00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening Hunt 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, Yanni, tell me about this big, big fancy played at your kids on just got some pictures. Jennifer had to go to Helen. It was funny. These guys came down from Helen and Jennifer had to go to Helen and today, so we got a Mabel doesn't go to school on Monday, so we had to get get her play date. She guts to go to a very fancy play date some friends of ours on a boarding facilities. I think he was what you'd call it, so quite a big property, bunch of big barns, bunch of horses, hoses, some are there's and uh, but most of them I think are just clients. So we're like, you might not get to go ride horses, because that's the whole thing and whatever. You probably hopefully you just get to go and shovel some food that's what I'm always hoping that my buddy Nate makes some juice and they go over there and be like, no, before you get to ride, you gotta shovel some ship. But I started getting pictures and uh, it's like, yeah, check this out. They went horseback riding, they went it, took a spin on the a t V. Then we went and stalked to balk with my father in law and killed it. And your daughter's got amazing stalking skills. Must be in the jeans just like I'm like, great, man, Like, can I come over tomorrow and have a play dates? Going to want to go home? Yeah, that's all today. Now they're going to Costco, which they love to go and snack on all the Uh. Yeah, so I kind of grew up like that. Actually that was just everyday life. That's good man. It's a solid play date, right. Uh oh quick things you know. Uh, Martha introduced yourself a very special guest, Martha Williams. Martha Williams, tell me what you do, Martha Williams. And I'm the director of Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Yeah, so every uh people listen to the show should by now I have figured this out um. Wildlife in in America is owned by the people and it's held in trust by your states. Some exceptions like stuff that has federal oversight because of endangered species and migratory things, but generally wildlife is run at the state level. All fifty states have when we just generally call a state fish and Game agency, even though yours is fish wildlife and fish wildlife and parks. Colorado's used to be fishing game, but they felt there was two hunt centric which is something we'll be talking about today, and they revamped it to fish and wildlife so that the hunting people wouldn't have so much sense of entitlement and ownership. I guess it's cpw it. Oh yeah, that's right, Andy Roll. No, no, no, sorry, California. I'm thinking I'm mixing it up. Colorado became parks, Parks, got parks, got rolled in, which is already true in Montana, Fish, wildlife and parks, so you're in charge of three things, um only three? Uh? Yeah. Colorado got combined with the parks department and became what parks and wildlife. Parks actually separated in Colorado and then joined back up. It's like people to get married a bunch of times. Only people talk about it that way. Really they were together and flew it up and got back together and divorced, step children, etcetera. I didn't know that. And then it was California that had to stop being fishing game because I felt it was like there's a connotation of like there's a connotation of shooting and killing and whatnot. So they changed it to wildlife, which is fine because Montana has always been wildlife. But it's changed, it hasn't Some people still call us fishing game. Yeah, we've been this is the voice of Martha's minder. That's a tough job. Uh yeah. So were yeah, Greg Lemon, Uh we were. It was in the seventies when we switched to fishing wildlife, so we were early on on the switch. But we are still in the seventies. Montana went from fishing game to fishing wildlife. Yeah, but but you would I would have been like back then, I've been like I was the world coming to well, you can walk, you can produce at Who's gonna call us fishing game? You know? By the folks in the in the who are standing in our lobby. I mean, they'll old timers still calls fishing games. Oh yeah, it will always be fishing games. Where I grew up, it was everyone knew that it was the d n r R Department and Natural Resource point being how to get on this? Oh yeah, uh I why was I talking about how states manage that the wildlife manage at the state level? Public? Yeah, well you yeah, we'll get into that hardcore. But Martha, you oversee run one of these right where in the fourth largest state not by population, but by land masks well and more importantly the best of wildlife resources. No, man, I don't think so. Your number your number three after Alaska? Your number three three? I feel yeah, I feel like Alaska. Wait did I just can see that? Tell me what the other two do? Not have a run in debate about this? But um like, I feel like I feel like woman's got a little bit of a tot like a little bit of a a little bit of a Why do you say that? I don't know? Oh, I thank you mostly to say that because there's less people. Yeah, and I'm just one of those kinds of people that always feels like I should be somewhere else. Um quick thing, All right, Well, we'll get back to that one, won't we Yeah, I got some No, I got some things I want to talk about. These are like little we do some little news items up top. But some of these news items are actually good because you'd be able to give your perspective on them. One of the news items is I wish Broody is here. Pennsylvania. It is now celebrating having overcome the decades long battle against their blue laws and blue laws or where you're not allowed to go hunting on Sunday. Um. People have all kinds of reasons why you can't go hunting on Sunday. It seems like the good money is that the idea that people felt that you were it was competing with with church. Um, so you weren't supposed to hunt on Sunday. And then over the years, uh, you know, people have become sort of you know, embattled, and they kind of lost track of what they're trying to solve in the first place. And then you had people who hated Sunday hunting bands. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, along with others, has been petitioning successfully against Sunday hunting bands or blue laws in a bunch of different states. And finally now like Pennsylvanians are gonna be allowed to hunt a handful of Sunday's six or something like that, which Broody is here to give the Oh boy, No, I don't even think it's I think it's half that. I think they added three. So like every year, I think there was one, there's a couple of Sundays where it's Okay, wondering Archie wondering rifle, and then they were they still had hadn't come up with the third day yet. I believe that's what I read, you know, And thinking about laws like this is always funny to Madge, like there's always laws that are around, right, and everybody success of their around. But I think a good test of a law would be, like, imagine that you tried to roll it out today instead of just having laws because we've always had them, right, constantly ask yourself, what would happen today if you came to a state. So someone comes to you, Martha here in Montana, UM and they said, I got an idea. I think that you should not be able to hunt on a Sunday. Right. It would be a very very hard law to enact, but states that just have it, they just got to suck it up and have it even though everyone's like, what but you can't get rid of it? Well, but I think also of all the laws that we have that I don't think you could get through now, like some of the good ones for instance, well, I think stream access in Montana, people think you were insane. Right, So that's a great point. Ways, if you said I got an idea, everyone can just once they're in the river, they just go what they want, drive boats up and down, paddling every which way. If people would be like, you're crazy, not through my property. The other great examples We've talked about it a bunch. As an example of this is the Pittman Robertson. He came up with that right now, Like we're like, some people are throwing around the idea of taxing the backpack tax, and it's not very welcome. Yeah, I was bringing this up there that I think Yoanni and I were driving around and we're talking about how uh everybody I feel it's like this new awareness around Pittman Robertson. It's been marketed well lately, right, and so more people aware of it. And I always here and I'll hear people um and I'll hear people throwing around like how proud they are of the contributions that the gun owners and shooters, hunters and shooters, How proud they are of the contributions they make to conservation. And oftentimes I'll be hearing this from someone and now I'll try to imagine that same individual what their response would be if it didn't exist, and you propose to them that we make a rule, They're like, I got an idea. How about the federal government comes in and they say that there's a tax on all guns and ammunition that goes to help animals. People would people would like, there would be revolts in the streets over this whole Organizations would be founded to find the organizations founded to fight It would be like, you know, it would lead to I can't imagine the upheaval. But now people are like, hell yeah, Brot Pitt Roberts. I wonder what it was like back, you know, when it passed, like what box of shells? Overwhelming item, overwhelming support? No, not this the support, But I wonder what it was like on the street, Like the guy that owned the sporting goods store, you know that sold like a fifty cent box of twin the two shells, and all of a sudden it was you know, cents. Yeah, I don't know, you know, I don't know. Like on the public end, I know I had widespread support and came from hunters at the time. I think hunter has most been a lot different. Well yeah, yeah, maybe that because they know what they're different. I had someone point out that it was from the depths of despair, meaning it was at a time when there was nothing. Wildlife was gone, and so that drastic, drastic situations lead to drastic measures. It was brilliant though, I mean it was brilliant. Also. I think of this all the time when we go to the legislator. Most people don't realize we have to get permission from the legislator to spend money, to spend any money. And so when we go and explain our programs, um, for any of the states to get the federal money, Pittman, Robertson, Dingle Johnson, Um, we have to have had our own statute ascent language. The states had to pass statutes to say we will only spend license money in a certain way. And Pittman, Robertson and Dingle Johnson in a certain way or we don't get that federal money. And so when we go ask for permission, will you know, the legislator will say, well, how about you do this? And we have to say we can't. We can't do that because it's not in the ascent language or the Pittman Robertson Dingle Johnson doesn't let us do that. That's really hard to explain. I want to do a couple I gotta do a couple more quick things I gotta take care of. But can we enter with that? We'll enter with that part of the conversation. Um, the money thing, but a couple of things. We we have a You don't have to have an opinion. Are you married, Martha? I'm sorry. I Oh, that's a hard one. I was married. My husband passed away, so I have a an awesome boyfriend, but I'm not married. We're talking about wedding rings from man. Oh do you have experience with these? Um? We've had a lot of you are you? I'm not wearing them today because I was. I was. I usually have to on, but I was hanging out of one of those uh tethered tree saddle deals borrow from you all weekend. I was surprised how comfortable and easy it was. It takes a little bit of trust because there's no you're not standing on a platform and see, yeah, you're just dangling around. Um and that's not quite true anyways, But we're not getting two into that. Because I was climbing trees and climbing, you know, going of those ladders. I decided to take the rings off because if it would be a really good opportunity to get sleeved, you know, as a as a sort of march, as a sort of public service. We've been talking about the perils of rings. I had a I got a fake one, rubber ones. But you know what, I was cold one morning, got an antelopen. It fell off. It's out on a field and wyoming somewhere. Um so now I'm running no ring. But a guy wrote in he was we were talking about accidents of having to people. This guy rode in his buddy as a commercial fisherman, and he had a bunch of crabs and like he gets to the docks and you keep you crabs. He's aerated tanks and he got to worrying about the crabs. He had an aerated tank that he's gonna sell and he wanted to go back in and check on him. And you have to take a real long walk around a restaurant and through the wharf, or you just jump this big fence. His body climbs up to jump this big fence as a chain link or cyclone fence. Yeah, after he jumped down and slipped and whatnot. Not only was his ring on the fence, the whole finger on the fence. Yeah, the whole thing hanging there from a ring on the fence. He says he, uh, he uses this mix, this missing ring finger as a reason to not remarry. So apparently he's married at one point in time, and now he tells people he can't because of that. Another guy wrote into that we're talking about when people steal your spot. This guy took his pastor hunting ducks, then later catches the pastor hunting the same spot. Yeah, catches his pastor hunting the same spot with two other guys. And he switched churches. Yeah, switch churches. I'm surprised he didn't switched religions compromising. Yeah, he wants to know, did I overreact through this hardcore? Here? Here's a good one for uh, Yeah, it'd be hard to pay attention to the sermon at that point, right, yeah, yeah, what would you be thinking? Just bad negative thoughts? Yeah, when the pastors up there, honesty, accuracy, can I throw in on the ring? So sure? Then I got yeah, And then I got one last little news thing. But it's not even news. It doesn't count as news. But I've got so. I when I got married twelve years ago, I got a titanium ring, specifically, why would you do that? Well, at the time, I some I had some friends that had him. They said, and they're like, they're indestructible. Who's who's destroyed their ring? Anybody wear out a wedding ring? Well, let me tell you what I do with it. So I never carry around bottle openers. I never do. But you can open a bottle with the titanium ring and doesn't even it doesn't even mark it up, just put the cap in. Yeah, I do teeth. Yeah, but but you can't you can't do that with a silicone. And then, and I've been thinking about it, you know, tossing it around like that. You know, they got to get those off when people come in, they break their finger, they get it off by crushing it with a vice gript I never I never cease to keep because it's my fear that I'm gonna get some sort of you know, water retention, you know, sickness, and then all of a sudden my hands gonna swell. I'm not gonna be able to get and you because we had an emergency room doctor right in and say do not wear the titanium ones because we cannot grind through them. He said. When they got to get a titanium ring off someone who's got a hand injury, they need to crush it with a vice or a pair of locking pliers. You can you can only break it off. You can't cut it off with the equipment. The equipment they have. So the so the benefit of being able to open up beer bottle with your ring is not does an offset? Yes, see this the whole thing I have on my keychain. I'm showing Greg. Now some folks call that a bottle over. It's with me most times. One last news item. There's a guy I don't really get. It's kind of long email. He's in the PhD program in archaeology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and he's petitioning his state right now to allow him. He doesn't think he's gonna get anywhere with this, but he's petitioning the state of Colorado to allow at Lattle hunting. What's your take on, at Martha. I think we've gotten one of those before too. How do you how do you handle it? It was like, how do you break that one down? Yeah? Well let me okay, uh, let's just do this. Let me I'll try to put in a fair way like, Um, what would be in your mind as a state director of a wildlife agency? What are some of the things that roll around in your head the minute someone says I ought to be able to right kill deer with a with an at Lattle? Oh, I mean the first thing that comes up is fair chase. I mean, you know what I think of what our traditional hunting methods, and I think now other than going we typically think forward and what technologies are pushing hunting where it goes beyond fair chase and and has society you know, caught up to that method or not. I don't often think of going back. Word, Um, why wouldn't we? I guess I guess my first question would be why wouldn't we? Rather than starting with not, I guess it would you know, I don't know because some some states have some states something they'd allow you to do it. Some stay it's when you look at the rules that doesn't prohibit it. But I would imagine the big argument against it would be one of efficacy and like the risk of uh maim and stuff. Can you remember some years ago there was a huge brewha where a guy uh made a big production how to kill the bear to spear? Oh, it was like a whole It was in Canada, right, kill