00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is a meat eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by on X hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Now where you stand with on x okay, first thing we gotta start out with is uh um two fish and related things, never to get into the real meat of the show. Here with the two fish related things on episode to two two, which is a couple of goal. We just did an episode to to three and someone pointed out that we should have commemorated it more carefully because it was a rifle caliber. So the two two three. But the two two two episode, which is all, isn't there another? I believe there's a two two two? Yeah? Search that up? Um. I I challenged the veracity. I challenged the veracity of a man's email who wrote in to say that he snagged a fishing line or snagged a rod ice fishing in a hundred feet of water, pulled up the rod, reeled up all the line and lo and behold on the end of it is a dead whitefish, and I was and I think I must I somehow questioned the veracity of of his tail and unless he went out that day with a rotten whitefish. Um, he sent in photographs that made me that back them up. So my apologies to his name is Steu Beard. My apologies the uh Mr ste Beard that looks like a legitimately rotten whitefish you found on the bottom of of the lake. It's so rotten and looked that he was kind of poking at it in the picture and it doesn't want to quite seem to want to grab it. Um, guy's not interested. This is not a ficient related one, but I think that someone sent in as they sent in. Did you see this, Yanni? A guy sent in a turkey's gizzard? Hm, open, cut open you know what had in it? A marble like a kid's marble. I believe it. I'll put that picture on Instagram. So if you go to Stephen Ronella on Instagram. The question is those you think he was eating it too to add to like the stones, yes, gizzard? Or did you think it was some sort of dude that he hadn't seen before. It's seven eight times bigger than a normal piece of that's a great question, man. I hadn't thought about it like that. Yeah, because it's definitely way bigger than the average piece of stone that's in that gizzard. You know what he could have thought it was? Do you know how they eat snails? M hmm. I hadn't incurred to me that that was marble, had like a little swar roll to it. It could have been like a little snail. I found a bear ship one time that was all Crayola crayons. Yeah, he found a box of Crayola crayons. Um. Yeah, I think you're probably correct. He wasn't picking it up as grit. He thought he's eating something tasty. The last fishing thing is a conundrum, the father and son conundrum that we need to that they had asked that we weigh in on. So this dude and his dad we're fishing, and they both had lines out, and the old man gets distracted, and the kid looks and his the old man's rods going crazy while the old man's off talking to some guy. So the kid runs over and reels the rod and it's like some tanker four pound rainbow. H So, whose fish is it? I think it's the old man's fish really an unintended rod. Yeah, I'm gonna he rigged and he did. He cast it out. It's like, I don't know. If I saw like a video of what was going on, maybe I'd have a different opinion. But I don't know. Maybe this old man was like barely distracted so that his listeners don't think that it's just you and I are sitting here talking to each other all day. I think we should ask our guests, you guys have anything to say, please keep mind he's a representatives here from I would actually defer to you guys. We have three representatives here from the Boone and Crocket Club. So they spent all all day. Uh, they sit there and look at um, you know, whether or not to accept things in the record books and stuff. So I feel like these guys have like a moral uh, they sort of have the moral high ground. You have the well you have there, you have the credentials to weigh it out. So so that let's say you guys were a fish. Let's say you guys kept fish records and this is a record fish and they come to you and be like, here's this record fish, and You're like, clearly it's a record fish, whose name do we put down? And and uh, they tell you the story. A lot of times when that happens, one'll take the ownership of the fish and the other one will say they called it. Now, as long as the person that called it had the fishing license, they would be good, you know, when they followed all the rules. A lot of times that's what a lot of the father's sons do is though, like the sunnell, shoot it or vice versa. And then we have a thing where the father that could then take ownership, which is basically just a sentence letting us know that, hey, this person hook this fish and I'm the owner of it. So we base everything off of the ownership of the of the trophy. So that would mean, that's what I'm saying, who owns the fish? They would have to decide. Yeah, Oh, they would have to decide legally, isn't it whoever reels the fish in, like, because there are certain states that say if you hook it and landed at your fish and it's on your bag limit, So I can't hook a fish and hand it off. It had the legality of it. So the kid that grabbed the rod, I think legally it is his fish, but if he was nice enough, to Kyle's point, he could allow his dad to be listed as a secondary fisherman in this case, assuming they both had the license is necessary for the fish. I like that perspective on it. That like, let's say he had pulled it in and then there was a problem, like he retained I fish, he wasn't allowed to retain. He wouldn't be able to be like, well, the game warden, you better talk to my old man. It was his rod. Yeah, the game ward is gonna be interested in who who hookedn't who landed it? Yeah, alright, so it's the kids fish. Thank you. Settle that problem for the family before you move. Before you move on to to to Remington's triple deuce, first center fire twenty two galiber in our country. There you go, great John, he earned his key. Okay, now we'll do intros. We're talking everybody from the we're talking to folks on Buona Crocker Club. We're gonna explore this whole thing up down sideways. But let's start out with it like what do you what do you guys do each of you? You know? So I'm Tony Shonen and I'm the chief executive officer. Crockett, how long you held that position? Um? About two weeks they just changed. I was the chief of staff for twelve years and then they just decided to change my death for whatever reason. So anyway, I've been running the organizationization for about twelve years and I've been thirty years the outdoor space. About half of that was the for profit sector, half was the nonprofit sector. UM. I went to my first shot show when I was twenty one. I just went to my thirty fifth. I should be get because some kind of a prize, but they haven't offered me anything. Still alive me too. That's a lot of like coming home with like a weird flu. Yeah, I've managed to avoid the weird flues, but uh, but no, So it's been a good rite. UM had a video production company to begin with, and then I went to work for Wonders Wildlife that ran that operation down there, and uh then to Buona. Crockett. Oh, but the Wonders well Life just opened up. They were opened before and then when I left as an executive director there, they shut it down for remodel and then they just opened it up two years ago, which I don't know if you guys been there, but it's an awesome place. I keep hearing people that, um that aren't easily impressed. He would say, it's like really something. Yeah, no, it's it's an awesome I don't know anything about it. Where what is it? And where is it? Said, well, I'll tell you, I've never been there. And now it's a it's a it's a it's a museum and aquarium that was built. The first round was in two thousand and one, and the original intent of John Johnny Morris was to have a home for hunters and anglers and and and all the stories and the traditions surrounding that community. And UM and then UM, when I left two thousand and seven, UM, Johnny wanted to make it a bigger and benner place, and so that's what he did. And so it's still a tribute to the American sportsman and women of the country. But it's UM, it's incredible. You just got to see it too. Something really described. We had our two awards programs there the last two times, like three miles of trail through there. Yeah, is that the one that's down in Florida. It's in Springfield, Missouri. You're thinking of, right, a hotel, right, something like that. No, but yeah, just people know Johnny Morris is the you know, the founder of Bass Pro Shop. That's a hell of a story. Yeah, like that guy's life. He started out like selling bait, selling bait at a marina or something like that. He started in his dad's liquor stores with an in cap. Yeah, and his dad had I don't know how many liquor stores, doesn't or so in Springfield, and he sold he sold off the inn cap and actually there's a rendition of the very first uh uh in cap that he had at in the museum at one of his dad's lager stores. And so yeah, live like a live bait and cap or a tackle in I know, it's just a tackle in cap, you know. He didn't he didn't like the uh the the tackle that the local store was using. So he went to Arkansas about a chuck little back put him in his dad's stores, and that's where the whole story started. As he called the Bass Pro Shop back then. Yeah, it's always bass Bro as far as I know. I mean, he's a little bit older than I am, but I've known John for thirty years, forty years, and it's always been bass pro. Yeah, he's sharp dude though. He's a great guy. Neil find of Begger conservationist than he he is. We should have him on, I'd like to. So if you're listening, John, alright, So moving on, then there's Joannice as though dealing poker. Good morning, and then moving over. Yeah, my name is Kyle Lair. I'm the assistant director of Big Game Records at the Boone and Rocket Club. I've been there for a little over five years now, Assistant director of Big Game. So my main duty is to review all the entries that we get in. So we have about four volunteer official measures throughout North America and it's my job to basically make sure that every entry that comes in basically has all its ta s Carlston size dotted and then to make sure that you know to be there they have any questions while they're scoring, or any questions about our based policies and procedures stuff like that, but mainly keep those entries moving through. So uh, there's volunteer scores. We'll explain what this all means in a minute, but plus minus a good a good majority of them. I mean a lot of the people that we train to be official measures want to be, and so there a lot of what they measure though doesn't quite I mean, it's it's pretty rare to actually harvest to Boone and Crockett Club caliber animal. So a lot of guys want to become official measures and they think they're going to measure a ton and they might only get a couple in their lifetime, but they enough to enter the books. Yeah, but they they don't. The ones that don't make it, we don't necessarily see. So they're doing a lot of basically public contact for us. I mean they're they're the people that most of the public is going to see. They won't talk to Justin or I or anyone else, they'll they'll meet our official measures. So they're pretty much ambassadors for us. And and so it's our job to make sure that they know what they're doing and know how to do it. Yeah, my old man was a scorer. I know he did it. He was really active in Pope and Young. But I'm like, I think, I feel like I know he did Commemorative Bucks of Michigan. He scored for Pope and Young, and I'm almost certainly scored for Boone and Crockett. Is that something you can look up past measures? Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah. We keep track of everyone who's been in managing if he's registered in there not we're the hello last name, Yeah right, I did some research. He was not on there, Frank J. Ronell. We did. We did a database transfer in two thousand and Some of the names could have been lost, but generally speak, I mean, everybody brought their stuff over. He had all the forms and maybe he was just maybe he just nod. I know he measured rifle stuff too. Well, you said it. CBM Commemorative Bucks in Michigan is another great scoring organization. We worked with close and a lot of these, so maybe he could have been registered, state registered. They're they're trained to score with our system. They use our system. They just may not have gone through the the process of an actual BNC certification, which I guess I should introduce myself. Sorry, I'm justin Spring. I'm the director of Big Game Records. I've been with BNC a little over ten years. Um started with him at the assistant director, doing what Kyle Um does now with the review of entry, and then when he came on I transitioned into the director UM basically help him out, make sure the pr side of our official majors they're doing the best they can for conservation. That's kind of what I'm tasked with UM, making sure our scoring is uniform, that the the current science that's coming out, we're not rewarding something that's actually a negative. Which we'll get into further later on what we're looking for. But that's that's my normal position with BNC and kind of helping Kyle out and keeping all of our majors doing the same thing for uniformity throughout the system. All right, we get two deep, we should do this. I want I want to bring people up to speed on something cause I feel like a lot more people know. I think that people know about Boon and Crock. They know the scoring system. So let's just catch up on that and what that means. And you know, if you're out and about and you hear someone say that so and so got a one eight white tail, so and so got a four bowl, right, um, black bear, Like, what does that mean? Okay? So the system was originally start the very beginning, they thought wildlife was going extinct and they were trying to find the biggest specimens which would have gone in the National collection the Heads and Horns, which is now what the Wonders of Wildlife, which we still have that collection. But they were trying