00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first light, Go farther, stay longer. All right, ladies and gentlemen, Yohny is gonna introduce everybody. Annie, Can I say what town we're near? Don't give a ship. We're here in southwest Michigan, at our buddy Matt's place on some turks, less than an hour from my dad, who I'm not going to see on this trip probably, but who appreciates good interest. And uh, we got what Fosburgh from TRC be Seth Morris, the flip flop Flesher Flesher, Ryan Callahan, oh cal four oh six on Instagram, and Steven Ronella speaking Instagram handles. I was wondering why Joe Surmelli from b Side Fishing, which is a great fishing show if you haven't seen it, just one episode so far. At there's two out right now, there will be two. There's two out probably by the time this thing there is, all four of them will be out Jersey fishing and what else. It's all stuff around Jersey sunny. Oh nice, nice, that's this season's theme. I've seen the new Jersey Turnpike a couple of times on the show. No, just driving on you just personally, that's all my experience. And did you love it? Um? I thought it was, you know, as far as infrastructure goes, it was a solid piece of work. You know the thing they have out east, Um, I want to get back to Joe sph Milli's instagram handled them out here. But the thing they have autise. You noticed those ones like that that have where there's a huge median, Yeah, with all the mature trees in the middle. Yeah, Like the medians so big you can't see, like if you're going whatever northbound, you can barely see the southbound traffic. When I was writing for Outside, I kept they never let me do it, I know. I kept being like, I want to do a story where I camping them there for a week and you have just someone just slow down on the highway, let me jump out and then and then backpack and camp down those long medians where no one can go because you can't even get out there. You'd find some weird stuff out there. Many. Yeah, that's a good idea, dude. I have seen turkeys out living in those, I was gonna say that no one's gonna get to him. Insurance companies must hate those things. From White Tailed Deer crossing back again, you see some of those, just like, there's no way anybody is messing around in there. I think there's dear living and dying and things, and they're owned by their their own by Department Transportation. State. Yeah, State. They never let me do that story. Uh Joe Uh Surmelli, it's like Joe Dot. It's like Joe Surmellie one thirty eight. Someone check fact check me. And I was saying, I don't know what the hell the one thirty eight is. It's based off a Misfits song. Like I saw two riddles at once. Because when we had the Nature's Metal Dude on, I was talking about Joe Surmelli, he's a metal guy, and I was saying, Joe SEMELI likes medal. He said, what kind of metal? I'm I don't know what Telly likes. Joe Dot smelly eight and it's from that Misfits tune I Want thirty eight, which I still don't know what the hell that means. But um ey, what does that mean? Anyway? That's why he's Joe dot Surmelli won three eight because the Misfits song one three eight, which if the Nature's Metal guy Rick is listening, he likes that song. Maybe it's a union thing like local Pipe Fitters one thirty eight. Yeah, it's gotta be a cow. Uh, guy wrote in lifelong Resident Wyoming, this is this is a propos This is a propos of of at the time of year being the spring, when um all good men and women hunt turkeys. Uh. I didn't know this about Wyoming. In Wyoming, you can still in the spring season shoot turkeys. Do you know this? In the spring season you can shoot turkeys with a rifle center center fire. Woo no, no, no room fire, no center fire. You can you can shoot turkeys in the spring with a center fire rifle. That changed the game. Huh. It should change the game. It should change the way I feel about I mean, and I wouldn't have changed the way I feel about getting my camis on and sitting next to my decoy, especially you're full strudder. Yeah, some dude a hundred yards away, there's one wind blows and that things starts moving. Yeah, or if coals out there eight yards away, I like think you'd know a live turkey from from a plastic one. But it takes all the fun out of it. Though. The best, the best, you know, the best part about Spring Coller hunt is the interaction to calling them in and yeah, for sure they have they have the game. In Wyoming, Gaming Fish has an open public comment period on these regulations. This guy's thinking that shotguns and you know, shotguns and archery tackle is appropriate. I'll take you an apocryphal ok ahead, Ni, I was just gonna say, have an opinion and why it is that way in Wyoming. I just think it's the wide open spaces like you're probably not hunting turkeys in like the classic turkey hunt country of the eastern United States. They're right hunt creek, valley, bottoms and yeah, just more open country where the same way that where we're sitting now in Michigan, you can't use a center high powered rifle to hunting deer. It's too dense, too many people and uh, you know, and Wyoming you can stretch it out a little bit. I'll tell you sort of comes out of Florida and you were here. I don't know if you remember this, but you might have been not here here but you were present on this trip where someone is explaining about when a sportsman's group in Florida wanted to UM address this issue. A turkey hunting group was worried about rifle use during spring turkey season for safety purposes. Like again, full camo there, flat ground, full camo decoys, jungle like have a tat landscape mimicking animal sounds. Right, you start hearing it on and you start realizing it seems like a way that there's a pathway towards someone getting shot. And they this This Turkey hunting group wanted to address UM what they thought was a real serious liability, which is being able to use rifles for spring turkey. They did not wanted to blow up into a UM firearms rights question. And they had gone through quite a bit of work too. Uh. They had gone through quite a bit of work to explain that the motivation is not a firearms restriction. This has nothing to do with ownership. This is like hunters advocating for other hunters than the spring season should be shotguns to reduce risk. And when it went for I don't know what ultimately happened, but when it went forward, it did not go the way they planned, and it very much became a UM it became like a gun rights question and not a turkey hunting questions. UM, I wonder if you can still now use rifles. And I don't know this. We heard the story a long time ago, and it might even have been what it had already gone on. But either way, I think that also it's like when when people have and I'm as guilty of his anybody not guilty. It's not that you need to be guilty of it. I have that tendency as much as anybody is. When you have the ability to do something and all of a sudden you can't, right, you kind of go like, well, what's up with that? Why is that a great question being? Um? In Montana? Right, you can't look like bear hunting in Montana. You know it's not a public safety issue. But you can't bait, you can't use dogs. People are quite okay with that. If you live in a state where you could use dogs and all a sudden you're not supposed to use dogs anymore, it encounters a lot friction. But if you're somewhere where something's always been a certain way, it just becomes easier to deal with and So if you're living, you know, in Wyoming, and you got a place and every year you get a turkey with your twenty meg and all sudden someone's like, no, no, now you can picture that. You would, oh for sure be a little miffed. Yeah, especially if I haven't shot anybody super safe, never had an issue, never even came close to having an issue. So why can't I sure I can see other people, but not me? Very natural? This is a good question that came in about turkeys. Um. He was wondering. Let's say, let's say, uh, you had a pet turkey and you tethered him out in the field. Would that be a good decoy? Yeah, my Mike kids, buddy, their their family raises turkeys. I don't know what the hell kind. They're like Spanish blacks or something. Spanish. I wanna say, they don't have to be the right color. Dude, Well that's some bitch in Turkey. We went over there to get ours. I brought my boy over there with a little twenty two shorts to shoot turkey that we had they had gifted us. And I was startled, man, I was like, are you sure that sounds a regular wild? It looks like a wild turkey almost if you saw it coming through the woods, dude, you would I got nine out of ten people wouldn't be like, there's something wrong with that turkey. We had grown up, we had bronze and white turkeys, and man, they every every morning in the spring there was a flock of wild turkeys hanging out with them. Really yeah, yeah, yeah, this thing was surprised. I mean it was like different, but surprisingly it wasn't like you know, I went over there. I was expecting some big ass white turkey, I don't know, like something that looked like a Yeah, the bronze is one. It looks probably the closest, right, you know, it's like brown. Oh I can't remember that ordered one or we ordered a bunch. Actually, Jake's gonna take a few off my hands. But they're they're coming to my house, I believe in July or August. But when you're getting turkeys, yeah yeah, we're gonna eat some part and and then I'm gonna learn how to call better from these uh hands. I'm gonna keep some hands around. But another another reason I want to have them around is because yeah, they're gonna be making some noise all the time. And I hope to attract some wild turkeys. You probably attract grizzly bear here one of me to day that you might have you might have your your that might excite your BlackBerry Johnnie UM. Dr Michael Chamberlain turkey dock wild turkey dock on Instagram. UM. He says, if the bird acted in any way normal, it would be incredibly effective, which is why I don't you'll find a stay where it's legal, because I don't know that. But I'd be stunned if any states actually allow use to live decoys. He said that thing was. That type of thing was the outlawed decades ago around waterfowl hunting, and that used to be a practice put ducks. I wonder what an abnormal turkey acts like a peacock panicked. It would only be effective it was if it acted normal. If it acted panicked. Oh yeah, if it's like constantly like hunches close to the ground and looks over at shoulder and tries to run away. What I had, What I had a handful. I learned a new thing about turkeys, uh, because I think I was able to witness several times over the last couple of days. UM watching deer and turkeys coming uh in a food plot together. That if a deer freaks out and runs away like spooks and runs, jumps and runs whatever, the turkeys are like, they kind of lift their heads up, but I don't really care when that deer goes. Holy smokes man, it takes those turkeys ten minutes to put their heads back down, even if it's off, even if it's off in the distance. And I today watched I heard a dear blow. I watched nine hens all stick their heads up. And I watched two fox squirrels run to a tree, go up the tree and start chattering over a deer blowing close but a deer blowing. And it took those things, I'm like, definitely six minutes to stick their heads back down again. That's valuable observation. People bring up like what do animal you know? How do animals