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The MeatEater Podcast
Ep. 252: A Sideways Thumb on 2020
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2h
Steven Rinella talks with Whit Fosburgh, Clay Newcomb, Brody Henderson, and Janis Putelis.
Topics discussed: tail strippers and Clay's squirrel tail ornaments; tanning squirrel hides; smash burgers; crazy fossilized footprints of hunters and a one-legged person from 20,000 years ago; pondering dropping out of the block management program; mistaking movement and a person for a deer; a local priest suffering hunter harassment; intentionally popping mountain bike tires by stringing a wire; out-of-state interests challenging spring bear season; managing wildlife through the ballot box as maybe not ideal; how Clay's old man went to high school with Bill Clinton and wasn't a partier; the LCWF; the intent to kill Pebble Mine once and for all; assessing where we're at with the ANWR; removing wolves from the endangered species list; explaining the Farm Bill and how gutting it is a big loss for conservation; the American Conservation Enhancement Act; not doing great on keeping CWD under control in 2020; manhaden aka bunker aka pogie; when 6,000-year-old arrows emerge from an ice patch; how to get involved in TRCP; and more.
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Speaker 1: This is Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case underwear listening podcast. You Can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play Store. Now where you stand with on X All right here we are half half remote, like half COVID remote and more than half COVID remote two thirds COVID remote. I'll tell you what I mean by that. In that um, Joannice and Brody Henderson are in um Our studio. How's it feel over there? Guys? Back to you great, wish you were here? Ah am on Maybe I'm on my third I might be on my third or fourth quarantine. I'm not totally sure. Yeah, I'm waiting on Seth to get his latest result. Who like he already had COVID now he's maybe got it again. Um, all of his buddies got it, so there's a good chance he does. Yeah. His theory, Seth feels like when he had it, he didn't have it, but now he has it. But I got twenty bucks riding on the fact that he doesn't have it. But like he already had it. You're bet in history hasn't gone so well lately? Were you talking about? Man? I just one a thousand bucks on pebble mind probably I lost two hundred on the election, made a hundred on a different election related bet, and then picked up with the thousand. I need to forgive the thousand because it's with a family member and that's that's the kind of money that like causes tensions. So I'm gonna find a way to let her off. But also joined by Clay Nucomb. Thanks Clay, who's who's remote, not quarantined, but remote? And uh with Fosberg from tr CP from the very functional, the very functional city of Washington, d C. Where no one does anything weird. Oh no, normalist can be What what's the general climate like in d C? And not not? I don't mean like the weather, but is you know, is it just like business as usual or people scratching their heads or what? Yeah, that's more or less business as usual. I mean we got used to the unusual now, so you know, there's a bunch of stuff going on, and you know, people are just sort of waiting for the latest mails from the past. Yeah, yeah, I got you. Um, well, we'll talk a lot more about dings and d C dings in a minute. But Clay, I'm surprised you don't know. Clay recently did for us a video, a wonderful video, um about how to make Christmas ornaments with squirrel tails. Yeah, yeah, I think I know where you're going with this. Well, first, I'm going with the fact that you're a video making machine. Man. It was you know, I'm pretty crafty too, so kind of home mecky crafty claiming a video. It's out right, like I saw that that's on It's on Meteor, Instagram, mete, your website, Facebook, It's out there, man. Yeah, it's like viral man went viral plays. Play's got virality And by that I don't mean covid. But um, I'm surprised you don't know about tail slitters and tail strippers. I you you will soon because that has bought you one of each man. But well, hey, you know what, So Steve texted me the other day and I knew he was watching my video, and he said you not have a tail stripper and almost texted you back that you were like one of the Internet trolls, Like you know how many people have asked me that troll on text? I'm a text troll. Hey, you know what man, I grew up using Listen, man, yes, I mean that's my tail strippers, green sticks, two of them, to green sticks, but with a squirrel tail. It was just easy enough to do it with hand, you know, by hand. Well, I got it what I thought for sure you would say when I asked you if you had a tail slitter and a tail stripper, I thought you would say, I do. But I don't want to discourage people from doing this by making them think you needed fancy equipment. Mm hmm. And listen, don't say that it was that. I'm that it's trolling. It's a text trolling is when you do it in a public format as a way to like put people in their plates. I sent you a private text okay, complete, you in your place, and then and then turned around and ordered one for you as a gift. That's that's pretty high level, high level thoughtful. He's saving you from future trolling. Yeah, yeah, well it was it was what you thought. The foresight that you thought that I had to like make this do it yourself video. It would have been cool if I would have thought that, but I didn't think that. I just didn't have I just didn't have the gear. Can you guys explain the whole point of Yeah, okay, to understand a tail stripper, take your middle finger and index finger and put them together, Okay, like you're making the peace sign, but then sandwich your fingers together. Now, imagine that right at your middle knuckle, you were to drill a hole right where your fingers touch, and then you were to take your fingers and clamp them around the tailbone so that that little hole you drilled was accommodating the tailbone. Then you grab that device and pull and it strips the bone right out of the tail. The tail slitting guide is like a long sliver of metal with a with a groove in it, and you insert that into the tail fox, coons, squirrel, whatever, and then just run your knife down that groove and it slits the tail open so you can dry it out without having a bony spine inside. I didn't know the tail slitter existed. I didn't know about the tail strippers, but the tail slitter that is totally new to me. Yeah, or do you want to aluminum? Right? Uh? Quick note on a Yanni, you'll like this. Um, Seth and I were before he got uh got to thinking he had COVID all over again. Um, we were squirrel hunting and we've been we've embarked on a project that you'll probably want to get involved in. Where we were, we had some fox squirrels the side of the the house cats and where you guys got a black face fox squirrel, which is way cool. No, that was a great That was a gray. That's a black face gray, even though it's huge. I'm sure it's a black face gray. I mean it was equal to those fox squirrel. I think it's a black face gray either way. Me, Seth, Matt, we're getting um and we started our collection. We're all getting a complete set of tanned squirrel hides, Eastern gray, black face gray fox, and then on and on and on until I have the full So we're gonna start flashing and stretching those and we're each gonna have a collection. I just got a couple of Montana fox squirrels last week. That's one other. What's your plan for displaying those? Steve hang him on a string, like, just let him drape. Are you gonna put him on a wall? Hang on a wall. I look, I look classy. Look great. Um. One other quick thing we did Clay that I thought you might find interesting. The day after Thanksgiving, we made a bunch of raccoon barbecue sandwiches. Mm hmm, very good. I put my oven on four and browned all the legs and whatnot in the back pieces in my oven for a long time. Then I pressure cooked him for twenty minutes. Then we picked it, put barbecue sauce in it, got cole slaw, pickles, and brioche buns. Yeah sounds good. Um uh. My brother's buddy had him, so he brought it all over. While we're on cooking, Can I uh share a little something I learned. I think you guys would all like to hear about because you can go home and try it if you don't haven't tried it yet. And for the for the life of me, I cannot remember, I've texted three separate people saying, Hey, were you the one that told me that you're family and your wife really like smash burgers like Venison Burger has done smashed burger style? Like, don't know what you're talking about, so obviously wasn't you either? Very simple all you do is you just get a instead of making patties, you make balls, just venison balls, season them if you want or whatever. I did, just playing, you know, with whatever my temper sent fat in there big as well. Yeah, but not not like it's probably just a little bit bigger than a golf ball. Not quite the size of a um you know, tennis ball. Not the same amount of meat you would use for a regular quarter pound patty that you like, like you normally cook your burgers at home, right it. And if you're saying there's a big difference between a golf ball and a tennis ball, yeah, I said somewhere in between. Okay, I can't think of a ball that lands right in between those two handball racketball, Yeah, there you go, that would work. Okay, So I make a piece of meat like a super hot skill it or flat top grill. Okay, it's gotta be flat No, can't, can't be a grill, get it smoking hot? You put I was doing three at a time. You put those balls and spread them out evenly onto that skillet you know I had. I must have been just like a ten inch skillet. I guess that I have at home that I was using. And then at first I started with a slotted spatula, but I realized I wasn't gonna be able to move fast enough. So I had another, uh skill it where I could just put it on top of these balls and just squish them until until they were you know, figuratively paper thin hot spish balls you're looking for, Yeah, paper thin patties, And so you literally squish them down. They cook like that for less than a minute. You flip them, throw some salt on there, put a piece of cheese on there, let them cook for another thirty seconds and they're done, which is another cool thing about them. As they cook super super fast. Um, you kind of get like weird edges, and you get a little bit more just browned kind of bits and pieces on your burger than you would I think doing the normal patty. Um, so it gives you a little more more carmelization in the mouth, a little bit more crispy edges. But yeah, the kids each just had one, and uh, I did a triple on mine, and I had cheese in between each layer and meat and uh, much much different eating experience than your standard make patty and throw it on your grill. Cheese burger. How does the burger know that it was squi on the grill as opposed to on a cutting boarder on a plate. I didn't try to do it ahead of time. So maybe you could do it ahead of time and just put him skinny like, but you're working with something hopefully it's gonna be so thin that I imagine that it'd be fragile if you try to make them that thin ahead of time. That makes sense. Yeah, you wouldn't be able to move it around. And the internet is full of If you just type in smashburger recipe, there's there's, you know, tons of recipes out there to read. I think that's the way a lot of these uh Burger franchise restaurants to it. Like the cool it's like in and out burger. I think does that some of the burger I'm not familiar with that one. Yeah, you guys know how we were talking recently about those those crazy footprints that came out of New Mexico, where it was the an individual walked along a path and then walked back along that same path some thousands of years ago, and in the time between when he or she passed through the second time a mammoth and a giant ground sloth had crossed her trail in White Sands National Park or National Monument, whatever the hell it is. A guy from Australia wrote in about these crazy fossilized footprints from Australia. It was from these hunters of about twenty years ago. And there's like a few sets of hunters in a family. There's a kid that kind of wanders off and comes back into the group, but there's also the footprints of a one legged person. They don't see where the individual was using a walking stick, like it either wasn't um it either wasn't captured and the like fossilized prints. But it seems as though this person with one leg was able to like cruise along hopping on one leg. Wow. We also recently reported on this big flock shooting, this big elk hunting flock shooting occurrence in Montana. So there's this there's a ranch and the ranches enrolled in a in something called black management area. And the way black management areas work as you take revenue from non resident hunting licenses and use it to fund this program where ranchers and landowners farmers get paid to allow get paid a very modest fee. No one gets rich off this stuff. They get paid a modest fee. I think the cap is fifteen thousand a year. Yeah, it's like they're basically doing a favor to hunters. They're like, it's a gesture. It is a it is a gesture to the public and part of the annoyance. This is one way you can think about it. Part of the annoyance of this is offset with a small amount of money. It's not life changing money to enroll in Black Management UM, but it's a black Manager place and an open day of general firearm season, a bunch of guys get onto herd of LP can start flock shooting. I think they kill like fifty These elk citations were written. I'm not sure what the citations are for. But on there we mused about what does the landowner think about all this? Well, a guide that that that does some work for this landowner, not on this place, but he guides a different property wrote in and said he watched this