to find the biggest to show our generation what was once on the North American continent. They thought everything was going extinct. So that was the beginning of our records. UM. You know, through the work of early club members and conservationists and whatnot, things started to turn around. UM. After World War Two, conservation is really taken off. You had funding and everything in place. People no longer wanted to go see dead heads on the wall of the museum, and we had this data set that we'd started. And so in nineteen fifty they said, we need to create an equitable system to evaluate big game and then we can use this system to UM monitor conservation successes and failures across the North American continent. So they brought together UM. There was a couple of people at the time. There was a taxidermist that had his own scoring system, and then there was system UM which it never took off. It was I can I remember the name of it. H Kyle. Well, you had grantil Fits and Jimmy Clark. Jimmy Clark. It was James Clark taxidermy, and so anybody that was a taxidermy client of his would enter their trophies in a competition and he'd do a banquet and give out awards. So he made one. He made his own little system yep, and and it was actually it was pretty well done. Um. And then the the other side of it was the more you know, widely known system. But anyway, these guys come together, Boone and Crockett put together committee of five of them that they kind of sat down and they said, okay, let's let's look at the science of today and what what are the traits that we see in a mature male specimen that comes from an ideal habitat. And so you look at nature, you have bilateral symmetry. Or that's a huge question. Albody asked, why does BNC have deductions? Well, if you look at nature, and if you're looking at something, your eyes drawn to bilateral symmetry, and it's very common. So the first thing they said is we have to have left or right matching. That's a sign of healthy habitat and healthy animal. And so they went through each different category and kind of said, you know what, what are the signs of a mature animal? What is calm and what's caused by some form of stressor And they came together with the system. You know, for moose, for example, Um, we don't measure the length of points because the mature moose has the palmation that gets bigger, and so a very mature bull may not have long points. So they didn't want to reward the length of a point on a moose. Instead, they wanted to reward the palmation, which seemed to be prevalent in the healthiest of the specimens. So that was that was the basis, and then they just took the number of inches of whatever they felt was important, and that gave you a number, you know, that was that was the original thing, is you know, where where does this rank in terms of um when it took a while to get there, yeah, I mean the scoring system started out with length of horn and what they called the girth of the base or the circumference of base, and that was how they got an idea of a sheet or a goat, And so it started out kind of rudimentary, and they realized that in order to be scientific there had to be more rigor, and there had to be more measurements to get a to allow again the public what they thought the animals that were going extinct, to get a picture of what that number was. And so if you say that number one sixty year a one eight white tail, like you're getting a picture in your head of what that is. Yeah, well it becomes I think it becomes ingrained for people who are exposed to it a lot. I remember when I couldn't picture it right, I didn't know what it meant. And then gradually over the years now if someone says like a mule deer, I get a very specific image in my head and it's like I understand it, And I tell the o MS and are the official measure we call moms and our course, I say, we've we've created a system of measurements that you add and subtract to get to some number that we've created. Now we think that numbers important, and luckily other agencies and scientists and stuff have have bawled into that, and the hunters as well. I mean, we wouldn't have a database if people didn't take the time to have their trophy measure. So they've kind of all bawled into it. And so you know, it's just like I sais just a set of measurements that are add and subtracted to get to the score. And and we say entered in as many different things. Were no organizations as there is out there because they all have an important mission and they're all trying to accomplish something. We're just one of them, and we've created this measuring system. And I think it's important to to you know, go, you know, turning that timetable back a little bit. The purpose that you know, these guys didn't really kind of sit down and come up with their scoring system because they needed something to do. You know, there's a there, there's a there's a precursor to all of that. When the club was found in seven, they wanted to solve a problem, and that was the fact that our wildlife populations were being decimated, our natural resource, we're disappearing in the West, and um, you know, they wanted to figure out a way to fix it. And so you know, they started with the Yellowstone Preservation Act in eighteen nine two. Then and when Roosevelt was president, they got the National Wildlife Refuge System in the National Forest Reserve. Was he involved with Boone and Crockett? He was right, he founded the organization. Yeah, but so he founded in eight seven. Yep. Okay, yep, yep. There's an interesting story behind that too. Why the hell real quick, I want to get back to your timeline there. But um why did he so? Why Boone and why Crockett? Okay, that's good, so I'll be you can come back to that. No, no, actually that's a good place to go. Um. So when the club was found in eighteen eighty seven, because Roosevelt had been out west for three years. This was after the death of his wife and his mother. Um. Yeah, he was a real MoMA's boy. Yeah. Well, but anyways, he was out and he had two ranches in Madora, North Dakota, and that's when he wrote around in the Dakotas and Wyoming and Montana and Idaho, and he saw this you know, decimation I'm talking about, and so he was upset about that. When he got back to New York City in seven, he called around a group of guys that, you know, we're influential in their respective areas industry people, scientists, education folks, politicians, and but they were all joined by one common threat, and that was that they were they were hunters, they were sportsmen, and they cared about conservation in the future. So they sat around scratched your heads trying to figure out, you know, what were they going to call this new organization. And at the time, Daniel Boone and Davy Crocker were two most prominent names in that space, you know, I mean they were the most famous people someone in America. And he said, named two hunters at that time. Yes, now he was still probably on that list. We'll talk about that a little bit, but I mean I think the uh, you know, so that was how Buona Crowd came about. But anyway, so back to the timeline, you know, um in asseence the scoring system was created as justin indicated first of all, to preserve a something that would show future generations that actually once existed on the North American continent. But then as our conservation efforts we're successful, state laws were implemented um and our population started recovering and growing. The system then became a majoring tool for how do we measure the success of everything that we've done and so and that's what it is today. You know, that's we're still gathering this data. We're still sharing it with with state wildlife managers, with academics, with folks that you know, why is my ecosystem not working? In somebody else is they're getting bigger male specimens and I am. You know, they come to us and they ask us those questions and then they can we can hook them up with those people that are successful widlife managers and to help them out. And UM, so there's a there's a distinct purpose there besides just county inches and county numbers. Well have you what have you guys like when you look at the records? Well, I want to ask I need to ask you other question about the records because um, explain the cut off? Like you guys don't accept something until it's a certain size, right, or do you accept all numbers? It's just they don't get put into the book. So what we uh, what we do have said that my question isn't clear enough for people. We've said a threshold that says, if it exceeds this particular level, it is worth recording as a mature male specimen created by this habitat. If we were clearly or if we were purely wanting to just ignized the biggest and best. Why would we accept a threshold. We'd say, send in your biggest mule deer this year, and then we just keep track of what those biggest ones were. But that's not what our mission is. We're looking at any time a male specimen reaches a certain age under certain conditions, this is the expression of its secondary sexual characteristic a k antlers or horns. And so we want to mark this down because we can't keep track of everything taken in the country, So we have to take a small small bit of this data set and then we can extrapolate it out. Now we can't say, okay, Bozeman, whatever Gallatin County, Montana, I say, historically it put out ten book mule deer year and then it drops the five. Our records can't say, oh, well, this is what happened. But we can say, well, for thirty years it put out ten and then all of a sudden, at this point it dropped to five. What changed? And so that's that's why we have a threshold, and we had to set it somewhere. You know, when you you wanted to say those mature male specimens that reach an age and beyond breeding. Um prime breeding basically was the idea of going for the super older ones because it have no effect on the population. So that's what you wanted to concentrate your your harvest pressure, and then we can record how often those happened and try to extrapolate that to habitat quality. So what story does it tell? UM? And if you pick a species like let's say you pick whitetail deer, does when you look at the submissions that come in, like the number of deer every year, and when do they start like diligently keeping records? The current system was nineteen fifty That's what I was trying to get what it wasn't real clear. We started for one reason and then it was was redone in the fifties to switch focus to really use as a gauge. So nineteen fifties and that's when the current system came Out's when the current system came out. So if you look at from nineteen fifty two, now, UM do you like? Does does the story that the record book entries tell line up with the story as we generally understand it? That meaning that UM starting I don't know when the hell is started in the nineties you know, we just started to have a lot bigger deer around the country because management practices began to change. White tail deer, Well yeah, sorry, white tail deer, because management practices began to change. Do you like does your stuff reflect that? Yes? Absolutely? I mean we're we're entering more every year and that is a testament to the effective wildlife management by our state and federal agencies. And um, that's kudos to them, because I mean we're taking more big creatures in what what are the things that you what are some animals that you realize that more and more of them are making the books? And what are animals where you're looking to be like, man, something's not right because we're just not seeing them anymore. Well, I guess before we get to that one, Steve, I want to go a little bit more into your white tail question because it's a great example. So you have the nineties, right, Milo Hanson, the buck out of bigger Saskatchewan world record typical white tail. At that time, we were seeing more top end quality deer than we are white tails as we are now now. I would argue that what you saw was an overpopulation of deer. We were too successful and then you have a density. You know, the species is too dense, so you're actually seeing a decline in the available resources to go to antlers. Well, we had that big die off a few years ago. Remember when e h D hit the Upper Midwest would have never been seen in Wisconsin, you know, across the across that area, and so there was a huge die off of white tails. Well we saw a corresponding dropping entries. But what we saw after that was you had unexploited resources that that tucker buck out of Tennessee, there was some deer that absolutely blew the doors off because there was extra resources. And so something like that is is what our records are real cool about. And sometimes it gets lost because I can't look at Missoula County on Mountain lion entries and make a hypothesis off of one county because I don't have a big enough data set. But when I look at the entire Upper Midwest and see a sevent decline, that's where our records fit in and doesn't really exist anywhere else. So that now to get back to your question on the species we're seeing um, caribou, caribooer dismal um. We are just not seeing big caribou come in with our Yeah we're not. We used to get a few thousand every three years. We're lucky to get um d Yeah. Now there you know you you look at the the barren ground caribou in northern Alaska. They're starting to see the populations go up. So I'm hoping that I start to see that gradual uptick in our records. Um I haven't noticed it yet. You know that's more Kyle now doing the day to day review. But yeah, I mean cariboo are bad bears. We're seeing We're seeing more and bigger bears from all over North America, the South. The said black bears, grizzly bears, brown bears. They're doing awesome like bears are. So you see a lot of big grizzlies coming out of Cannon in Alaska. Yeah, Alaska, Pope and Young's world record broke twice, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, they're the Commack bear. Yeah that was a brown bear. Ye, Chris Commack killed the world record archery brown bear. We haven't seen it break ours. But I mean again, you're still seeing some of the biggest bears in the