right? And I remember um Ah talking about pine squirrels that that that you know, you get irritate when you're el conning or whatever. Now a pine squirrel sees you, but then you realize that they're also doing it to elk. But then we had a squirrel. Researchers say that pine squirrels are usually doing that to pine squirrels, like, so, I think the animals they don't care at all when pine sus going. Everybody's like, the guy's always doing that. But man, the deer blow is an attention grabber. They they had these researches once took I don't know what the hell they look like, but a vervet monkey and know what that is? Verbt verbet monkey. Mhm. They went to this troop of monkeys and created a well, let me back up a little bit. They found that these monkeys have a variety of warning calls, and they have warning calls that are directed towards a threat on the ground, and they have warning calls that are used for a threat in the air, and there's they're different, and depending on what noise comes out, the animals will respond by clearing the ground or getting up against the trunk and looking up. They were able to record a specific vervet monkey doing his alarm call, and then they started playing it all the time to the troop until they blew that monkey's credibility and people quit paying attention to that monkey. He became the boy who cries wolf. Monkeys quit paying attention to that monkey. They blew his credibility by He's like, oh, there he is again, you know, but there's no problem. He's probably passed. Yeah, it's manipulative, man um. I noticed basically every time crows flew over the decoys, like low, they made a racket. It's like they flew over the food plot, saw that there's decoys and started calling aggressively. Oh, I thought you meant that the turkeys take note of No, the crows is just flying over. Like multiple times I noticed crows flying over silent and they flew over, hit the food plot like look down, saw the decoys and started making Uh. Aaron Warburton, the guy from the hunting public that I got to hunt within Georgia a few weeks back, he actually takes note and when continues to like keep an eye on the crows that are working the zone and if he's like, man, those crows or he'll be like, oh, gobbler gobbled earlier over there. And if you've noticed those crows have sort of been hanging around over there, they're pestering that turkey and the turkeys that the turkeys, they are with that turkey, Yeah, and like messing with him. M hmm um. That that is, you know, a documented deal with with big game as far as um. You know, scavenger birds alerting predators to large praise sources, especially in the winter, because they're they're going to get a reward if something dies. Um. But I would think that like crows ravens, they probably eat or you know, try to eat young turkey polt or locating nests here and there too. I'm sure there's a there's a real interaction there. You know. Another thing that I had never picked up on because I didn't have such a like such a controlled concentrated, high volume area to observe it, is that we use these turkey coys d S d S. David Smith decoys, and holy sh it, I mean a dude looks at they look at it, freaking turkey turkey looks at and they look like a turkey. So turkeys will come out. I was hunting with for new season with my boy. A turkey came out, A hand came out and bedded down to to preen herself between my strawer and my hand decoy and laid down in the grass and and groomed herself. That as awesome, very contentedly. Um. Last night I had seven hens out, seven real live turkey hens out in a field with my two decoys. Totally bought into it, like totally bought into it. Some deer, and again and again I saw his having deer come out, dear man, this they the minute they stepped clear of the brush, just like something's wrong with that turkey. Like whatever they see is like, like, what they see isn't what I mean, we all know it's not what we see. It's definitely isn't what a turkey sees. They see something and then and they're stomping their foot the minute they stick their nose out. They there's something about the sheen of it. I don't know what they are, not buying it, circling it, stomping at it, trying to get down wind that deer or leaving the oir deal come out and right with a deer and be like, don't like that. I would love to know what it is that they Yeah, direction at all, man. It's real freaking turkeys out there, all right. But your decoy doesn't have like a little funk to it from just rubbing against your head. Doesn't seem it seems visual, man, It seems like you know how like this whole thing that they you know, they don't see what we see, and we know that, and people always trying to tell you what they see, but you know, they don't see what we see. And there's something about the finish on it, the material on it. They see that and they're like yeah, or maybe it's like, you know, the stillness of them, the lack of movement, because I feel like a lot of times there's a real there's a real sort of sense of cure curiosity, like they kind of come towards it. They stumped their feet at it. You know, they do a lot of those sort of like hercuy jerky motions, like trying to see if like maybe when it puts its head away doesn't move, you know, and I think it makes them uneasy, how a little motion there is. Maybe maybe it's just that another thing I saw is certainly a dear decoy that's completely still emotionless. It fools a deer. Yeah, it might just be something about it's like body language or another thing. This is a small sample size. I can't say it's for sure yet, but this this is of interest, is that I was watching a fox squirrel today to fox girls that were perched up in trees and theyre was hanging around and when these turkeys came out, don't know what this, I don't know what it's. What does that planet? And up there? It's when are we um on the Why the hell the squirrels want to be out in there? Wheat seeds? Yeah, there might be. I was trying to watch him him by bnoctors. Whatever they're picking up so small you can't see it, but they're picking something up, you know, But for me to you, I can't tell the hell they're grabbing. It's probably seed or I noticed there was there was some maple trees that had the oh, they might be getting the spinners off. When the hens came out, the squirrel came out with them and basically fed underneath them. And where they went, he went, And he didn't go out there until they went out there. I don't know. Extra set eyes. And last night I was sneaking into that same spot and I could see some hens, So I stopped and waited for the hens to pass through. And as they passed through, I realized there's a scroll going behind them. It might be just him. It might be just him. I don't know. Lost his parents at a young age raised by turkeys. Yeah, um, I did. Uh another quick No, there's two turners in turkey. Know what. I'm sorry all people that turkeys drive people crazy. Apologies at the time, but I took my two kids. They're out there, Yanni, they are out They right into you. They are out there and they're sick of freaking turkeys. It'll end, it'll start back up again. Um. It took my two kids to for youth turkey season Wisconsin. So the state I live in, you have to be ten to hunt turkeys on anything, you have to be ten years old and then you Um, I think I'm mostly getting this right. Uh. Generally states have generally this is this is very much true. States have reduced or eliminated age barriers for hunting because they've gotten into States have gotten into these mentor hunting things. So for instance, when I was a little boy, you have to be fourteen to hunt deer with a gun, twelve to hunt deer with a bow. But you could jump right into doing it. It was like you could jump into not being able to do it at all, and then at twelve you could go out by yourself and hunt squirrels. So what a lot of states have done they've institute these these mentorship things. So in Montana, for instance, once your kids ten, they can hunt for two years without before they need to do hunter safety. So a kid can hunt for two years about doing hunter safety, but they have to be within arms reach of a mentor. And the mentor has to be a licensed hunter of a certain age twenty one years of age maybe has been licensed certain age thing license and good standing, and then they had to fill out they have to fill out a mentor form. So now my my boy who's ten, um, he was able to hunt deer with me last year. Um and you know his uncle signed up as his mentor too. Uh. Wisconsin has no age restrictions. Um, as long as your mentored. So I took my two kids, my eight year old daughter and my ten year old boy two uh Wisconsin because they could each hunt. So me and my buddy Doug were able to take those two out hunting and they each got their They each got their first turkey. My daughter got one. She had to shoot it twice, but yeah, a little bit of long story, but got one with a four ten with a red dot scope, which I think is a wonderful way to go for little kids. You think she's hooked very much. She asked Doug if she could hunt there again next year. That's great. She liked it a bunch, liked it a bunch, very cool, liked everything about it. But how they handle it getting up, they don't care, rose Mary to the other, that's cool. Yeah, they're good at getting up. Um long list of things that we're always adding to it. Things that will make Turkey's gobble. The guy was picking up his son from a play date. That's a word that used to not be around. What what was the substitution? I don't know. When you were a kid, you didn't go on a plate eight the hell did you do? You hung out with your buddy. But that's why I like, I resisted. Like in our household, I don't like my wife. Everybody used that. I don't. I don't. My kid even uses his dame. I don't use that word. You don't say, you know what we should do a range of play date? No, I say you're gonna go to your buddy's house, you'd be like, yeah, for a plate date? Anyways, picking up his kid. That word was never ever said until I don't recall it either. Yeah, I remember hearing a linguist. Um. I was listening to an NPR never interview the linguists and the linguists explaining what they do, like what kind of thing they work on. And they were and they said something interesting. They were giving something that they were interested in, and they were saying it wasn't that long ago. No waiter or waitress said, are you still working on that? But then there it was, and it was everywhere. How does that happen? Right right? Good question? And there's a lot of things in languages that are like that. You know, it's an interesting deal. Clean plate club. Do you guys ever say that in your households? Every night? Every night? So never, it's a strictly enforced club man. Never never heard it anywhere else, never heard it anywhere else. I'm working as a busser in high school in this Do you remember McKay is on the river? Right? I had a bunch of guns all over the place. Uh, restaurant that is no longer a restaurant in Missoula. Um, I'm working as a busser in there, and I'm, you know, bussing this guy's table and and he said, yeah, I didn't think i'd be able to get through it. But I remember the Clean Plate Club. That was the first time, and I was like, are we related? Where are you from? Yeah? Because you grew up knowing it, but you had never heard it. Yeah, right outside of the family, like you just like did not exist for whatever