spectacle from seven miles away. It was too far to see any individual elk fall, but he said it sounded like the beaches of Normandy When these guys surrounded this herd out and he said, if you're asking what the landowner thought of the whole thing, the landowner is quote not happy with this event, and he is considering dropping out of the black management program, which is a real disappointment. Uh. Another thing I read about recently, Uh, a hunter in Minnesota just fatally shot. I mean, this happens every year. Fatally shot another hunter mistook him for a deer. Apparently the guy that got shot, uh, wasn't wearing his hunter's orange. This is up by the midge. Apparently the guy that got shot wasn't wearing any hunter's orange. But you know, and you might look at that and be like, oh, that's the problem. I mean when someone when you hear of someone mistaking someone for a deer, it's kind of like, not only did you think you were looking at a deer, you thought you were aiming at its rib cage. It's just so hard to understand why this has to be a story that you read every year multiple times, Like, are are people so greedy and lusty that they want a deer that bad? Yes, firing a movement like mistakey. I don't buy the mistaking it for a deer they're just seeing movement. It's got to be you know, I've been I've been surprised at sometimes people. I mean as a growing up a bow hunter, like we were taught not to shoot at walking deer. We were taught to really calculate the shot. I mean, you had to be a successful bow hunter, and then transitioning later in life to rifle hunting and different things, especially in the big woods when deer moving through big woods. I'm surprised at the shots that I see and hear about people taking, which they've most got to be just you know, like shooting at something that's moving. And I'm not saying they're not identifying what they're seeing as a deer, but as far as like are they aiming at the rib cage? I don't know how they could be. You know, A much more common hunting injury, I think it's the most common hunting injury from firearms is when someone's swinging on a bird with a shotgun and you know you're shooting at a bird, but what you don't see in the foreground or in the distance is your hunting partner or another individual. And when I hear those stories, I'm often like man like I could. I hesitate to say this. You're like, I can just picture how that happens, Like I could picture how it happens, but something like this, I just can't. It's upsetting because it's so it's so preventable and so much more dangerous then, you know, like what happened to Dick Cheney years ago. UM, kind of interesting story come out of Wisconsin. There's like a article that comes out by a local priest who's suffering hunter harassment. So this he's called He's a norber teen priests, which I don't know what the hell that means. He's forced to file a police report because he keeps getting continued public harassment for bow hunting on the St. Norbert Abbey grounds and appear. So this dude joins this like order in two thousand thirteen, and he lives on a hundred sixty acre abbey property, so like where he's sort of stationed. Is a hunter do they use that term? I don't think priests use that term. But he's stationed in this place hundred sixty acres, and he realizes that there are a lot of deer there, so he starts investigating and checks into his uh city ordinances and regulations and checks with the d NR. Uh, checks village stuff. Everybody says there's no reason you cannot be bow hunting on abbey grounds. So he starts a bow hunt and he quickly his dude gets He stacks up four deer, but people in the town are so pissed. He had to go and uh, you know, pursue his hunter harassment law protections to keep hunting on his abbey. I was feeling going down there and doing communion and whatnot and hanging out with the guy just to get I can see there's a lot of listeners whose wheels are turning right now thinking about ways they can get into some good hunting properties. Oh yeah, I'm going to become a priest. Yeah, that's that's a line of work. I'm sorry pursuing man. Um Brody talked about this, uh talk about this dude that got in trouble for this twoth that got in trouble for setting a mountain bike trap. Oh yeah, this happened in Montana. Um, he's in big trouble. Yeah, like like like there's no way he's going to be in that much trouble. I don't know, man, dude, Okay, tell everybody about it. But I bet you he'll wind up getting like a nothing, a slap on the slap on the list. I don't know, we'll see. Um certainly could have hurt some people. This guy is not a fan of mountain bikers, which you know, Uh yeah, I I can understand. Like, I gotta tell the story. First, he put a board that he had hammered, maybe a dozen nails through, quite a few nails, to lay across the trail so that when mountain bikers ran over that board they popped their tires. This was in an area where mountain biking is completely legal. I'm not even sure how they tracked the guy down and confirmed that that it was him, but he confessed to it. Dude out walk and his kids stepped on the board, right, But I'm saying, how did they get from point A to point people? Like? How did they ever figure out who the hell is doing it? Who it was? But he once they they caught up to him, he confessed to it, said he wasn't trying to hurt anyone, He just didn't like all those mountain bikers out there. When I was reading about one of the the things that struck me was one of the investigators winds up interviewing a guy who had allowed this individual access to the national forest through his private property, and when the investigator prevents, presents this guy with a board with all the nails through it. He tells the investigator, Yes, I saw the suspect with such a board who laid out for me his plan to use it to to reduce mountain bike traffic. They describe this guy as a witness, But how is he not sort of complicit? Right, Like if he could have at least said that's not not a good idea. Yeah, Like if I went to your house, Brody, and I'm like, see this machete, I'm gonna take this machete and I'm gonna go or hit claw on the head with it, right, and then I do that and then later you're like, you know, he did have a machete and he told me he was gonna hit Clay on the head with it. Like, is that is that being a witness or is that being like something different accomplice? Yeah. The reason the reason I hesitated earlier is because there's a spot that I hunt back in Colorado where, um, you know, I've seen some illegal mountain bike use, some illegal motorcycle use, and uh, you know it bugs me, but that's you know, in a spot they're not supposed to be. So do you normally just like string piano wire across those No. No, But um, I'm not gonna lie if I hadn't said I. I fantasized about the idea of doing the same exact thing this guy did. But of course I never falled through with it, because you can hurt someone, you know you can. But I'll tell you on those trails, illegal trails like that, because I know, I mean, we might be talking about the same spot, but I would sort of advertently maybe kick up big rock onto that trail, roll a log onto that trail. I mean, no one's supposed to be mountain bike in it, so like you know, they come across a log, they should be prepared for that. I got. I got a cousin he caught a thirty I remember, he caught a sixty three pound beaver one time. But the same cousin he tells me this, told me this, This is a long time ago. According to this cousin of mine, he one time was in an emergency room like where the um ambulances pull up and you got like the sliding doors. I don't know what the hell he's doing there, but he's there. He says that out of this ambulance comes a gurney and on the gurney is a headless corpse. Under its arm is a helmet with the head still in it. This struck his curiosity, and he says that what happened was a guy was so pissed about snow machiners snowmobilers that he did, like Yanni said, and strung a wire. I love that. True or not, we still we floated it. We used to flow the river where the landowner, one of the landowners, you got to float through his property. He strung some wires keep kayakers and rafters from rolling through. So we just carried wire cutters with us. Okay, Clay, tell us about the um tell us about what's going on with this Washington bear hunting deal. Now, yeah, so there's uh. I talked to a lady today that's what the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council named Marie new Miller. Really nice lady, and she talked about how she was at a a spring the commission meeting and because the spring seasons were the first seasons of one that they came up and were talked about, and basically she was the only hunter there that gave any positive input about the spring seasons in Washington, and she said that there were basically there was a room full of people that were upset about the that had negative things to say about a spring season. They had all these different reasons, but there was a couple of interesting things that she spoke about. So this was a zoom meeting, and she said that there's a lot of out of state special interest groups that are influencing wildlife law in the state of Washington and in other places, which was kind of a new, a new idea that it's kind of an influence of COVID because there's a Mountain lion group in California, an anti predator hunting group in California that was present in this meeting. Um there, I made a list here of five takeaways from what she said, Steve, But basically, COVID nineteen and these some of these ZOOM meetings are given access to to these groups to regulation meetings from AFAR that they never had. The second thing that would never have showed up, that wouldn't have been like to show up for local meeting. That's right, they would have never showed up. The second of all is that in the state of Washington, and I would assume this is the same in other states. They that any email that comes into the commission is presented and somehow acknowledged by the commission. And so these anti hunting groups are pretty well raped, well put together, and they're sending these form emails. So basically, one of the people got up and said, hey, we had five hundred and forty emails come in against the spring hunt and it was a form email chain sent out by one of these anti hunting groups. But you know what that does inside of a crowd, when you begin to hear something negative, it's it's like empowered some of the people that were actually in the zoom meeting to begin to speak out against it. And um, basically she was like, where are the hunters at? Where where the where's the voice of the hunters? Yeah, and her her point to me was that the commissions here the squeaky wheel, but not the positive stories of hunters and hunting and uh, you know, we've we have I think the solution to the problem, and there's nothing specific that's happening in Washington, Like there's not a regulation that's being proposed that takes away their spring hunt, but it just came up and she sent an email to meat Eater and Uh, basically, as hunters, we need to build a culture that's more proactive talking with our game commissions, talking about the positive things that that we see inside of our hunting seasons. Because there's definitely squeaky squeaky wheels. Um, you know, the there's a the cultural shifts that we're experiencing today inside of his era of technology. Basically, rapid culture shifts can have significant consequences and hunting regulations and are moving much faster than they have in past decades because of technology, if I can say it that way, Like so, like you know, this idea of some murmur about a spring bear hunt not being a good thing, Like maybe in past times that would have taken twenty five years to infiltrate a deep part of the culture to change regulation. Well anymore, it's that is moving much faster, and so you know, I just think we just have to be more proactive with the tech communication game as hunters and and and speak up for stuff. But this points to a thing that I argue about frequently with my very dear friend Carl Malcolm, and Carl's of the opinion that you know, um, we need more voices, right, more voices in the room, more seats at the table, and that game management in this country has so long been uh so heavily influenced by hunters and anglers, and he's points to the fact that we need to be realistic about the fact that more people have input and that we're not always going to enjoy having oversized input on like game commission rules and things. Uh. I don't know if he's being pragmatic or if he's being hopeful when he talks about the fact that more people are going to be coming into the conversation, but I don't necessarily look at that as an entirely good thing. UM. And as we deal with like management and funding structures, where right now fishing game agencies are funded largely by hunters and anglers and shooters meaning people to buy hunting and fishing licenses and all kinds of other things that are have excise taxes on them for that purpose, like marine gas and sporting goods and all kinds of things. UM. Funding from that and funny like funny from buying licenses and buying sporting goods. Right, So the users are paying. As we look at these other funding structures and we talk about, you know, having a backpack tax or a trail tax or some way for other outdoor users to kick in money. Then when they kick in money, they're gonna probably want to have their opinions be heard. And I don't think their opinions their eyes gonna go along with ours. Yeah, but the truck to you can do that is just target those dollars to what they're used for. So there's an exercise tax on mountain bikes that's for fixing up mountain bike trails someplace. That's great. That shouldn't be something that the hunters dollars should be paying for, which has been partly done in the past. You just segregate the accounts. You know, in terms of fish and wildlife management, hunters