world. Um, so that could tell you. Yeah, it's interesting because you can't tell what it can tell you. On one hand, you could look and say, um, hats off to Alaska, right right, doing a great job. Other hand, you could look and say, maybe they're not offering enough opportunity. But I wouldn't really say that there because they're like increasing operation. Was gonna say, increase is increased effort resulting in an in an uptick in the number of trophies we're seeing. Yeah, it's hard to untangle it. So and that that's again where you have to look at it on a North American scale. If you get too precise, you can kind of miss it a little bit. With our data set, we're just looking at overall trends, so I can say, like, oh, the southeastern United States, we're seeing bears from a bun to states that we've never seen before. They're getting very big, they're doing healthy. Bears in that part of the country are doing good. Kudos to you know, Carolinas and Arkansas and all that. So you mentioned mountain lions, so out of the let's just say, I mean they're only you know, I don't know how many states have thirteen or fourteen states have legal mountain lion seasons. Maybe our mountain lions up or down, steady, steady, steady. Um. Missoula County, Montana, that is the place to get a book skull mountain lion. Yeah, just over the border in Idaho. Those are the two top counties. They're staying stable. But that makes sense with the biology of a mountain lion, because you can't have too many big toms because they kill each other. So it makes sense that that would be something that's kind of a status quo, you know, across their range. From what we've seen, it's not likely to be super violatile, all right, um, Melier out down, but holding steady and showing positives in some areas and not in others. It's not as dismal as you want. No, it's not the sixties of mule deer harvest. Um. I actually did a talk on this one time a Wild Cheep. When I first started, you know, I had a philosophy and I was wrong, and you know, I thought I knew everything back then. But um, there was a lot of people that brought up brought up um like predator control when they when they were seeing those big mule deer in Colorado and these you know, deer getting killed. There was a lot of people using coyote getters, and so yeah, there was a big peak back in the sixties and seventies. But they're not they're not continuing to draw, but we're putting a lot of effort into them. They're just kind of plugging along. And why is Colorado blowing the doors off of everywhere else? Yeah, that's that's the thing I wanted to ask. Man. I mean, there's a ton of ground I want to cover, but I do want to hit that real quick. Is uh you know, we spent twenty years scouring uh this eight up and down in sideways, um, trying to find like a like a like a big builder, you know, and I thought there's something wrong with us. Then I started making a handful of trips down to Colorado and Idaho, and I'm like, oh, I get it. Yeah, it's just you know, it's just different, man. There's some places that have a lot of them. Is it like in Colorado puts off ten to one compared to oh yeah, some other Western state. I don't I don't know the exact but it's it's ridiculous, you know what I mean. I was I remember what my breakdown was but Colorado had put in three hundred and something entries and the next close this was like a hundred and one, and then it drops them Montana that was like forty you know, in the same time period. It's incredible, is there even? I got all kinds of theories about why that is. But what's your theory about why that is? We let people shoot mule there all the way through the right? I mean, I think you know, Colorado is an opportunity state. It but they've they've seemed to set it up to where they're bigger deer protected and a lot of those real big deer come from sleeper units, and so I think they've got they've got the groceries, they've got the age structure. They protect him at the right time. I think. I think there's no over the counter deer tag there. Still we have to check, but I don't think so. I think pretty much everything mule deer has gone to draw down there. But either way, you're right, I mean, they definitely protect those deers um, but you can they still have lots of opportunities and go shooting. Does you know for a lot of the seasons, Hey, before I know where I don't want to leave the scoring system before I can reason a couple of my questions because and I feel like we need to make sure that everybody understands it. But what I want to start off with is, because you mentioned it has changed over the years, right, is there a chance that the scoring system will change again? Because and I can give you my example why it brings up this question is that I remember when I just got into, like, look at having to judge bull elk as a guide in Arizona for clients, and so I was getting like getting into that mindset, you know. And at the time, there was that world record elk that was forever number one. The was it the Plute bowl out of Colorado, Black Canyon, right, And then it got bested by belief like an inch or something like that, by the White Mountain bull Black Canyon bull Vain And it was a And when you look at the two compared side by side, the Black Canyon Bowl, just wait alone you can it must weigh twenty pounds more than this the White Mountain bull. White Mountain bulls long and spin ley, and but it had the length right, which was awarded by your system. But I would say if you saw the two animals on the hoof, probably and saw the two sets of antlers, you'd say, well, for sure that that the black cannonball is just gonna crush the white mountain bull because he's just bigger and batter and healthier just by judging the mass and his antlers. No, And so it's a great question. And if we were to create our scoring system today, I guarantee there'd be some differences. But what we did was in nineteen fifty we did the best we could and some of those things now we kind of have to to hang onto or all those data points that we have to this point become invalid because you can't go look at it right and so on ELK, when you mas your g one, you start in the center, you transition to the outside and go to the tip. That's the number one thing that we see problems with. If we were to do it today, I'd say that's not really, in my opinion, not necessary. So when you're taking the little show, how detailed this is, So when you're taking the length of a time, you draw on a baseline on ELK because what we're talking about here and generally speaking, on the edge of the beam where the time. You know where the beam would be had the time not happened, is where you started. You follow the center of the time along the outside curve on elk on the g one point, the first point, just because of the way it sits on that base, and I think what it was originally they didn't have a lot of curvature to him, and these bulls were at the time not as mature as what we're seeing now. They started in the very center, like if you're holding the elk rack sideways, like looking at it from the side. You start in the center of the time, it goes to the end, it transitions to the bottom edge of the time, and then continues around the outside curve, which at the time made sense. Now I would say probably doesn't. But that's how every g one has been measured, so we can't now say, oh, never mind, we were wrong on that particular measurement. I got a suggestion for you what you could do too. If you needed a pivot, You wouldn't do a hard pivot, right. You would continue to measure everything the way you've always measured it, so that you can at least compare relative to the past. But then you simultaneously do the new way, and everything has been measured twice, and then in ten years you'll have this decade long body of the perfect way. But then you miss the nineties, which the eighties and the nineties which is the taking off of in white tail. You know, um, this is for the future generations. But but you need to see where the data set. You don't want to discount thirty years, fifty years, eighties to continue to do it. You continue to do it, but you also do it the new way. Everybody has a measured everything twice. You tell our volunteers that hold on those guys, right. The follow up question to that to be would be like, would you ever add something like the weight of an animal or just to get more data points? We we did for a while ask for the weight of the rack um for a while the program the chairman was a professor at the University of Montana and he was looking at rack weights and so we actually had a data collection thing on the back of the entry or the hunter guiding hunt form that asked how much did the rack of your animal way or horns? How do you get the skull and everything on it? Well? And there was a there was a thing. How was it cut whole skull? And so as we tried to do it, we found out that that wasn't really a great It's right, there was a lot of variation there, so we quit asking for that particular. What did this rack wag um? You hear about water displacement? There gets a lot of that, to your point, is really big and they think it should be water displacement. So water displacement is again it's another great system that's interesting to know, but it doesn't reward symmetry. It basically rewards freak traits. And so if you're looking at the overall health of the animal, you get something that gets a big infection and a giant bulbous you know growth off of it. Well, that's going to displace more water. But that's not actually a positive trait when you're looking at you know, how well did this rack? I mean something that means you get hit by a car or or bit by a bug and it got infected or you know, got in a fight and it got broken early on in velvet and created something goofy. So that's what what would cause those abnormalities is generally a stressor that would be negative only have one of our universities looking at that, isn't one of our fellows looking at that abnormalities caused by stressors? And yeah, and it's been looked at a few times. Um, you know, basically the science that they had in the nineteen fifties is still solid. There is some some workout that shows like split eye guards in certain areas. Perhaps that population got so genetically bottleneck that all the white tails from some area have a split eye guard. And so you could argue, well, okay, that's that's what they all have. Well that was created by a stressor, that the population is still bottlenecked, that this negative trade is now dominant, that doesn't mean we've changed the system to reward a negative trade is dominant just because they got bottlenecked. I think that the one of the uh primary, one of the primary hunter based criticisms of the Boone and Crockett scoring system. We'll get into the non hunter based criticism of Boone and crocket sport scoring system, but the hunter based one has to do with like deductions to the point where a lot of people I hang out with they they please don't say nets are for fish, but yeah, so you I'll take a stack. Let let me take a staff of this. You tell me where I get it wrong. You you know, you shoot a deer and you take all these different measurements. Not like you measure the length of the main beam. You measure the length of all the different times. You measure a bunch of circumferences. Um, you measure like the width the inside spread, so the distance from one antler to the other antler at the widest point. And you add all these up, and we're supposed to You're supposed to do it for each side, left antler, right antler. And so let's say you get a um, you get a left antler that's seventy, and you get a right antler that's sixty. Someone would think, oh, so you shot a one thirty white tail. But in fact they penalize you or not or reward you. There's like some penalty because of the fact that they're different, and that pisces people off. Now you say, now you give them what I'm telling people. What I'm trying to say, Well, it's not a penalty. We're just we're measuring what's out there. People look at people have put constructs on it that it's some kind of penalty or reward. Um, sure, it's just what the animal. You know, it's what it is. It's just a set like I said earlier, it's just a set of measurements that are added and subtracted. And there's other school But the reason people feel like they got robbed, I think is because they look at the because it's about them. It's not about the antists. It's about them. I'm not saying it's not about them, but they're looking at the thing. They see the number because it's even like a box. It's like net or gros so gross is like all the score of the deer. And then you do like your deductions. And I think people get bummed when they have to look at the one number. They feel like it's taxes they're paying, So look at the one number, and then they got to write the real number down, and I think they'd rather just stick with the big number. When someone asks you, like how much do you make? I think a lot of like so says, well, how much do you make? Depending on the audience, you tell your like pretax or post tax number, because you know it just it tells the narrative. So I think, yeah, it's like being tax so like, why can't I have the big number? Why I'm just gonna tell everybody the big number and I'm not gonna tell him the small number. Tell him whatever you want. So when I go to explain that, because you're right, we get that question a ton of why are you penalizing this? I love that word penalizing. It's like a guy comes to your house, like takes the points away, throw a flag. No, um, what you're doing? What causes those differences? Like what causes a big deduction? I think it would help if I think if you can answer this question for me because I had written it down. I'm glad you brought it. The bilateral symmetry again, can you? Is it today accepted amongst wildlife biologists that bilateral symmetry is a display of the health of an animal generally speaking, yes, yes, they're like I said, That's why I tried to get out where they've shown some some traits that aren't necessarily perfectly bilateral have been shown. But for the most part, you know, and I mean