reason, never heard it. Yeah. Someways this feller picking up his kid from a plate just for you, you folks, at home, his kids playing with his buddy, and uh, he's gathered his kids bike to load it up into his truck and the kickstands scrape the concrete driveway lo and behold, Tom cuts out. So then he gets the family back out of the truck, has scraping against the pavement a whole bunch more eventually gets another goal added to the list. It's the list um in in the law. So yeah, this one, this one kills me, man, This kills me personally. We did a we did a piece about it. If you go to the meat eater dot com. Um Our our very own Sam Longren wrote up a piece on this. Uh New Mexico past a bill banning all trapping on public land, even live traps, even cage traps, public land, public land trapping is now done signing the law. Democratic Governor Grisham signing the law past thirty five to thirty four. Who all publics all? And you know what, here's the part of it gets me this, This is the part of this It becomes conversation worthy. The law was nicknamed Roxy's Law because in two thousand eighteen a dog was killed in an illegally set snare. So a person violating with a snare catches and kills a dog. The logical extension of that is to ban to make legal trapping illegal. The other part about this is law abding citizens. To penalize law abding citizens. Here's the other problem. New Mexico Fish and Game Commission had just enacted a bunch of new limits on trapping methods and equipment. Mandatory certification classes, prohibitions on trapping your population centers, prohibitions on trapping near trailheads. Never gave the rules, never even gave him a chance to take effect and see what the results would be. So in terms of all the things that are pursued, just just so people get a little bit understanding of this, I live near a links recovery zone, okay, and in our links recovery zone. You a trap that's big enough to catch the links, too big enough to hold and catch a links which is smaller than most dogs and more fragile than most dogs, has to be by law four ft off the ground over a certain size. Even if it is four ft off the ground, if it's big enough for a links, Again, it also has to be in and it's recommended to put it inside an enclosed box and over a certain size trap has to be in a recessed and closed box. There are a lot of things you can try um before you do that. And the other part of this draws into question is again and again, when you see trapping bands, it's all we's it's like dogs, dogs, dogs, And I don't understand if if people where does it become like how did it become that it's like a god given right to have your dog not leashed wherever you want to have a dog not leashed. Why isn't it that there's rules governing how you manage your dog in certain areas during certain times a year. Well, the rule is is your animal has to be under control, right, that doesn't mean a leash. But you know, like Janice's dog is born to run and run far beyond eyesight to follow his nose and do his job. But Janice has a serious investment around his neck in a GPS tracking caller and has got a tone on there, and uh, you can you can zap him till you can shock him right right, But now you just use the tone that says better come back or I'm gonna zapp here right um, and I would argue that that is in control now and will. There're of areas you do have to have them on a leash, most wilderness areas. There are some that have exceptions, but Solo's got a ticket once. So houndsman can't operate in a designated wilderness and some designated wilderness unless you wants to track on a leash. I don't know about that, because they might have a um exception for you know, dogs that are pursuing or you know hunting that must be man. Yeah, I've never never heard that rule. I mean there there's I'm sure there's like some sensitive areas like watershed areas and stuff like that where they worry about like the it's whatever, what's the one south of Vale there? Um, it's the Eagles Nest Wilderness? I think it is but yeah, I'm like seven eight miles back, not even on a trail, just kind of cruising along the hillside, kind of looking at benches and scouting for elk, And just got the dog with me and and walk into a meadow and there's a force or a stranger. He happened to be there because he was looking for UM dog owners, uh pasture ground for horses because they were in there doing some work on on bridges and stuff that they needed to bring in equipment, so they needed a spot to graze the horses. So that's what he was doing there. I was just cruising along scouting for elk. We got to talking and as I'm leaving, He's like, by the way, no way. Yeah, God, I've never heard of that in my life. Boy, that guy could make a serious living walking around the Bob Marshall Yeah, righting tickets. Um, well again, I don't think I think that it's per wilderness. Yeah, I'm sure it is. Uh Yeah. The other thing that bugs bugs me. Okay, so like, um, you have a bad actor and illegal trapper, do any illegal things that uh then gets this crazy enforcement brought down on all legal trappers. Makes no sense to me. Um public lands are for the most part by definition, not even I mean pretty much ubiquitous land of many uses zones. They're set aside for everybody, and that can be like everybody from miners to joggers, right like hard rock miners, not spandex miners or what am I saying, you drinkers miners? There you go, thank you? Um and uh God, there is an insane amount of public land in New Mexico. I looked it up. Don't have it in front of me, but it's over thirty million acres of public land in New Mexico. I'll give you the couple of reasons why this this tears me up inside. Uh. I'm gonna speak to a state that I know well, but just so people can begin to kind of understand. Um a little bit about some of the mechanisms, like some some of the tools at hand to mitigate conflict around trapping and dog stuff. We have setback rules um campgrounds, setback rules for roadways, setback rules for designated trails. Sometimes where you're go into an area and you can't find a place that falls if you've got to roll the switchbacks or a trail network to switch backs around, you can't find a place to get clean of the setbacks, meaning a setback meaning they'll they'll take a trail. You go into your rags and says like this trail network. You can't do anything within UM the either side of the trail. No setting anything UM a type of trap that used to get dogs, be like a big body grip and traps three conno bears uh in our state for instance, that thing has to be half somemer urged. You can't set it on dry ground. You take like cable restraints UM snares. They have things like the states can come in and mandate that has a relaxing lock, meaning that the lock doesn't get tighter tighter, tighter, tighter, has relaxed. Once it's closed, you put it has to have a deer stop on it, so it can only close to a certain diameter. UM. They have to have breakaway devices on them. Okay, like a certain poundage of of pressure breaks the thing away the relaxing thing to make it non leasal lethal states will put into things that the snare can't have anything around the circle that would allow it to become entangled, so that it becomes like really like a cable so it functions as an animal restraint. There are so many things you can do, UM, so many things you can do that that best practices that can be implemented. UM. It just seems to me like a wildly just a wildly reactionary thing. And I don't think it's about dogs. Because this dog, this roxy they got killed by the illegal snare, was killed near Santa Fe. I'll tell what kills dogs in Santa Fe's coyotes. Are these people anti coyote that kills a lot of dogs? Kyotes killed dogs in l A. Why don't they anti kyote? You're You're trapping knowledge is great for people who want to like care an iota enough to actually know about trapping. And then that's not the people that are banning trapping, like, it's not the people who know about trapping or want to know about trapping. UM. I guess my point with public land is I've hiked all over Hell and gone in New Mexico. I've never seen a trapper or a dog walker in any right. There's room enough for everybody. And if you want to be invested in the fact that we have public lands, you need to understand that those are set aside for everybody and man, there's a lot of things that I do not do that are totally legal on public land. And if you're doing those in a respectful manner, man, I'll go to bat for you. Now, Like there's there's a lot of land to go around and to outright band trapping just because you don't want to even understand it is just assinine and like all of your crazy crud. We could come after, right, your big biker, we can come after that. Ban that on all public land. Big you know, It's just it's it's like foundationally destabilizing to the public land. Ethos powerful dog lobby man, but even live traps kind of blows my mind. That's why it's like it's not God bless Roxy. Roxy is being used as a proxy. This is not about Roxy, No, it is not. That's a great I've heard plenty of stories of horses kicking dogs on the trail. Oh better need band horses and bank Um. I did think it was funny considering like especially you bring up Santa Fe. Santa Fe is a great town to walk around and do. Some people watch him the style, the distinctly Southwestern style. Um, you talking about ponytails. I'm talking about I'm talking about leather goods because we're talking about trapping. Uh. There's a decent amount of fur around that town too, which is hilarious. Uh. I think, yeah, you gotta find a new style Southwest if you want a band trapping, get rather all of your leather goods. House Bill one seventy two and Vermont Vermont House Bill one seventy two would ban all trapping other than the licensed wildlife control operator. Ban all trapping. Also band hunting bears with us the hounds can't you already can't bait in Vermont. So bas sically you'd go like, oh, it's no one should bill hunt bears, and you you roll those in together. Mm hm. Listen, man, people like I am a believer. I am a believer in the slippery slope. I think that the slope is there. I think that it's slippery. Oh absolutely, man, you know, I mean, you just start whittling, especially in these cases, right, you just start whittling away the group of people that participate in these activities and and give a ship enough about it to like go to bad for them if you were able to whoever it is that's behind us, Okay, and it's not wouldn't be hard to find out. I'm guessing h s u S almost certainly by the Maine study, United States is almost certainly like involved here. Um, if you could sneak into their bedroom and hear what they talk about in bed at night, it would be they're not even in bed over the phone with their colleagues. It's not like, oh, once we can get this bare hound thing taken care of, I'm gonna hang up my spurs, m the world will be perfect. Oh sleep, No, it's just like they're like, they have it in mind what they would like to end, and it's it's it's honey and fishing and into some extremes like pet ownership. Weirdly like they'd like to see that end. And then you look and you'd be like, what are the things we can accomplish right now? What are the things we accomplish right now? Anything to do with dogs is low hanging fruit with traps. If you're a pet owner and you support hs us Man, you need to pull your head out of your butt and and take