ought to have a learn to say we do. I think it goes back to and you guys help me understand this better. Even it goes back to how these state ame agencies are run. Like her, one of the things we talked about today. She told me that four percent of people in Washington State or hunters, So they're starting out as a minority. So the anti hunting argument is that, hey, most of the people in the state aren't for this, specifically talking about the spring bear hunt. So this is a democratic society, so why don't we stop the spring bear hunt? And the game agency in Washington came back with a great response as I understood it, which was, we don't manage our game based upon democratic feel I mean, and I know here in Arkansas our commission is totally run by these commissioners. I mean, it's it's not a referendum state, meaning you can't just get a bunch of people together sign a petition to get something made into law. Um, So that brings up the question, I mean, is our our game management practice is up for the democratic process. Yeah, but I mean, like so much stuff in society is not or so much stuff. We have a representative democracy, right, like you have an opportunity now and then for your congressmanutes every two years, your senators every six years, your presidents every four years, whatever, you have an opportunity now and then the way in and generally how things are going. But when people point out like it's a democratic society. It's like, Okay, if we're gonna go invade Iraq, right, do we then have a quick vote to see if we're gonna do it or not? If we're gonna have a new tax buill, do we have a quick vote to see if we're gonna do it or not? Or like we're gonna lower, um, the maximum fine for marijuana possession, do we put that? Of course not like we'd like get people to do things for us, and we don't subject everything to a temperature check, a public temperature check every time we turn around. Um. And so when people like, when people point out that argument, I'm like, yeah, I see what you're saying, But we don't do anything like that. Yeah. One of the things we're gonna talk to One of the things I want to talk to with about is, uh, what are do you have opinions about what happened with Colorado? The um where in this case where we did go to a public opinion and have like a public opinion a poll on a path toward a wolf. Yeah, No, I don't you know. Listen, I think that you know the worst thing you can do is to sort of have you well life management by ballot box I mean, this is professionals how to be dealing with this stuff. And you that's why you have professionally run you know, game fishing, game agencies. And no, I think if we've failed, if we go to this you know model of you know, trying to get the citizens way in on it was just like that. Colorado has a history of that too. Yeah, that involves the spring bear hunt, you know, and I think in the mid nineties the spring bear hunt in Colorado was outlawed by ballot box initiative. You can even argue that, you know, Congress is not the right place to be dealing with things like a wolf de listing, which we ended up having to do around you know, the gradielist an ecosystems, certainly because you know, the courts kept blocking it even though biologically it was justified to delist wolves. So Congress had to weigh in and you know, deal with it there. But again that's not the best place either. Are you guys familiar with the predator hunting conspiracy theory that the anti hunting community wants to shut down predator hunting so that predators would overtake the landscape and take down ungulate numbers to such a level that hunting would no longer be necessary because have you heard that? Yeah, no, I hear that. Do you know the do you There's one we'd like to talk about a lot which is even more insidious. It was that the Clintons. I know you're gonna say that they liked what they wanted wolves to come. They wanted the wolves reintroduction because the wolves would kill all the game. No one would hunt anymore, and if they couldn't hunt, they wouldn't have any reason to buy a gun. And that's how you disarm America. It's a long it's a long play. So I feel like I I don't know that that I know that theory. And there's a guy, there's a guy that's a very big proponent of he's right here in our town. He's done a lot around wolf reintroductions, and he gives a lot of talks about UH wolf reintroductions. Really likes him a lot, and he's very antagonistic toward hunters. And I've mentioned this a couple of times where he referred to hunters as the recreational big game killing industry UH and views them as being like an adversary for it. But I don't think that he views wolf reintroduction as a way to ticket to hunters. M I think it's more like he veals that we have an obligation to like restore in a completely intact ecosystem. Be my guess. Maybe at night he's like, you know, like this insidious plot. But I I don't know. I mean, I couldnot like if anybody could put it together and be the Clinton's though, Yeah, I mean, you know, hey, did you know my dad went to high school with Bill Clinton? Because you're from Arkansas? Did they party a lot? No? He was a few years older than my dad, but well I'm sure Clinton did. Yeah. I don't know if you're old man partied with him? Not not Gary Newcomb, No, sir, so you're your old man. Can't put your Gary Newcomb? Can't put the rest this inhale or not inhale thing? Well he probably could, but not because he was there, got it. We we're a little bit now, we're not too terribly early. Every year most every year for the last few years, we've done with wit from Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership where a full disclosure, I am a proud board member. Uh. When Fosburgh comes in and does a recap. So the year is not quite done. I mean, you know, it's it's it's winding down. We're getting there. It's winding down. Last year when we did this, you had, uh you had about nineteen a general thumbs up. We went through the details, but you had a thumbs up from conservation perspective. Where where does the thumb sit. Now, let's say it's a middle of the road kind of sideways right now. There are some huge accomplishments. They're also doing some real disappointments. Really uh so, yeah, So I think it's you know Nick bag as he usually is, listen, and I think that overall, I think we're happy with where we got this year. We have some challenging circumstances, but once again, in least in Congress, conservation proved one of those things that you could actually get done in a very hyperpartisan year presidential election, you know, hot congressional elections, everything else. That's one of the you talking about that and explaining how that happens, that conservation is a thing that can move forward when when nothing else can move forward. I was kind of thinking about that a little bit recently and looking at um that we'd have uh, you know, Republican led Senate, the Democrat the White House. They're not gonna get anything done. Maybe they'll decide to focus on some some conservation work to get those easy wins that you were talking about that they often get thirsty for. Yeah, I think so. I mean they have to everyone has to show they can legislate and get stuff done. And if you look back at this year, I mean things like the Great American Outdoor Act, which was permanent and full funding for the Land Water Conservation Fund. It was a ten billion dollar almost trust fund to deal with maintenance backlog in public lands. That came together because you know, a lot of different interests. You know, I thought it was a good idea at the time. Some of those were conservationist just interests, some more political. There was an idea that you know, they wanted to help, you know, Corey Gardner in Colorado and Steve Danes, you re election efforts. So you know Trump proposed doing this. This is when the Democrats have been pushing for years, and they weren't dumb enough to say, oh, because you're proposing, I'm gonna vote against it. It's like, hell, yeah, bring it on, and so that allowed us to get it done. Can you can you explain why, like the Elder talk people through the l w CF, and why we had to have a new thing called the Great American Outdoors Act to sort of like provide backing for a thing we already had, which is the LWCF. Like, why does it require a new It wasn't. It's just basically, you know, Congress passes things in bulk these days. It doesn't do individual bills very often. So the Great American Outdoors Act had two independent bills underneath it. One was Land and Water Conservation Fund. The other was a maintenance backlog. Just a little background on Land of Work Conservation Fund. It was created in nineteen by Congress when they opened up the Outer Continental Shelf that oil and gas development. The idea was that oil and gas industry pay into a fund UH to do national resource conservation in perpetuity million dollars a year. The problem was that in the fifty five years that has been around, only once did Congress actually fully funded. So you know, two thousand nineteen and a big ominibus bill that we passed, we permanently reauthorized this. You don't have to go back to Congress every year every five years to get it reauthorized. In the Great American Outdoors Act, we took that funding and moved it off budget because what did Congress has been doing is saw this juicy pot of funding sitting out there that had not been protected in nine from being rated. So Congress rated it for all sorts of purposes unrelated to conservation. What were they rating it for deficit reduction schools? You know? Who knows? I mean, it just it was used for other purposes. So they still collected the money from the oil, yes company, oil and gas industry paid into it every year nine million dollars, and in their mind they're paying into it because of this thing, this fund. But then the money goes and sits in another pile and someone grabs the money off that pile. Oh yeah no. So Congress looks at and says, what we can give it the nine hundred million dollars we're supposed to, or we could give it half of that and use the other half for these pet projects we might have. So finally, what we've been trying to do is get that off budget so it automatically goes out things like Pittman Robertson Dingle Johnson. You know those funds. Congress is not allowed to tamper with the sportsman's exercise taxes. Let's go to the federal government and then go back out to the states. This would be similar in that the nine million dollars in full guess for goes to projects like it was intended, land acquisition, permanent Easeman's city parks, trails, those types of activities. You know, that was a huge win. You know, I think people might be interested in about when we're talking about money going into piles and someone robbing that money is uh, you know, when you buy like earlier, I mean we talked about this, when you buy your fishing license. Okay, the money from your fishing license goes to support your state game agency, which does everything from like regulation, you know, enforcement of hunting and fishing laws, disease research, access enhancement, boat launches, like on down the line. It goes to all this stuff. If a state, states are blocked. You can tell me if this is a universal or not. States are blocked from raiding that money because if they raid that money and don't put it for what it's supposed to go to, they're not eligible for the federal funds that come from the excise taxes. Correct. Ye, so you get like you get like slapped on the hand. Um if you try to steal the hunting and fishing money. Correct. And now that it was genius when they set that up because people would have taken that money. Oh sure. And so now you know you have a Congress can't rate it and the states can't rate it. You know the matching funds the states use basically which is their state license fees. So no, it's a it's a perfect situation. It's worked and that's why it's funded conservation for since the nineteen thirties. Is there like when all this LWCF money comes in, um, who who is the who is the who's the collection of people that decides where it goes? So half of it goes basically half of it goes back after the states, and the states can use it for anything from real conservation, migration corrid or is that type of activity, or they can use it for a city baseball diamond, basketball courts, you know, urban recreation. They have flexibility and how that gets used. The other half is basically goes to the agency's Department of the Interior Department of Agriculture that then goes out for very specific projects. And what we're trying to do is, you know, make sure that they really think about projects a little bit differently. They have in the past. LWCF has been used to fund like the big Plum Creek acquisitions on the Blackfoot and you know, things like that, which are multimillion dollar, really complex deals. But it could also be used for things like, you know, funding you buy one section someplace in Montana to open up a landlocked parcel. You know, as you guys know, we've been working with ONYX on those reports on landlocked and you've got sixteen and a half million acres around the country that are owned by the public but the public can't access. So you start thinking about a little bit differently because three of the nine million, seven million dollars annually is your remarked for access projects. So start thinking about that little section or half sections someplace that opens up a whole bunch of different land and the on X project it really helps identify where those areas are. Yeah, because that's like a that's like a force multiplier on your money when you buy like a small chunk and open up a huge chunk. Yeah, and you mentioned even like you know, the you know, block management in Montana, if you buy a section that opens up more block management potentially, or target some of the block management, which is also funded by the farm bill, you know, to you know again access