look at nature and the whole. A tree that's healthy isn't gonna be lopsided to one side. Um, you know, anything you want to look at there is bilateral symmetry, and so what causes the variation to that as a stress or, which is the basis of it. But where I was going is, you know what causes a big deduction? Okay, well three of the elks times are broken? Well, he was just fighting. I shot him late in the season. That's not a penalty. Well, what results in excessive fighting that breaks times and overpopulation of bulls. So that actually leads us to believe that perhaps the bull population in that unit could be too high because these stressors are being exhibited on this rack, which results in a deduction. So if you're talking to your buddies and you're making it about you know, well, my dear, was this or gross? This? Gross is fine? But when we're looking at the actual health of the species and the habitat, that's what the nets for. So my go to is, you know, the grosses for the hunter, the nets for the animal. Yeah, I think that we're larger. Where it comes from is I think that people, um people have taken a tool created for a purpose and created like a tool created by an organization to pursue like the sort of long term goal and they don't know about that. They don't know about the tool, and I think it's just a way to write how to communicate to your friend over the phone what it was. And so they don't they see imperfections in the tool without knowing or even like like why is it that way? And I mean the club itself is so much bigger than records and what Justin and I run. I mean, we do so much more then. I mean, we're known for our record book, but we do so much more for conservation and and I know Tony can touch on that a lot more, but I mean what we do with our university programs and you know what we do with UM our associates program and our conservation and ethics program. I mean, it's so much more than than what Justin and I do well roll that out. I mean, we we've gotten welcome back to the scoring thing to mix. There's some more points about it, but yeah, like give a bigger context for what, you know, besides coming up ways for people to argue about how big the deer was, what goes down over there? Well, so you know really that like the records program is about tim percent of our budget UM when we were founded the intent was to make some course corrections in UM in wildlife health and inhabitat health, and the only way to do that was through policy. So you know, back then and today, you know, a huge chunk of our mission is spent developing conservation policy in Washington, d C. And helping the state's develop UH policies at the state level. UM. You know, we're very much involved with forced health. We're involved with UM wildlife disease. You know, we're we're a group that people go to to say, Okay, you guys have the knowledge to come up with a solution to the problem that we've identified. And that's what we do UM, and that is what the probably two thirds of our entire mission budget goes towards, is that that effort to make sure that we have land, that we have public access, that we have when is get out there, they have UH animals to look at that the landscape that supports those same animals supports all kinds of other wildlife like birds and fish. UM. You know, the health of the not on the health of wildlife, but also the health of the habitat. So UM policy is a big part of what we do. How do you guys get money anyway we can. But um, we you know, our members, you know, we still when Roosevelt founders, we have a hundred you know, he founded us with a hundred regular members. And again those are guys and gals that are influential in their respective fields. But they're all joined by the common threat of being hunters and um and so when they they are a big part of us. You know that they you know, member contributions, member dues are a big part of our budget. Our corporate partnerships are a big part of our budget. Are we have a fairly healthy endowment, and that those interest earnings are a big part of our budgets. People that die and then do like a not like bequeath to a non prom partially, yeah, partially, and then a lot of them have just been major gifts from again those hundred Readlar members. Because with you know that that those the by laws have never changed. There's just the same number of Redlar members today as there was, you know, a hundred thirty years ago. You know, so you keep it at keep it at one hundred. And so we have about a hundred and sixty of what we call professional members, and those guys and gals are like worker bees. Justin and I are professional members. I've been a professional member before I ever came to the club. You're not a regular member. I'm not a readier member. I don't have quite that big a check. But but anyway, I've got the fire in the valley. Just not then. But um I uh, but you know those in the like state agency heads, federal agency heads, a lot of academics, a lot of univeriversity professors in forestry and wildlife departments in land grant universities across the country are all in that mix of professionals where we were which is really our knowledge base. You know, when we have a problem like cw D is a good example. You know, we're front and stater with c w D research trying to figure out a way to stop the spread number one. Number two, how are we going to fix the problem? Um? And you know, we spend a lot of time and energy, uh resources, using our professors and our academics that are special that that are known all over the country for being experts in c w D trying to come up with answers to that problem. UM. So you know, in the answer to funding, you know, we do have grants you know, we have grants, we we we we have we we do a lot of matching funding for issues like cw D and things like that. But it's UM, we're not a huge organization by comparison to a lot of others. Do you guys get checked just some people to write into check don Yeah, I mean we I mean you know that. It's interesting because all of a sudden, like on social media, somebody will say, wow, you know, you guys are doing a pretty good job there. I want to help support you. Yeah, they'll send us some money. But I think the main thing is is that unlike other groups, we're not relying on events. We don't have chapters, we don't have banquets, we don't have. What we are relying on is our members and UH and our member support and UM. For a long time, there was the Budha Crivate Club. You know, we ran silent and deep, and you know, nobody really knew what we did. We didn't really care that nobody knew what we did. We just cared about what the end result was when we got the job done. And now you know, we're kind of coming out of a cocoon. In the last ten years and talking a little bit more about what we do, because we want people to be aware of that these these issues are not so different than what they were a hundred and thirty years ago. There's just different solutions to the same types of issues. You know, the threats to our public lands, the you know, the threats to the health of our wildlife. UM. But at the end of the day, if if, if, if it comes, it boils down to the hunter and the angler. If you don't have those guys out there fishing and hunting, and you don't have those licenses getting sold and you don't have you know, our state and federal agencies dry up, and that funny mechanism is solely dependent on hunters and anglers who need fresh water to fish. They've got to have public lands and or land access to hunted, and they've got to have healthy, healthy wildlife populations to hunt. And so we've always tried to be in a position we're kind of looking down the road and anticipating what what is the next big problem, what is the next big threat? And UM, you know, we have huge wildfires now, UM, you know across the Western States, and you know, the forest health and rangement health UM is not what it needs to be. Um, you know, we've got to take much more aggressive approach to active forest management and restoration and and make sure that you know, we our forests aren't tinder boxes. And so you know, those are the kind of issues that we look at. And I know it's really boring for the average hunter to sit there and all this stuff. That's why you know, the records program, you know, the concept of fair chase. Those are two cornerstones of our organization that I really are public face that are somewhat sexier than what it is that we actually do behind the scenes to ensure that those two things can happen. Yeah, that the fair chas thing is interesting because I see there, you know, you're a hunter like your brun and Crocker closed a hunter based organization. But there's a little bit of a conflict. I can imagine where on one hand, if it's just records keeping, it would be that um, like it was just specifically trying to understand in some geographical area, how many animals of a certain size the landscape kicked off put off. It would include like animals that were killed by poachers, animals that were struck by vehicles, animals just turned up dead and someone swimming pool right and be just bring come one, come all. But you don't do that because there's a cash attached to getting an animal in the record book, and so you don't just let anyone through. And you have rules and regulations about who can get in that are more stringent even than state law. Yeah, like, how do you reconcile tholes that because we actually do accept found heads. Oh you do. So the picked up is what it goes in as or if it was an example party taken. We don't feel that's a fair chase thing. But a lot of states all well, three states at party hunting, we don't list the hunter what those rules. Also, you do have a way I got you, so you do log the presence of the animal. You just don't reward yep. For example, we have a state owned heads. So when they say that Buona Crocker won't accept it, we won't let you won't accept it. Isn't reward well, well, because it still recognizing the animal. In some cases we wouldn't accept it if it was from a high fence population that's not indicative of the area's native wildlife. I never I never understood that didn't know that that was true. So you do take it into account, right, We've got we've got it. One of the first deerray process got hung up on a cemetery fence, like they found it hanging their dead in the morning. So yeah, and that's a picked up head um wildlife agencies if you guys want to know about it. If the state confiscates ahead, we never list whoever you know the poacher was, but it's shown as owned by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and where it came from and where it came from. Oh, I see, I didn't realize that, but it is. It is you you bring up because that's not how people like. So much of what I know about Buda Crock Club was just from like shoot the ship with earlier. I don't like what I hear that. That's that's the thing I always heard, is like that, well they don't accept acts, they don't accept this and that. Um, so yeah, I got you. Now we have it. We have a set of rules that are fair chase requirements that you have to stay within to be recognized. And this goes back to the beginning of it, like for you to your name as a fair chase hunter. This deer taken in fair chase by this person. That goes back to the very beginning. There was no rules and so they had to try to switch everybody's opinion on, you know, what was appropriate. So they said to get into our records book, and this is pre nineteen fifty, you know whatever, you must take this in fair chase. And at the time you couldn't jack light, you couldn't crust them in the snow. It was a lot shorter even then you might have legally been. So they in the very beginning they put that on. What happened is the hunter perception started to change. The fair chase took off. Um, you know, state agencies, loophold started the you know, the Wildlife School in Wisconsin, and all of a sudden you had scientifically trained managers that are setting this. But at the time, fair chase was one of necessity to force harvest on the old mature at males, basically forcing trophy hunting in the beginning, which was the sure male harvest that did not affect the population. And that was the whole beginning of fair chase where we continue it today. Again, the reason for fair chase is kind of morphed. We no longer have to follow fair chase to save wildlife populations, but fair chase is integral to what Tony pointed out on hunting and fishing to continue and the funding for wildlife to continue. What is um what's an example of a practice like what would be something that Buona Crockett Club would regard as not fair chase that could be legal somewhere, and what's vice versa like like the opposite example. So the biggest ones that we see is some states allow the usage of radios to talk somebody intoing a game animal Arizona, Oregon, for example. You can, or you could. The last time I looked talk somebody into an animal. We say, if you guide hunters to game with an electronic you know, with use of electronic communications, it's out. Um. You know. Another one that that's probably with the biggest misconception that we have is cellular trail cameras. It's not fair chase to get live images of a game species while you're hunting it. We're working on that final wording on that, but for cellular trail cameras, if I'm sitting I could be sitting here in this podcast and all of a sudden, the bear walks by one of my trail cameras. If it was legal in Montana, I could then go legally hunt that bear in many states, and that is not fair chase. UM. The other side of it, and this is a very contentious topic, is baiting UM Baiting is a general practice, especially for bears, is not a violation of fair chase. Ah. So that's an example something you might not be allowed to do in a state. But you would accept that if you were correct, and that then you can never do something illegal. So you know, if if if it's illegal, debate in your state, you can't do it, it's okay. So you always you always bow to the state. Right If the state is more restrictive, that's fine. But with with the bay eating for bears, you know, for black bears in certain areas, that's