the bear to spear in Canada. The blow up was so bad, the social upheat, like what it was? What I'm looking for? Ever being pissed. That's so pissed that the province then made it illegal to spear bear to hunt with a spear. They went from having that it wasn't clarified a guy did it. People were so it was so offensive to people that you kill it. I think people look at it like it's a stunt, like you're stunting right, and man, they were pissed and then made it that clarified that one cannot hunt with a spear. Well, didn't we talk about this in the car and the way here in a way, Greg, we weren't talking about sparing a bear, but we were talking about in Montana, you know, UM hunting bow hunting versus rifle and UM, is it the experience that we're allowing people to get out and have or is it just really um? Is it the efficacy? Is it that you obviously you want to kill an animal with one shot and you should be good and proficient. But um, if we were worried just about the efficacy, would would we then limit the opportunity we have and the and the method of take it. I mean there's a balance there. It is. It's like, yeah, it's it's hard to it's when you you can go through life having it all makes sense, like what you can can't do? And then someone throws out a question like the atletically, what is ant throwing board for a spear? Okay, it's the thing you swing bo Okay yeah, and at ladle is it's a spear, but just a mechanism by which people can throw spears. So they archaeologists feel that fifteen thousand years ago when this when the Western hemisphere was colonized, it was colonized by people who hunted with at laddles. So it's like it's a spear. But then there's a board that you hold on to, and it's like, you know those things, you know a good way to think about it. You know those things when you go to a dog park. Things use to throw tennis balls, that rippy little tennis ball hooker and at laddles, one of those that throws a spear. What's not even that game that those things came from. No lawn darts, No, no, no, It's like in a room and you have all the players have those crescent curved Come on, Phil, I think dog throwing dog ball hookers. No, you throw it against the wall. It's racket ball. Oh, the track ball, the big they had, the big Oh that was a good game. Man. That little looks like a little sickle hawks the ball, whiffleball. I think that was coming. Did you see that? Did you see the jackass? Where they were moving, where they were throwing oranges at each other with those things? Good, good, while very very entertaining. So uh, that little thing, I don't know. I'd be curiously what happens with it, but it does like everything makes sense, like oh, you can hold the gun, you hold the bow, and then you don't think about it too much, and then someone proposes like, well, why can't I do X? And it puts you in this position where you're trying to like articulate something that you hadn't thought to articulate, like, I don't know, why can't you? So I don't think you should be able to do? But why don't I think you should be able to I think we do that all the time too. Things come up that you've got to break it down. How would we answer that on this question? Uh? The statute governs some of what we can take used for take in Montana and uh, there was a bill a few sessions ago. No, well there was an addle addle bill post in Montana that died in the legislature. So someone advanced that it got its due it's got its due. Course, Yeah, it got considered in a serious way and didn't make it. Didn't make it. Uh does the state record the rationale of things that? Do? They not record the rationale? Like what it didn't make it? Does someone record sort of? Uh? Is it recorded? Like the arguments against it and for it are recorded? Not recorded? They're recorded? Uh? In like the public records of the hearing. So there was a public hearing on it, and those who came forward in favor and those who came forward against. It's all and the gist what they had to say would be available. It's a legislative history. You'd love to go see what the guy or gal who had to say. Why not? And I don't why we should remember it wasn't that long ago, No, but it was. It was when I was still in general is him and and it wasn't. Um, but we could track it down so you could look at the bill number and you could you in the sponsor because the sponsor. But what I do remember is the sponsor. Sometimes sponsors are not real invested in the bill. They just happen to, you know, have a constituent that wants something carries, you got to be in his bonnet. And yeah, the sponsor on this one really was, I would think, was really interested in it. I got shot down. Yeah, yeah, thanks, Now we'll see another proposal next session. Um, that's it for Newsy stuff. Oh yeah, you know, a method of take. That's the thing I find it when I'm talking to people who aren't familiar with the hunting and rules of hunting, they're often interested to hear about all the method of take restrictions such as like in this state you can shoot a variety of like you can shoot mountain grouse, so with call here would be like Franklin's blues dusky. Yeah, well now yeah, they're you're right, you're way ahead of me. Dusky grouse, rouffed grouse, spruce grouse can be killed with a rifle. But you can shoot me with twenty two. You cannot shoot with the twenty two sharp tail grouse, pheasants right, um, turkeys, you cannot shoot him with a rifle in the spring. You can shoot him in the rifle in the fall. There's a ton of method to take stuff out there, people to get complicated, people like rassling over it. Uh, all right, I'm gonna get back to this the money thing. Um, I'm trying to think of the enterness in the way that the most instructive way possible. You're probably good at doing this lay out for me, Like what layout for folks? Layout for folks? Like what is like what it is a state Fish and Game agency does, like one of the things you're responsible for looking at? And then how does that get paid for? Easy question? Thanks? Um, Well, I think we're responsible for more than people realize, and we're responsible for more than UM what we always get direct funding for. I mean, so I think fish and game, fish, wildlife and Parks d n r's are charged with more than people realize. In Montana, Fish Wildlife and Parks Mission is disteward the fish, Wildlife, recreational and parks resources of Montana UM. And we do that with the Citizen Commission, and we do it with a board. UM. You know, so we don't do it alone. Can you explain the Citizen Commission Somewhere? Some states it's different. So, UM, the director I am appointed by the governor. In some states the director is appointed by the commission. But in Montana, the governor appoints the director of all of the agencies. And the governor also appoints the Fish and Wildlife Commission and the Parks and Recreation Board. So they're the Citizen Commission. It's the Fish and Wildlife Commission and the Parks and Recreation Board, and they really are the ones that set policy and UM help with UM allocation issues. And then you have the legislature in Montana passes statutes that get into specific numbers and percentage of resident versus nonresident licenses issues like that. So the department brings proposals forward to the commission and this is what people often call a game commission yep yea. And those game commissions were UM. The early getting to the origin of the Pittman Robertson Act and the restoration of wildlife and why we funded the way we did was early on when wildlife populations were depleted at best, you know, bison were decimated, birds, migratory birds were populations were decimated, for feathers, deer, a lot, a number of wildlife populations UM and fisheries, commercial fisheries were plummeting, and so states created UM, the Fish and Game Commissions to try to restore those species. So in the United States, the states have always UH been the entity that stepped up to manage what we think of is that the public trust the wildlife resources in the country. And it started with those Fish and Game Commissions and then UM they realized, you know that that you needed that scientific underpinning, you needed to understand what species needed or what habitat you needed. And then the departments developed around UM giving that expertise in the in the scientific research to know how to manage I didn't realize that the idea of game commissions predated the idea of a state agency. It would just be like someone would a point a bunch of people that had a vested interest or expertise, and they'd be like, hey, you all get together, you figure out if there should be a deer season or not. Yeah, because well they stepped up because they felt like they needed to be recovering these species. They weren't dealing with the plethora riches that we're dealing with today, luckily me and it was a totally different, different scenario. So there's still this interplay between a state Fish and Game agency and the state's commission. Yes, definitely. Is it tense? Um? Well, sure, I mean it can be tense. I don't think it's bad at all. I mean I are current commission. I feel like we recognize that we have different roles, and so instead of arguing or being tense, I think we just realize we have different roles to play. The department puts forward proposals, and the commission, you know, sometimes they're put in the hardest position where they've got to vote on these proposals. How do you get a job on that commission? Man, I want to be on that commission so bad you do. You should apply. How many people are on it? There five and they're paid position. No, they are not paid positions. I would want no one else. I want to be the only commissioner you could. Yeah, that's shoot for it. Are there any states where it's an elected position that you hold? Omissioners are always pointed, it's always I never heard of non. I don't know of any that are elected, but I certainly I haven't looked at the state they had to run for game commission be suite. So you're in Montana, They're they're appointed on different staggering terms. So there so when a governor is a new governor's elected, there's some overlap in terms. So um, you know, so there's continuity between one administration to the next. And then they also represent regional area, so there's not like five commissioners from the most populated areas of the state. They're spread out. So um, we have got like a commissioner from Glasgow, for instance, that represents region that region of the state. We got your way, Sorry, go ahead, I was just saying we got your way. Off off off your answer, Pittman Robertson, Yeah what um, yeah, like what what your mandate is, like how what you do and how it all gets paid for. So, at least in Montana, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, I believe the well Montana Constitution. I could go off forever on that. It's just a really cool document. It goes back to the conversation of could we get a constitution through now that looks like the one we have? I think it would be hard. So the constitution and the statutes, UM set up what the department does, and that is that we um steward fish, wildlife, parks, recreational resources. And then you add a layer to that are funding primarily comes from selling licenses and then um that's um, let's see, it's about fifty three million dollars. It's almost half, almost half of the of our budget comes from license sales, which is pretty high. Not all states are that high. Um. And then the then the rest of it we don't get, well, we used to not get any general fund. Um. We we fund ourselves really through license sales. And then the Pittman, Robertson, Dingle, Johnson, Land and Water Conservation Fund, all the different federal sources of of match that we get. That's that's how we operate. But you you a lot of agencies do not have hard funding. Explain that and you do get hard funding. Yeah. Right. So when the Pittman robertson Dingle Johnson, I think it started as Federal Aid and Wildlife Restoration Act. So the concept started where put excise taxes on on certain equipment, you know, hunting, fishing equipment. When when both Dingle Johnson and PR were passed and the states could get that money a certain apportionment to the state, if the state had its own statute that said the state can use license money only for restoration of fish and wildlife and for these you know, to help game species to the state can't rob it's the state can't rob it's. It's it can't be like, oh, you your department has a bunch of money, I'm gonna take all that and spend it on something. We have to, you know, that's right, We have to. It's what it's called control. The Fish and Game agency has to retain control over the money, license money and any of that federal matching money that comes in, so we have to retain control of it. That's one buzzword. And then also we can't divert it to another someone else, can't spend it, and it can't be diverted to what's called an ineligible use. So if you were to do that, then you become ineligible for the federal money. And no state wants this. Most state would. They wouldn't want to screw themselves like that, so they don't steal your money and do an airport renovation with it or something exactly. That's part of the brilliance of the UM. It's the Wildlife Sport Fish Restoration Program woos for that combines all these different UM federal pots of money. And what's the what's the hard funding you mean, like just like general like when someone pays just the regular taxes, like a person lives in the state Montana elsewhere, that doesn't come to fish wildlife. No, none of that money comes a little bit now for our a caughtic convasive species program. I think that's it, and not very much of it, and that's dedicated, so you don't just get like a general chunk like the same way the Department Transportation, it's like just general state money or one of the few agencies to test that. Yeah, I think that, um, you know, in preparing to have this conversation was one of the things we talked about. One of these that really like initiated the conversation was was talking about this, this sort of this this whole package of things that we're discussing, meaning like who owns wildlife, who manages it, how does it get paid for? All this is sort of captured in this kind of hard to understand concept of the North American model of wildlife conservation? Phil, what's the North American model? Let's ask Phil, he don't hunt. What's the North American model wildlife conservation? Phil? Real quick? I could not give you a good definition. See there you go, every man. This is just the every man off the street. He doesn't know. Um, he doesn't. He doesn't need to know. I'm not even mad at him about not knowing. Um uh. But yeah, So North American model of wildlife conservation, meaning here's a healthy way to look at it. Look at places that don't have it, right, It's helpful to explain like what it is by like, look a place he doesn't have it. For instance, you go to place like Scotland. Um, we talked it was for in Scotland have right to Rome. You can go wherever you want, like people can't kick you off their property. Can you can roam around wherever you want to go. But can you fish everywhere? Nope? Everywhere Nope. And in Scotland here like here in the US. And let's let's take again, because we're here talking to the state director in Montana. UM, you might own property and there might be elk on that property, but you do not own those elk. They belong to the state. They blown to the people. So like you have the you hold the ground they sit on, but you have no more right to them than anybody else has to them. You control access to them, but you don't control the things themselves. You can't box them up, you can't give him away, you can't just shoot him when you feel like you gotta go through all the rules everybody else has to go through. UM. And then that's like a big part of the North American model of wild They have conservation and the other part of it is is that that there's public input on management and public input on how we pay for it all. So yeah, well I think of that too. I don't want to get too on key, but I actually think of what you've just explained that UM that wildlife the the public holds wildlife in trust. We well, the state holds wildlife and trust we manage that asset. And the legislature is in a way the trustee, they set the laws, we manage it. And the beneficiary the people who benefit from that. And we need to manage the wildlife for everybody. And that's I think more UM derives from the public trust. And I think of the North American model, or as the statutes and the funding mechanisms that this country put into place that helps fund that model, that allows us to have the public trust. So it's kind of it's twofold, but I'm following you. Yeah, well the reason, yeah, the reason is getting that and you can call it as any way you want to call it, but I think that one of the ways it it gets important. It gets down to some of the things we wanted to discuss today, is the wildlife is for everyone. Right. Let's just say so here here in a state like this, wildlife for everyone. You're supposed to manage wildlife for everyone. Everyone has different ideas. This is gonna be too big of a question where you're going everyone has different ideas. Everyone's an expert about. Well, you're like, okay, if you're managing it for me, here's what I