world, we need to recapture and deliver to them this child, this like idyllic childhood that we had growing up out in the rural parts of America where you took off in the morning with your twenty two fish and rod and came home after dark. And he's like, that's the mind frame and how we're going to re engage people with nature. Um, and the technology is bad and he says, like, that approach is not going to work. We are not going to we are not going to bring that back and make that a scalable model for wildlife engagement. And you're gonna have to find a way two make the natural world, make nature relevant in the way that people can understand, and they're going to relate to how they do. And he says that and I feel that that will happen. And technology, if it's going to happen, technology and a bracing of technology will be part of that. Amen. You will not get payment that, you will not get people to leave it behind. I couldn't agree more with that approach. It's a the the the other is just so wildly uh idealistic. Will never go back to that. There are people who pull it off. Um. You know, very local if in national terms, when we talk about like an increasingly urbanizing where we live, it's like if we're if we're gonna make it this binary thing. You have to love nature and hate technology, and that's the only way we're gonna win. You'll never win that, you know that that that if if that was a battle, which I don't think it it ever was, by the way, although people love to frame that, and a lot of it had to do with people extrapolating, making their own inferences from you know, some of the findings that drove the whole uh, you know, last Child in the Woods movement, Children to nature related movement. But I think most folks who are given this issue any real thought have come to the same conclusion is technology is here, it's here to stay, it's growing, and it's increasing part uh you and you can't make kids choose. So meet them where they're at and let them experience. It's like taking my I've got some young cousins that are you know, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and yeah, I'm kind of mildly annoyed by the fact that you know, we're sitting out there, um, you know, in a ground, blind or something, and you know they want to post everything on Snapchat and Instagram and tell the story, you know, electronically and their smartphones are going ninety to nothing. But you know what, they seem to have a ball. So who is it of me to tell them? No, I want you to enjoy it my way. You can't do it your one. You gotta enjoy my mood. I say all that stuff. Yeah, well, I just don't think it worked. I'll leave you with this story. Fifteen years ago, I got a buddy that UM the mind that UM ranches out in far West Texas, sprawling ranch. Gets left alone by his his wife UM with his two young daughters, and UM, I think they were four and five. She leaves to UM, going to town to see parents or something for the for the weekend, and so he's doing parent duty at the ranch. He said. He watched his two daughters UM one afternoon spend their entire afternoon within about a five ft radius of a big oak tree in their front yard, and it dawned on him at the time that hey, you don't need to take people to some big wilderness area. Yeah, we'd all love to know that they're there, UM, but people can find nature anywhere. They can find it at an undeveloped city block, a lot, a park, a little green belt, you know, sitting under a tree looking at your office building and there's a paragon falcon, you know, praying on a pigeon, you know, in downtown Chicago. UM, it's not that we don't to get people out into these wild places. We do, but let's help them discover nature in the outdoors where they are. And I thought it was interesting for that friend to have that revelation about, you know, the population as a whole, from watching his two ranch raised girls on a big, sprawling ranch, because of their interaction with one tree in their front yard and how just connected they were. That thing's pretty cool. Yeah. I had an interview recently, asked you like, where's the best place to hunt deer? I said, it's close to your house as possible. Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I know we're short on time. I'll leave it at this. That was a good story to finish on. Good Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks. I'm sure you're extremely busy, so thanks for giving us so much times allowed to be here. Thank you for having all right. Tell him John starting the sky film dot com man, Tell him, Yeah, you guys need to uh go over two stars in the sky film dot Com and buy a copy of it, and I was just thinking that you ought to buy a second copy to give. I don't know how that works. You can get a link and you can give it to somebody, but you should buy it for a non hunter who's uneasy with hunt That's right, because this is it's a very good, uh deep dive into hunting. Explores all the different realms of hunting that we all know so well and they're so easy for us to talk about and understand. But uh, Steve does a really good job in the documentary of sort of you know, opening it up to and in a conversation where people that are non endemic outside of our little hunting bubble can understand all these topics that we deal with and grapple with all the time. Um, you'll enjoy it. But I also feel like if you're somebody that wants to promote hunting and make hunting cool again, you should pass it along to some folks. Yeah, you're only worked on the movie. Yeah, have a good time working on it. And your honest is the he's the most honest man in show business and he's sounds you go watching. Yeah, I know I know for a fact. Thank you guys. Stars in the sky film dot com where you can find our new documentary UM available for streaming and download purchase