the only way that you can get a real good look at a bear and make sure you're not shooting a cub or the wrong bear. Well, then we look at baiting of servants, which is a very hot topic with c w D. You could make a very strong argument right now in that case for servants, baiting may not be fair chase but as an overall practice for baiting, as it's done for bears, we say it is still a fair chase practice. Who is it? Like, you know, Teddy Roosevelt wasn't arguing about what to do about trail cams, like who who is it? Who is it? Who decides it's there for? For the overall club, there's the entire you know, it would go to the there's an ethics committee um for records. The records injury requirements for fair chase would be the records committee. It's a thirty two member committee. And they got to wrestle with emerging technologies, and we do constantly, uh have you have you addressed drones specifically or is that captured onto something else? So it was captured under something else again, it was it was transmitting images of live games to the hunter, because you can't run a drone without seeing the animal. We actually called out drones by name, and the interraffed David about I was going to say about eight years ago, eight or nine years ago when when it really got when he used to drones really kind of picked up pace. You know, people are using them for a lot of different things, and there they got to be pretty popular, and so we did call him out by name. And it might even been longer, might have been closer to ten years ago. It's been a while, yeah, but it was. We were getting asked by state agencies, what's your thoughts on drones and our answer would be, well, it's transmitting an image. But we got asked enough that to help the states were like, we will call it out by name. So there's no doubt that a drone usage to find the scout for or hunt game falls outside of fair chase. What you know, we would deem as the ethical pursuit of the animal that they can escape. Um. I gave you the big complaint that you get from hunters that there almost like similar. We're not not you know, it's not even fair as a complaint because it's just like a misunderstanding, but that that people will argue about their deductions, right, and people complain about that they felt the score should be higher, and like, well, you know those assholes seventy but I got um doug uh so Uh. The other thing is is I think that the numbers This isn't even a criticism that comes from outside. It's like inside and outside hunting. But people look at the fixation on numbers, right, and then and that people feel that that, uh, it's like that that's kind of this objectification of animals might not be a totally right word, but basically they're taking this sort of like living, this beautiful living thing that has a lot of um. There's you know, a huge amount of cultural pride that we take that that that we have these animals around us, and we generally Americans like generally recognize them as gorgeous, were generally supportive of their existence here. There's a lot of like reverence for them. And people feel that when you boil it down and just take the deer and turn it into a number, that it's something that something gets lost. And so you'll hear hunters say this, and a lot of times like newer hunters, um, we'll be prickly about it because they're excited to get a deer and I think, like a deer if I just get be so happy. And they learned that there's kind of like this, Oh, it was just a blank and should never be that? Why and even we recognize it should never be that And you mentioned to it earlier, it's simply a tool that we've created and it's kind of been I don't know, bastardized. I don't think, I don't, but I don't think it's your I don't know that it's your not I don't think it's your fault at all. But it's a thing. And then but people know it's the Boon and Crockett score. Yeah, so you get right, Yeah, yeah, you probably hear about it all the time. Yeah, and yeah, i'd argue that if you know, if you if you adduce it to any single component, it's inappropriate. Well, it's about you again, it's just about the animal. You should never just kill an animal just because of a number. That's ridiculous. You never adduce it to that. Honestly, if you don't care about regulations anything, you're just shooting something for only meat, and you don't care about the experience and the laws. That's wrong. It's the whole experience. You enjoy the meat, You enjoy them ount, you enjoy the number, how it how it affects the biologic data. Make sure that that's still there. It's just another piece of it. You should never make a hunt about one thing. It's about the whole experience and the animal and everything that animal is UM. I know you guys have some thoughts about how the the evolution of the term trophy hunting, that that it's you know, each generation kind of defines it for whatever to to, you know, defines for their moment. How has that drifted? So I can answer a little bit of that because I have been in the space and as I mentioned before, I started in the space as a film producer, UM, and that was the eighties and at that time there's only four of us that we're doing that type of thing. And UM, you know, if you turn the clock back of ways to the days of Kirk Gouty, an American sportsman, you know, those were days when um, you know, it was all about hunting. And then in the in the eighties and the nineties what started happening was as my um, the business I was in, there was more and more video producers that started getting into the game. You know. My feelings were always you know, they told the story, they stole a story about you know, where the animal lived, what the animal eight. You know, we didn't always get an animal, um, but if we did, it was always underfair chase. But later in the in the late eighties and the early nineties, as more and more of these folks started getting into the business, it's all became about to kill. How many kills do you have in your tape? I'd have idn't actually have distributors asked me that questions. And that was prior, prior to um, you know, the outdoor network to determine if it was good or not exactly, because that's what they were selling it on. So all of a sudden and and and the term trophy then became starting to get really polluted because they did your what you're talking about with the numbers thing. You know, the bigger the better, You're not worth squad if you don't kill a big, big animal with big horns or handlers and so um. So it went from the hunting days of Kirk Guity to the killing days of the eighties and nineties, and it really got the term trophy a black eye. Um. And I think the media drove that. I mean, if you look at our outdoor programming now, for the most part, on our outdoor networks, there's still a lot of whack them and stack and stuff going on in those networks. And I think that's not a tribute to the animal. I don't think it's a tribute to our sport of hunting. I don't think you should really call it hunting, say, media, you're talking about our own media. I'm talking about our outdoor media, you know. And I think that what I see now, uh though, is I see hope in the fact that I think, you know, programs like yours for example, you know, you're talking about these things, and you're talking about and you're going to see a migration back now from the kill to the hunt and what it really means. And you know, the local war movement, you know, consuming those animals. Um. Where does your me come from? Um? And you know, so I think that there's there's there. You know, we're starting a course correction there in a positive way. UM. But I think that's really happened to trophy. It was. It was hyped so much in outdoor in the outdoor media there for twenty years that it just kind of took a left turn and now we gotta get it on the right turn again. It's amazing how um, how universal not in honey media, but how universal in the mainstream media, how universal um of a condemnation trophy hunting is. It's like if you use that you don't even need to say anything else. No, you don't. It's like if you see an article trophy hunter, like you don't need to read the rest of the headline even you know that it is bad. We talked about this recently, whereas there's a fundraiser that uh Don Jr. Was going on for blacktail Deer in Ducks. Okay, so when I hear blacktail deer in Ducks, I don't jump into my head like it doesn't sound to me like an evil trophy hunting adventure. But when describing to new As it was leading a trophy hunt, and you have to say, well, i'd have to know a lot more. I don't really know that that what they're doing. It just seems like they're going hunting deer and ducks, Like how do we know that? But someone's like, I know how to make this seem real bad. I will just use the word trophy and then everyone will know that. I mean, it's real bad. I don't know that you're gonna save that work. The term trophy was never intended to be bad um, but unfortunately it has become that way. And I don't think it's salvageable. It's it's just a term that has been beat up so bad and misrepresented um by you know, the media, whether it's the outdoor media or the general mainstream media with the stories you're like you're talking about, um, you know, we need to find some other description for these, for the for the for the mature mail specims that we're taking out of these ecosystems. Yeah, I do. I was just gonna say that. I feel like some reading Jack O'Connor stuff, I always had the idea that like trophy and then the head or the mount were interchangeable, they were synonymous, and that's how that that how where where how they used trophy? Did you would you guys agree you just want the head? No, no, not that you just wanted to head. But that's just like what that piece of the animal was referred to as. Yeah, that is yeah. You know. I ran into a guy one time I was l COHNT ran into a guy on the trail. He's actually a radio I don't want to say his name. He's a radio host. And I was talking to him like that's where I was like, holy shit, you're but anyways, he was talking about a gun and he said he's taken thirty head, which sounds like livestock I think of, but yeah, like thirty trophies. Sure, And again it wasn't a negative connotation back then. It was just like that was like like they had an animal down and there were many different parts of it, and then like the head was you could say it's called it was just also referred to as the trophy. Like I'll grab the back quarter, you grab the trophy. Yeah. Yeah, they had all their trophies with them. Yeah. It came along with I've I haven't abandoned. I have not abandoned the word. And I try to help it out a little bit when I can, because, um, it's funny because uh and talking to people, like talking to people who are sort of kicking the tires on hunting or you know, curious about hunting, They'll they'll really want to push you right away. They'll be like, well, you're not like trophy hunter. I'll be like, well easy now, because I am. You know, I'm a lot of things. And one of the things I am is I have a lot of this ship laying around my house and I really like it a lot. And so I don't know what you call it, what you want to call it. But like if I get a big deer, any deer, If I get a deer, I want the head. I'm never gonna get rid of it. I've never gotten rid of one, unless I like lent one to a friend because he thought it's cool to have in his house. I've never gotten rid of one of my life. So I don't you know this idea, and some people like overdo or they tried to like, I don't even remove the head from the woods. I'm like, dude, now you're just like you're trying to make a comment on things, and it's just ridiculous, Like you would want it and you would have it in your house, but because other people view there's in the way that you don't find acceptable, you will now sacrifice by leaving yours in the woods in order to have like make turn this into like social commentary. One it should be remembrance of your hunt. I mean, I look at my hanging in my you know, in my house, and I remember every single one of those. Yeah, it's a trophy. I'm all four onto something different. I don't know what the hell you're gonna call it mementos. I don't know mentos. My kids would think mentos in a shadow box. Yeah, I love it, so I haven't like walked away from it. But I know that it takes a lot of explaining either. If you explain it like that, people like, oh, yeah, I get that right, Like I don't know. It's like I like all of it. I eat all the meat whatever, I give the damn bones and my dog. I put the antlers on my shelf, like I take the whole thing. I like it all. And I found a nice like, um, well, benefit from doing some so called trophy hunting. I caught a little bit of slack four on that video we posted that meta your Hunts where I was hunting elk in Colorado at a tag that way to you know, fourteen fifteen years to hunt. But I could have very easily filled that tag opening morning and just shot a bowl. But the older I get, man, I want to hunt. I remember like older clients in mine when I was a hunting guy, they should tell me that, Like, man, my perfect season will be if I can kill one on the last evening of the last day of Pennsylvania's deer season. You don't want to sit in my tree stand like sixty days. And I kind of as a mid twenty year old, like I didn't really get it, But now at forty two, I'm like, oh yeah, I get it. I want to hunt every single moment that I have opened to hunt and then hopefully kill on the last day. And if you're looking for something, you know, a trophies festivalor however you want to put it, a bigger buck, it's it helps you do that, right, unless you can get lucky, But most of the time you're gonna end up hunting more. Yeah, there are a lot of trips that will be over instantaneously. And that's another funny thing, is like, so if you're super moral, uh, you shoot the first thing right away, like that's more moral than that. You wander around the hills for five days and then get one like you're you're less moral. It's just it's this heart. So when you see the word destroyed, he just man, just one of those things just makes you cringe. Well, you know I am. I grew