would like to see happen, right. I would like every bear that comes near my house to die. And your job is to manage wildlife for me, because I own it and that's what I want to do. And then someone else, the next person down the road, is like, since you're managing wildlife for me, um, I want no bears to ever die. And so that's what I want because it's my wildlife and you're just here to manage it for me. And there's a lot of reconciling that needs to happen. And what it throws a little bit of a wrench into this whole thing is that you just pointed out that people to buy hunting and fishing licenses are paying over half of the budget for your agency. And then another huge chunk of your budget is coming from people who buy firearms and ammunition and fishing equipment, another in some designated sporting goods like bows and arrows and whatnot, so they're all footing the bill. Talk about share with us your thoughts about how one sort of does triage on this like whose opinion matters the most, the one that's paying? Why you do this? You just got right to the heart of it. Yeah, and there's a there's a lot there. But like, right, you don't even give your own personal opinion. You don't need to even talk about what happens here, but like what happens when you start wrestling all of this out? Well, okay, so awesome question. And I don't even know what the question was. Whose opinion matters the people that pay? Are the people that don't pay? Or is it all the same? Do you get a bonus because you paid? Well, I'm sure you'd like to. Um, you got a vote, although not a specific vote. You get to engage, you get input for sure. So I mean it goes to the other piece of what you started with in that, UM, we have to do our work through public engagement. So my opinion actually really doesn't matter. UM. My opinion on on the decision making process and guiding it to make sure it's is fair and transparent as possible matters. But it's the public input, UM that should guide kind of where we go. But it's not a vote, UM, And obviously, UM, there's always gonna it's a balancing act. I mean we were talking about that on the on the way down. There's very little we do that doesn't require balance. I mean, most decisions that come to a fish and wildlife, fish, wildlife, and parks agency parks sometimes is less controversial at fish and wildlife. I can hardly think of many decisions that don't require some balance. You mean to tell me that, Um, everybody in this whole state doesn't all just agree on everything. Oh yeah, they agree always flooding, excellent job. Hey, yeah you're hired. No, Um, no, of course they don't. Of course they don't. And I mean think about it. You know you've got walleye fisherman, or a walleye fishery and a top fishery, or you know, bears. Do we protect bears and never kill a bear? Or do we make sure bears don't get around shelter belts, you know on the Rocky Mountain front. So I don't know that there's ever going to be the perfect answer. We're always so maybe another way to put it is, it's our job. We're always going to make somebody mad. I mean that's just the way it goes. So how do you do that? First of all, I think, um, sure, we can get hammered on so many issues. We get all these competing interests. I mean, that's just the nature of what we do period. I think there's tremendous beauty in that because people are passionate. So yeah, they might be crazy passionate sometimes, but they care and can We've talked internally, what would it feel like if people didn't care what we did? I think that would be worse or what I you know, what if people didn't care about our outdoor experiences? What if people didn't care about elk? What if people didn't care about grizzly bears. I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying, like in theory, Yeah, but it has to be we have to embrace that would kill us. There's two things that there are two things you said that I that I appreciate. One that you you said that you don't spend like what you think doesn't matter. Yeah, that's interesting. Do do you feel like you're pretty successful at pushing down like your personal take on it? Uh? You should ask where you're like where you're like personally, I would never hunt with at you know, at Lettle. Therefore, no one should like that wouldn't be something that's going to roll through your head. No, it wouldn't roll through my head. But but then that gets to another topic. Maybe. I mean, that's just my style of leadership. It's it's a team effort. There's no way I could be director without really great people around me, and so for them to be good, I feel like it's better to turn to to push it down. But Greg, do I really do that or do I just hope I do? No, You're good at it. And I think I think the other thing that this piece, the opinion piece, the other thing that comes into this is is our science work absolutely back to sort of our core role as he's trust man will hold that thought for mixing that we'll get into that good. Um, because that's just that that is also a hard word. Yeah, um, which one science or man who's got science on their side. Everybody's got science on the side. Yeah, Well, and both sides of whatever. When you're talking about passion, people coming to us with a passionate you know, opinion, they both sides have. They come with science too because they know that that that we are in the realm of science. And so that with the conversation is not just about I like this or I like that, it's I want this to happen based on this science. Yeah, but I think what's what we're getting this a little bit in a minute. But what scientific is incredibly unscientific and its social science is science? Oh yeah, there you go. It's a lot of there's a lot of social science tied up into science. But when you said that, you liked that everyone's engaged. Really so when when there's a hot button issue, I mean I have to there's a hot button issue, you have a hearing right or like a public comment period, and you come in and there's right everyone's in there ready to kill them kill each other over this thing. You have people that like take wolves like that that incites a lot of passion. You have people who are like, you know, kill them all that God sort them out. People who are like, you know, wolves are you know, are higher than unicorns on the list of what sacred and um, and you're like, oh great, everybody showed up. I'm so happy they have opinions. I am. Well, I mean, think, okay, just think about that. UM would if we showed up to talk about wolves and there were three people in the room. I would turn to Greg and say, we did something wrong. We missed the boat here, we missed reaching out to people. If only three people show up talking about wolves, Yeah, wouldn't that be scarier? I mean seriously, it would meet. Would that mean that people just uh, we don't really care? Do you get overall good participation? Like if if it's not something like a wolf or a you know, buffalo or something big and charismatic, you know, like when there's a meeting on I don't know, give me an example. Will be an example of something that doesn't get a lot of public excitement. Well, it doesn't happen every two years. So we set our regulations every two years are hunting regulations, and so that we go through all like the quotas and everything else we go through. It's a all the regulation booklets. I mean, it's all that information has done every two years in our season setting process. And there's portions of that that are always controversial. But there are some pieces of that drop that will will hold the meeting where we'll outnumber the public participants at the meeting. There'll be five f WP people and two U yes. So no, that is a bad sign. Regulation gosh, you think we'd all show up for regulations meeting. I haven't shown up neither. But to be fair too, I mean we are like other agencies who are trying to think of are there other ways to engage the public? If if people stop showing up at public hearings, should we be reaching out to them in different ways? All right? I want to I wanna move back a little bit. So there's something I want to hit on more like precisely, um the funding question? Ye? Like? Like seriously, how like what does an eight How does an agency view the fact? How does an agency view the idea that all people's opinions matter? Right? Everyone should have an opinion at the table, but then only some of the people are funding the structure? M h, what's your like? How do you view that? Is that viewed as a problem? Is if you just like a fact of life? Do you feel that people within a state, fish modelife agency do they sort of overserve the payers? Are there is there an idea that like those are the ones we should keep happy because they're paying for it all? How do you wrestle that? I'm not saying, you know, I know what I like? Where are you going with that I don't know, I'm asking. It's got to be something that comes up totally. Yeah, I mean that's a fair question. So yes, it's a fact of life because it is what it is, it's what we've had in place. Um. Yes, I think we pay you know, in all fairness, we pay close attention to what's our traditional base. So the people who pay, yes, we have to pay attention to them, and I believe we always will. With that said, Um, they can't be the only voice if if other people comment. Um. I sometimes get people asking me like, how could you meet with such and such? And my answer is, because I'm a public servant, I meet with who asks me to meet with them. You know, I can't cut a voice out because it's not popular. So I believe we have to listen to all voices. But I mean, yeah, we there is a certain skew toward our traditional base because that's who we're used to working with. And I would say, um, we don't want to lose them. I mean, we are in the business of perpetuating of um, encouraging getting outside that experience outside. We want people to hunt, we want people to fish. That's not the only thing we want them to do. But um, we do want that heritage in that tradition to continue. So is it tricky sometimes yes, I mean you know it's we're we're perpetuating a tradition. At the same time, we use science and we try to listen to all perspectives to come up with the best solution we can best proposal. Is it a lot harder, Let's like take that from it. Like, in a state like this, um, hunting is a big economic driver, right, So there's a lot of economic activity that occurs around hunting. So you could look like one can go and make this argument. They can look at dear chronic wasting disease, right, Like chronic wasting disease could come and have a big impact on public perception of hunting and participation and could cost communities. Like there's a community and they have high sea w D prevalence, people are gonna go hunt somewhere else and that is bad for business for people to have hotels and right, so all this stuff goes on around it and you look and you'd be like, man, we need to protect this thing. Um, I think I look at the thing envy about Alaska for instances, how jealously they guard their salmon sources because commercial huge commercial business, huge recreational business, Like don't go to Alaska and mess with salmon, Like it's not gonna go well for you. But what about like when you want to Yeah, so then you take like, oh, there's a big problem with hummingbirds. Um is that tough? Is it? Like hard to get like the the agency momentum and the money and the support to go do something where no one can come and argue to you about the economic impact of hummingbirds. Do hummingbirds tend to get like forgotten? Um? Not them specifically, but you know what I'm saying, Like if people are like, hey, hunters pay for this, elk is economic driver all this stuff, Like what do you do, Like, how do you begin to think about and address issues of people like that. We're not I'm not calling you up the buggy about it. I guess that people aren't. I'm guessing that people don't every day call you to make sure hummingbirds are okay. Yeah, Well, I think about a bunch of ways. One, I mean, that's the whole point of recovering America's Wildlife Act and all the precursors to precursors to that, you know, teaming with wildlife Cara, Blue Ribbon Panel, whatever, or the states that have a mechanism to help pay for to add the funding of a wildlife agency so they can get to um hummingbirds and our species. You hadn't even heard of um so, so that would be helpful and I think it's needed. Absolutely the challenge I have like an outside additional well, I think so so that we can get to those other species that we haven't. I mean, what in Montana we have? How many species do we have? Greg a lot of wildlife and you got nine big, we have five hundred, we have five four. I just happen to have this at my fingertip, uh fish and wildlife species in the state, and how many of those are? Then you realized we have a uhi four total fish and wildlife species and eighty game species. But here's the thing. What about ones that are like uh not as curious? Take like the short tailed weasel. Now he's non game, but take is permissible. So is he in that? Is he in the eighty or the five? UM I might so I would assume that he would be in the eighty if we have a permissible take. But we have seven. We have seventeen species that are federally protected or warranted. Federally protected or warranted, So we have responsibility over all five hundred species, and if we had better funding have not as many. You maybe wouldn't have seventeen, although that's not that high, um, that are federally protected. I mean the point is, I think if we had more capacity and resources to get to the other species of you know, to the five hundred, then um, I would hope if fewer need that federal protection. Well. And so one another twist in this is of our budget goes to the wildlife species. Management of the wildlife species of the budget goes And that's why I'm guessing or fishing game that people pursue the game species plus the the ones that either require statement they require state management, like there's species of special concern or they're federally protected. And so that answers your question of UM, people who buy licenses and or ammunition or fishing gear are I think they got a pretty good return. Yeah that's interesting, man, But I'm thankful for them too. Oh yeah, they're not doing anything wrong. There's buying their license. Yeah, there's a lot of like you know, in in our world, we hear all these different ideas people throw out about other ways to get, other ways to other people should pay to, right, And I don't even know if I like that at or not, because I don't know if we've played that all the way out, should we? Oh? Okay, So I'll give it like I'll give a commonly held perception about it to be that right now, all this money comes in and goes to either like the listed stuff or it goes the game right, research on game um enforcement, all this kind of stuff. So some people it often comes up, this idea, and Janice brought it up earlier that there should be some there's this kind of like this nascent concept of a backpack tax, meaning that there should that other people should be paying money. Um. You, when you buy a backpack, it should be taxed the same way if you buy a rifle, it's tax, and that that tax from your backpack should go to help pay for or binoculars. They're not rolled in, No, they're not. Are they rifle scopes? I think are, but I don't think but not it doesn't catch binoculars. So but but when I say backpacktacks, I don't mean like, let's just say I don't mean like specifically backpacks, well like taxes on other stuff to help flood money. But I think people bring up as people who have a strong voice that already have a seat at the table. And if you like hunting fish, you put you Typically some states I wouldn't say this is true, but generally if you hunting fish, you have a big seat at the table. Um You're your needs are being heard. That by bringing in all the payers, that people think that these other payers are going to come with expectations. So do you think so those people think of it as a ply and there are only so many slices, and so they're not going to want more people there because when their slice gets a little thinner, I don't thinky being how much attention can be paid to your knees. Yeah, but I don't think of it as supply. I mean you can look at it that way, and I get it, and I think we have to pay attention to that. So um fish, state fish and wildlife agencies. I think we need to do everything we can to provide the best service we can to the people who pay absolutely and if we could grow capacity, then we could pay better attention to some of the other species, and that funding could help there. So I don't you know. I can I appreciate the worry of losing some power or influence on the decisions, but I think that looks at it as a pie instead of realizing actually that it's more than that. It's not a finite resource. It's something that if we had more money, we could build capacity and address other things as well, and not let go of our traditional constituency. We still need to pay attention to them. That's not the point. Isn't to move away from what we've has done, it's to build more. I think where that question becomes interesting is um probably the last word, like one of the last words. Hear wolves, right, wolves? So let's just say, let's say that, do you have a how do you add noises? Anything? Can do a