another look at who you're sending your money to. Not anybody listening to this podcast is doing that. I don't know but I guarantee you there's folks in Vermont who aren't going to write in on the trapping bill. Right, It's like you you folks better know your representative as well. Yeah, what will Clay Knucolm say, guards gate Man? Is that what Clay Newcomb and say when something gets banished? Clay he was like he wants to hang a painting of it upside down on a ceiling. Its symbolic to him. I don't really understand it. All right. We've had a lot of people here's a great here's a great tool for folks, you folks at home. A lot of people written in, Uh, we're always a hobby of ours here at the Meat Eater podcast is explain all the weird ways in which you're not allowed to barter in trade wildlife and people. The minute you say, like you can't sell wild game, the obvious ques and I'm not I'm not dogging on people who ask this question, like like you can't sell venison, right, I can't. I can't go to my buddy's farm shoot a deer, shoot a wild deer, shoot a deer, butcher and then and then go down to the farmer's market and sell my dear meat, like, you can't very illegal to do it. You can't sell wild game um from from a food perspective, And so people bring up the really logical question, well, why can't you sell it's antlers? Why can't you sell taxdermy? Why can you sell his tanned hides? Like? How do you make sense of this whole thing? Um our our colleague Corey who if you write in if you write us an email, UM, and you wanted to get red, you got a butter up? I would address it to Corey and butter hm up a little bit. Corey, calculm's butter him up and your your your email get better handled. Uh. He found an interesting website. It's an online guide to selling taxidermy. Had to state sales and auctions. I think it's answer. It helps with some of the helps with some of the legalities. Here's a question if say, say I shoot a white tailed dough and you're like, I'll take care of that for you. I'll cut it up for you, but the it's gonna cost me eighty bucks for bags and tape or whatever. Is that like if I give you eighty dollars to do that just to cover materials you can do like you could. You could shoot the deer, give me the deer. I could take the deer you gave me down and pay for processing. You could shoot a deer and drop it off at the processor. I could go down and pay the processing and bring the whole thing home. But then I can't give you five don't I don't give you five bucks for the deer got. What would have happened if you said, here's what if you reimburse the state. You said, I'm gonna sell you the hide. Here's a here's a good one for a game ward, and someone right in you shoot it here. Okay, you get your dough and you're like, I'll sell you that deer hide for a hunter bucks and I'll fill the deer in free. Then what happens, Yeah, that's a good one. What if what if you're like, I'm like Steve, I want I want your deer that you got this year, and you said, yep, no problem. Are we role playing right now? But the tag costs me seventeen bucks? Right? You couldn't do that. In Alaska they have a lot of what's called proxy hunting um and it's an interesting system. Alaska has proxy hunting where the elderly individuals, say, can buy a tag, they could buy a deer tag or by give make you their proxy and you hunt on their behalf, but the deer goes to them. It's applicable in some areas and not applicable another like applicable around some hunts and not applicable brown others. You can proxy hunt my elderly neighbor really wanted a doll sheep this year? Right, Yeah, I don't think it's limited to very it's limited and I'm not a subject matter expert, but it's but the proxy hunting is limited to more kind of meat and potatoes kind of issues, you know. Yeah, I'm guessing it's a way to uh, you know, keep the subsistence lifestyle alive and well, so you hunt for others really wanted a ten foot plus brown bear? Yeahni. Now that you're reviewing a state sales dot org, are you just as you as you give it a cursory inspection? Are you buy in it or you feeling like it? Yeah? Yeah, most states are just it's just saying any taxidermy may be sold, you know, as long as it was obtained legally, etcetera. Etcetera. Uh, California now has quite a few paragraphs here, one giant paragraph. Alaska had some extra rules. Colorado everything besides bargal bladders, bighorn sheep, bigcorn sheep, capes, velvet antlers. Hmm. Connecticut everything besides endangered species. Yeah, it's all here a state sales dot org. A lot of black bear parts are out in some in some states. So there you go. People that need to dig in deep and have all kinds of crazy questions check that out. But I don't. I want to clarify we're not vouching for it. A lot of times you look at like the problem I found. You try to go to things as they give you a state by state roundups, and if you go like what are hunters orange laws in all the states? Right? The damn laws changed so fast and people don't go update the website. Absolutely. You gotta kind of go like you want to go to the source. Yeah. I would think if you want, if you really come down to brass tacks on some item on whether to buy it or sell it, I would contact probably US Fish and Wildlife. Here's good email. He poses this as of what would we do? Um, But I don't really, I don't really understand the U. Let me tell you the story. A bunch of guys are out jump shooting ducks on a neighbor's pond. Okay you with me? So yeah? And they have a dog. How do you say this dog? Yeah? Okay, they have a draw A lot of folks just referred to they have a drawer. They got to retrieve ducks. They sneak up on the little pond. A bunch of ducks jump up, A couple dozen jump they jump up bam by man bowie to get some ducks. The old man's yelling that he um, he got one too. Now the dog. Here's where the steer story gets weird. The dog goes out to retrieve the ducks. The dog gets all the ducks, and then he wants to make He does a triple check to make sure they're not missing anything. Nothing got away. As he's walking the edge of the pond to check around um because it seemed to be some uncertainty about who got what, the dog jumps abedded deer a yearly and sets to chasing. The dry fire sets the chasing the deer. He's yelling and screaming at the um dog and has a shot collar on it, but then checks his pockets, realizes that he left the controller in the truck. The deer jumps in the pond and start swimming. The dog is on top of it, fighting the deer, well killing the deer. But here's where the story gets weird. All of a sudden, the deer vanishes vanishes, and they're thinking, well, how could that be, Like, how does a deer like a deer can't sink or you know, they don't they seem to float kind of, they float near the surface. Um, they get so curious about his body, strips down, jumps in and swims down and dives down and realizes this pond is fifteen feet deep and you can't see squat down in there. Another guy jumps in and he these guys are free that he's a free diver. Another guy strips down and jumps in there and it's so cold he can't figure anything out. Comes back later with a scuba tank. They're divers, Abaloni divers and whatnot. Comes back later to scuba tank, goes down the bottom and there's the deer lion dead on the bottom of the pond. Uh ship, So they just had to know, because they didn't believe that the deer, like how it just just sunk so to pull backstraps out of it. Yeah, I was gonna say it be well preserved down there. And he wants to know, what would you do if your dog drowned a deer on your neighbor's farm Pondum, I don't know. I feel like I would think that it was if I drowned a deer in my neighbor's farm pond, I would have a conversation. I would have to have a conversation with the game warden. Yeah, but I'm guessing I don't know if if you remember a friend of mine, I don't wanna, you know, I don't want to. She's anguish enough about this. But a friend of mine was walking her dog on a very popular how you can Trail? Her dog killed the deer killed the pont very popular dog h I can trail? She was no reason they should all be on leash. She was devastated. Did it happen? But I don't know what your obligations are. Yeah, I kind of want to be like, I don't know. It's like the dog man, Well, for sure, but again, you're supposed to have your dog under control, and they're certainly not allowed to harass while life. And I think the killing wildlife constitutes harassment. Um so I think technically, yeah, you're probably you and your dog. You're responsible for your dogs, so you're in trouble for that. I would think, I mean, I'm no game warden. I would think that they would say, cal, I'm guessing this is one time thing for snort. You're not gonna let that happen anymore, and if it does, then you're gonna get a ticket. Yeah. I would imagine that there's gotta be some sort of harassment well you know, animal whatever. But I mean there's gotta be I mean, I know in the state of Montana it's it is legal to shoot ah dogs chasing deer. So there's gotta be some some way to get a ticket for it too. Do snapping turtles bite underwater? We're talking about that because it's like a it's a kind of like I grew up in snamp and turtle country, as many people do, and we mess with snapping turtles a lot and trapped for him and stuff, and it was it was said that, uh, they won't bite you underwater, and we my dad had a very good friend of alcohole, and he would look for snapping turtles by feeling blind under undercut banks, just feeling his hands till he felt the shell. Then he'd feel the shell and you could, you know how they have the points on the back of the shell. He would find he'd feel the shell and could tell by the points on it what way the turtles facing. And then he'd entify the back and he just reached under and grabbed the tail, and he said that turtles lay there the whole time. He'd get the tail and jack turtle back out. Uh never got bet No, I'll tell you a story, quick quick interjection. Um, I was checking my turtle traps one time and there was a turtle that the biggest snap turtle ever caught was had gotten the door of the trap messed up and couldn't get in, but it was trying so hard to get like poking around, and somehow he had like I used to make him out of like, uh, you know that hog wire with the rectangular yeah, and which is stout stuff. Yeah, And he had I don't know him or another turtle head. Somehow I got the door jacked up. Now that they know where the door is. They're just going everywhere and eventually it's a funnel and eventually poked their way in and they get caught. But he had gotten it jacked up where he couldn't get into it. The door was disabled. So I see the turtle the trap kind of like bouncing, shaking. It's is huge turtle. He was so intent on getting to the bait that I was able to paddle up in a canoe and grabbed him by the tail. And this turtle was so big. I'm not joking. I was in high school. Um, I could not get him into my canoe, try as I might, And I had the hole that's something bit by the tail with kind of the tail over the gun of the canoe and one handed paddle myself, one handed paddle myself to the bank, climb out and dragged that thing up and get the back of the truck. And I brought it to another commercial turtle guy and he said that was the biggest turtle he'd ever seen, the biggest snap turtle you'd ever seen? Nice, what did you weigh it? I didn't, I remember him saying, I don't want to