up, you know, in a subsistence family, so I never had a beefsteak till I was sixteen years old. But I will tell you it is my perfect hunting season is when I draw a beat egg for a for a cow because I can run out, I can get the cow, and I can put the cow in the freezer and I have no I've got meat for the rest of the year, and then I can actually focus on Okay, I'm i a tag start picking that place, and I'm gonna start seeing if maybe I can be lucky enough to wander into something that is a respectable you know, but your male specimen. I have not gotten that lucky yet to get into the book, I will tell you that. But you know, you have to put yourself in there and just right, and you know there's no back door, but I but you know, I mean that, because then you do maybe you hunt the rest of the season and maybe you gets something, but maybe you don't. But it is all about being out in the woods and and and and the experience as much as anything else. For I think the majority of hunters um, you know. And I bet I think that the unfortunately the plagiarized you know, the trophy piece has been plagiarized, and they're not plagiarize is probably not the wrong word, but it's been misinterpreted and and and it's not um, it's not what it was originally intended to be. It happens to a lot of words though really you know, like now, um, there's a certain way you can throw an inflection on environmentalists, right and you're like, oh, you know an environmentalist like, oh, so someone who wants like major sort of overreach. They ruin all the good times. You know. It's like there's like words that just like you know, trophy hunting. But you can probably stay here list a dozen words that at one point in time had like a positive connotation, but then a version of it runs wild and it just starts to carry with it to the point where you have no one can self identify anymore as a trophy hunter. You gotta do a lot of backflips to in order to land there. You know, there's nothing I want to ask you guys about that We've we've talked about it at least a dozen times, so Buona Crockett Club. When you're looking at the animals that get submitted, um, you break the like you don't just break it up by species, but you break it up by uh geography in some cases, because there's sort of like not hard lines between things. Meaning the example we always bring up is it a deer in California. Say a deer can run across I five and become a different deer like, meaning he could be a record book deer on the west side, he could be a record book blacktail on the west side of I five. Should he run over to the east side of I five, he ceases to be a record book animal. We can actually look into that now, so we can have a DNA test done that will tell us what, you know, if that deer is a blacktail or mulean deer. Has that come up yet? Oh yeah, yeah, we have. We probably have what about two dozen deer right now that are getting DNA because of that. And so what what you're touching on there is if you look at the blacktail range from Washington, Columbia blacktail Washington, Oregon, California, the southern end of the California, we get down to the California, it wasn't a definitive line, whereas that the peak of the Cascades served as a definitive line between mule deer and blacktail, so that historically was not crossable, which created this speciation where there was as particular Columbia as there well south of that line, there's no definitive. They can't get over the cascades type thing. So it's a mixing, that's what's going on there. It's just that the severe, the severe high altitude spine of that range isn't separating blacktails and mule, where historically with different climate conditions it would have. Okay, and so they can So you get down south of that range and they can slip back and forth. And what what we've shown if you look in Oregon are our blacktail boundary is the forest service line. So we pulled it off the top of the range. We made it conservative so there wouldn't be a potential crossover. So now that they identified the loci that are unique to blacktail and mule there, we can take a deer kill just over the border to the east and say, sure enough, it has all the traits of a blacktail. Let's run the genetic genetics on it and see and if it comes back pure blacktail, we will accept it in the category. Who pays for that? The hunter does. If if we have a question on something, if we're not like if it's a top end or whatever, and we're doing it to preserve the records, will pay for it. But if somebody says, I shot this deer. It doesn't make your book, but I know it's a blacktail taken east of your boundary. I can now say, okay, well a hundred and thirty bucks, and once I get ten samples and I can run it for that cost, send me your DNA sample, and then we can come back and say, divinitively, here's your cue value, a que value of point nine or highers pure blacktail. Really, and you've got two dozen right now that people want to challenge that. Man, See, our stuff is all out of date. Can we talk about that that? This is my favorite thing to talk about. The five dear thing man. The I five boundary is actually Roosevelt's elk, and there's no genetic variation between a Roosevelt and the Rocky. It's completely habitat driven. So then it was just an arbitrary line that has to be easily defiable, which is I five. The other one that's really kind of embarrassing is the Canadian moose stop at the Canadian border and become what sheriffs in the Rockies. Yeah, I got you, but what about like in Maine and now those are all Canadians. Okay, So if you really so, there is a there is a hard line there Canadian moose and shiras they can change back. They probably like the border too, because I think it's cut so it's got a good young growth on it. Well, then you have the bears in Alaska. I've had them, like a brown bear, grizzly bear. I've had that come down to yards. No, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get a GPS location. I've literally had to come down to yards. I'm on Google Earth and I've got everything up and I've got the coordinates punched in our line runs. Because what is referring to here is that you have barren ground. So grizzly bear. Yeah, in Alaska, like you know in the Rockies ere everybody says grizzly bearon and but a grizzly bear or brown bear are If you went to a taxono, Mr geneticist, they would tell you that grizzly bears and brown bears is the same thing. Brown bears have some coloration differences, tend to get much bigger. Um. Grizzly bears tend to have like lighter colors, more pellage, uh, you know, greater differences in hair color all kinds of things, Um, not nearly as big and in some ways, like a lot of guys in Alaska will tell you, if it has access to salmon, we called a brown bear, If it doesn't have access to salmon, we called a grizzly. But how do you guys, so a lot did you draw line? We did? Yeah, So it's it's kind of the Alaska Range curling up around the spine of the Alaska Rare until it hits one of the longitude lines. So the north the north edge of the Alaska Ranges of Grizzly, the south face of the Alaska Ranges of brown Bear. Correct, And I've had that come down to yards on that range line. So what what it is is you follow the Alaska Range around there's one spot that it's a straight line like Mount Elias I believe, is it, And then it goes a straight line across, then hits the Alaska Range and follows the peak of the Alaska Range, and then once you reach a certain point, then it follows the longitude out to the coast. I'm guessing again this was the fifties, so I was not around. Um, they probably were going with the salmon thing because that's what I've heard. If it's got access to you know, a big salmon run, it's a brown bear. If it doesn't, it's a grizzly. So it would make sense that salmon couldn't cross that Alaska range and you got the Yukon to the north. But I think that's probably what they were trying to do, is that differentiation. They were set down and said, where is that line that's the most easily definable that hunters will understand and makes sense for separating these out so that you can But you know, bears is the worst because all the biggest grizzly bears are killed right on the line that we're probably a brown bear last week. So the the yeah, so the let me guess that the one you're looking at is a guy that feels he killed a tanker grizzly and you're like, well, may it's just a small brown bear where exactly yeah, yeah, or yeah. So all the biggest grizzlies come from the line, not all of them, but it's it's a larger portion of them. You kind of know where a big grizzlies going to be from when you get an entry, is that right? Huh? What other ones are like that, So the moose, the grizzlies, the moose don't seem to follow the Colorado is blowing the doors off a shiris moose you think would be northern Montana, it's not. Washington does well, but so that one. You know, you think that just over the Canadian border would be the place to hunt shiris, but the answer is Colorado. Um. You know blacktail the California area, there's actually a little bit genetic differentiation. So even though that they do potentially have some mulder, it's actually different black tails with the biggest black tails or northern California in southern Oregon. The further north you get, they almost look more like a sit Ka than they really do. Uh, you know what you consider a Columbia and so you know those are Columbia black tails. Yeah, there's big ones that show up in Washington and Oregon. We haven't seen a lot of real big deer in Oregon since the fires of like the sixties when there was some major stand clearing fires. The years following that we saw some gigantic black tails. We haven't seen that, but that you know, Jackson County Applegate type country down there that still puts out some big ones in northern California. If someone wanted to, uh, what's the quickest way to get in the books? What should you be hunting for? If you want to get in the books? White tails is tough, man real dere is tough off of like rough population estimates and whatnot. I kind of calculated out, you know, how many do you have to look at to find a booner and white tails? Like a hundred and eighty thousand white tails you have to look at to find one that's and again this is all, but usually one in a thousand is kind of what you what you think? Um Shires move mouse and most of their ranges forty inches wide and split brows will get you to the minimum. And I feel like if you can get a shire's tag, you could set your sights at BNC and have a decent chance at it. So you gotta look at how many to find one. I don't remember what that one is off the top of my head, say split browns just to brow times. The way our scoring works is you terminate the measurement on the on a moose palm between two qualifying points on a brow if it does not have a qualifying point on a brow. It just comes to the end of the palm. So if you want the mature moose have a split brow. So that's a characteristic. If you want to a good score, your moose has to have split brows are better. But if it's forty wide with a split brow, that generally will put you at minimum score. So that wants to be a two point brow, and that'll split down towards the end, So I'll give you a little bit more length and increase your score. So is it one in twenty? You gotta look at judging from the people I know that have had mo stech, yeah or less. Like you find a mature bullets, it's pretty pretty good. And I mean maybe it's not true and Wyoming or some other states, but my limited experience with schyris yeah, forty inches and split brow is just a good solid bull. You know. Um, earlier we were talking, you mentioned an interesting case where you've had Yeah, because uh Nanny's mountain goats. So males and females are very very similar horns. The females I have sort of like a little dog leg like almost like imperceptible little dog leg in them when they come up narrower. But you've had a female, you had a female mountain goat make the books. Yeah, we we got a fifty picture of fifty and I don't know if I officially dried. Yeah, I don't know that it's been entered yet, but we got preliminary pictures of it. And yeah, I mean things got I bet you eleven twelve inch horns. Yeah, I mean, well it's a Yeah, it's a name that grew insanely long horns. And not a lot of people they're shooting nanny, so there could be you know, a hundred book nanny's that just died of old age. You're still in the oh not not really. We get that too. You know, people always this the biggest ever. Well it's the largest ever taken in fair Chase that was then entered to Boone and Crockett. I mean, you know, so there could be bigger nannies out there, but we have seen one that made our our minimums. But it used to say on the score chart male or female. But after we had that on there for thirty years and never had a female, we did away with him. If here comes a female goat, hey, what is it? When? Uh? I gotta gripe too. I gotta bring up real quickly as you what I'm gonna ask. You know, my grape has to do with my halina. But I want you guys gonna explain what all time means. But I want to give so. I got a gigantic cavelina, I mean a giant I don't remember what it was. I measured it just like when you measure a bear, like it's length and linked fluss with very easy thing to measure. I measured my have Elena with my old man's I still have my old man's measuring calipers, and I still have his genuine I don't know, like nineteen ten. Uh, I don't know what that was, very old. Uh little tape measure with the pope and young Yeah they're emblem a little emblem on it, and his caliper and all that kind of garbage, the cable. I got a lot of stuff. But I measured my have Elena and then went to check and see if it was book. And you guys don't accept Havelna's now our our records committee hasn't hasn't taken that well. I mean they've taken it on, but they haven't decided yet to add that as a category, and gators either, right they had and gators not yet either. I had to go to your competitor, Safari Club. They're competitor there. They're another scoreing organization that I had to go there to validate that I had a giant alena. Yeah. So the the thing, the