vehicle and really far away though, have you ever heard this? He'll do it? Can I hear it way off in the wind? That's good. It sounds like he's like five miles away. It's sort of amazing to hear it in real life. It's just remarkable since chills your neck. Uh, But I don't think he can do it. He do a wolf way off. Ye, No, Phil, good job pill Um. Okay, take wolves. No, let's just say thanks for picking an easy man. Um, take wolves. Let's say that there's a thing you have to buy like, but let's just there's some enforceable way to do this, some hypothetical, weird way in which you have a you need a license to see a wolf. Okay. I don't know how you do this, but it just minds up being the same way you need a license to fish, you need a license to see a wolf. I don't know if I like where you're going. Hear me, so, and you say this license is twenty bucks, right, And all of a sudden you're selling hundreds of thousands of these wolf seeing licenses, okay, and it becomes a big thing, and a big part of your budget comes to people buying wolf seeing licenses. At that point, at some point, there's gonna be this like I use the word reckoning earlier. At some point there's gonna be like this reckoning between big game like big game hunters who want to see wolf I'm just speaking very generally. I mean, there are many folds within this, but I would think it's it's safe to say that in general, big game hunters harbor some apprehensions about having to what they would qualify as too many wolves on the landscape because it's can be detrimental to deer and elk hunting, because it can lead to declines and deer knock. They would that's an argument they would make. Other people would argue that, um, it doesn't really matter, let nature play its course, blah blah blah, and we shouldn't have any harvest wolves and there should just be a many wolves out there as possible now the minute that if you have a wolf viewing license, all of a sudden you're gonna have you'd have like this paying constituency of people, and you would probably feel a pressure to maximize wolf sightings because you could the same way people feel pressure now to have a lot of deer in alcout to satisfy guys like me, Like, can you imagine a situation like this where having more payers come in with more opinions that you would where you where it winds up being that, uh, where it winds up being that there is a battle. It's not like that the pie gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Well, we already get those opinions now all those opinions anyway, UM, and most species are managed now, I mean a lot of species are conservation dependent or well just that we as humans have intervened on behalf of a number of species, whether to help recover them, like think of grizzly bears and wolves. We wouldn't have the numbers we have now in the landscape if we hadn't spent so much time and money trying to recover them. Yeah, that's a really good point. It's an interesting point because I think that some people fail to see that. They feel that those are there in the absence of action. Right, No, I'm conservation I like that conservation dependent is there because someone is paying to have them there. Well, yeah, we've we've managed we have you know, we've touched them in some way. UM and wolves, right, you know, I mean we reintroduce them, not we not fish, wildlife and parks. Because I've had somebody point their finger in my chest furious about me and reintroducing wolves, and I think, yeah, yeah, to take I can't take credit for that. I'm not quite that old. But anyway, it was real quick. That was UM an idea that was initiated at the federal level into varying degrees that the impacted states were responded, Yeah, we're brought in and it all happen. It was it was something that came from the federal level, right, did not come from a state that states either had to like figure out how to work with it or there was no option to not figure out how to work with it. Right, it was happening. So you have species that we've helped recover, um. And then you know, obviously the species that we have seasons on are allowed take there some management there. Um. So we just have had a hand in so many species across the landscape. Think of fit shouldn't think of water and returning you know in stream flows or the habitat you know, the whole point of habitat conservation. Um, we've just had a hand in a lot of that. So where am I going with that? Just there's it's complicated first of all, and the science has complicated and the social pieces are complicated. I don't see, um the ability you know, were you to have a wildlife viewing license, which I question that because it's a public resource, but there are some Yeah, there's a license you got together like the McNeil Bear Viewing area up in Catmire somewhere you gotta like buy you gotta like apply for a tag to look at that go in and see them to go into the area. Ye okay, so um, but that's more of a it's an access to it. It's not like you're buying a license to look at your access you're getting You're getting a permit to go let's say, just like to get a permit to full the Grand Canyon, right, Yeah, So it's not a rock viewing license, it's a permitive right when I mean, you know, if we were to play this out too, when we get so much pressure in certain places, that might happen. You know, how many people do you want to when you love a resource to death? Can that happen? But so say you even have that kind of input, you're still I can't imagine a day when state fish and wildlife agencies don't need hunters to help manage a species. I don't want. I wouldn't want to make our our staff, our employees go out and be the I mean, I remember the days of the firing squad of bison coming out of Yellowstone versus having hunters do it. So I don't see I just playing it out. I don't see hunting going away for a number of reasons, but one is that management an aspect, and I think it'd be ugly to have firing squads instead of having that opportunity to be outside. And also this sustainability point, what's in your freezer? You know? I have elk in my freezer and I don't. I don't typically buy meat, and I think many people who hunt and live in Montana they hunt in part for that. They hunt for the experience, but they also want the food. Do you guys didn always strongly advocate like pro hunting or I guess not so much that you'd be advocating pro hunting, But when it seems like lately every time, um, we have an opportunity, there's like an anti trapping bill that seems to come up. Right, So they're probably not a huge part of that fifty million dollars that comes in, but there's some and some people look at it like that's just the edge and if that goes, then the next thing is bow hunting or whatever. So does does FWP always stand at that front line and try to protect that? Yeah, that depends who you ask I would say many trappers would argue we don't enough. The anti trapping people would say we do too much. Um, I think we it's a balance that's that's not easy. We support trapping as a harvest heritage. We support trapping, and I don't think we wanted we don't want it to go away as a part of our heritage. At the same time, it's I don't think we should be too far out on that on the front line there because we're we're not set up to be an advocacy organization. An example is when there's like a trapping initiative, it's against the law for our agency to take a stance on an initiative. We don't step into that political fray. Remember when the when they were a few years ago, there was that there was a public vote out referendum and it was a band trapping on public land. And I feel like it was someone within Phishing Game who was talking about, we don't have the money to deal with all of the beaver complaints that would happen if people couldn't trap beavers. So that was before I was director, But I think we um we got challenged actually on on um a piece of of well, I think it was like a trailer or something. We got challenged on going too far an advocacy toward UM trapping, right, So someone pointed out, like, you're not that's not your job, stay out of it. Not you specifically, but someone within the agency. So we have a we have a fur bear trailer that we we we loaned to trapping groups to do helped do education on trapping. And the circumstance was this trailer was being used by a trapping group that was also at the time where they were using the trailer, they were also they were also advocating in opposition to this UH ballot initiative. So the we were we were challenged because we were they looked at us as having playing politics right, And so as soon as what the specifics of that, as soon as we found out that that we were in that sort of area conflict, we just took the trailer back. But that wasn't enough to ward off lawsuit. But in that situation you can't So let's say there's a trapping band situation, you can't come out and say, um, you can't come out the voters and be like, I can tell you one thing. Fish Walllife parks don't like it. That's really an initiative and that's a that's a that's a statue you. So, I don't know if that's different in other states, but that's it. But at the time, at the moment, we do say, um, we think trapping is an important part of our harvest heritage, and the harvest heritage comes from the Constitution. That's why we say it that way. So it sounds like a very buzzy word like it would be like cool to say these days, but you're saying that it's been, that's been. Yeah. So but what you raise, though, is a really good question on what's the department's role when, um, we see societal changes and when you know, perceived ethics of trapping or a certain method of take or when there's a shift, what is our role and how do we play into that? And I I don't have a good answer to that, but I think you've you've hit something that we totally have to pay attention to. We know our educational programs are really important, trapping education, hunter education, UM, aquatic aid, all the parks. We do a lot of education in our parks. So so I mean, you know, there's a role for education and and continuing this sort of heritage peace education doesn't count as direct advocacy, well, and it doesn't matter. It's it's the length the legislator, the statutes specific to like ballot initiatives or something like. I mean, so we we do we provide this so this trailer, this trapping trailer for bearer trailer, we talked about that. We we loan that out all the time and we provide grand money to um I guess Montrana Trappers Association is a group to help with some of their educational programming. So we do on that in that standpoint, we're supportive of that on all sorts of different fronts. It's the when there's a ballot initiative specific and that's it's just come up in the last few years with the trapping initiatives. That's where we don't take a stance. We're prohibited by a lot of take a stance. And I think that's to your point. I think that's what raises some people's frustrations. They say, well, you're the agency that licenses licenses this activity, you should be advocating for it, right, But then you're iss. You can get a certain point where it hits whatever in its process of enactment where you're like, right, you're at that point you gotta be like, my opinion is now stepping away, and you know what, I feel like that happens all the time too, when someone doesn't like something we've done, or they don't like what we haven't done. Where we're quiet, it's really hard to explain to people what our sideboards are to say we can't do that, and I nice, I'm thinking like with bear management now, I'm thinking of when we UM say when a legislator, legislator says, i'd like you to spend Pittman Robertson on UM enforcement, and we say, but we can't do that because it's not an ELI, it's not eligible under Pittman Robertson. It's really hard to describe those things. That's where you know, the engaged public, they're passionate, that's awesome, but sometimes they don't believe us when we say, well, we can't do that under the Endangered Species Actor, we can't do that under Pittman Robertson. And but we end we can do this. So that's just you know the nature of our our work. You know, seldom to someone come up to me and say something like, you know, who does the hell of a job wildlife? And by some I mean and I put gas in my car at the gas station and I got lots of comments like tearing it up. I find myself in a situation where I do try to like, um, do try to talk not just you guys specifically, but everyone. I try to say, like all in all, like when I stepped back and sort of look at the country. Um, oh no, I feel like fishing gaming agencies like that system works. I mean there's some wrinkles here and there, but I mean generally everybody can go hunt and fishing, you know, like in very like broad general points, like something's functioning well and there's mechanisms where you come and follow your complaints. But in terms of like no one does anything right? Do you guys feel like you should be able to take a victory lap about wolves now, because like, by and large, they're pretty well they're not all gone. They didn't go back extinct, right. Uh. People aren't super frustrated because when they got to like stand helplessly buy and watch them slaughter all their cows out in the in the by the haystack, it's like, did you get to go like I told you? No, No, we never get to do that. No. I mean I think we should celebrate recovery when they're Yeah, you can celebrate it, But um no, I don't think it's ever. That's a mistake people make. I believe with the Endangered Species Act, where certain species they view it as a switch, like they're not enough and then all of a sudden, we're okay and you can walk away. I don't think wildlife listens to us power switch. You know that it's okay one day and not okay the other day. Okay again, it's part of a continuum. So is it a success that's we're celebrating. Yes, but as our work ever done? No, because there are plenty of people who would like to have fewer wolves in northwest Montana, and yet there are people around Yellowstone who use wolf. Wolf watching is an important economic driver. I would like to see more. So we're not naive enough to think that our work is done. You never like, got it permanent? Yeah, got it? We can learn from good things. I'll promise not to bring up wolves anymore. I'm only bring I mean I want to say that because not that you have a problem with me, bring them up. But imagine it's just like it's one of those things that probably if you imagine how many like like you, Matt, you were talked early about how a big like a piece of pie is. If I imagine your brain as a chunk of pie, the wolf slice, it's probably big. Well, the elve slice is big. Well what's bigger the wolf slice of the elk slice? Well, it depends on the year, depends on the year. But I feel like when I go talk to landowners, like I can go talk to landowners about wolves or bears and they'll pull me aside and they'll say, listen, what I really want to talk to you about is hell. So if you imagine, like where are your sort of thoughts, Like if you made and there's this pie and it's your head and there's the wedges representing different animals, and I'm saying, this is what you wish you could think about. But just like when it all said and done, and all the things you got to look at and consider, Um, grizzlies, wolves, elk are big, huge pieces of pie. They are, and they're like the whole pie budget personnel. Fish, No, it's only animal pie, climate change, aquatic invasive species disease, chronic wasting disease. So you're not willing to just have it be an animal pie. Listen, I wish it was only an animal pie. The harder things sometimes are are the human the human pieces of the pie. There was a Commission meeting just uh six weeks ago where a chunk of the meeting was on a good chunk was on trout, kind of a trout versus walleye debate. Oh, and it was as animated our meetings, can people getting okay, give me the just give me give me real quick. What are the what? What are the what? We're talking cutthroats and we're talking other inters. So trying to introduce rainbows versus introduced walleyes. What were we talking about? Well, so the it was the Upper Missouri River Reservoir plan where we have a multi species system that includes very healthy walleye fisheries and a very healthy rainbow trout. So it's rainbow rainbow v. Walleye. Well, when how would you balance them or not? Yeah, the rainbows aren't from here anyways. This is one introduced the think that yeah, there's no way that one didn't come up that river high enough? Are you? So are you on the you are on the on the side of the debate that Wally I or a Montana native. Let's just say, okay, do I think the historically, Wally, we're coming up the Missouri far enough to hit Montana. I mean, of course, come on, fishty, wild stuff, right, fish turn up. I mean you have a wolf from the up of Missually the winds up down in Missouri, so it's like a wolf wind up there here to the wall, I wind up there. How about the Upper Missouri waters head though I don't know how high up well that one got lost and well so historically from from from what our research has are not ours, But I mean the research we've collected and looked at the Great Falls was a barrier. So above Great Falls was cutthroat west slope cutthroat fishery, which is kind of cool. But you know, with with dams and everything