say because it sounds ridiculous, But he bought it. He was a commercial guy and he bought the turtle from me. So, uh, what's funny about this? This person that rowed in, who's a fisheries there there, they're a fisheries technician um in North Carolina and they're doing the survey works for freshwater muscles. He says, a lot of times you're able to do your survey work visually, but sometimes you need to do it by feel or you're poking around. And he brings up an interesting observation that that's like I hadn't really thought about his true Like he talks about how a lot of clothes, clothing right winds up in streams, and he describes that look that it gets, you know what he when it gets full of sand, like any kind of fabric and stuff like land at the bottom of the stream. It gets full of sand. He said he has twice felt or poked what he thought was a clothing item, but it was that weird like you know that the snappers get that kind of moss that grows on him and it gets like that sandy feeling. And he said, you can do all manner. When he finds a turtle doing his survey work and that turtle thinks it's hidden. He said, you can do all manner of manipulation on that turtle, and a lot of times it's hard to get him to do anything. And when you get him do anything, they want to get away. He says, the minute you get that turtle out of the water, he's ready to fight. But he said, underwater fighting is not on his mind. He's like, I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna hide, I'm gonna get away. But you get them up out of the water and he's like, now I'm fighting. It's just so bizarre to me. The animal is designed to bite it under water, but just apparently not defensively. But when we talked about this before, I brought another thing that happened turtle trap is I had a turtle in the trap having a vicious battle with a turtle out of the trap, and they were definitely biting each other under water. So like territoriality, sure, eating, sure, But apparently when you're somebody gently caressing your carapace and feeling your points is not fighting. That's not worth fighting. They mean fighting words in the turn a World. Okay, with Fosburgh waiting patiently, what we're gonna do is one more one more thing to touch off on. We've talked about this too many times now. This is probably probably the last corneal dermoid thing. The corner. The corneal dermoid fixation began when some people started sending in pictures of Harry eyeballs Harry eyeball disease. It all happened where a buck got a Harry eyeball disease. Each hair, each eyeball turns into hair, put it on Instagram, and a guy sent into Kyle Olk. He killed with like big, long, like three inch hairs growing out of its eyes. The buck that got the corneal dermo dermoids eventually went blind and they had to euthanize it like a blindeer run around hair his eyeballs full of hair. A lot of guys are written in about this. Guy wrote in he had a golden retriever has corneal dermoids. He thought, for sure the doctor the dog would be like, you know, couldn't see, he had a feeling, couldn't seed and know what to do. Then you realized that they could track an airplane in the sky, and that's the first thing to eat him off. That despite it having these messed up eyes. Was still pick off, you know, well, so visually aware of what's going on. But this guy gets into the human element of it, and uh. The guy wrote in that there's a wildlife and fisheries guy at Clemson University, a student there. He has corneille dermoid's in his eye. You're born with it. His aren't harry, but they're white. He says he can still see good enough to hunt. He's especially sensitive delight. He was surprised to hear that affects deer. I was surprised to hear that affects folks. This other guy wrote in he had two boys and they're twins, and he said, the only way you could tell these two boys apart is one had a real point. He knows. They eventually bring him in. I don't know what happened they bring him in. He had a point, he knows because he had nase. He had a nasal dermoid, rec a fairly extensive surgery to remove it. It was in the tip of his nose, traveled up his naval cavity into his skull, real close to his brain. They removed this whole thing, and the surgeon said it was shaped like a barbell from having traveled up the nasal cavity, a bunch of hair growing out of it. Jeez, born with it. The surgeon said. They sometimes even have teeth mm hmm. And I remember, man, my brother had a girlfriend. Remember and I never really thought about this, he had a girlfriend. She was saying that they one time I had to have a surgery and they pulled out a little ball out of her. They head teeth on it. Yep. Yeah, never looked at her the same way again, nothing against it. God bless her, a little ball full of teeth inside of her. I really out your The guy had identical twins and the only way you could tell one from the other was the Harry eyeballs. I God, that's that's yeah. So they're pretty easy to tell apart. Then all right with Fosberg from TRC pe wit talk us through, give us like an update, d C update. Uh, Well, we're about a hundred days into a new administration. Which that's like a big that's like a big, big milestone. That's a milestone. Do you know where that comes from? I don't understand how that came to be a milestone. Just a nice round number. Yeah, I think right now, it's a round number as something has been used for many many, you know, presidencies in a row to sort of gauge initial for at step in priorities. So I think, you know it's but I don't know where it came from originally. Do you feel that a hundred days is fair just from your observations of home, because I mean it's it's really symbolism at this point. Is you know what you see what the administration's top priorities are. You will see the general reaction that that gets from the general public as well as from Congress. Uh, you know in Congress, you know again you have the top things tend to be the first things they deal with, the most important, the most visible, the highest priorities for whatever parties in power. So I think it's you know, the way we tend to look at it with administration is first hundred days, first year, and then four years, and you know, you can sort of break down any sort of set of priorities in those three buckets. And that's when we we did transition plans for both Biden as well as Trump too, and we laid out our priorities and all in those three sets when you do transition plans. I remember seeing transition plans because you have to draw up right, It's like when the Super Bowl, Right, they make T shirts for each win. Um, you have to drop up transition obviously, to be prepared no matter what's gonna happen. Yeah, we got them to the campaigns, you know, well before the election too. Or you send it to the camp Yeah, we send them both, send them to the campaigns to really lay out what we think our community's priorities are. But how different are the two letters. Oh, they're pretty different because you know, we're well, I mean a lot of its phraseology. I mean, we knew, for example, it was gonna be Trump to we weren't gonna lead with climate change. You know, we would talk about you know variety. We still talk about farm bill programs. We would talk about things that directly affect climate, but we certainly changed the way we phrase that. And we also think about you know, things like you know, the meat and potato, wildlife. Stuff like migration corridors would bubble up to like number one because you know, they started it. They have pride of ownership in it. You know, they can do things to expand it. So it's you know, I think, you know, and then you know there are certain things were just off the table, you know, with for example, the Trump too, that we knew it weren't going to be worth pushing for, and why I hit our heads against the wall about it. So we're gonna do things that we think we can achieve, and you know, so it was different, and we have this sort of a second term of continuing administration, it's not going to be as long. So for example, I think when we sent to the Trump team was like eighty pages or sixty page ages and the one that went to the Biden team was probably an additional thirty or forty page because you already had a bunch of You've already been laid for four years with the groundwork with dexistration. Yeah, so I want to get to where we're at now, but I want to talk a little bit about where we uh, a little bit about where we'd been. You mentioned that the Trump administration had a lot of ownership over the migration corridor, and Bernhardt was heavily and that actually came out Secretary Interior was very heavily, and that came out with Zincio was still you know, Secretary that was first dropped Secretary Order three three six two, which basically directed the Western states to identify their top three big game migration corridors and it limited it to elk, mule, deer, and pronghorn and uh then you know it directed the federal agencies to coordinate with the states to conserve those areas. I mean, it was a really good idea. They put some money behind it, National Fisher Wildie Foundation came in with some money for it, and it's the kind of thing that we wanted to make sure if it wasn't, you know, Trump, if Biden got elected, that they didn't immediately come in and just say, you know, Trump did, this must be But that's what that's what I'm wondering about. That's what I was gonna add that that exact question, are you do you do a lot of work to try to hand things off and be like, no matter how you feel about your predecessor, yeah, this was this is the right thing here. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean I think we would define success not by how far the pendulum swings each time, but by things are actually durable that you know, withstand changes in political wins. And I think migration corridors is you know, a classic example of that. You know, it makes sense on a number of different levels from you know, if you're a big game hunter, which was obviously a priority of the Trump administration, you know, something that's really important. If you're in favor of biodiversity and letting animals adapt to a change in climate, you've got to be supportive of this, you know. So it's again depends on how you look at it, but it's something that should not be a partisan improven it hasn't been. I mean Deb Holland and her confirmation hearings for Secretary of the Interior talked about how important it was. So I think that we've succeeded in that just making it sure that people didn't think it was a political issue, but it made sense regardless of administration. And there were certain things that Trump guys wanted to do they never got to do. They proposed adding wild sheep and moose to that and then got a bunch of blowback from agricultural producers, so took that off the table. Yeah, we'd love to see the order expanded to that. We'd like to see more money you know that could go to for example, private landowners who are really an important part of preserving migration corridors. How do you get them to make it in their interest as opposed to them being the burden of these animals that go through their property. For them to come in and in retrofit fences to you know, compensate them for the elk that come through and eat their crops, you know, things like that, but make them an important part of the solution. So I think that Trump guys, you know, it was a