first thread the first time they looked at the havilina category. In order to have a category, the states that have them have to ask us and it has to be a managed species. And up until like four or five, maybe five or six years ago, now Texas did not manage havelina's. They switched over to where they actually do manage them now and so that was a big hang up. These were just kind of a shoot on site in Texas, So we can't really create a category form well in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico all now manage for him. That by visited and so it is being talked about at both Pope and Young and Boone and Crockett committee levels. Mines out of West Texas, West Tescas nice. So when you get it, let me know. I'm gonna run down with mine. I wanna be the first guy in the books. Man, I got one on the shelf too. That's gonna get give your run. I thinks between you and I will flip for it. Uh. And then so alligators alligator scenes like a stretch that again my understanding that discussion was before I was around, but that very rarely is one taken in fair chase. Oh ban, Yeah, how do you define? So you have to rewrite fair chase. I mean you're you're trapping him or you're catching them. It's a trapped animal. You know that. That's a good point. You have to kind of just go shoot it and run over and grab it right. You can put a hook into it, which at night we're using a spotlight, which is another. So you have to go out in the daytime cold cock it in the head with something and then retrieve it when you take a buddy you don't like with you. I got something that's good to Oh. That's a really good point, man, you have to do it take a lot of work to accept alligators, and there is there is my understanding, as you can in the alligator rut if that's what it's called, they will call him and you can get him in the day with a bow like on land. So there is a very rare situation. You could take a fair chase alligator by our standards now, but it wouldn't really justify a category. Yeah, I'm with you. Would this sample size be big enough to warrant a category. That's a good point. Uh, okay, here's the thing you're here too. I honestly don't know what this means. People will say that it made the all time every day of the week. Basically, what does that mean? The all time books and the not all times. So basically what had happened was is we created this measuring system in we didn't know at the time, you know, what that would look like, how many entries we would get, And so conservation came along. Wildlife populations were doing better, more people were harvesting mature animals, and so our record books started to grow. And now we're like, okay, we've got this data set that keeps growing. You know, what we're doing is working. We're getting to a point now where every six years we'd have to print encyclopedia and we know what happened to encyclopedias. No one's buying encyclopedias more, and so in order to sell this book, basically, in order to have a book that was manageable, that we could print people would buy at a reasonable price, we kind of had to create this other number um for that trophy to or for that to reach. And so basically it was just a way for the Yeah, yeah, it was just a way for us. It is. But any report. So if you know, one of our university programs comes to us or an agency comes to us and wants to know, you know, category wise, what are you guys seeing, it's always off that that entry score for white tail one sixty, you know, for pronghorn eighty, whatever the case may be. All our data is based off of that one sixty number. And so that that other number that we created was basically just a way for us to reasonably publish and sell a book. Uh So, if one sixty for a white tail makes the book, if it's archery, right, an we take any legal means the harvest does not separate it out. So one sixty makes the book, but what makes the all time? But again that's because we'd have if we won sixties identified as a top species that needs to be recorded, it isn't met our criteria. But we can't put all the one sixty plus is from the last eighty years in one book, so that's really where it came from. So we said, you know what, we're gonna made the year book. It's the Awards Book, which is a three year period. Everything entered in that three years goes in the Awards Book. And then we just have an arbitrary number that the very top of the top goes in this all time book once every six years, and people don't want to hear it, but it's currently one seventy. At the eight we're going that number is gonna be one eighty and the foreseeable future because well the one we just the last all Time book we did is now to volume. I'm getting to the point now we're getting so many entries that what we thought was going to keep it at a one volume book has now expanded, which is great. I mean, that's great that there's that many mature animals out there that are species are doing well. I mean, that's a good sign. I'd rather have that than trying to fill pages. Now, do you guys remember my earlier suggestion, I want to give you another one now? Okay, yeah, that the change in its slightly as we go forward, keep doing the old way, but then right the other suggestion is this peel off, forget about the threshold for the all time. It's the top one hundred or it's the top Yeah, we've looked at that. That's been discussed. I like your your thoughts in the right place. Top one died by the Top one book really yeah, like Top one hundred bucks. Yeah, or you could do like like women's magazines and have it be the top ninety nine just because it catches your because then you're like, wow, it must be real if it's ninety and anybody, anybody can do a Top one bucks. You know him? Are you guys behind the Great Rams Books? Is your names in there? Yeah? So we the last two volumes of that we've actually published. B and C Publishes Books, and so Julie Trips our director of publications, and I think it was Great Rams three. We worked with Bob Anderson and so we actually did all the publication and whatnot of three and four. Is there like, is there an equivalent for mulder Um. We did a Mule Deer retrospective. We went back and we took all of our old entries, the stuff that kind of got dropped and maybe never made an Awards book that you wouldn't see. So we did a mule Deer retrospective, and we looked at doing more of a book like that. But man, that sheep worlds just so picturesque and the characters are so defined that it's it's a little bit easier to build a book around sheep hunters. I think the mule deer hunters. There's a there's a book, Idaho's Great as Mule Deer by Ryan Hatfield. I wish it was like greatest Meal here in the West or whatever, but Idaho's greatest Meal. But it's got the stories right. I think that the dude, one of the dudes that has one of the best bucks ever got in Idaho. He um, he was just wrote out on his up behind his hot Yeah, Grover Cleveland or something like that, wrote out to shoot a buck to eat. Yeah, sees a buck, thinks there something wrong with it, shoots it, thinks himself nothing more than it was quote a squirrely looking buck or a screwy looking buck or something. And in thirty years goes by and someone finds it in his garage and like lo and behold, it's the biggest come on, Idah Hatfield. Actually he was. He had my job, but I went to work for BNC. He was the BNC guy that was doing those books. Yeah, it's got the it's got the best jacket of any book. You go look at the Idaho's Greatest Meal dere if you look at the cover of the book is hilarious. Um, so what's next for Bruning Crockett Man? You guys been around for I can't do that kind of thirties there we go? Yeah, yeah, is there like a midlife crisis that happened? Like it happens like what happens now? Do you guys launch new initiatives? Like what should people? Um, if people want to sort of see what's going on with Boone and Crocket, what do they gotta do? Well, you know, obviously go to our website. Um, you know, we try to keep everything updated there. But um, you know, we're going to continue our policy work with a focus on again have a tad health, wildlife health, and public access and because those are things that just that are NonStop that you always have to address and um you know we uh so give me the three guy. I like that wildlife health, tad health, and public access. We are mainly are three UM focusers. You know, that's a good way to sum it up. Yeah, yeah, Ben's and and you know, and as administrations change, UM, you know, we have to change with those things. So we understand, you know, we can deal with what the politics deal are dealt forward, we have to deal with the hand that we're dealt I guess and UM, but you know, we we just keep plug it along and UM and that's really all we can do. And you know, we've had some successes, we've had some failures. We've had you know, one of the most exciting things for a personal perspective, because even before Boone and Crockett that that I and probably about three or four together select individuals have been working on for the past twenty five years. It's full Funding Bill WCF, which is could be with the Great Outdoors America a Great America Outdoors Act right around the corner for the first time in twenty years, I hope. So I feel like it's been around the corner for a long time now it has. Yes, now you know, we got we got full authorization a year ago. UM. Now if we at full permanent funding, UM, you know, that's that's a big deal, and that's been a long uphill fight. But you know, you don't get every you don't get everything done. You know. We we try to do things right, not fast, and so you know, you've got to kind of look at the landscape. Okay, what is that we have twenty things on our policy agenda that we would like to see done. What out of those things can we get done in one particular administration? It might only be six, So we focus on those six things for those four years or those eight years, and and that's what that's what we focus on. UM. You know, for example, right now, Endangered Species Act, Well, you know that's an old act. It was put in for very good reasons, and we need to keep that act, but it does need to be modernized. And so UM, I don't know that we have the appetite in Congress for that right now. So why we don't want to waste our time on that again, you know, we just want to focus on the things we do think we can move the needle on. And but it's always going to fall into one of those three categories. I have a to act health, wildlife, health, republic access. That's interesting, the need to um, the need to adapt that list in order to just be most effective with what with what's going on, to be able to say, well, you know what, this issue is important to us, but now is not the time, but would be a great time for this issue, right and then and then getting the people together to do that, the different conservation organizations out there to help with that, so the Rocky Mountain out Foundation, you know, the Pheasants Group, the Mule Deer Group, and and so being able to bring those people to the table when those issues come up and knowing when to strike. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's an important point that that Kyle brought up, because, you know, one of the things that that our organization is able to do because we don't have a dog in the fight so to speak in terms of you know, events and funding and because we're pretty much eternally funded you know, UM, you know, we can we can facilitate a lot of things. UM facilitate work with among all the different organizations out there. UM twenty years ago this in August, we UH, we had a meeting at our headquarters with UM with the nonprofits at the time that we're involved with sportsman's based conservation. There was seventeen of them represented, including some of the ones that Kyle mentioned, Rocky Mountinel Foundation, the Meal Deer Guys, National Wild Turkey Federation. And you know, the whole objective of that meeting was to you know, conservation wasn't moving at the time very very well. And um, you know, the club saw an opportunity to say, Okay, you know what, we're not succeeding here. Um, and we're all going different directions. We gotta we gotta check our egos at the door. We gotta check our gen as the door. We're gonna sit down and how we can work together to get the job done. And what boiled out of that original meeting in August the two thousand was was an organization of It started out to be seventeen. Now today it's forty five sportsman's based and shooting sports based organizations that represent roughly eight mill and votes. And when there's an issue that comes in front of Congress, we draft letters that all these organizations signed on to that go to our congressional delegations and say we're in favor of this or we're not in favor of that, and um, and they listen. I mean, eight billion votes is nothing to sneeze at. So you know, if you if you look at the sports sporting community overall, I think it's better organized than it ever was at at that policy level, which is another reason why we're actually making some headway in the past. You know a few years that that we hadn't you know that we hadn't been making but um, but you know, that's one of our strengths is to be able to bring those kind of groups together and and and and focus on a common on common ground. We've had uh with Fosberg, who leads the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, on the show a couple of times, and um, we had him on recently, well, I guess it's months ago now. We had an interesting point where he's saying that the periods of real bipartisan dysfunction aren't necessarily bad for conservation because when you have such a tumultuous situation in the House and Senate, oftentimes, uh, you can get good pieces of conservation stuff through because they're just looking for a win, like these broad these things that have some pretty broad support when they have nothing going on and everything's acrimonious, it's like a thing that they can pass and so he doesn't feel totally pessimistic about and that's why he's looking at some of the achievements we've had over the last handful of years where they had, um, you know, some good