else. I mean, there's no doubt that we have some we have some spectacular walleye fishing in the Upper Missouri reservoirs, but so so the multi more about what I want to clarify, what I think all to happen if it's wal ivy cutthroat. Cutthroat win because they're native fish, super native fish and imperiled and to some extent wal ivy rainbow. I'm justest gonna go with walls. I like them better. Yeah. Well so the so the to the balance that we do is we manage for both of them. So we we in this one. We try trying to keep everybody happy. We're trying not to pick winners and losers, and uh, it's throwing the mix, uh the perch fishery which is really important to the to the both the walleye and the rainbow fishery. And so there's a lot of going there's a lot of moving parts in that Upper Missouri Reservoir plan. But right downstream of the last damn is the fabled Missouri blue ribbon trout fishery, the tail water fishery where up until this is just meeting, we were it was an unlimited take on walleye because there was just no we didn't want any walleye in that. And that's where the heat got into the room. Was trying to you know, the passion on both sides of the fishery debate. Man. That's that's an interesting point because there's a there's a thing where you know, you can use set lines in the Lorielstone. It's like a great way to catch catfish. I've heard that there now and you talk about like all the different people getting mad at each other. I heard now there's catfish guys who are gunning for set lines because the set liners catch all the catfish. So it's not even walleye guys v. Rainbow guys. It's like catfish guys be catfish guys. Everybody's everybody's douking it out, the write letters and mail. Um so so does there's a little piece of that that I find, um funny odd that we're fighting. It's it's another way to put it would be that's not I probably shouldn't say that the first world problem, but that we're fighting over a plethora of riches. I mean, instead of early on going back to the theme of the origin of the North American model, the Pittman Robertson Act, where there um depleted resources. Now we have a lot of resources and we're fighting over them. And I just I just sometimes think we we missed the big picture of we should all we have more in common than we're willing to let on fighting at the litt things. My kids fight the worst one about ten am Christmas morning, Yeah, the richest. Then they got something to fight over who got what? And I'm not discounting it was drowned in toys and they turn on each other. Uh, loving it to death? Okay, talk about what what do you mean when? What does it mean to you? Loving it to death? What would mean to me would be what happens in Uh what do you mean right now? Would be like what happens during archery elk season in Colorado. Pretty much every season in Colorado's loved to death. People want to go, and they want to go and have the experience in the state. It's like hell, come on out. And it makes it that it just creates like over it creates what I would feel like an overwhelmingly negative thing. And by trying to participate in something that's supposed to be great, all of those people participating and it diminishes and cheapens it and makes it not special. Um. I think that that Colorado Elk are but they'll be in love to death by other user groups as well. Yeah, maybe even more than too many archery hunters. I feel like a lot of archery hunters certainly worse since your experience out there. But we've talked when we talked with bel Andre from the Colorado Parks and Wildlife, you know, he's talking about, um just hikers and backpackers and mountain bikers that are in the mountains seven sixty five days a year. There is no off season, there's no shoulder season there anymore. Um. I lived there ten years ago and just now is back this year, and just you know, trailheads that would have a car or two or maybe none at certain days of the week. Now every single day of the week, all the time that there's overflow parking for every single trailhead, and those animals just do not get a break anymore. Um. So that's a form of love and to death. Yeah, I'd say so. And then the love and death of I think just like the like the amazing number of nonresident the hunters of the state lets in. I'm staying that from a non resident, So that would be love or here let me give you another love and to death, because here's what I want to talk about. Like a river, for instance, when I go down there's a river near here, the Madison it Um in the old days when I was a young man, um some people around the river. But now you go down there on a Saturday in the summertime and it's like it's like a parade, and you're talking even like inflatable swans. I mean, it's like a parade. Have you taken your kids down and done that? No? Hell no, I wouldn't take them to do that. There. You can rent those inflatable swans. Wouldn't inflatable mattresses. I remember one time seeing you know, those metal um watering troughs. I've seen a metal watering trough on the Missouri on the fourth of July weekend. Not to be crude, but at a certain point is the amount of urine in the water it's produced by all those floats that start to hurt the fish. It depends on if there's an offset with beer. Can beer offset the impact you're in? So we got this situation where you have this river and everyone wants to go there and they want to flow down the river. And someone might look and say, um, what was special about this? Right that it was like a way to this this this naturally scenic, it's beautiful. You can drift down this river and kind of visualize it yourself, getting lost in time. It's this landscape that just from a cursory look um carved. Yeah, it could be like I don't know, I'm here five years ago, Like if I was here five hundred years ago, probably kind of be like this, you know, and it's special and people go there. But then one day so many people go there that now it doesn't do what it did Now it's just a circus. So like like, whose responsibility is to police this? Is it? Anyone's who's supposed to say, like, hey, now some of you can't go because we're just gonna let a couple of people go and it will be special to them and everyone else stay home. Well let me ask that back. Who do you think i'd have a say and who should police it? And what that would look like? I mean, I would just look to That's a good question. The constituents. Yeah, what are our constituents? What you're even talking about different land like different landownership stuff. Yeah, well let me let me back up. So when I talked about fish, wildlife and parks, you know what is our job? Our mission is to steward uh fish, wildlife, parks, recreational resources for for today and for future generations. And then as we've gone around the state and talked to a number of people and went through a whole process internally to figure out what, like what does that really mean? And that our charge is to protect the integrity of the Montana experience outside. So so we're we're not Colorado right now, We're not Utah, were not other states. What is what is the Montana experience and how would we protect the integrity of that experience? So that's what our charge is. So in I would argue it is our job to look at that, whether it's the experience of hunting, it's the experience of trails on lands we manage um, and it is um the experience on the Madison. So I believe we do have a role in it. And there's a statute that directs us to address social conflicts on rivers now like a specific thing to like fight out social conflicts. And I remember on rivers, I remembering they they didn't they didn't forget anything. Today you could go back to the legislative history on that. I was sitting in the legislative hearing the day that language got added into that statute, and I remember I was like this fresh lawyer. I didn't, you know, I was somewhat new to the process and I reader can't have a law background. Yeah, and I was. I was. I thought that day, I thought, WHOA, what is that going to mean? Is that's a good thing or it's hard? So so we do have that responsibility. Now, how we apply it is super tricky. Um and I would argue the best way to apply it is to go through some sort of robust public process where we do hear from everyone. You hear from you know, we're talking about them, Addison. You hear from the people who live in Annas, you business owners, the people who live there and don't own a business, Virginia City, Nevada City, people who live in Bozeman, non residents. I mean, think of all the different people who use them. Addison and I don't believe that we can turn back the clock on what's happening there. I think that's tough. But we can certainly think about what's happening now and look to the future. It's not easy, but I mean, I look at the Smith River, I look at other rivers that are permitted. Do we want to do that? Greg and I were talking about it do we want the same experience on all of the rivers, Like should the Boulder River or the Yellowstone be the same as the Madison. Um. I think we have to listen to the public and go through and we have here, but go through a really public process and and sort through that collectively without us stepping in and dictating it. My opinion here doesn't matter. It's what collectively we do. But at some point, because right now we're just talking about all the user experiences, at some point when you have to step in and say, yeah, well we have to be the voice for the habitat and and all the things that live in it and on it. Yes, and to date, um, and I mean this is all part of what's going on. I think the people you don't want to see fish wild life from Parks or the Commission to step into this the issue on the Madison because to date there has not been a biological impact. There hasn't been an impact on the fisheries. I think we're seeing that. Um, we're starting to see that, and and and the next year or so, I'll be really curious. I do think it's our job to get that data and understand that better. So I want to just clarify this for for folks, No, you're doing a bang up job and I'm probably gonna I'll be accused of like someone say like, oh, are you telling the obvious? So, uh, we're looking at we're talking about two different things. Where you have our river okay, and the river has too much boating traffic. You could be invited into police the experience. And that's one thing, so you talk about you have the ability to monitor like social stuff, meaning like in the absence of it being fish habitat or whatever, just like that you can monitor like what kind of experience is it crowded or not crowded. But then there's another avenue of approach into this question where you could be in a situation where no one has any problem with the crowding. Everyone loves the crowding. They wish there was more crowding, but it turns out the fish don't dig it. And at that point you can also you also have legal authority on behalf of the fish regardless of what anybody thinks. Not regardless of what anyone thinks. I mean, we still could step in, but you still will get public input. So there's that's that mix of the biological science and social science. I would argue, you know, biological science is critical, it should be the underpinning. We also have learned we need to pay attention to social science too. There are very few things I think we deal with it doesn't have some social impact or so. Um, but it's good. I'm glad we're so linked to the natural world. So that's a good thing. You mentioned the Smith River. So there's a river. There's a very isolated, very wild river called the Smith River, and it's quintessential Montana. People do multi day floats on it, and you gotta like draw a permit to go float the river. It's not like you don't you don't go down there for an hour. It's like you get a permit. You do at Yeah, you do, you do a river trip. Um, could you imagine is there a way to have a version of a permit system that you need to get a permit to go float in a two for an hour? I mean I'm all for it, but I mean, like, is that is there a way to do that? I don't know, first come, first served, like like you know, I mean, like what could it look like? Um, I guess I don't know yet. I mean, this is somewhat new territory for us, and we've not had a sound bureaucratic here. But it's the truth. We haven't had the capacity and the money to put the work into getting um studying this better and setting up a good system to address Yet well it's come up, but it's not popular and we haven't had the support to really plan it out. But if you think about the Smith River, the precursor to and I'm not saying that we want to permit all rivers, I'm not at all going there for right, right, and we wouldn't want that. I mean, you know, because then people aren't getting outside and experiencing it and then loving something else too because they got to grow up going on the river whatever. But the Smith River. UM first, there was a study of the resources. There was a study of use and resources on the Smith River that led to permit getting there. And so what I'm saying, I think is we're getting pushed river by river to address conflict, whether it's on the West Fork of the bitter Root or on the Madison. You know, people are coming to the agency to say we want you to address this. UM I am saying it. I would love down the road to be able to uh look at it across the state holistically, so that we're realize that if we do something on the Madison, how might that impact the Yellowstone? Or when we had regulations on the Beaverhead and Big Hole, how did that impact the Madison? And making sure we have all sorts of different kinds of opportunity, So we're not saying every every opportunity, every river has to be the same. I don't. I'm not arguing that well. And I think on the Madison is a really unique spot sort of because that lower river is is so the experience during the summer months is so much geared towards that that sort of non consumptive crowd. Not that not that they don't consume, because they do, but they we we don't permit people like the bird watchers and the carrying, the partiers, they're they're they're consumptive in a different way, but they but we so they use up years of my life in swants, the ones in the inflatable swants. But but but on a given uh summer weekend, summer Saturday, there may be thousands of people on that that lower stretch river and there and there's a there's a there's a businesses and in Bozeman that that serve that crowd, that that that value that use. Isn't the primary debate that that comes to us. The primary debate that comes to us is on the Upper River, and it's on the commercial outfitting versus the wait angler versus the non commercial outfitted user or the non guided user and the and so that's where right now that the debate is the hottest. Well, you're saying that that on the river. On this river there's more of a debate around people arguing between who's got a guide and who's waiting from the beach and who's in a boat but not with a guide, Like they're duking it out more than who's here to party and who's here to fish. Well, think of if you think about it for us, for like kind of how it gets to us, Like there there isn't the constituent that that buys a six pack of PBR and and a black inner tube and hops in and floats down the river and it's cut offs. He doesn't show up at the public meeting. Yeah, they don't have like a he's not like in the Montana Tubers associated right, that's truthfully, this comes to the Commission in the form of in a formal petition, so that already, you know, weeds people out. He's going to bring a petition for that. But but if you like to drink beer and float, and I'm starting to group right now, you're you haven't shown up yet, but if you're but if you want that sort of solitude experienced wade fishing, like up a three dollar bridge, you know that the sama fly hatches on. You've hiked down the river two miles, You've got this couple of holes you're gonna fish. You want that solitude, You've earned it, You've you've put in the time, you've you've done all everything right, and then you have a whole bunch of people floating by your you might your dissatisfaction with your experience. That that is where that opinion is what's coming to us now. Also, the you know, and it's Chamber of Commerce, the you know, the Outfitters and Guides Association. We're hearing from those groups saying, you know, hey, you can't if you're gonna you gotta be really thoughtful if you're gonna limit how many outfitters we like selling stuff. Yeah, you know what, you know what? You know what group you're gonna regret? You ever heard of when we we get uh, we're gonna start the Rocky Mountain Squirrel Foundation, and you're out top about having to be in your bonnet. Man, they don't you guys more squirrels. You guys don't make They don't manage squirrels. Well, the isn't. I mean, I believe I'm stepping out, but aren't those uh foxtail squirrels are invasive foxtail fox squirrels fox squirrels. No, I don't think so. I think they came up. You think they came they came up, They rolled the backs of the wall. I read they came up, they rolled on wall. Here's the thing, though, Man, to be honest with you, I don't want there to be It's counterintuitive. I don't want there to be a formal season in a formal bag limit because I feel that if there was, people would be tuned into it, like the minute you make it a thing. Like