great idea, but they had just really gotten started on this and ideally it gets expanded and works even better, you know now that we're in the next four years. So with the first hundred days, uh about up or up? What? What's your what are your impressions? Is it just completely new set of priorities and you've got to kind of go in a different direction if you want to get anything done. Yeah, you know, I think that's it's not completely new set of priorities in some areas, and that's a good example of the corridors. But I think it's you know, a lot of the emphasis is going to be changed and as supposed to be making that scary, we want to make that an opportunity for example climate. Uh, you know, we have we've been working in the last couple of years to get our community and we've had forty two different groups and a letter to Congress saying, Congress, you need to engage in climate and part of the solution needs to be land and water side of it. Sequestration, resilience adaptation, which is all important for a climate in terms of sucking carbon out of the air, making our coastal communities more resilient, cleaning water, but it's also great for fishing, wildlife, and explain that. So the way we work as we're a partnership of we have sixty normal partners partners within the umbrella of TRSP, the Theatore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and you know, we're a coalition that willing, you know, so we don't force anybody to take a position on anything, but we lay out what we think makes some sense. And uh, we had about two years of working on climate and we put together this five page statement or six page statement that went to Congress that laid out our principles. We you know, created a website so the folks everyone can understand what it is we want and then you know, we asked groups to join on this, and forty one groups within the TRSP partnership joined on that letter that went to Congress and have their names and logos on the website which people can see at TRSP dot org. When you're doing something like that, I know we're straining a little bit from what we're talking about. When you're putting that together, are you finding that there are people who, uh, don't get back to you or they say like, don't put my name on that. There was there were some people that just you know, they didn't want to have discussion, and you know it just weren't really engaged a lot of others that they coming up from a very particular viewpoint. You know, if you're Pheasists forever, they really want to see this is a vehicle to expand the conservation reserve program. If you're Duck's Unlimited, you're gonna want to see it as a way to preserve more wellands, restore or walans. So every group comes to it with their own lens, and so the danger of any one of these is that becomes this unwieldy beast because every single priority is put in there, and the fact that it's only five and a half pages or whatever it was it went in. It was actually a triumph because we kept that into certain key areas and you know, I think we accommodated concerns. You know, any of the groups that were there. Now, other groups like you know, d you didn't sign it, but they they're doing their own. One Boone and Crockett didn't sign it, but they did their own as well. That it was. Honestly, it's stronger than the one we have, you know, so Nature Conservancy is a formal partner. They did their own. So the forty one signed with us, sent that letter to Congress. Those are the folks that just collaborate on this effort. It's not a full snapshot of everybody that's dealing with climate. And that doesn't mean that a third of those groups aren't interested. They might have been there. They have their own because they're handling for themselves. Yeah, so or they're just you know, they don't really see that in a wheelhouse like you know, a f l c i O is a formal partner of ours. You know, they're they're dealing with climate in a whole bunch of different ways. You know that, So this isn't something they were going to sign on too. But in terms of overall impressions of the first hundred days, I think, yeah, I think we're optimistic. I think that they have you know, pretty good people put in. I look it over at Partner of Agriculture, tom Ville Sack, you know, obviously it was Secretary of the Interior before Governor of Iowa, Senator from Iowa, you know, knows this stuff really well. He brought in Robert Bonnie to oversee you know, basically the Farm Service Agency RCS as well as the Forest Service. Robert is an old hand on this. He was on our board for a while, hardcore hunter fisherman, and you know, very pragmatic about how do we get these farm bill programs working better than they have. You know, we've lost a ton of acres out of c RP in the last four years just because you know, Sonny Perdu and the Trumpet Partner Agriculture, it wasn't a priority. They'd rather just sort of send people checks, you know, in response to the terrify fight with China, then actually ask them to do something with that money. Whereas you know, we want to see, you know, instead of just sending thirty billion dollars out to agricultural producers just to make them hold in a tough economic time. You know, I think things like Conservation Reserve program where they actually were doing something. They're setting aside marginal lands, they're improving it for a wild life, for water quality, and those are the things I think we think make a ton of sense. And I think we're gonna you know, the folks that Department Agriculture now will agree. So we already know that plans are underway to amend the current sign up for c RP to make it more lucrative. So you think that'll go down, that'll go down. We'll see, we'll see more, you know, a CRP program that makes more sense for farmers. Yeah, and then I think, you know, Robert and the team that the USDA are working on this right now, we don't know exactly what's going to look like, but they have recognized they have a real problem and they're expecting another If they don't do something, another to three million acros will move out of the program this year, so they have to do something. My first experience with was CRP, like really understanding what it what it is, was watching um the end of those first round rounds of contracts in in my like hunting lifetime and watching all this prairie and sagebrush get torn up in eastern Montana and seeing an immediate effect on antelope specifically, and just going from like more antelope and and truly like fewer hunters because people were so dispersed across eastern Montana. Um, it was like the good old days of antelope by far and away in it and it just man, it tanked and you could just see it. Yeah. Yeah, And this is the same story in Dakota's a pheasant. Uh, you know, duck populations ride different places. So I mean this c RP is a program that benefits you know, sportsmen in a variety of different ways. But I mean, you know, we see it as you know, if you want to deal with climate, and you want to if you think about climate and the overall solution to climate, you can stop emitting today. But to get ahead, you're gonna have to suck a bunch of carbon out of the atmosphere. In the best way to do that is through natural mechanisms like forests, and you know you're putting in cover crops instead of having bare ground over the winter. You have things like that that are if you go to eastern shore of Maryland cover crops, everybody doesn't. You go to Iowa, nobody doesn't. And so we just need to give create some incentives. It's not bad for the producers, it's just not the way they've been doing things. So given a cent of to do that sort of work, which is gonna suck out a certain amount of carbon overall about it, you know, they're saying about of the solution, are these natural things that naturally suck carbon out of the atmosphere. You know, we talk a lot about, you know, sort of the poor state of a lot of the national forests in the National Forest System that haven't been logged at our monoculture, their beetle infested, they're waiting to blow up and you know burn. And if we you know, if you're serious about deal a climate, you're gonna go in there and you're gonna do some selective harvest. You're gonna do some areas. You're gonna restore some of those areas that are pretty degraded now. And that's going to help wildlife and sportsmen because you'll start developing that mosaic of habitats that you really want. I mean, we have roadless, we have wilderness, but we also want to have areas that are actively managed. And you know that is far better, you know, than you know, a stagnant forest. I was with a group of other you know, conservation you know, CEO S and Louisiana, talking with a bunch of the private timberland folks and Dave Tenny, who runs the National Association of Forest Owners. You know, later statistic that managed forests, you know, private managed forests are seven times take out seven times more carbon than their counterparts on the national force. And uh and I would argue too that you know, they're probably better for if you want that mosaic of habitats and some oral accessional force, it's better for wildlife too. Now, nobody wants to return to the old days of spotted elves and clear cuts and salmon watersheds and all the rest. But there's a happy median in there some place. Well for sure. You know, a friend of mine in the Forest Service, he'd uh had a stretch of like seven years attempting to do a prescribe prescribe burning an area, you know, and it just like through you know, you gotta meet a lot of criteria to get a burn going. And um, it's even more more strict in the on the government side of things. So yeah, and it's just there's still a cottage industry out there are folks who just litigate any active management on national force. And you know that's we're gonna have to deal with that. We're gonna have to make a little bit easier to actually cut word to do prescribe burns. And obviously if you do a small prescribe burn, you're heading off that catastrophic burn that we see in California in other places. And this summer is gonna be bad, I mean moisture levels across the wester allowsy. So you know, we need to get on top of this. And Robert Bonnie at USCA understands that. And when we fix the fire funding fiasco at the Forest Service, when until I guess about five years ago, every time you know, there was a catastrophic wildfire fighting that came out of the forests versus core budget, Congress changed that to create an emergency account like we do for all other natural disasters tornadoes, hurricanes, and you know, because you know that change has been made it gives the Forest Service about a half million, half billion dollars annually in additional revenue is to actually go and do habitat management for wildlife, for fire prevention, to remove invasive ecs. So, you know, part of the challenge that Robert is gonna be facing now at U. S t A Is getting that up to speed, getting that money on the ground, which is that it sounds like a big number, but is it that that's like they can do a lot with that. They can do a lot with that. Yeah, and there's and it's not that you know, they know it all goes out to commercial sale. I mean, the Turkey Federation and you know Mule Deer Foundation have doing stewardship contracting where they actually go in and do the work. You know, they got some money to do it, but it's not the forester is doing this stuff. So you know, Turkey