that national forest behind you what you said that some of this money could be used, And it surprised me when you said like urban projects like baseball diamonds and such. I knew that a lot some of that money I had seen wording inside of that where it said it could go for rifle ranges and firearms related stuff. I mean, how how can how are we not are we guarding against like all of that money going to by small diamonds. Well, I mean, first of all, you're it's largely a state decision where they want to spend it. So engage in the process. You work with your game and fish agency, you know, your record aptor parks or agency, whatever is in the state, and help influence that decision. The idea was that it makes sense to send some of this money local and locals decide how they want to spend it, and we want to make sure that they can think about you know, yeah, that different ideas like migration quarridors. You see a lot of those estates in the West are now developing formal migration policies try to identify and protect big game migration corridors use some of the state side money to help, you know, further that cause, as well as doing things like baseball diamonds or if you do a shooting range or you know, whatever it might be. Uh, well, let's go on to you got I got a quick follow up if it's all right with I want to know. Thanks, Steve, appreciate it. Um when when you're like, what does it look like? If you can give me like an abbreviated version of when like you're in there in the trenches in d C trying to help push something like the Great American Outdoors Act through what does that look like on a day to day basis? And then too like did you are there allies that like right alongside t RCP that are maybe not in our you know, the hunting and fishing bubble that are also in there? And also a great question answer to the second part first, so yeah, we had great allies in the outdoor recreation community, in the historic preservation community. Yeah, it's a big you know, there were literally hundreds and hundreds of different groups that were engaged in this. We're all fighting side by side for it in terms of what it looks like in the trenches. I mean, what we do is really two things. One, we provide good information. You know, we let a member of Congress know, here are the projects that have benefited and hunters and anglers in your state through all the BCF. Here are the other types of projects that are sitting out there that could get funded if we had full funding. And then what we also do is apply some pressure. And you know, honestly, they don't want to see me walking in the door. They want to hear from their local rod and Gun club in that state, you know, the local chapter of Pheasants Forever Turkey Federation engage. I mean, local voices matter a lot more than you know, guys like me that live in here in d C. And they're paid to do this stuff. So what we try to do is, you know, and that's why we have guys and you know a lot of the western states around the country as organizers mobilizing local businesses, local citizens, local rod and gun clubs to engage on these issues to make their voices heard. So it's one part good information, another part yeah, just you know, shoe leather and getting the people out there that can help influences. Thank you. Uh you put down Pebble Mine in the wind category and yeah, and I recognize that. And to bring people that have been following this show. Um, we had a big pebble episode recently. I should say recently, but I guess this fall we had a big Pebble Mind episode. And it was funny because while we were recording that, we had a gentleman on Tim Bristol Um who just coincidentally, his last name is Bristol and Pebble Mind is you know, in the headwaters of Bristol Bay. And he came on and sort of laid out the whole history of where this idea came from, why it's a bad idea, why it won't go away, and and literally while we were speaking with him, he was very eager to get home after the interview. While we were speaking with him, a story was breaking about some some activists who had masqueraded as foreign investors in Pebble Mind, and the CEO of Pebble Mind, what what was his name? With Tom Collier, Tom Collier. These people masquerade as investors, and they do in a call with Tom Collier from Pebble Line, and Tom Collier um really opens up to them in a way that wound up being deeply humiliating to him, where he contradicted a lot of Pebble Mind's own messaging. Um they had all along in the permitting process been looking for, you know, I don't know, like a ten or twenty year roadmap. He shares with these these supposed investors that this is like a twenty year play that he's got plans where the state is going to pay for a lot more things in the state had any intention of paying paying for. And then he really liked drives a nail on his own coffin by speaking rather disparagingly of a number of politicians that he needs to have a lot of cooperation with, to the point where, uh, some politicians who haven't been entirely supportive or to entirely dismissive, but it wanted the process to run, and they've been pretty careful to say that, like, this is a process we're gonna allow to play out, and they don't want to weigh into heavily. But anyways, he goes and shares it. Basically, these people are in his back pocket, and when the rubber meets the world, they'll do what he says. And there's nothing that's going to be quicker at getting those politicians to not do what you say than to say that, Oh yeah, listen, that was you know, I'm not sure that you know, the interview, the tapes, you know, had that big bearing on the corps final decision to deny the permit for the Mind. But it's sure as hell have for persuade Leasa Murkowsky and Dan Sullivan to come out very vocally against that mine, oh just as it was so insulting to them, and uh, you know it was. And we've been trying to get them both to come out hard against the Mind, and again, like you say, they've just sort of taking a very neutral stance of let's wait and see, let's see what they say, not wanting to you know, take anybody off. But started saying that stuff, holy map, they went off like Roman candidles. Yeah, it was, you know, it was just one of those uh, you know, if you were gonna and I'm sure someone will someday make a documentary about this entire process that would be sort of like, you know, a huge moment in the film is this call. But but that set off I don't know if it's set off or not. It sure seemed to set off a um cascade of events, like all of a sudden, there's people wanting to do investigations. Tom Collier is dismissed from his position. Uh, the Army Corps of Engineers comes in and and rejects the proposal. But this the fighting about this mine is that just it never goes away. Like when we had this this episode, I was pointing out to someone that I went to my first pebble mind event, I thought it was the year before my kid was born. He's ten years old. And um Bristol had pointed out that to really close this thing up, there needs to be some land designations in that area that would make it that we don't just need to constantly revisit this horrible idea. I don't want to spend too much time, so we've covered so heavy a basis like this, like when you draw a gold bearing or out of the ground, you use an acid. Yeah, you use cyanide to dissolve the gold out right. This isn't like digging up for gold nuggets. This is like or that contains gold. You crush that stuff up, put cyanide on it, and that dissolves the gold. Then you're able to collect the dissolved gold. The problem is you have all this you have all this waste from the cyanide, and you have like a bunch of heavy metals that are in water, and that stuff don't go away. So you gotta make a big lake and you fill this lake up with all this ship right, um, And they just in their plan they're like, oh, yeah, and the lake will always be there, but we'll build a sweet dam to hold it in. And people like, what do you mean always? I mean like twenty years, fifty years. No, it's like for an eternity, forever, forever. The lake of toxic sludge sits there behind the earth and dam, and people point out, well, how can the dam be forever? And they're like, to be a sweet damn, real nice damn. Yeah, sismically seismically active area. Yeah. And so it just is very unsettling to people who have to trust that this earth and dam will hold for the rest of human history. Right. It's just hard to buy. It's hard the toxic sludge does last for eternity as far as you know, it's got a it's got a greater life expectancy than the damn that's for sure. So that's where in this mind, like in a nutshell, that's where this mind becomes really problematic. Uh, there is that. But your original point is exactly right, and that's what you know, Tim, and you know Tim and I used to work together and try to limit it, and he you know. So the trick now is how do you permanently protect that area? Do you do land swap with the state and give them some federal lands where they actually me make some money, you know? Do you get the state legislature to designate all those state lands as you know, some sort of you know, salmon reserve, you know, something like that. But you know, there's nothing to stop the next fly by Night and jackass company coming in there five years from now and they think they have favorable politicians and do the exact same thing again. M do you think that will kind of put a wrap on this? Now? Do you think that's just the the appetite, the political appetite too, Like, just squash this once and for all, you think it will be left to linger. No, I think there's an appetite, you know, thank you Tom Collier to kill this once and for all now. And so I think that you know, Lisa mccowski is already on record and you know, variety of publications saying that she wants to find a permanent protection mechanism for Bristol days. Yeah. Now, one of the things that I was wondering about when you know, I was pretty happy when um, Donald Trump Jr. Uh, Tucker Carlson, a number of right wing figures came out and you know, varying degrees of intensity, but came out like in opposition to pebble mind. And I went, remember, I remember wondering if this would somehow be like cover or could be justified as cover for something else. Uh, which I think And now that's like a conspiracy theory that exists in my own head or not. But layout where we're at, you know, in the year and review around the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So another premier, um, another massive, premier pristine ecosystem in Alaska that for my entire life we've been arguing about do we leave it be or do we tap its resources? Yeah, so a little bit of background on this one. And again you know, we don't do a whole lot with an wharf which is arcade National Wilife Refuge. But but you know, there's history here. So when the Alaska Native Lands, I guess it was Alaska National Interest Lands Act passed in the nineties seventies, which created most of the national parks, refuges, forests we have in Alaska, it was silent on what to do with the coastal plane of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It basically the four miles of coastal plane and by that north slope twelve hundreds of miles of which were open for oil and gas development, two hundred miles being that and more coastal plane. We're basically to be determined what we do with it later. So when that law passed in the seventies into the Carter administration, you know it basically you know, it didn't have to be Nostradama's to know you're gonna have fights over that area for a very long time. And that's just what's played out. And you know, so now here we are, you know, a long time later, and we're still dealing with it. So it's always been the goal of politicians in Alaska to open it up because they were convinced that there's the next Prude Obey is sitting under there. I think it's very questionable or that's true or not. But what happened now is you finally had you know, during the beginning of this administration, you had a Republican House, Republican Senate Trump, and they jammed through opening up an war to development. And now the part of the interior is moving as fast as humanly possible to you know, get the first lease out of there, and knowing that the Biden administration when they come in, is going to shut that thing down. It's much harder to shut it down if there's already a sole lease someplace. So that's you know, that's why they're trying to get at least right now and have somebody buy some thing out there so that it's much harder undo in the future. I mean, there's people that are posed to drilling in in where what are the reasons they're opposed to it? Well, I mean the main thing is I think actually, you know, there's a variety of different reasons, but this the porcupine caribou herd is the main one that's their main calving grounds. Obviously it's a big polar bear area too, and polar bearers aren't doing great right now. But it is, you know, because it was the biological heart of the refuge, which is why it wasn't set. It opened up for a well and gas development in the nineteen seventies and you know, you know, Steve, you've been up there, you know, so you've seen it. And when those cariboos come in, as you know, pretty freaking amazing and huge numbers, and in the spring in early summer. So I think that's the main reason. And it's just that, you know, if you go over to prude obay Or it is a major industrial city, and you know, I think there's a lot of folks that want to leave that coastal plain over an Animore the way it is not looking like that. Yeah, you want to Uh, when you deal with something where you have this like this pebble mind issue in the ani issue, um, you do get a little self conscious. I get a little self conscious about um. The tendency, my tendency to look at every development project and be like, oh no, not there, this is a line in the sand, and then the next one not there. This is a line in the sand, you know. But I do