remember how like people used to just go and like you might go fishing and maybe shoot something too right and just that's just what you did, and that could happen then all a sudden something came up with the term like, oh, let's do a cast and blast, and all of a sudden, you like put a name to something and you turn it into something. So I think, like, if people open up the REGs and they see rules about squirrels, are gonna get all interested. I'd rather I like it one of the I like it that there's just no mention of it, and then it doesn't become like a thing. But what I'd like to see is more of them dropped off here and there, like a lot more money into do it bucket biology on squirrels. Man hate no bucket biology. That's just a stance we gotta make. Yeah, uh, okay, we'll talk about loving it to death and what like. And it's interesting to know that you're actually like there's a mandate, an agency could have a man date to regulate people's social fighting. What do you feel? So this is a whole new topic. I want to ask you about um. Earlier we talked about like who owns wildlife? Right, we talked about it really matter of factly, like everybody knows. Everybody knows wildlife owned by the people. What are what do you imagine being threats to that. And I know that for you to use the word threat, it's gonna put you in trouble because you're sort of there's a value judgment with calling it a threat, like what are the chant Like, what do you see as emerging challenges to this thing that we're just accepting at face value as being Like everyone agrees that wildlife is a public the wildlife is publicly owned. Um, but as you point out, not everyone agrees with that or they understand that it's always been that way, but they would like to see that change. Um, there's a group I'm trying to remember what's the what's the the Utah group Sportsman. They come up with them as a group of sports for Wildlife. It's one of those this is me talking, not like I want to save you guys, any kind of I'm talking right now, Steve that that I haven't consulted that our guests are sitting silently. Um, but yeah, I don't want to say that group there are sometimes you'll see, uh yeah, never mind sports states handle it differently. Yeah, so sports there's and I could't even be wrong, but I feel like Sportsman for Wildlife. I believe, um that that organization would like to see. UM, I would like to see individual landowners enjoy sort of a greater ownership. Speaking very generally, they would like to see the landowners enjoy a greater ownership of the animals that are on their property. Meaning UM, they're not comfortable entirely with the idea that that's public and it'd be like if you got if you own the land, you should be able to have more say and what goes on on it. UM. I'll point out we told a story before, but this whole thing comes from UM. A long time ago there was a there's a Supreme you know, there's a Supreme Court decision of other things where there was a guy and he was he owned some land on the beach and people would pick oysters, would collect oysters off the beach. And the guy was like, hey, man, um, you can't pick those oysters up. Those are I own the oysters because I own the land on the oysters and UM, and he traced back his ownership at these oysters or something like land grant from the King of England. So he's like thereby, my wild my land, my wildlife. And eventually goes to the Supreme Court and it's determined that Um, with the declaration of independence, those things that belonged to the sovereign, like those things that belonged to the king, became the property of the people. I'm doing this like very shorthand version. Therefore you don't know on the oysters. Sorry, like king game to you, but not anymore. We're done with that stuff now. Now we're America and we have this new idea, which is public wildlife. It's not like in Europe where you you know the king's deer. Um. How do you I know you earlier saying you have you're not able to advocate or you need to be more like a passive bystander, as an agency, an initiative. Okay, what about something like this? Can you, like, are you able to flex some muscle and stand up for public wildlife or you just have to be like whatever way the wind blows. Um. If that's the question, well, I mean, I think it's the law. I think it's the public trust. And wildlife is embedded in our um, in the fabric of our country. It's embedded in you know, think of people love block lands, public wildlife. It's part of why we have some of the species diversity and abundance that we have. UM So I don't. It's not advocating for a certain point of view, because it is. It's a fact of life. It is what it is right now. Certainly in Montana. Now Utah wildlife is monetized more than in Montana, where you know, a landowner can get landowner tags or whatever, and there's certainly people who are interested in that happening in more places in the country. UM. I have learned in being director. I mean there are lots of things that I've had to learn along the way. And I think there's so many sort of unspoken rules, and I've tried to learn them, and I think we should make them spoken about what we think is different in Montana than say in Utah or Colorado and some of our neighboring states. And I say that to learn that because if our job at Montana Fish Wildlife from Parks is to protect the integrity of the Montana outdoor experience, to protect that, we need to know what might be different here than elsewhere. And I think we as people as citizens, whether citizen of Montana or citizens somewhere else, as hunters, anglers, certainly as managers, I think we need to understand how we got to where we are, That it wasn't by happenstance. The fact that we UM have this equitable opportunity in Montana, the fact that wildlife is truly public, that we haven't monetized it, the fact that we have the experiences to rivers and UM across the state that we do. It's it's on purpose, it was all, you know, It's part of our that North American UM model. It's part of our system. And if we don't understand that, and we don't understand what makes it different and special compared to somewhere else, how do we make sure that continues. So I feel like it's my job to be not necessarily advocating, although I think I'm comfortable here because there's not an initiative or something. This is what developed as a state, and I think that makes a state special UM to pay. It's my job to pay attention to what that is and be UM explicit. If we're going to deviate from that and change it, we need to understand what that difference would mean. So if we were to privatize wildlife and I and and if we were to allow give change, what we have of now where landowners are treated like anybody else. It's an opportunity state, UM, where landowners don't have any rights to wildlife much different than the general public or a license holder. UM. If we were to change that, what would that mean? And we certainly could as a state, But I think we need to understand what we have in place now, what makes it special before just saying Okay, it's all right to change that, Because I think when you, as you've said, it's hard to put a genie back in the bottle. You know, when you change something or you allow you give somebody a right, it's a whole lot harder to take that right away than to just not give it to them to begin with, or to do it incrementally. So I think in this instance, what makes the experience in Montana pretty special we better be careful at it's saying oh, it's fine to change that without really understanding what we're doing it does, without inviting people to understand the foundation. Yeah, someone's like, why don't we have more landowner tags? You could say we could have, could we could, But let's look at how we came to sort of the underlying like foundational principles that led us to be that we like democratic allocation right. And I also think it's really fair to realize, like this is inside baseball, this is something we all think about. You clearly think about it, and it's great to talk about. But not everybody knows this. We shouldn't assume that people realize how important it is that we do have this public trust in wild life, that all everybody has a piece of this. It's it's complicated enough where I have purchased and hunted off of landowner tags. When we talk about land ard tag, what that's why to tell people at land artaga is land ard tag would be that UM in whatever particular game management unit or wherever you have, they might be the people who own x number of acres um deserve to get some like payback for them owning land that has animals on it. So if you own four acres, they're gonna give you two deer tags. Everybody else needs to try to apply for a tag and win in a drawing. And then in some cases you can take your two deer tags and sell them. And that wasn't in Montana. No, no, no not. You can sell them to the highest bidder. Um they're just years to have and then you get them that way, just by the simple fact of owning land, you get tags, and then other people get them the good old fashioned ways. What I'm saying is I've bought and have been given landowner tags and other states, and even with that, uh, even having done that, I still them a little bit like, um, I'm not sure how I feel about them. I remember we had a podcast guest time one time that has a place on the coast, has a place on the California coast, and he doesn't He didn't say this when we interviewed him, but he had said it elsewhere. He lives in a house on the beach, and he says, I don't even think you should be able to have a house on the beach. But I'm gonna stay in mine until it's illegal. Then I will happily move out once I know that someone else isn't gonna move into it. So like I'm just pointed out, because like I was magnanimous, not everyone would sit. So it's like I get him, and I still get him, and I still a little bit like, I don't know, man, is this like the right thing, the right way to uh that you are? Um, that you're hunting the King's deer. Right, That's what he taught me about it, that it's some that it's tags, And I guess I've I've had in my life through various ways for landowner tags um or the equivalent of land ard tags four times. And then it would be that, uh, I got those opportunities because of my connection to or my personal being like someone of means, and there was four opportunities that would have been distributed more equitably and more democratically to others. So I went into the woods because of being a man of means or having relations that way, and other people stayed home because they're not right. That eats at me. But then you can also be like, oh, life a fair whatever, like there's all kinds of ways to write it all. Yeah, well yeah, you know, like I'm a good friend, right so uh yeah, man, it bounces around and uh to if I put in for a draw and like draw the tag, dude, I'm elated. Yeah, guilt free hunting guilt. Yeah. So when I'm pointing, I'm not on even know what I'm getting at. I'm just getting at the idea that it's like that there's these sort of ideas out there that that um I haven't even totally unpacked. How I feel you get us on the subject of governor's tags talking about its ambivalence, all right, I see both sides. Well, you know, the interesting thing in Montana and not to get it down on governor down the road on Governor's takes, but where we're at is and you know, wildlife management is a is a complex situation that you know, complex field for us obviously, but there's a lot of but there's a lot of values at the table, and there's a lot of interest at the table, including landowners. We don't get to we get to just manage wildlife without sort of considering all those sorts of relationships and those partnerships. And we've talked about this a lot in in that department recently. Is it's critical our landowner relationships are critical. I mean, there's a ton of habitat in Montana that is critical that's on private land. Oh, if you look at I mean private land, private land conservation, if you just look at it and whatever is in square units of space, private land conservation is more important in public wayAnd conservation because more of the country's private land, Like if they all decided just to piss it all away. Everyone's done. We're done, Like we can't have wildlife if private landowners decided that they didn't care about wild life anymore and they're just going to destroy it all of course, of course, uh, And no one is suggesting that you should be forced to allow access on your property. Like if you own land and there's animals on it, you have right and no one can go, No one can go. No one's questioning that. But we're talking about is like do you, by by fact of you owning the land, do you then get the animals too, which is us, which would be giving something that didn't previously belong to you to you. Right, it's not like you're not writing momentum, it's a new idea, Like that's the thing, you know. Well, I feel like we often get accused of like being down on on private land all the time. Man, I have, like I have a lot of friends that you know, it's bad when people say that, A lot of friends that manage land specifically for wildlife and phenomenal stewards and it's absolutely important and we're really thankful to them. But right, but like, do you get to own the stuff that's walking across it. So and I think that sounds too much like a UM one or the other. And and uh, while landowners definitely have the right to determine access on their land UM and they can determine if there's hunting at all. Oh yeah, for sure. The piece that is often missing. And I'm going to my next director's message or the one after that talk about this more. I mean, I do think as an agency we can do a better job of appreciating the conservation and access the opportunities that happen on private land. Like you said, we could not manage wildlife and provide these opportunities without partnering with landowners. There are critical peace and we're really thankful for that. And so I think you're right. Sometimes when we talk about the public trust and wildlife, it gets too wrapped up in access and and landowners and letting people on or not. And I think we need to do a better job of just saying private land is critical. They play a really important role not only in the habitat for wildlife and specific wildlife species, they also I think that we've talked about this, they're facing these um global economic forces where I really worry about losing long term landowners on the landscape and and losing their peace of these rural communities that are also really important for habitat and wildlife species and are important to this Montana way of life. There there intertwined with what we do it should be. We had the writer Tom mcgwain on the show and he mentioned how when a ranch, when a ranch gets sold, biodiversity goes down. I worry. I'm totally worried about that. I think we should be doing all that we can to support these families that have been on the land for a long time. And we're seeing right a trend at least in the Midwest of family farms going under, and that's gonna spell trouble I believe for wildlife, yeah, I feel, and water and real community, I mean, all sorts of things. We had a conversation the other day about when a landowner and rolls and the Black Management Program, which is a public access program where landowners get, you know, a small compensation for the impacts for for letting people you know, A small yeah, a small I don't even know if you'd call a payment a small compensation for allowing public hunting access on their property. I was saying that, Um, I feel that I wouldn't want to make them uncomfortable, but one should really go up and give them a big hug. Yeah, because it's like people be like, oh, they're getting paid. It's like, listen, this is not they are not getting paid, getting paid nominally for the impacts the public hunters like you should go up and clean their boots when you see them, and to have any sort of attitude that you have that they're like that you're doing them a favor or whatever by using the access program. And how many of the wrong we're looking at you guys don't do this, but a lot of hunters get the landowners help them go retrieve their game. I mean, they're out there, but the baco or they're really they're pretty darn helpful and encouraging to give them a hug and clean their boots and send them presents if they are willing to allow public access through through a state program like that. Uh, all right, what do we What have I not asked you? Both of you trying to talk about No, I don't like to talk about myself. So let's seat hops. Have we not covered you skipped grizzly bears, but that's okay. Yeah, we caught wolves a couple of times we rolled into that. Do you want are you dying to talk about grizzlies? Uh? No, although I think that would you like to see would you like to see your agency take would you know I just asked for this one. Would you like to see your agency takeover management from the Feds and the grizzlies to go to state management? Of course? Do you feel that you guys would just run him in the ground. They'd go extend we're bad or not? You can't. We can't, That's right, we can't. I think people forget that it's our responsibility to make sure they stay recovered because they could go right back. No, we couldn't do that. We should saying that right if the States screwed it up, could go back to the Feds, they would be right shooting themselves in the foot. But whatever your motivations are, it wouldn't make any sense to have it go bad. No. Now, I think it's just our responsibility, and I do think Montana's been really good at taking I mean, wolves are an example where we've been measured in our approach. Sometimes wish we were less measured. But I it goes back to that switch. I don't think that you know one day they're listed in the next or not, and you can go out and hunt them all. It's an incremental process. Do you do you like to do crystal ball kind of stuff? Never have you get what you pay for? Well, I want to ask you, like you looking into a crystal ball. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You get to pay for their meaning. I'm not paying anything, yes, Just to be um, where are we at like our well, well, grizzly bears fall to state. Well, grizzly bears get pulled off the Endangered Species Act listing and become no longer threatened and get handed over to state management in five years, ten years. Someday you think so, someday I do think so. I've asked, um, I've asked that to the head of um Fishing Wildlife. Well, I've asked the head of I've asked that to the head of the Idaho fishing Game. I asked it to the head of Wyoming's fishing game, and I asked it to the head of Montana's fishing game. Now, and we also asked the felt that we had. I don't know if he's the head of the Inner Agency Grizzly Bear Committee. Yeah, I haven't that. You're the only one I've asked publicly. You're the only one I've asked publicly. The other two I asked. I'm not gonna tell you who gave what. But I got one no, one yes. In ten years, our grizzly Bear is going to be under state management. Yes, really, yes, So I've got two yes is in one no? Yeah, I feel like we're doing the best weekend. So what I would you want to talk about? There's I firmly believe that the governor created this Grizzly Bear Advisory Council and it pulled We got over a hundred and seventy applications for eighteen spots, and it pulled people from all over the state different perspectives, And to me, that's how we solve issues in Montana. That is something that where we do our best work, where it doesn't come to the department. It's not my opinion that matters are Greggs for that. It's this council where people get together and hash out some of the hard stuff with Grizzly Bear management and it is hard and give a recommendation. That's an example of why I think we will get there and that we're on it with the science. We are committed and we're getting Montana's really engaged to help us figure out the best best path forward. And I really do think that's the way you do it. You don't have just the FEDS coming in and saying you do this or you don't do that. It's a it's a collection where we try to figure out what makes the most sense in Montana. You know, I'm not gonna ask you to comment on this, but it's a funny observation that all the work that goes into that went into wolf delisting and it's going into grizzly delisting now, Like does all this work that happens? And then people always litigate it in such a way that it winds up in the court in Missoula because they know that the judge of missoul will throw it out. It's like all this work at all, this where you're like, yeah, but they still got the same person still sits in the federal court and so until whatever, they don't know what happens if they retire. Oh careful with me. I think that will we can get it through him. And I say that because when I taught at the law school, I UM the Wolverine litigation. I took my students, UM, we read the briefs, we went to the oral argument, he issued his decision. He came to our class and explained his decision, and like the good lawyer and the bad loring or whatever, and we got to listen and learn through the whole process. So I think to believe in the judicial system, you think, you think that you think that that individual is actually doing their job and they don't just be like I don't care how I do it, but I'm gonna damn sure make that no one hunts a grizzy bear. I don't think that was in the decision. I think it's easy. I think it was lurking around, lurking around. Um. But I don't want you to comment on that. I'm way off into like, you know, just hunches, and I know you probably don't get the deal, and hunches a whole bunch probably shouldn't, but also doesn't it Do you feel that it largely depends to just kind of like how you know we're gonna have either continuation of the same administration in Washington or potentially a new administration of Washington, and these kind of like big things wind up being so much bigger than the state, right like right, it kind of depend on whatever whatever, like high like high level leadership or do you think do you think that a decision like this could wind up happening regardless of input from Washington d C. Yeah, I don't think that the change in administrations should have that much of an impact on the Fish and Wildlife Services decision on whether the list or d list is that? Right, They don't just make a call, and they're like, you know, they can't. You don't always laughed about I'm gonna go back to you can see you got anything to add, But I always laughed about in New York, Build A Blasio all the problems, like you know, he becomes the mayor of New like everything that goes out of New York. You can imagine all the issues, right you yeah, like every like the subway is counter terrorism and you know, you know, Russian oligarchs buying up really like whatever, all these issues and I remember, Build A Blasio wins and he gets the thing, and one of his first actions as mayor is that what this city really needs is to not have carriage horse carriage rides in Central Park because it's mean to the horses. And remember being like, there's no way that that's something he natively thought of. It was someone had said, here, man, here's a bunch of like, uh, campaign money. He didn't have a bad carriage ride. But he's like, he's like and then he wins. He's like, dah, man, I forgot. Now I gotta do something about stupid carriage rides. I promised someone I would do that, like, and so I I view that I can't help but view that when the next that that when the next presidential election happens, that there's not someone planting in someone's ear the idea that I will tell you one thing that cannot happen. We do not want to see those bears delisted, and that someone would like that they would apply some level of force in some weird hidden way. I don't have any doubt that someone might plant those seeds. But having worked, yeah, I'm just a dumba. I'm just a dumbas talking. I mean, I worked in the Solicitor's office for the Department of the Interior on the Endangered Species Act to subject matter experts. So we worked our tails off to not have there there was no political influence in our decision packages on listing or delisting. I know people don't believe that. No one's gonna believe that, but you're looking and so and I think you see that there hasn't. There may have been a big shift and policy and interior from administration to administration, but if you look at the decision packages coming out on listing or delisting species, I don't think you're seeing a giant shift. Now, strike me down. People hard left, hard right wouldn't agree with me there. But I think there's so many um the laws in play, there's so many systems in place that it's hard to politically influence those types of scientific decisions. And I don't think I'm just being Pollyanna. I think that's really the way it's set up. Other things too bad. There's there's policy influence, But on listing and delisting grizzly Bears, I believe they're going to be delisted because as Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, we are starting to work together, and I think a lot of people are coming together to make sure we've demonstrated for if it goes to Judge Christensen that everything's in place and we've adhered to what's required to delist them. I hope you're right, it's just how long? How long out? I believe it will be done in ten years? Done in ten years? Yeah? Man? Why do you so much to go home and hug my kids? Why do you home so much hope that she's right? Why do I hope that? Are you asking? Why do I hope the grizzy bears get delisted? Because I feel like it's an instance, it's twofold one. I feel like it's an instance where people are weaponizing the Endangered Species Act, meaning it's beyond any conversation about what the Endangered Species Act is supposed to be used for and what its function is, and it's just being weaponized as a tool to get what you would like to see happen. And people are like, they don't want there's people who do not want to see a grizzy bear and did not want to see a wolf get killed by a hunter. And they weren't debating anymore about whether or not the Act had worked, whether or not we had achieved recovery objectives, whether or not the whole system did what it was supposed to do. It's stopped being the debate. The debate became like if they d list, there could be hunting, So I will fight the de listing without articulating that that's why I'm doing it, And they became all these proxies, and so if we de list, do you think it'll be less easy to weaponize and to continue. That's why it's multifaceted because you have to take everything I just said with a grain of salt because I am personally biased for state management of wildlife, and I am uneasy with this is me talking personally personally biased towards state management, and I'm generally uneasy with federal management of wildlife unless it's a case where we really need federal management to keep the species from becoming imperiled and going extinct. But in cases of just federal management, because it means that the states wouldn't be able to have a hunting season, I just think that that's a bastardization of what the whole thing is supposed to, how it's supposed to function. So my bias, I'm biased as a hunter. So I'm just pointing that out. Less someone say everything you're saying about the Endangered Species Act, you're just saying because you like the hunt. I'm like, yes, I like the hunt, and I don't like the ESA being weaponized. There's plenty of the things that are not recovered that we I would argue we should be spending tons of money and energy on saving. That's not one of them anyway, in which we spelled out what recovery would look like back we've been there for thirteen or fourteen years now, right, So yeah, I'm go home and hugged my kids based off of what I just heard. I really children, it will be a beautiful world within a decade. Is that? Is that all fair? What I said, Martha, I don't want to pull you an awkward position. No, No, I mean I'm I've I've already been on the record saying that I believe in the Natured Species Act. I mean I do. I also think I personally think that grizzly bears are recovered because they've met the recovery goals. I think that the States we actually with grizzly bears um where we are sharing in management with the Fish and Wildlife Service and Wildlife Services. Now, I mean, no, one entity is doing it alone, so we're already kind of there. We do not have a hunting season, um and I think a hunting seasons are red herring. I don't think that's the issue. The issue is recovery of long recovery of bears. It is the is the issue. It is the issue. Did anyone sue against delisting bald eagles? Probably? I don't know, but probably. I mean I said that in that most listing and dealisting decisions get challenged by people who like them and don't like them, of both. Any decision by the US or shamildly service to do list or deal list a species is likely to get challenged from both sides everyone. I want to point. I want to go on recent. I love, like, love, love grizzly bears, love love love them. Yeah, how come? This is what I'm curious about, because you know, I'm in places that don't have them, and I'm wandering around. It feels like something's missing. I like them everything about them, like looking at him, I like being afraid of them. I like everything. Do you like that they're no longer top dog when reute? I love them. I'd like to seemn more places. I want to go on record saying that I'm wanna go on record saying I'm a stall a supporter of the Endangered Species Act in like in general as a thing, Like is it always used perfectly? No, It's like I'm in favor of having my kids live in my house. Are there like parts of things I wish they would do differently? It was like, I want them there, I just wish they didn't weren't there all the time. Yeah, I pick up when they're done. I don't know. So it's like, yeah, like I love it, It's fantastic, would be a worst country without it. But in this case, it's gotten a little silly, and it's just in my personal opinion, I don't I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. Well yeah, and I mean I agree with you and that I think the Endangered Species Act is there for the species who really need it, and I'd like to be putting more time and effort into those species that really need it. And I think grizzly bears are so far in the continuum of being recovered that I would like to spend the time and money on another species, knowing just like wolves, it's not that switch We're never done with managing grizzly bears and ensuring their long term recovery and managing them for the people who live with them. Um, so I think they're biologically recovered, and yes, we're in the business of of managing them for a long time to come. Okay, what else is there any that you're like? Man, which this guy would ask me about. No, you said I didn't ask you about you. You don't want to be asked about your personal life. Well, it's boring. Where were you born? I was born on a farm in Maryland. And um, you went to law school obviously in Missoula. Have you always been law? Public? Land? Law's where I went there? Yeah, so if you always worked in the public sector, ye, you never like an ambulance chaser, I probably should have been. My kids would like it maybe better. But no, oh, I mean, like a word, you have always worked around land and wildlife issues. We got the land and being outside is just in my blood and it just was my way of giving back kind of farmed your grandpa, um subsistence my you know, we had steers, pigs, milk, cow, chickens, um, wheat, corn, hay, big big garden, my parents are in their late eighties and are still running the farm. And they taught me like we always knew when the swallows came in and left, and would see the different times. You know how that's changed every time. My mom taught me all of the plants in the woods. We would sleep out in the rows of straw in the summer nights, just out in the middle of the I remember getting lost in a corn field once because I was teeny and the corn was, you know, way above my head, and my parents didn't know where we were. We were just running around in the corn field. Yeah, children of the corn man. When you're a little kids scary out of cornfield. They should have been worried. So what year did you move to where Montana? I went to move to Missoula to go to law school in ninety one, I think. And I spent my high school in college summers in Wyoming working on a ranch. It made me I always loved the land, but it was psyched to get away from the East Coast and just fell in love with public lands. And you got some you got some kids mostly raised up. Yeah, and they're probably at this point whatever they're going to be there, there's nothing gonna do about it now, Isn't that scared? But they're turning into really nice people, congratulations, I think. And they loved the outdoors. That's a good way. Like when you're all done parenting, you're never done. You've never done. I mean, like a good thing would be like in the end, be like, how'd it go right to be? Like, you know, they're pretty nice people, yeah, because there are a lot of things that should be the measure right right, So they're pretty nice. Let me tell you this one thing. I we they grew up on adventure points. Have you ever heard of adventure points? So, um, we had a board where if they added up their adventure points, we could get a certain trip. So like once when we were in a Yellowstone a really cold night, I mean I think it was like minus thirty degrees and us like if you it was in years, we went out cross country skiing to Ring in New Year's and they're like, mom, it's freaking cold out. I'm like, you get twenty adventure points if we go out skiing to Ring in the New Year. I'm adopting the best And the only way they could trade them in was for the next adventure, So that's all right, not for chocolate bars, because that's what my girls for, you know, Yeah, whatever you want. Think about being like daddy of like being a nice person. By My beloved sister in law was recently in a she's in a vehicle accident. She's everybody's fine, she's fine, but someone else's at fault. You know, they like crashed into her car and it turns out they don't have insurance. So I'm on the phone there and UM, I'm like, why, you know, I guess you're gonna have to go after this guy. What are you gonna do to go after him? And she's like, you know, he seems to have a lot of um problems right now, so that's not something I'm gonna do. And she goes, in fact, I'm I gotta go because I'm supposed to give him a call and see how he's doing. Kind of melted my