Federation has done remarkable projects around the country using the Stewardship Contracting authority to go in and improve habitat. Yeah. So I think there are different models of how you can do it, but I think there's a general consensus on the science community is certainly and the sportsmen's community that you know, we need more active management a lot of places, and that dovetails perfectly with clinton solution. I know you don't speak for them at all, but takes take a group like National Wild Turkey Federation. Have they are they articulating specifically a desire to address climate Yes, they hadn't before. And it's because it pisses people off. Man. Yeah, I mean it's the word has been so politicized and you know, people just retreating to their camps. And you know, Becky Humphreys, who's I think, you know, terrific CEO. And she's on my board with you, Steve. I mean, she's you know, understands us. She comes from a science background, and she's not going to talk to a membership about climate solu. She's just gonna talk about active management. She's going to talk about, you know, doubling the size of the conservation programs in the Farm Bill, which is what we're calling for in our statement to Congress. So instead of six billion dollars a year in conservation, kicked that up somewhere around twelve billion. And that's not all c r P, it's you know, the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, it's equip it's a bunch of other good stuff that the farm bill does, you know, whatever makes the most sentence in a given region. But we want more land in conservation and less land, you know, being especially in marginal habitats being converted to row crops. Yeah, you can tell a real good story about what natural prairie grasses do or native prairie grasses do. For poulse Right, you grow a lot of birds well, and then if you know, you do a soil segment on those you look how deep those roots are in native grasses versus introduced grasses, and you know that's where all that carbon is is going down in those deep root systems. You look at soil carbon maps the US. The most important area is that prairie pothole region. There is a ton of carbon in those soils and every time they get plowed up, that's getting released. So we ought to be restoring the areas we've already trashed as well as protecting the rest of that prairie pothole region. And if you care about climate, and if you care about natural infrastructure, down water, downstream water quality, you want to protect those areas. So move over from in terms of the Hunter day picture and who they've gotten placed from the Department of Agriculture to Interior. It's like, what are your what are your sort of gut a gut impressions about the nominee. Well, you know, I didn't know. She's now a confirmed Deb Holland, who was a congresswoman from New Mexico. She has only had one term in Congress. Um, but she's, as she likes to say, she's a thirty fifth generation New Mexican, you know, Native American. Her family grew up eating venison um. You know. So the challenge that she's going to face is, you know, it's a really political, a really controversial, complicated agency. You have everything from Bureau of Indian Affairs to the US Fish and Wildlife Service to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. There was a lot of things that fall underneath the Department of the Interior. I didn't know that the Bureau of Indian Affairs is still an Interior Oh yeah, I mean, if there's an we don't do Indian issues. But that is if there is one agency they could use some help, and one people that could use some help is the Native American community. I mean, when I worked in Congress, I spent a fair bit of time on reservations in South Dakota, and you know, the average person just has no idea of you know, how lousy it is, you know currently. So I mean some you know tribes have got it figured out and do a really good job and have plenty of money, but others just have. I when we were trying to get running waters is back in the nineties, you know, into you know, some of the Sioux reservations in South Dakota who didn't have running water, do you you know. So we've seen the Biden administration UM kind of reverse a lot of Trump era rules. Um, do you think we're gonna see um deb Holland kind of reinstate or try to get back a bunch of that monument ground. Yeah, I think she's I think she was justin in Utah visiting Bears Ears and doing her own listening tour. So I suspect you're going to see those you know bears ears in Grand staircase, you know, re established the original for there may be some you know tweaks here and there, but no those will get you know, pushed back. There's a marine monument off of New England that was taken away. I think you'll get that back. So I think there will be but I think they'll open up the bears ears thing again. Huh yea, So no, I think they'll be doing that. I think the bigger issues are gonna be things like oil and gas development on federal lands. I mean, when she was you know, congresswoman, she had called for, you know, ending oil and gas development on public lands. Or maybe it was during the campaign, but you know it was, but was friendly to wind and solar on public Oh sure, and you know that's you know she you know, that's you know, sort of the coming. You know, she has a fairly liberal district in New Mexico. You know that's the you know, feeling that renewable entered is better than you know, oil and gas. And I would agree with that. But the problem is that you can't just turn off the spick and on oil and gas. I mean, it's gonna be around for a while. And yeah, you know, my my trucks only a year old. I'm gonna be driving it for a while. And uh, you know the issue isn't you know where it comes from his demand on long term because you could shut down oil and gas development on public lands, And all you're really doing is screwing states like New Mexico, which have a lot of oil and gas on public lands, and shifting all that over to Texas or to North Dakota, which don't have a ton of public lands. So you're you're not really solving a problem, You're just screwing, you know, certain areas. I think a much more thoughtful approach is you deal with the you know, you deal with the issues of methane leakage. You just make the oil and gas development of public lands better than it has been. You get smarter about where you're going to sit oil and gas development, because there's also a ton of areas have already been leased. I mean that you know the cats out there, you know the door, the cattle's you know, the horses out of the barn. If you want an analogy, you want to use. So again, even if you were to say no new leasing starting today, there are still a ton that's going to happen. So the issue really is, you know, how do we do it better? And when you know, like Ken Styles are with Secretary of the Interior under Obama, they put together something called Master Lease Planning, which was before you develop an area and this could be oil and gas, it could be solar, it could be wind. You did look at a big area and you decide the areas where you can have development, where you never want to have development, where you can consolidate roads, pipelines, just to be much smarter about the development as opposed to Yeah, when you know Trump came in, it was under the and Zinc you would talk about energy dominance. The idea was energy development. It's going to take precedent over every other use on public lands, and they're not. We're not going to get in this way wherever it wants to go. Well, I mean that was more of a political stance, but it just creates problems because you're inviting controversy when you're offering leases in core stage Graph's habitat in the middle of migration orders. You know. So I think our senses and this is probably probably will shake out when an interior is there will continue to be oil and gas development. We've just done very differently that has in the past. Uh. Do you have concerns about working with Holland or do you Are you optimistic about it? Oh? I'm optimistic. I mean, uh, I've I've spent very little time with her. She'd been really good on our issues, but I just didn't know her personally. But then during the yeah, when she got nominated, and then until her you know, basically approval by the Senate, I think I had three different meetings with her and it was you know, and she was great. I mean, she didn't know a ton, she didn't pretend to know a ton, but she took copious notes and every time we met with her she was better than last time. She had understood what we were talking about. She was able to prioritize it. I think she valued our community as an important ally and her confirmation, and we're very happy to give her the benefit of doubt and work with her. The guy that just brought in is the number two at Interior. He still has to be confirmed. Tommy Boo Drow. He was in the obaministration. Good guy, you know, solid conservation credentials. Knows the department well. So she's been smart and putting people and keep positions around there who really know how that department works, because she doesn't mean this is she's brand new there. And you know, Zinkie had that same issue that Held had a trouble being effective within department because he was complete outsider, and that's part of the reason he brought Dave Bernhard in, who had been a solicitor during the Bush administration. Knew the agency, and things, you know, improved dramatically, you know, the Trump administration when Berner came in because he was a stabilizing, steadying hand. He understood what the agency could and couldn't do. Remember when you know, after he got picked to be Secretary of the Interior, we had a conversation. I mentioned energy anomous. He said, you will never hear me say that again because it's not legal. We are a multiple use agency. We have to we can't just arbitrarily pick one of these things and make it more importan and everything else. I came to like him quite a bit. Um. I mean, there's plenty of things that that I didn't agree with him about, but I did like and valued there uh stance on expanding access and doing some other things that rolling back some things like there was things a thing in Alaska I found particularly I somewhere they stripped the state of certain management practice abilities if they wanted to do it. I thought that was a bogus play and they moved that back. But do you do you think that in the new administration there's going to be like we will sportsman's access be a thing that ever comes out of their mouths? You think? So? I think, you know, they were I got a call from Interior that they were going to I don't know if they've done it yet or whether they were going to do it you know, shortly, but they're going to open up another ninety you know, areas within the refuge system. Yeah, I was going there and that was the fraight you're gonna tell me that that would be rolled back? And that was one of the things we made sure that this this is something that Obama did, This is something that Trump did, This is something you guys ought to do. And it's you know a lot of it is not you know, sort of rocket science. It's you know, their areas are closed for no good reason and have been historically, and nobody really knows why. I just never been open. And and then the other issue was, and I give the Trump guys a lot of credit on this, you may have your particular rules on the refuge that are totally