feel like that, man, Um, Like I can't I don't know if there's even maybe it's just perceived. It's in my head that there's supposed to be this idea that we're you trade one for the other, Like Okay, you can't do the big gold mine, but um, we'll make it up to you with some oil leases. But man, I mean we're talking about places that are again like like the most productive in the case of Bristol Bay, like most productive salmon fishery in the world, um with anwar one of the most pristine Arctic ecosystems on the planet. So like, I want to being a little bit unapologetic, even though it's in my head that that you're being like a real obstructionists by just feel in my mind like, yeah, those those things, it's like if we can't have the sort of audacity and vision to protect that kind of stuff, like nothing is sacred. Man. Yeah, I'm totally with you, and I think they're just special places out there, and there are fewer and fewer of them as more and more of our globe gets developed. I think ann war Bristol Bay Boundary Orders is one of those kind of places. Yeah, we had a big campaign the Ruby Mountains, you know, the Invada and that's you know, a pretty special place as well. They're now proposing a big titanium. Mind it was a titanium I think, so on you by the Okay Finoki Swamp and Origina, which is another pretty amazing place. So, I mean, you know, there are no place that's not you know, sort of under assault in some fashion. You know, talk about you know, mining near the Grand Canyon. You know that's been talked about for a long time. But you can imagine extraction people, you can imagine at some point think I'll be like okay, well then where like I just took possession of in the mail a new titanium stove pipe for my seek outside stove that goes into my teepee tent um. I like that I was able to order that thing. So when people say like okay, so what okay mr, Mr, don't touch this and don't touch that? Uh, where should we be doing this? Like how do you how do you answer it? I mean, look, there are a lot of places that appropriate to mine. You know, go to Nevada, and look at a bunch of the big Barrick or Newmont or some of those you know mining developments out there. It's incredibly arid country. I mean, the basic water is the main thing that you know, gets you in the way of a good mind. And that's where dealing with in Bristol Bay, that's where you're dealing with the Ooki Finoki the boundary waters Nevada place like that, that's not an issue. I mean, I guess six inches of rainfall a year or whatever. So I mean, I just think, are there are places in Nevada that are that are not being mind that could be? I mean, I guess I have no idea. I'm not you know, mineral I'm not geologists, so but I'm just saying there are appropriate places for a mine. And even there are a bunch of minds being developed in Alaska. They're fine. It's just they're not in you know, sort of these amazing areas. And these presumably these amazing areas too would be super cash cows for these huge energy groups. I mean, so it's not like this is the only place left. But they just by their projections, by their understanding of you know, the resource, they're like this would be major place. It's it's it's it's accepted as an objective reality that pebble is the would be the largest gold mine in human history, so they would fight for it. Yeah, but you know, part of the problem is it's not a you know, like a solid gold seem like you'd find some places in other places. It's so spread out over such a large area. You have to churn up so much habitat to produce that gold and copper that it's you know, that's where you get into the problem. So it's the you know the nature of the development as well. All right, well, let's keep I want to keep bumping along on our list wolves getting federally delisted. You have that you view this as a win with some caveats. But first, is this like is this real or like like no, as Biden gonna come in like just undo this. No, the obadministration proposed it too, blocked by the courts. So you don't think you don't think that you don't think that Biden will be like reflexively hostile to this idea, Well, I mean I would, I haven't. I have not spoken anybody about it over there, but I doubt it because they did it in the Obama Biden administration before. Yeah, they proposed this and he got blocked by the courts. And you know, what we're trying to do is, you know, take this out of the political sphere and make it much more of the wildlife biologists controlling the decision, not the courts, not Congress, not ballot mission with someplace. And the only thing I don't like about, you know, the most recent delisting, it's done the day before the election in Minnesota, a swing state, and you how do you look at that and not think it's political? And that just galvanized the opposition to it, and almost it works against our interests those of us like to see the wolf, do you listed? Yeah? You know, I actually, um well sometimes some other time I'll tell you a story about that timing, but um not not that's not for now. But okay, give me the caveats. So it's a win like so, so if you want to understand, it's gonna go, it's gonna go to the courts. Yeah, US Fish and Wildlife Service, we have uh trying to think it to what level of detail we want to get in here, CASSU where I mess up on this with but wolves were listed under the Endangered Species Act. They were listed like sort of across the Lower forty eight. One fell swoop, right. We we just listened like so we didn't want to hit a lot. Didn't get we're not getting Alaska implicated in this because Alaska has wolves across historic range or something like that. Um, very you know, thriving wolf populations. But they were listening to Lower forty eight. Later, when we kind of got a more detailed look at the problem, we realized that thinking about the Lower forty eight as a whole isn't a great way to try to manage wolves, um because we know that they're not going to be recovered in you know, downtown Denver, right, Like, it's not gonna happen. So we should look at like where could they be and where are they and kind of break up the map a little bit and talk about these different population groups. And so one of these population groups is the Northern Great Lakes, and so that's wolf populations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Uh, you wind up there's all kinds of complexities in the law when you try to go after the fact and impose this logic of these distinct population segments like it creates a lot of ways for people to file lawsuits. That the fact that we didn't have that system in place when they were listed, and we tried to later come in and overlay this logic, um has created a lot of trouble. So the Northern Great Lakes wolves have been you know, the US fish And while their service went and said it's time to delist them, that gets blocked in courts. That bounces back and forth. They have hunting and trapping seasons, Hunting and trapping seasons go away, then all of a sudden they were locked back up put on the endangered species list. And now they're saying, um that you know, the outgoing I shouldn't time it with the outgoing administration. But they're now saying, all right, enough enough, we're does delistened the whole damn deal again, and it'll almost certainly get all wrapped up in a bunch of lawsuits, almost certainly. But it's important to note that the like the the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountains, you know there, they've exceeded recovery goals for a long time. Like there's a reason why they're wanting to delist them. Yeah, but it's just so political and you you may well see, you know, similar to what we've had to do in the Greater Yeloste ecosystem with Congress passing specific delisting legislation for the gray wolf there. My guests is you're probably have to see that again in the Great Lakes. And these are these are well funded anti hunting groups that are have a long term strategy to keep this inside the courts. Is that is that true? Yeah, I think that's a fair description. Yeah, and they do it like they kind of if you look at the details of these lawsuits, they sort of skirt the issue. Um, They'll often they don't argue, uh, how many wolves there are, they don't argue that. It's like you need to when you're doing these lawsuits, you're sort of going after these, um you're pursuing technicalities. You'd be like, okay, so you have a listing plan, Well, we can prove that you didn't consider something of relevance. And you know, like it's motive, it's motivated by a very it's motivated by a desire. But you take whatever little things you can get to try to like hold it up within the court during procedural administrative issues. Those are the main ones that stick. Now. The irony is, of course, if you know wolves had been delisted, you wouldn't have to do a ballot initiative in Colorado. They could just go ahead and reintroduce them. Oh is that right? Oh yeah, huh. I really should know this. As a predator hunter, if wolves have been on the endangered species lists, why can we hunt them in Idaho and in other places? Because you know there was the courts did not sing allowed those states to move forward, and you know that was all the Great States. You know, I think Wyoming may still be in litigation about his plan, but you know that's been on and off because Wyoming didn't have a robust a plan as the other states didn't. Oh no, they had, they had. I thought they were insane, but they're kind of in the end one like Wyoming wanted to come in, Like all the states in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem came up with these management plans, right, and Wyoming came up with this management plan or they're basically saying, Okay, the area around the in the g y area, the area on Yellowstone, they'll be managed like as a big game animal. But then they took a huge chunk of the state and said, and here they'll be managed like coyotes. No bag limits, no reporting structure, no closed season. And I thought that they were insane to try that approach and that they would never get there. And I was like, man, you're shooting yourself in the foot with that. But they stuck it out, stuck to their guns, pun intended, and God, despite what the Clintons wanted, God, despite the Clintons, they got what they were after. Um and and so I was I thought that was a pretty bold play on their part. But when when when in our list here delisting what you have some caveats, explain the caveats. Oh, I was just what I was saying is that you know this is not yes as good as it scenes, because I think it's going to go straight back into the courts. So yeah, well hit hit again. I think that that that's the main caveat is that you don't go out and buy a license tomorrow. Yeah, okay, but what about Mexican gray wolf protections? Yeah, I'm again, I'm not an expert down there. I'm not even gonna venture into it. Is there any solution to keep it out of the courts. I mean, it just seems like like the best arguments that we can come up with. I mean, is there going to have to be wolves running through the streets of Chicago before the lawsuits? Just what I think that you're gonna see, you know, probably congressional legislation on something like the Great Lakes population. That exactly when when you talk to when you talk to people who are opposed to delisting wolves like wolf, like you know, Diard, wolf advocates that aren't aren't interested in a compromised solution. They love to point out that we've only recovered wolves across the fraction of their range. Um they seldom considered, well, yeah, but they're they're right, And I like to point out to them that we've only recovered elk across ten percent of their range. But we manage elk hunting and elk populations in a lot of places very effectively. But we still don't have uh elk across the entire state of Nebraska, which historically we did. So it is possible to manage a species as a renewable resource, as a game species, while you're still pushing ahead with a broader recovery plan. Because we do it all the damn time. Okay, gutting the farm bill. Yeah, this is the farm bill is a loss. Explain to people what the hell that what? What what the farm bill is? Yeah? So the farm Bill, he know, is the single largest conservation program in this country, six billion dollars annually to incentivize conservation on private lands, the conservation reserve program, you know, wetland areas, grassland areas, you know, just restoring various types of habitats. But it unlike a lot of the environmental stuff we've talked about, like the Endangered Species Act, the the Farm Bill is all voluntary. It's all incentive based. So the ideas you give a farmer an incentive to enroll the land in a good conservation practice, and it's been incredibly successful. And just one of the areas, the one we focus on a lot is the Conservation Reserve program, which was really created back in the nineteen eighties as essentially a supply management tool when during the farm crisis to get people give money to farmers and have them set aside land so that they have money to in spite of really terrible markets. So in its height, you know, the farm Bill Conservations Deserve program about thirty seven million acres enrolled in it. And you know that's good for you know, upland Burghs is good for deer, it's good for water quality, it benefits pretty much everything. Today, you know, that program is down to twenty point seven million acres. Give me the number again, at its height twenty about thirty seven million acres down to down to the lowest level today is today is the lowest level we've seen really since the creation of the program, and that is twenty point seven million acres and we're expecting another probably three million acres to expire in twenty one. So and at the same time, we're giving I think you know, the last two years, we gave thirty billion dollars to farmers because the trade wars are going on with China and depressed markets. Is essentially