conservation bills, because his view is that it just gives them at least something to kind of agree on and to move through some kind of you know, some common sense conservation work. I don't know if you share that opinion you look at I do. I do, yeah, And TRCP is a very active member of that a w c P American Wildlife Conservation Partner coalition. I just mentioned UM and they were at the first meeting back in two thousands and so. And Whitney's what's right. I mean, I think that the divisiveness, even though it's not pleasant to deal with, and I'm not exactly sure in the overall health of our country it is, it is a good thing, you know, UM, I will tell you for our world it has at times, not all the time, but UM at times worked our advantage now where you could say, like, here's something good you could do. Yeah, there's a lot of people that support this, and or it gets tacked onto some piece of legislation to get you know, somebody's bill pass. You know, I mean it, so yeah, I think you know it. We've tried as a as an outdoor conservation community to take advantage of those types of things to do a good thing, you know, to to turn what is not is not necessarily a great thing into something at least at the end of the day can come out as a good thing. This this conversation came out of his um. In fact, it was towards the it was an early the early part of the new year here, and we were we had put to him like like like thumbs up or thumbs down for conservation, and he had felt that it was a thumbs up year. Absolutely absolutely, we we made some great home runs last year. That's great to hear because you almost think their day. We were talking about, you know, the planes tribes. Uh, some planes tribes used to have the practice of that they would have a robe like a buffalo robe, and basically they would distill down a year into a symbol, you know, and the symbol could be any number of things, like could be like someone being sick, or like something that was like a phenomenal year for hunting or whatever. You'd like make a thing like to wrap it up, you know, And we were just saying, how is shaping up to be like the bullshit year? Yeah, you know it would have been great, would ended on February eight, you know. Unfortunately it didn't. Ye be going great for a minute there. Yeah, yeah, but no, I think twenty was a great year for for contrivation. Sorry. Yeah, nineteen was a great year. We had an ominous bill. We addressed the fire the wildfire funding fixed, you know, UM, trying to give our agency more money to manage our force instead of fight wildfires. And you know that was a great The Farm bill had some great had some great wildlife in habitat health UM language in it uh S forty seven UM Senate Bill forty seven, which had a lot of public lands great things for public lands uh in it. Yeah, we did we did some. We did some good work last year. Shot. I guess if we can get the Great American uh was the Sportsman's Act. What's it called the Great American Outdoors Act? Outdoors and uh and it's a used to be on the docket here within the next couple of weeks. Will know that's great because I'm assuming that once like October hits, nothing's gonna happen well yeah, campaigns, yeah, you know, and and in the past that's kind of what the way it's been. Of course, this is you know, you never know. But I think we it's in our best interest again as a community get as much done as we as quickly as we can at this point because most of the legislation that's on on deck right now has been stuff that's been worked on. So it's not like we're trying to create language. Just finished across first publishing the deal, so if we can get it across the finish line, it'll be great and and that. So to ask your question, I don't think shot. I think it's hanging in the balance. I feel shot well from we're only on the sixth month right, feel like it just needs to go away and start understand I'm the eternal optimist too, but um but now, you know, we still got some some good things going out there. I mean, I think again, the health of our country, the health of our economy. It you know, it's a driver that is gonna resonate with um, you know, with funding for what we want to do in you know, in in in the conservation arena and but by and large the public in general, I think they realized they may not know why, but that you know, our natural resources in our country are probably the most valuable asset that we have and without those, regardless of Wall Street or anything else, nothing's nothing else is going to take and you know, so we've got to maintain the health and viability of our natural resource space. I'm glad to hear that you think that the public recognizes that, because I don't know if I always feel that way. It's well, it goes back to thee the point about the you know, the quote environmental is um. You know, so you know, there's it does It doesn't make any difference exactly what what the hell they think, but they're at least aware of it, and um they may not again, they may not know why, they may not be exactly have all the right reasons, but at the same time, you know, folks are kind of aware of the fact that you know, are you know, it's kind of important that we have a healthy environment to live in, and it's a healthy in Now, there's gonna be people to think we're cutting down too many trees. There's gonna be people that think they're not cutting down enough. You know, science points to right now, we need more active forest management overall. That's not going to be agreeable with with everybody. But the point I'm making is people are noticing it. You know, people are saying, you know, we've got a forest health problem and um, and I think that's a positive thing. Yeah, even though some of the details might become a little contentious. Details are always contentious. The devil's in the details. Yeah. I like to think I have, um, you know, I have a borderline like unconditional love for my country, like a deep patriotism. And it's hard to picture, like, yeah, how would I feel differently if it was Um, would I feel differently if it was like an environmental waste land. They're not gonna help it, right, it's not gonna help. Well, I just I grew up over the hill here in Butte, Montana, which you know, back when I grew up as a kid, was not exactly the most environmentally pleasant place to look at. Um, but I will tell you, you know, they've made great strides and correcting that problem. And and no, you know, throwing fist throwing, but you know, but your point is well taken. I mean, if we don't have our natural resource base. We don't have you know, wild places and wildlife that have it, those wild places to enjoy as a country. Um, you know, I just I don't. I think the patriotism part becomes a lot more difficult, for sure. Yeah, there's a lot to be proud of, right, and it didn't. And the thing I try to more and more point out to people is, um, like growing up, you know, as a little kid or whatever, you you think all the great things and the wildlife and stuffer uh just there like by accident, untouched like untouched by the hands of man, right, and then later you're like, oh no, they got touched there there because people. They're there because people are like decided to have it be there. It was a conscious decision. It was a conscious decision that like cost money and cost time, and it was like, there's nothing accidental, no North American model. It's awesome. They realized that was that it's awesome. They realized that. Well, I realized, but it took me thirty years to realize it. Well, I mean back in the late Yeah, it was realized and that people had the foresight that they didn't just let walk off some species. But but again, I mean, that's just awesome that that a group of people or a collective of people took that on and said we can't let this happen. Yeah, they tried to do like you know, try to do the impossible, or or what other people were. That's the thing I would like to bring up. And it's similar to when Boone and Crockett started out is Um. When I was working on a book American Buffalo. Uh, I talked about that guy Horn today, m and um. They were so sure that animals gone. That's why the National Collection was started. They were so sure it was gone. They dispatched him out by rail on like an emergency order to go shoot a couple and save the skeletons because they wanted they wanted to be able to have like a specimen and they wanted hides and skeletons, and they're like, hurry, yeah, now is your chance. Well that was originally the measuring system too, was so we could kind of picture man. Yeah, he was supposed to go get like as many as he could get so that Sunday people will be like that's what it looked like when they truck one back to the Bronx Zoo and then they had a buffalo sitting there hanging out in New York and Bronx. Yeah. That's one of the great ironies of that story is that later when they tried to one of the projects of bringing them back to the Great Plains, that they had to use as a source herd the Bronx Zoo. Yeah, they're like bringing them. They're bringing bison from the east to the West, which, like that collector mentality um, proved to be pretty valuable. So where are you guys? How do people find you? Guys in the web? Hopefully you got Boone and Crockett domain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got on that one. So yeah, just type that in and you'll find us. That's great, man. And if you got you know, next time you're over at your grandpa's barn and you find some crazy deer heading there. Yeah, I call one of our four official measures out there, and you can find those on our webs right, and maybe you'll make the all time, maybe you'll make the top us. It doesn't matter. Justin says a lot of times that you know, we'd much rather see let's take white tail. We'd much rather see a hundred sixty inch white tail out of an area we've never seen it before. Then the next two white tail, because that's that's telling us more about the management that you know, whatever this area was doing is now producing mature animals. So it's more exciting for us to see that animal come in from an area that we haven't might not have previously seen something come in, or we were seeing him from there and then they kind of dropped off and now they're cooking back up. You know what book I really want the more I think about it, this would be a custom book you can make just for me. It'd be just called the Top one hundred, but it's the Top one hundred everything. So it's all of the things, all of the North American game animals. But it's like, and you might you know, I don't know if it winds up being you just have to figure out the ratio, right, so be like probably like you probably want twenty white tails, ten mule deer, one goat, So what about that would be a good But what about a picked up head? Sure? I don't care, I mean, you don't care if there's not a story, I don't want that. The Top hundred, B and C. And it'd be like you know, you just well, how do you want to break it out? Like you don't want to It can't be like fifty mountain goats. That's not gonna be that's not gonna be very exciting. Like oh, mountain goat act. I would like to have two lions in it. The mountain goats are the best stories we have. Nobody kills a good goat that doesn't almost die. Like three dollars sheet, you'd probably have five big horns. This is getting recorded right fills an outline the whole alright, Boone Crocket Club, Thank you very much. Guys, we should have done this a long time ago. Um, next time something weird happens, let us know, you know, I want to have it be that when you get uh that when you have a hard call to make, like like the bear thing or something that, um, we can come down and participate in making the call. Okay, probably like like here's what I do. And then that guy will run into every hunting publication being that damn Ronella metalized me. That's good. It gets us off of us and puts it on someone else. Fill the side will be like Phil, what do you think? Phil also point out that Boone and Crocket Club has a discount code where listeners of the of this pod here you can get ten bucks off a yearly subscription to Fair Chase magazine. You just got to use the code me eater. And so that's for folks listening right now are like, it's kind of interesting, Well go find out just how interesting and get your discount on Boone and Crockett Clubs publication Fair Chase. All right, thanks guys, yea, thanks for having us. It's immediate podcast talking bout things you might want to hear. It's needy podcasts people about things you might want to talk about, hunting and fishing and conservation, and occasionally by white tailed de Go underwear Steve Vernell. He's the whole man. That guy likes to talk, so purely bug mitton underwear less Stevens as a host man that fella loves to talk. But make no mistake about it, my friends, that skinny guy, and he also walks along right. Can a hand in theis? Tell you know, how can you not be a fan killing Yana Germany? Indeed we should all be fans. Okayl's got this conservation podcast in Yanni as the world's most alf of man. There's a lot to talk time in conservation and things we do and don't want to see. Lots to talk about conservation things we do when you don't want to see, all kinds of hunting and fishing techniques and bas by c W porn fingers and other weird injuries, hunting half and hunting fishing down on the farm, porn fingers and ripped nipples and other eye injuries part of hunting fishing, her life on the farm. But if you're lucky like I was, you know what that we just sold that thing right back on. Uh, we're in the hunt in public access two more subjects. You should all care about getting people out hunting public land and access m in the two things. And we should all care about fishing, catch your release. You think it matters to travel? I do so. Welcome to this podcast friends, it's good to have you do. Welcome to the media podcasted people, get some good have you here. Just remember some of these things might seem real simple, but others they're not so clear. Yeah, it's long, is that well? I can cleane that up. Look, you get the idea

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