heart, right, you know, like, pretty nice person. It's okay to be a nice person, isn't it not? Just wake up every day and be like I'm gonna make someone pay out? Maybe are we all like that? Because we um like to be outside so much. I like to think that people would like to be outside, But man, I don't know Claude Dallas was outside all the time. We talked about him the other day. Anomaly. Yeah, I do. I have a lot vested. I have a lot um in child raising. Um, I've thrown down pretty hard. Like my whole thesis is sort of based around the idea that outdoor experiences UM and all that goes with them, the people, everything that that that's a path toward parenting success. I hope I'm not wrong. So if I'm wrong, I will be real wrong. I've really like pounded it into him that that's important. So if I if that's screwed up, then I'm just gonna have to rely on luck after that. Right, let's visit in twenty years. I hope we're all on some sort of similar path, right, Greg, Yeah, I hope my kids are all nice? Yeah, nice and happy? What else you up? Yeah? I'm just thinking. I gotta wife's out of town to night, so I gotta cook dinner for him by myself and wrangle them into bed. They're nice to me tonight, Oh you got uh? So I owe you like a night of babysitting. You haven't redeemed? Oh yeah, we'll get to that UM real quick. I know that in the last couple of three years, I think we've been as Montana has been selling out a nonresident taka mule here. That number is pretty much capped right for how many and until the Commission decides to change its statue. It was a ballot initiative that kept it UM and I can't remember what year that was, So that'll stay at whatever what it's like, eleven thousand or something like that. There's a couple of numbers and uh, it's seventeen thousand for deer outcome UM, so that the non residentari combos are kept at seventeen thou and we we had a time where we weren't selling out because when they capped it, then that initiative raised there was a year of sticker shot, a couple of years of sticker shot, and so now but we've been selling out the last three years. Yeah, and now we're selling them out sooner and sooner year. But until another ballot initiative calms that number will stay or legislative, I mean it can the legislature could change that without a ballot initiative, with or without I hope they can make it that it can't be changed, it can only be lowered constitutional. But my question is what are resident tag numbers doing? So the resident tags have been pretty steady. We we're so unlike some states where the resident tags are going down or the fewer people participating in Montana, we've had steady participation. And we're also seeing, or we think, is that more of our license buyers are buying more types of licenses. So, um, that's a good I think that's a good song. So all you ever hear about is declining hunting participation not here yet, but we can't rest on our laurel, so I don't think. But we hear a lot about that. But I feel like we also hear about like the balls is like, yeah, that's what they say, this are three stuff. But when was the last time you went into the woods and felt like we needed more hunters? People? The people that hunt are more die hard and are more likely to travel on multiple states. Man, that's our theory. I gets backed up by some data. Well I don't know what our how our data would speak to that, but I think you know, we we've got Whenever we talk about our three you have people that say just that, Like I don't know. I went out to my block management area and there's you know, twelve trucks. The Yeah, I used to be pro R three but I'm reconsidering. But I was just in Wisconsin over the weekend and it's and it was the same when I was there two years ago for opening week a rifle Compared to when I was a kid, and even you know, maybe into my early twenties, it was it's a marked difference on Saturday morning, the amount of shooting that you hear a lot more, no, a lot less where in Wisconsin and we go and visit with all the neighbors usually at some point either before a season or you know, over the weekend, and there's just it's the same thing. It's like the elders aren't like they're getting old and so there's not really making it into the woods. And then you go to that camp and there aren't the um younger cousins or nephews or grandkids. And even in the camp that I was in this weekend, I mean I was the youngest there by thirty years. Okay, maybe I'm a lot close to it, close to thirty. Yeah, Well, I think the one of the things I say about our three is that it's not it's not just the numbers, like the percentage. Even in Montana, the percentage of population that's participating is the last. So our numbers are stable from a license sales standpoint, or you know, they sort of way like this, but speaks to a demographic shift. Yeah, Like I and I used this analogy that you're more apt to to marry a non hunter in two thousand nineteen than you were in two thousand and eighteen. And that's not maybe a big deal because maybe you marry somebody that's supportive of hunting but isn't a hunter, but that's still that adds that that little bit of hurdle some money that that wasn't I didn't grow up around guns, maybe you know, and that just doesn't really understand him. Then the kids grow up and you have this sort of this sort of plan that you have to put into place on how you're gonna get the kids out hunting and that sort of thing. When when we were kids, there wasn't I didn't have any that wasn't even part of the plan. I just I just gotta bb gun and said get out of the house, you know, And people aren't gonna like, my brother kind of talked me out of being here. He's in the process of talking me out of being um, talking to me out of being pro R three, which was it Retention, recruitment and reactivation pro more hunters. Uh, he's he's he is in the process of talking to me. Ought to be in that way, and um, we're never gonna like hunters aren't gonna wreak the rewards of fewer hunters because people just gonna like now like, well no, but I'm saying, yeah, that's what I argue. But the thing is, you're never gonna be like that because you're never gonna be like, oh, it's a lot. The woods are better now because people just lease it all up. Like people used to not lease stuff and now people just lease properties. So the day that like, from his perspective, he'd be like the day someone comes to me and says, I have a big, beautiful ranch and by god, I'm just trying to get someone to come out and hunted full of deer and out, but I can't find anyone to hunt. He's like, on that day, I'll become like a pro recruitment dude. But that day hasn't happened, and it's there are you know, just like fewer places to go, and when you go, there's more people in them. And so it's really hard to get people on board with the idea that you that that that we need a bunch more people. You know, you got like there's people I know that LEASA properties they leased up the hunting rights on property. They don't even hunt them. They just want to know that no one's hunting them, just like like actual you know, they want to know that if they wanted to go, there to be no one there. And last year I don't even go. It's just it's hard to get Uh, it's hard to get excited about. It's hard for people to get a lot of people. It's hard to get excited about a bunch of more hunters on the woods. Well, and I don't think we're talking, uh we're not. The goal isn't to have a bunch more hunters. I think it's the R three is just part of it. And access. Access is another key part as a key part ARE three, but it's also a part of just what we do, you know, and trying to get people people and landowners, you know, the shifting shifting landowners, like you're talking about, you know where where the communities, people in small communities, they used to know who would call to go get on Johnson's Place or the k bar L ranch or whatever, and today they might not. I mean, there just might be a landowner that is just not not as much a part of the community as they used to be. But so so it's all it's all sort of um, part of the fabric of of sort of what we have to face with the department, and I think primarily what where in Martha's talked about this a lot internally too, but is looking to sort of figure out how to have those meaningful experiences outdoors because it's not it's not just that you can only do that by hunting, or you can only do that by fishing. Trap you can or by trapping, right, but we but we talk about it. I mean, we can think about like these meaningful episodes that we've had outdoors that have shaped who we are. And there's like there's one after another after another after another, UM and some people don't and even in Montana, some people don't get that. I mean, we you know, on the at the from our education program and we've got um like our aquatic gad uh. We're in fifth grades around the state doing you know, education about fisheries and things like that. You'd be amazed at the number of kids that look at a fish and they don't they don't know that's a perch. I mean that usually, Yeah, I mean in Montana, they just it's it's even here we're becoming more urbanized where you know, in the state where you think like, my gosh, this is Montana. Couldn couldn't possibly be true here, but it is true. And so I think beyond they are three discussion of how do we sell more licenses? That's it's really not our focus when we have that conversation, are is how do we get how do we sort of build up the next generation at conservationists. They're concerned about, you know, all the things that go into loving the outdoors. Yeah, that's the That's the when I talk about this debate I have with my brother, that's the one I do. Yeah, I'll do that side of it. I don't know, you know what me and Yanni are. We're running for president. I heard that because I had suggested that Yanni running for mayorbles but he said he's got another gig because we're all tied up with being president. Um. But all the money when people buy our Runella tell Us Better Hunting and Fishing for America shirts, all of our money, we're putting it into our access piggy bank. We're gonna use it for an access project. Stickers yard signs. We don't know what cal our Boddy. Cal's uneasy with the lack of specificity we've had so far, but trust me, no, no, I'm serious. It's like a thing. We're like banking the money. We're having access piggy bank, and we're right now currently looking at different kinds of access projects or group we would help with an access a land acquisition that would open up land locked public lands. We'll figure it out. Yeah, you have one in mind. No, but it's funny. We should talk sometime. No, we don't. I want to do a combo that we're gonna take our piggy bank and then I want to run a go fund me project and look at some specific acquisitions and to see if people would think it would be fun to throw in five bucks and buy a chunk land and have it be for public access. Then we'll go recruit a hunter or two to go on there and on. Um, yeah, so there's that our our nome packing out a unicorn T shirt. There's now joining with a gnome who's reeling in a mermaid doing battle the mermaid is the title actually nome tussling tussling with a mermaid. People who want to know what happened, But I don't know. It could be incidental bycatch, it could be a courtship ritual. I don't know. It's just a gnome and he happens to have a mermaid on. I'm not saying what's gonna happen. I don't know what they got going on. She might be messing with him. My brother thinks that she's pulling him in to kill him. Um, hey, wait a minute, you're assuming the mermaid says she and the gnomes that he it's very female mermaid and a very male No, it's a bearded gnome Like yeah, I wouldn't go it's not like an erotic mermaid. But it's a female form. It's a female mermaid. Could use a term voluptuous. It's a female form. And then uh, we have our nome. Uh, we have our T shirt out coming out with our nome. That's in Uh, you know those old pictures of our mountain man's got his knife and he's in a fight with a grizzly. It's our Nomes in a in a knife fight with a bigfoot. The big foot's got him good, but he's also got his bowie knife out. And I gotta said, We've getting a lot of ideas for Gnome shirts. I think we're gonna start working on. Next is a Gnome in a blind and it's a big flock of dragons coming in all cupped out, all cupped out, coming into the deco is gonna be sweet, man. So you can find all. You can also find our Nome packing out. A unicorn shirt is back in full color. Yeah, no, I'm packing out a unicorn full color. Find it all the whole g Nome line up and then no one. I think this is going to turn into like a big expansion of game themed products. Man. Uh you guys good, We're good. Thanks for sitting to our little plug there. It was a natural plug because it started out talking about our access fund. Ronella Propels. Don't tell everybody. I know you're gonna write us in when you vote, But don't tell people because I know you don't want to get partisan. Yeah, that's right. I don't know. I don't even vote. No, I'm just um, Martha, thank you very much for coming on. Thank you. If there's ever something that comes up and you really need to come and talk to someone about, you should come talk to us about it. All right, all right. I love how you dive into the issues. We need to do this more. Yeah, I enjoy it, and I say too. I'll say that too if you guys come up to come up with stuff, because I I we listen and I hear these, you know, conversations, and I think one of them was, yeah, I canna say something we did that was wrong? No, no, no, it was the debate like Kenya, can you use the stream access lot for big game hunting? You know that those sorts of things where you know we're I was listening. I was like, I don't know. I mean, I got a bird dogged it all down, but it was hard. It's interest. Can I hit you with one? It came up the other day. If it's licensing, I'm not gonna know. No. No, check this out. Me and my kid on Saturday, we're out in our in our jet boat, messing around trying to get it dialed in. And we pull up on this island and I find find a nice bot. The backside of him been eating out by Kyles. He's just floating in the river, not like a not like a skull, like full on fresh dead, but cloudy eye has clearly been landing the river long time. He was piste that I didn't ask the head off it and let him bring it home. But I was like, I don't know if this counts as like a skull, Like I don't know if this is like a dead head. And it's hunting season, and I feel like we'd have a lot of explaining to do to have a furred, severed head of Ben dead for a few days but not terribly long buck in our boat. So I made him leave it, and he's like, well, just look it up. And I'm like, there's some things that are easy to look up, and there's some things that are tricky too. Do you have any feedback on that? What I would I would suggest is if you wanted the antlers or wanted the head, is to call the game ward and tell him what you found. That's what I was telling Ti Tipmott. Tell him what you found. And then when the game war in college, you say, you know, hey, this is what I found. This where it is, and you know, when you're done looking into it cannot is it okay? If I get the antlers, I think, you know, they sort all that out. You know what I did do? I don't know, Maybe it's illegal. I drug it out of the water and pulled it up on a little island gravel bar so it didn't float away. Well, we were just having to debate, and it was better to have the debate with it laying there than have it floating by. Yeah, well you could you could still do you can still do it. We you could. You could let the game war, No, and he go. Next time you're on the gravel bar, you can you know, ask him if it be okay, just to grab him because at some point I don't know that what. I don't think there's anything specific in No, just be like a matter of like what kind of conversations do you want to invite? Like why is there a dead buck's head in your truck? Like wow, what happened was right? I just didn't feel like right, I feel like needing to have that chat. I found I found a buck on a gravel bar one time with its horns dead horns cut off call the game war and told him where it was. But I call him right from where I where I was standing. And then I kept hunting, and I hunted up to another gravel bar, and on that gravel bar, I found a saw all chewed up, you know, and it was open still had like you know, bone stuff and flesh on it. And I didn't even think about it's picked up and put in my pocket and kept going because but the handles all chewed up on it. And I realized when I got home that had to have been the saw that was used in the crime. Probably some like fox or coyote had grabbed the so on, chewed on it a little bit, and then left it on the next grab a bar up. That's great, crazy, I still use this to got it Phil, You got any questions? Uh? No. I do want to say though, that I was part of the Party coalition on the Madison this summer, and I will come to the next public uh public comment session. I'll be a lone rep. He's gonna be shirtless, he's gonna have some cut off blue jeans. He's gonna be pretty drunk. He's gonna be sunburned, and he's gonna give you, guys a year full about telling him where he can't can't ride, I can't wait? Can you bring mango? Oh? She would love it? Yes, all right, thanks guys,