a bailout, not asking to do anything. At the same time, we're just starving the Conservation Reserve program and we're not offering enough in terms of rental rates, we're not offering enough the sentives for folks to get into the program. A. So you're seeing it basically, you know, dying on the vine. Our farmers are farmers wanting to get involved, but they're just not sure. They just can't make the numbers work with the way they're trying to fund it. Yeah, and they've you know, there's a lot of interest to sign up for it, but when you're offering low Brunwald rights and minimal incentives to get in, you're not gonna have a whole lot of interests for folks to lock up their land for ten or twenty or whatever many years. So what are they doing? I mean, they're they're growing crops on that land and yeah, exactly, so they're tilling it and growing something and getting a bail up from Congress. So what we want to try to do is really try to reincentivize that, you know, the Farm Bill program, and have a much more honest effort to get it implemented. And I think the Trump administration has been a mixed bag. A lot of conservation areas good on things like Great American Outdoors Act, good on migration corvers, but they have been really bad in terms of conservation on private lands through the Farm Bill. What is it? What give me an argument against the Farm Bill? Like, well, what do they not like about the Farm Bill? It costs a lot of money. Yeah, but we have subsidies that cost a lot of money. Oh yeah, No, I know. It ties the farmer's hands. It requires more effort to implement. It's it's easier to write somebody a check and send it out there. And if you have a Department of Agriculture or Office of Management or budget that doesn't really care about conservation, it's not going to prioritize this. And you know, plus you look at a program like the you know, conservation Reserve program. It's in the Farm Service Agency and not in the National Resource Conservation Service, and our c S wakes up every day thinking about conservation Farm Services f S A does not. So again, it's not a high priority for the agency that administers it. Not a high priority for Sunny Purdue, not a high priority for you know, Nick mulvanny and omb. So you know, it's a perfect storm of you know, just it's just not getting implemented. How has it? This is like a horrible generalization, But let's say I went out and found a random sampling. I somehow pulled a random sampling of a hundred farmers, uh, and I put to them, hey, what do you all think of the farm bill, And what do y'all think of the CRP program? What am I going to hear back? Uh, you're probably the next bag. I think a lot of them really like it because it provides seuple been an income for areas that they may not want a farm, or made me recognize that it's great to have pheasants on there too, And then they could do a you know, walk in program and have extra money from hunting on their property also. So I think the ones that have done it, I mean again, I think that if they were to do another enrollment and offer better incentives, you see widespread interests for you know, big sign ups. If you know it you started, Yeah, broody? How how do you think how farming has changed plays a role here? Like you have a lot more gigantic commercial fence defense farms that like there's not a tree anywhere, there's not a fallow field anywhere, and you've got a lot less small farms that traditionally had brush or fallow fields or shelter belts or whatever. Like. Are those big giant commercial farms just less interested in being involved with this? Absolutely? And I think that when you had the you know, the old time you know, small farmer or even you know, the low person who lived on the land and cared about it and took real pride in it. You know, that's very different than you know, when you basically contracted out for somebody just to maximize profit of it. And I think that's part of what we're seeing. Um So, no, I think that's part of it. At the same time, you know, technology is you know, with precision agriculture things like that, you can be a lot smarter about how you farm. You can target areas that you may be more productive for you to grow soybeans or corn, and you know, protect other areas that are much better use being in a CRP land. So to simplify the issue, it's an issue of funding because the funding is there, funding just is not being used. Okay, so, but why wouldn't they offer more incentive through making the price super high, like making it so they should advantageous were we were landing that that's what we want to have happened, and that's what's happened in the past. But if the farmer for whatever reason, is not not being offered very much money, not being offered the incentive to get into it, and again Congress has made this money help let's sitting out there, it's just not being offered by the Department of Agriculture to the farmers. So that's about question where's the where's the stop point for that price tag? Like who decides how much money is going per acre to those farmers because if if it was financially advantagious, they would do it. Yeah, obviously that various depending on where you are, because you know, one price doesn't fit all because different for you. So there there are very local mechanisms to set those prices. But basically, you know, we want to have a program that is robust enough that folks want to get into it and they're willing to put decent land into it, not a bunch of just marginal habitat that can't grow anything. So, you know, that's been one of my real frustrations is you know, just that the implementation of the farm bill, because the last farm Bill was really good. I mean, it dedicated a lot of money six billion dollars annually to conservation. You know, it dedicated more money to conservation than it did to basically traditional farm programs. And so we we love that, and there's still a lot of really good programs in the Farm bill, but it just needs to have, you know, a much stronger orientation towards the implementation and making it work. Okay, what's the what's the ACE Act? So that's the Yeah, this is an act that was passed, you know, this past year, the American Conservation Enhancement Act, huge win. It had I think six or seven different individual bills underneath it. Again the idea that Congress passes big bills to have a lot of little components in it. It reauthorized in North American Wetland Conservation Act, reauthorized, National Fisher Wildlife Foundation authorized for the first time, National Fish Habitat Partnership Act, which has been around administratively for a while but had never been codified by Congress. Great Lakes program, Chest Peak Bay program, all really good you know, on the ground conservation programs. Who do we have to thank for? That was that bipartisan? Yep, very by partisan. It passed. I can't remember the exact vote counts, but overwhelmingly, you know, not close. Martin Heinrich, who you know, you know, worked really hard on that variety of others, but no, it was you It was very bipartisan. Very few people opposed it. It was again a place where they could come together. When when when you're doing something like that and it is a bunch of stuff rolled together, is there a lot of in fighting about trying to keep crazy stuff out that's just gonna want to that's going to turn people off. Yeah, And that's one of the strategies of the folks that are anti conservation. They'll try to get poison pills added just to things too. It kills the whole bill. So that is part of you know, the the art and science managing these bills when they're on the you know, the floor or you know, in committee and the Congress, they're in Senator of the House, is you know, just keeping that silly stuff out of there and keeping the poison pills away. I mean, you know right, you know, there was a lot of folks who wanted to see great lakes, you know, wolf delisting on that bill. It was just but it was you know, and we we were one of them, but it was one of those things that could potentially derail that bill because of the vehemence of the opposition from some folks. So you're put in a position where you gotta keep it clean in order just to get the win. Yeah, listen, we would love to see a bunch of other stuff in there, but we'll take the good instead of the perfect. Yeah you said, you said anti conservationists or anti conservation with it being so bipartisan, who is this? I mean there are fringe elements. Uh you know that. You know, I don't like public lands. I mean we've talked about them. They rail against them all the time. Who think that any money that's going to you know, conservation, Yeah, there is a waste of money. Yeah. So it's a different orientation and they've sort of you know, you can do a little you know, Google research and figre out who we're talking about. But yeah, there's a handful of members who just don't like this stuff and always fight against it. But they wouldn't describe themselves. Oh no, of course not. How do they describe themselves that just like just unfettered, frugal, you know, get the government out of this stuff. Government shouldn't be involved with this. Yeah. Yeah, So they either use the libertarian coach or the you know, the definite hawk approach when it suits their purposes. But they don't say I hate animals. No, No, Uh, they may say I hate public lands. Oh no, I don't know that, but that that's getting like less and less tenable all the time. Though, man, you gotta yes, yes, it is thankfully so hippy with uh we have, as in the lost column environmental rollbacks. Walk that through a little bit like like well, I mean, let's talk about the Clean Water Act. So, you know, clean Water Act obviously, it was a product of the early nineteen seventies after we saw the Cuyahoga River cash on fire, and it is, you know, fundamentally changed water quality in this country to the point where the majority of our waters are now fishable, swimmable, maybe not drinkable, but you know, still it's you know, done an amazing job of cleaning your stuff up. Now, the controversy has been to a large aread, not what comes out of a tail pipe someplace or a sewer hype from a factory into a river. The issue is much more evolved into you know, say, open space and what is covered and what is not covered by the Clean Water Act. And there were two rulings by the Supreme Court back in the two thousand's, two thousand and four and two thousand seven. I believe that basically you know, said Congress, you have needs to define what is and what is not included in the Clean Water Act. Is a farm pond included? Is the irrigation ditch included? Is an ephemeral stream or you know, isolated wetland included? And so it basically told Congress to do that. Congress never took it up, is you know, it's too controversial. So you've had ministrations ever since defining it themselves. The Obama administration, we thought, did a very good job with the Waters of the United States, which defined what was included in that in the overall navigable rivers standards. So you know, a heart strict reading of the Clean Water Acts as a navigate river is something you can actually you know, flow the boat down. A much more scientific based reading the statute is there are a lot of little streams that impact or wetlands impact that navigable water directly that need to be included, because you know, that's not the way river's work is just protecting it and not any of the tributaries. So the administration set out a complex rulemaking process that basically laid out what was and what is not included. It eliminated you know, any sort of coverage for things like farm ponds, irrigation ditches, conventional agricultural practices, things like that. But it did protect headwater streams, wetlands, and even some isolated wetlands when there was a scientific justification. So incomes the Trump administration and proceeds to basically undo that, eliminates all the protections for headwater streams and isolated wetlands. So essentially decreased by fift The wetlands that are covered are protected by the Clean Water Act and probably decreased by maybe a quarter. You know, the stream miles are protected. And the rationale there is that. I mean, it basically come down to job creation and industry right like making sure. I mean that's not what that was some of the arguments they use and the heavy hand of government, and they always trot out a few horror stories where there was indeed, you know, federal overreach and some port you know, dude that's just trying to build a farm shed or something, you know, gets blocked by some evil person of the e p A. So you know, I mean there's you know, there have been abuses, no question, but it also argues for let's better define what is what is not included and our ideas, let's not define it so that you know, half the wetlands in this country are no longer protected. And it's really you know, they trot the farmers out as the main you know, sort of victims and an overly robust Clean Water Act. Honestly, the way that the vulnerable is written, it was eliminated, you know, basically, it's not you know, if you have normal farm practices, farm ponds, irrigation ditches, those are not included in Clean Water Act. Everyone knows that. But it's a lot easier trott a farmer out there and say, you know, you're trying to story my livelihood than a real estate developer out there who says you're going to block him, I being a mini mall that I want to put in. Yeah, you do you feel that they could have had a better way of fixing the problems. Congress needs to deal with us. So we have a situation now because Congress won't deal with this. You know, you have different administrations are to keep your genuflecting back and forth and pendulum is gonna back and forth. And if you're a developer, if you're a landowner, if you're a farmer. You're never gonna have any source of certainty about what is and what is not covered. And listen, I have I completely agree with that uncertainty is a terrible thing. And we've been arguing that Congress, you know, Republicans, Democrats get together and decide what is covered and do it, you know, statutorially, so that we don't have an administration just swinging back and forth that we attacked by the of course all the time. Uh. The lost column c w D as well, uh continues to spread no real consensus from the sportsman community. Well, I mean I think y'all listen, I mean, there are some people that you pretend it's not out there. They're gonna be you know, the science deniers, but the majority of folks recognize it as a threat. I don't think anyone pretends it's not out there, all right. Maybe they just they just say it doesn't matter, It doesn't matter. It's never going to jump to humans, you know whatever. You're not gonna see population impacts unless you replace like Wisconsin, we're seeing population impacts. So you know, I think that you know, prudence would dictate that we get on top of this, and uh, you know, we got five million dollars appropriate to last year to go out to the States to kick up surveillance and tests. Just peanuts, I mean, that's just peanuts. So we had fifteen million in the House bill that you know, the Senate cut down to five and you know, I was piste, but five is better than zero, which just was before that. Yeah, but it's it's a joke. Yeah, it's a joke. But you know, a Department Agriculture, you know, drags his feet and getting the money out the door and then only gets to you about two and a half million out to the States, and the other is used for indemnity payments for captive farms, is used for genetic research and how he might be able to modify white tail deer and make him live longer it will c w D, and is for administrative services you know, which nobody knows what that is. But basically just they paid for themselves. So you know, even of that piddling amount we got through Congress, only half of that actually made it out to the States, you know, to expand surveillance and testing. So it's just you know, there is you know, the you know that basically Department Agriculture has done a terrible job in terms of getting on top of this. Now I give Interior some credit because they've been pretty vocal about this, and we managed to get in the ACE Act that I talked about, establishment by law of an inter agency Chronic Wasting Disease Task Force, So Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, you know, probably some other agencies to all get together and figure out how we're going to stop the spread of this thing. Is it ation was gonna be? What needs to happen with in your opinion, I mean, do we need Like if we had all the money in the world, what would we do. First of all, you you have to get control of the captive deer industry, which continues to be the biggest spread of this, even though they want to admit that. But any time you put you know, live deer in the back of a truck and you drive them around the country swapping genetics, you're moving disease, and so I would are. And also we have to understand that the aphists the Department of Agriculture, you know, their herd Certification program, which is supposed to sort of give you a stamp good housekeeping seal of approval. If you have a you're applying by a certain standards, you're CWD free and you're a good operator. It's been a joke. I mean, you know, the keeps popping up in the certified low risk herds and it gives I think producers, you know, a false sense of security. It gives regulators false sense of security. So what I would recommend is that there'd be a moratorium and any sort of interstate movement alive dear period until we can get a decent heard certification program out there that we know actually works. I don't trust the Department Agriculture to do that. You need some sort of third party national Academy and Science is something like that to look at it and make some recommendations as to how that can be reformed so that this industry is part of solution, not part of the problem. Now, what's this already in a wild herd like like it is widespread across North America? Does that not even though we know it came from this captive wildlife? Does that not? Listen, hunters have an issue problem here too. I mean, you know, and I think you're bood of seeing a lot of the states have put in you know, these prohibitions and moving carcasses across state lines, and that's a good step. Yeah, Yanni, you did that video for us last year and show people how they can bone out a deer. It's still on our website. Yeah, so that you have the tools, you know too, if you're a hunter to not be part of that problem. You can have your deer tested. Um. You know. But you know, especially during the pandemic and the government you know sort of you know fund in crisis that state and local garments had been under, you've seen a real decrease in testing and surveillance at the state level, and you know, every single state agency has got a hiring freeze on. You know, they had to redeploy resources to other areas. You know, things like surveillance and testing, you know, have become a lower priority. So you're not hearing about as much right now because there's less testing going on than there has been in the past. So you know, yeah, we need to do more surveillance and testing. We hunters have responsibility to be and if state agency says, hey, go out and shoot a bunch of animals in this area and knocked the population down, do it I mean they're trying to make sure that you have your good hunting for years to come. Stay like Illinois, which took it seriously and hunters were part of solution and went out and they whacked a lot of deer in areas where it came in. They kept at background levels, whereas Wisconsin didn't take that approach, and it's fift prevalence in a bunch of the state. Yeah, I can't believe that now. Man like uh Doug Dern, he talks about areas on there were guys on certain farms that he knows about where they're you know, they're getting their dear tests that there that their families are hunting on their farms and they're running some of these guys seventy of the deer their families are getting our CW depositive. Yeah, I mean, it's Wisconsin's ground. It's ground zero, man, ground zero. Absolutely, It's like the few, the future is. The future is now in that place, man, yep. And no no other state out there wants to be like Wisconsin. So give them the resources. You know they can't that they need to not be that state. All right, Let's let's let's end on a win. Um with. Tell people to Manhattan men Haydan Manhattan man Hayden. It's also called bunker or pogy depending on where you are, especially the bottom of the food chain. Uh. In the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, everything eats you know, striped bass, you know, red fish, eagles, whales, I mean, you name it. They eat it because it's a nasty, little oily ish Uh, it looks like it. Maybe a shad is probably the closest thing I think about. Oh, you know they the big one will be like fourteen inches long, some fifteen yeah, yeah. And they're filter feeders, so they have an environmental function too. So in a place like the chest Week Bay which has chronic water quality problems and as a breeding ground for man haitan, I mean more manhitan, you having there, the better water quality you're gonna have. Yeah, same thing with oysters. But anyway, we have, you know, never done a good job managing forage fish, the base of the food chain. We manage them like we've done everything else, which is, you know how many fish can you kill before you crash the species? Instead of what does the ecosystem need? And based on that, you know, how many fish should can you kill them? And when I say, you know, it's not like everybody get out there killing them. There is one industry on the East Coast, and that's place called Omega Protein that catches these things and giant purse sayings, grinds them up, turns them into basically fish food for aquaculture salmon, you know in Canada. Huh so yeah, so anyway they're using those fish to feed farm fish. Oh yeah, yeah, so I thought there was I thought there was a pet food component to this. Yeah, there might be. Yeah, but that's the reason that Cook You Cook Industries bought Omega Protein. Cook is the big aquaculture operation up there, and obviously it's part of vertical integration. So if you buy, you know, the company that makes your food, you're gonna be more profitable. So so what we finally got to do is, you know, the Atlanta States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates basically the non federal waters in anything three miles and in up and down the East Coast for migratory fish including men haden, striped bass, blue fish, weak fish. You know, they finally changed the way you know, they manage it to move from single species management ecosystem management, and they adopted that unanimously this summer, and then in the fall they came together and you know, basically did the first catch Lin's based on the new model and reduced the man haden harvest by ten Now, their science show that should have been reduced by eighteen, but at least ten percent to step in the right direction. So I say that's a win because you've had a basically a fundamental sea change of how we managed the bottom of the food chain, which helps every predator out there. Uh well, that ten percent allow the fish to start to recover your thing. Oh yeah, and we're already seeing they had a reduction a few years ago. We're already seeing more menhdan out there we have before me. I've got a guy who works for us, you know, in Long Island, and he was saying there, at some points this summer there were schools that ran basically from Montalk all the way down to Fire Island, And for those of these who are familiar Long Island geography, that's a long way. And you had everything in their feeding on the whales, blue fin, tuna, you know, stripe, bask galore. And so we're already see starting to see him come back. And but they're saying right now that the current Manhaden harvest reduced the stripe bass populations by about that's right. Bass is the number one recreational you know fish in the country salt water. And there's gonna be some science coming out of the Gulf of Mexico where we have even a bigger industry. Menhadan industry and two players, you know, Daybrook is the South African company, and Cook which is the Canadian company. And the resource is going to come out of the University of Florida. It's already out there in draft is showing that there's about a fifty percent production in you know, redfish and sea trout due to the current Manhaden harvest down there. There's also some meaning meaning that there's these researchers are saying that the due to this Manhaydan harvest. Yeah, they're seeing a like in our own lifetimes. Oh yeah, no there, if you didn't have that harvest, you'd have more redfish and sea trout than you do now. And this industry is growing substantially. They're planning on growing another fift pent and there's anecdote of information out there too. That tarpen or directly impacted by this harvest too, because tarpin will follow them at hayding around. That's a that's a tasty meal for a tarpan. Huh. So these guys, these these commercial harvesters, like these industrial harvesters, they might be um seeing some reductions in their harvest quotas coming up in the Gulf too, maybe, But the Gulf is a while west out there. You know, it is a bigger industry. You've got two players. There are no catch limits in place. There's a voluntary agreement. There are no hard catch limits in place. Unlike in the Atlantic, where the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission actually has legislative authority to manage it, Golf States Marine Fisheries Commission doesn't. So there's not even a mechanism right now for them to reduce harvests and mandate mandated. Another issue is the pogey boats in the Gulf. Yeah, there are more and more conflicts with recreational anglers because they will come right in on the you know, the beaches and catching them. It doesn't matter if you're in there, catch you fishing for them. They will come in there and push you off and you know, hit that school, and they're also tearing up a lot of the barrier islands we've been working on restoring down there after Katrina, So they're causing environmental damage there. You know, direct conflicts, recreational anglers, and there's the direct conflict, the direct impacts on sport fish throughout the Gulf. This was in the wind column. Well, the Atlantic is in the Gulf. Were haven't even gotten started there. I mean, that's gonna be the next frontier. We're gonna get engaged. We're gonna go down there. We're gonna try to get common sense regulations and listen, you can still have a big reduction industry down there. It is a really fertile you know, Gulf of Mexico and you can eat, but you ought to stop the industry where it is now at a minimum. Don't let it grow another fift you know, push him off the beaches where we have all the conflicts and recreational anglers. So there are things you can do that, honestly, I think in the end would work for everybody. But you know, the status quo is not sustainable long term. So it's like when part one. Yeah, so like at the end, of the first Star Wars. They blow up the thing, but then all of a sudden, you got the Empire strikes back. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Coincidentally, I just got an email with like a half dozen beautiful pictures of a humpback feeding on men Hayden off a cape lookout in North Carolina. This is a I'm no fish bologist, but I was gonna say it sounds to me like the whales are part of the problem here. Oh honestly, people care, I mean, the general public and large care is a lot more about the whales. They do about right, So there there there are of It sounds to me like we need less whales. We want more man Hayden, we want more whales. Okay, I got it backwards, I got I understand that. All right, Well, what one last thing? We got time for one last thing? Yeah? Can you can you? Uh all right? Are you ready to I thought you forgot all about my book report? No, man, what we gotta here? Yeah? His book report? Man, he threw mine into the first and I was just like, jump, well, because we're trying to um it's hard to explain. I didn't know how long we need for wit we got Joanni's gonna Johnny's gonna redeem this sec Well, here's the thing. Here's the thing is, I didn't know how long I was gonna take for wit we got through the list. I had wrote a scathing email to Yanni about his not telling me whether or not he was prepared to deliver, and so then for me to not get to it would lead him to think that he could do a bad job and not even get caught. You know, I've actually got two of them stacked up that we've talked about doing prior and haven't gotten to him. So we we have some already ready for the next time. It's chef's choice. So you can do whatever a little, you can do whatever book report you want. Well, now I'm gonna do the one that I worked on today because it's fresh in my head for sure. Report all right, this story. Interestingly, I think to me, when I pulled up the map that was associated with this story, I immediately saw I'm like, yeah, that's why that's why I thought you'd be good at this, because it's like a little bit close to home. Yeah, totally, no little if if If regal Avia, so you know where because everybody knows where regal Avia is. If that was the center of the clock, this story takes place about um, five miles northwest, no, sorry, seven miles northwest ten o'clock from the Senate from the center of the clock. Um. In my opinion, it's a high likelihood that I probably share blood with some of the same hunters that left these artifacts I'm gonna talk about in this story. UM. Yeah, I might as well be doing a biography of my family here. I wrote that today. Um yeah. It's like I'm your new Eastern Northern European correspondent here for Meat Eater, So you have to keep coming up with stories that I can do reports on from the zone of the world. All right. The it's a net Geo article titled six thousand years of arrows emerge from melting Norwegian ice patch. Love it? Yeah, interesting enough. Um. The first artifact that was found here was a three thousand, three hundred year old shoe that was found in two thousand six. That's kind of what tipped everybody off to like ice patch archaeology, right, Like, wasn't a thing I guess up until then, Right, and somebody finds a shoe sticking out of this ice patch and they start paying attention, and they also start paying attention to ice patches all across the world because stuff that's been buried under this ice is now like because it's all melting at a pretty alarming rate. Everybody always says alarming rate. Yeah, I don't know if it's alarming or not. I mean, if you look back at history, there's been a lot of melts and freeze and thoughts. What is alarming, I'll point out, is that it might not be good for us to live on this planet if it containues down this path. Right. People always say, oh, poor mother Earth. I don't, I don't. I don't pity her at all. I think she can shrug her shoulders get rid of us, and she'll keep on spinning around the sun for quite some time. Um, it just might not work out so good for us. Hey, can you clarify that these aren't glaciers. I was just gonna point out that an ice patch is different from a glacier, which is basically a slow moving river of frozen ice. That's a glacier and ice ice patch is just a deposit of water which then freezes and forms, and it can grow bigger and smaller you know, depending on what average temperatures are doing. I didn't know that, but it doesn't move. Yeah, it sounds like normal ice to me. What was the shoe that came out of it? What was the man? There? Weren't any details about that shoe, um, but a couple of interesting things that they I mean, obviously we're interested in it more because of like these I think there was a total sixties some arrows that popped out of here, right, And they figured that at time they could look kind of because from radio carbon dating, so they could like date each arrow and they can say, oh, this, these ten arrows were here from two thousand years ago, and then these fifteen were from six thousand years ago, and they can radio carbon date the antlers and bones and other things that they found at this ice patch and sort of figure out how, you know, when the hunters were there, you know, how much they were dealing with or what were they doing with the animals, because they found times where there was a whole bunch of bones, uh and arrows, right, indicating that sort of like they're they're hunting, and they're there and they're killing stuff, right. But there's other times there's a whole bunch of bones but no arrows. And I don't know, this seems kind of a stretch and I don't know if it's the researchers is doing this assuming, but they're saying that, well, just at that time, it was just wolverines killing all these rain beer and stashing them, huh, which they do. It seems like there had to be a lot of wolverines right around there doing this in the same spot. Yeah, same spot, which I want to get to about the spot and ask you guys a question here in a second. But there's other times where the inverse was there, right, like a lot of arrows but no bones. And they just figured that at that time the humans were taking like literally using more of the animal or using all of it and taking it off the mountain where this because this ice patches at high elevation, right, so instead of maybe just taking some meat, that actually making bones antlers, and for for whatever reason, they were going to use it for you know, making things, trading, whatever it might be. But he also makes the assumption that because they found like a point that was made out of iron, there was a point that was made out of a sharpened muscle shell from a river like fifty miles away and then there was a stone point there. So the guy says, well, even though there uh technology changed, they still kept their same hunting techniques. And I'm like, yeah, and he's just saying technique as in because it's all in the same spot, right, And I don't think that that's necessarily like a technique. They were like hunting a zone that had animals, right, but like they're just returning to the same spot. It's like, I don't look at that as the same technique you're talking about that they were using archery equipment though, I mean, was that what he was referring to. They could have used something different maybe. Yeah, he said that honing techniques stayed the same even as the weapons that used evolved from stone and rivershell arrowheads to iron points. Yeah. I think that's him saying they just showed back up in the same spot year after over hundreds of year. Well, here's my question to you guys, the whole old site of it. If you were shooting old delta points, you go upen on a spot and you're shooting old delta points, then all of a sudden, like razorbacks come out and you start shooting razorbacks up in that same spot. Then a while later, mechanicals come out and you start shooting mechanicals up in that spot. And then like single bevels come out and you start shooting those up in that spot. Uh. I think that you could safely say that this dude's technique stayed the same, but his his ship kept changing around, his tools just changed. Okay, I don't know, all right, I'll take now why uh? Why do you think it's an ice patch on top of a mountain right in Norway? Like I'm going to cut you off of the gap. He had a food plot there? Well? What But that is the question why there? Why they're what drew the animals there? Do you know the answer? Yes? The saddle saddle? No? No, if there's ice there, there was water. There's a water hole when the climate was much dryer. Maybe any other gases us pass. I'll give you. I'll give you a tip. They were always hunting there in the summer calving area. Maybe, but that's not what this article said. Not at the research said oh they're avoiding bugs, yes, get away from there, and that we don't really get to apply that ambush speculative man oh, come on, they do. Now we know that you can in the summertime, you can go anywhere, and you know the high Arctic, and that's where you find them. We talk about that's what the dudes were I thought you meant that's what the dudes were doing. No, I totally agree, because when you go out in the in the mountains, the caribou in August are always laying up in a snow pile on top of a mountain. Mm hmm, okay, I mean they literally are laying in snow patches on the north side of peaks. I totally buy that this is a good book report. I was gonna give a bad grade when he kind of messed up that technique's part, But I don't know. I think you should read the story and decide for yourself, because I think he was kind of leading me to the wrong way. Um. So that's kind of the interesting stuff about the hunting. What the researchers sort of like their big takeaway, and that the takeaway from this article is that they're hoping that the ice patch would be like this perfect time machine, right where if something was like the last the thing that was the oldest, everybody thought would be buried the deepest or be at the center and most part of this ice patch, right, and then things that later in time would come in there would be sort of sort of the outer ends. But after this discovering them being a radio carbon date sixty plus arrows, they're finding out that's completely not not the case. And they're just guessing that underneath the surface because of melting and movement, that uh, it could be like like that the water melted a little bit and then and then a you know, little river, a little stream carried an arrow to yeah, and it's also getting torn up and mangled. And then if it's let's say, something like a light arrow shaft all of a sudden appeared on the surface, the wind could very easily blow it to the edge, right or blow it right off of it. Full jackets, full metal jackets are on the bottom. Yeah, they were expecting like a layer cake of arrow technology exactly what Just like alogists digging in the dirt, right, you're gonna expect the oldest stuff to be towards the bottom. How big? How big is this uh ice patch? Uh? Sixty acres? I believe I have a great way to visualize that because I grew up on a sixty acre lake, so it's just about the size. Just for you people at home listening, it's about the size of the lake where I grew up. I bet they'll find a bunch of your stuff there one day. You ought to drop a signed copy of the Wilderness Skills and Survival Book down there and like a ziplock bag. I'll tell you what, Man, there's a lot they will there's a lot of my stuff, like the bottle at Lake man Um. I'll close with this to them. It is melting at an alarming rate. Not so much because I don't think they're worried about the uh, you know, the planet melting and blowing up or whatever, but because they know that they only have today's technology and today's techniques to figure out what they're seeing and what to do with it, and it's all coming at them very rapidly, and they're just hoping that they can do the best they can, you know, in the moment. Yeah, I want to I want to throw a little archaeological archaeology anthropology tidbitten here. Um our, Our understandings and technologies change all the time, and there's this thing in modern day archaeology where they'll find some big camp. Right, Let's say this camp is, you know, an acre in size. They would be like, you know, you're tempted to go and dig the whole thing up right, see what it all is in there. But they're like, they know that just in ten years time, twenty years time, our questions are going to be different, our methods are going to be different. So they'll take a little chunk and do a little chunk now, knowing that they're leaving tons for future generations to go in and do what they need to do with it. The Folsom site which I talked about all the time, when they first dug the Folsom site, which is the ice Age kill site where some hunters killed some ice h bison. When they went in there first, they just wanted to find big bones and big projectile points, and they dug the whole damn thing. Later, when people started realizing that you could look at pollen counts to figure out what the climate was like, and that there was all these other food items to search for, and that you could you know, pursue all these different avenues of discovery, they had to go to those people's debris pile, so they had to go dig through all the garbage at the first are geologists left behind to try to see what they could discover. And it was like, imagine if those guys had just taken a little chunk and took a look, and then a hundred years later, other dudes they had a way different idea about how to go about it, had their little chunk to share. Um. So what these boys are saying is that, uh, that's not gonna work. It's all it's all happening right now. Yeah, coming coming right to the surface. Thank you Nie, you're olcome. That's a great little report. Uh and thank you with for coming on. Tell people how to find tr CP tr CP dot org, come on, love to have you involved. Yeah, Um, you can go in if you want to help tr CP. Tell them the tr CP slogan, the war cry guaranteeing all Americans quality places hunting fish. If you want to get on that train. You can make a donation to support TRCP, and there's other ways you can get involved. Um. So yeah, TRCP dot org. Find them, see what they're all about. You can find policy papers, um and kind of figure out where they stand on everything. Nothing happens in secret? Oh no, no, very transparent. Um, you can find it all out. You don't need to wonder what they really think about things, because it's just laid out there for you. It is public information. So thanks Witt, Thanks Brodi, jannest Clay take care of guys. Thanks guys, Thanks w
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