different than next door on state Land or general statewide legs, and that may make sense, but if you're gonna make them different, have a reason for them being different. Don't just have them different for being different, because it just makes it harder for all of us to participate. To know what the rules are. So that you know, Trump guys did a good job of basically conforming the refuge rules with the state rules, and I hope that continues. M hmm. We're earlier, we're discussing New Mexico's new trapping band. Uh, I understand, Like sitting here, I understand perfectly well, Um, why that it's not t RCPs fight, Okay, Like I I want to hear from you why it's not, and then I want to question you why it's not a little bit because um, it's a hunter angler based conservation organization. And I know that you can't get bogged down in in the constant legislation and referendums about what you would call method of take issues, so like how the particulars of how people access game. But at a point, if rights continuously get stripped down, it will become an existential thing for you. True. So the way you know, first we're we focused on federal policy and not state policy. So that's an easy out as to why we wouldn't engage in something like that. Second, you know, we've always, you know, tend to defer to the states in terms of fishing game management because the states have always had primary jurisdiction, and you know, we don't want to sort of I'd like just keep Congress out of it as much as humanly possible in terms of every now and then you have something like you John Tester and Mike Simpson having to deal with the wolf issue and a greater Yellowstone. But Congress should not be in the business of dictating fish and wildlife management. That should be left to the professionals within the states. And now if states sta start going, you know, very much down a bad path, then yeah, maybe we have to rethink, Yeah, our stance. Maybe we do have to engage in some of those But because I agree with you, But if you got to your point where you thought, wow, it really is a slippery slope and we've split off the slope, I could just I'm not inviting you to do it, but I but I think I've expressed this to you in the past. I have a small amount of like I have a teensy bit of frustration with wildlife groups who I feel could probably could perhaps be impactful around defending hunting rights, angling rights, trapping right, that they might be impactful because it would be an unexpected voice for wildlife, like hunter based environmental groups, hunter based wildlife groups, to say like, this matters to our constituency, this matters to our supporters. You need to understand that this is this is upsetting to us because I feel like it would help us defeat some of these things that some of these losses we're having. Yeah, and I think that you know, you'll see a lot of our community will engage and those you know, the different groups that do engage in those state fights, from you know, maybe Boone and Crockett on a you know, sort of intellectual level, to the Association of state Fish and Wildlife agencies, to any individual group that happens to be a strong in a particular area. But it just hasn't been our issue in the past. I mean, if we can be supportive to our partners who are engaged in these things, we will, and it may at some point maybe we will have to recalculate and engage in some of these but we have enough stuff going on in Congress right now and on the federal side that we're not looking for any you know, new fights. No again, man, I totally understand. You can't be everything everybody. If you just were like a drunk guy in a bar throwing wild punches, right, you get a bottle, you get the bout as far so I understand it. But I think it's just you know, helpful to have. Yeah, yeah, And I think that there, you know, there's some allocation issues we will engage in. I mean issue like you know, girlfriend snapper, Yeah, which you know is you know, you could argue with sort of you know, feeds versus the state and a very parochial issue down there, but it had much broader implications about how we managed recreational fisheries and federal waters. So we would we engaged on that issue. Meaning, uh, just like to to express differently that you engage in in a state issue if you feel that it's something that has potential implications that would occur around the nation in a similar some sort of direct federal next us. And in that one, it was about federal fisheries management. And essentially the solution is let the states take over and which we did. They say they took over red snapper management and read there are a lot more red snapper out there than you know people used to think, there we are, and that fishery is very well managed right now. And so that worked. But that was a case where you know, we were arguing about state versus federal jurisdiction on that one. Generally we don't engage checked your federal box. But I'll give you another example of a place where we have engaged of state issues, like when the Trump administration basically rolled back Clean Water Act and you know, it took out half the wetlands in the country and you know, a large percentage of headwater streams from jurisdiction. It was very clear that Congress wasn't gonna deal with the issue. We're gon we're going to get any place the administration. So we helped, like in Pennsylvania, an effort to increase their water quality standards, recognizing that that was where the game was going to be played. And if we could help a couple of states essentially developed prototypes about how they can protect their own waters, we could bypass you know, the federal legislation until or federal problem until at some point Congress wanted to deal with this issue. So again that was an area where I felt that there was we can get into it because you know, this is relevant given the lack of federal engagement on an important issue. That is, you know, not just Pennsylvania. If they have shitty water quality in Pennsylvania, that means the Chesapeake Bay suffers. So you know, if we can create some prototypes and states like Pennsylvania about how they can protect their own streams better, then that's you know, worth putting out there. What do you think is going to happen? This is my last one for you right now. What do you think is going to happen with And you've got to kind of explain a little bit too. Now that the administrations have switched, what do you think it's going to happen around the tong is roleless stuff. I think that will get again go back to you know, the previous roadless rule, you know, so those areas will get protected again and again we would like to see you know, some sort of you know, not have this flip back and forth every four years who's in power. So I think we would be you know, perfectly happy to sort of do what we did with Idaho or Colorado state specific roadless rules, and maybe a blanket roadless protection and tongas may not be perfect. Maybe there are areas where you want to have, you know, some changes to that. Let's have that discussion. Um. But opening the entire area to development was not a good solution, I do have. I lied it was one more pebble mine. Yeah, it's kind of in its death throws wriothing on the ground right now. Is someone gonna, you know, well and put put one behind its ear. That's certainly what we want to have happened there. You know. Obviously the Pebble partnership is appealing. You know, it's denial of a permit. So this is still actually alive from an administrative standpoint. Now, I do not expect the Biden administration corp of Engineers to reverse the Trump administration to say you go for it, you got a permit, you can develop this mine. But long term, yeah, we've got to figure out a way to permanently protect that area. And we've been in quiet discussions with Center, Murkowski and Sullivan about you know, what would it take to you know, it could be a land swap that creates in Upper Bristol Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which in theory it would still allow you can do mining on refuges, but you can't do it if it's gonna impact salmon um, you know, is that one of the solutions. Is there a state solution, you know, states protecting those lands? You know, I think that Alaska is probably gonna want, you know, a chunk of flesh to sort of take development off the table, because that's the way Alaska works. So they're gonna want to either pile the money or they're gonna want to you know, land transfer someplace where they can actually make money. You know, long term, you can't. I mean, you can't blame them. I agree. I know you're saying that's how Alaska works, but that's how a lot of places work. Yeah. Yeah, Alaska is just got it down to sort of in our the They have a lot of opportunities, and there's just so much federal land up there. I mean, you know, you have to be able to develop some of it if you're gonna ach a living in Alaska. And there are certain areas that are far better for development than you know, the Pebble Mine area, that's for sure. Okay, any you want to add. I just say there's a couple of other things to keep your eyes on as you move forward. Thirty by thirty initiative that was talked about during the campaigns that was in the executive order. Not nothing to do with the ESPN. No, nothing to do with that, which I always love those, But this is, uh, this is actually you know, this came out internationally and it was around the biodiversity crisis, the idea of protecting of the world's lands and waters by and uh, you know, the how you do that is, you know, the challenge. So you know, the Biden administration, you know, during the campaign talked about it, and the initial Climate Executive Order came out of the White House they mentioned you know this thirty by thirty. Now it can go one of two ways. It could become a preservationist protect strategy where you're drawing lines on maps and not allowing any activity. And there's obviously the wilderness. You know, the hardcore environmental advocates are pushing in that direction. What the case we're trying to make is you've got to think much more broadly than that. First of all, it ought to include restoration because drawing a line around something that's degraded doesn't help you anyway. So there ought to be a restoration focus. We need to engage private landowners. If a land is under a conservation easement, but you know somebody is still cutting timber on it or making a doing agriculture, my mind, that's conserved. It's never gonna have Walmart there. It's never gonna have condos if it's got a permanent conservation easement. If you have you know, working for ESTs someplace again that are under conservation easement, there are certify sustainable by a third party FSC s f I, the two outside forest certifying bodies, my mind, that aut account is protected. Again, it's never going to get developed. And if your goal is climate or biodiversity, as we talked about that mosaic of habitats, having some young habitat is a good thing, um, you know, so we've been arguing that define. You know, to find this broadly and use the word conserve and not protect, because you instead of making this scary, say to western landowner who thinks you're going to go in and lock up their land, they've become part of the solution. You know, you can incentivise them to protect an area, to put a conservation he has been on it, to plant things that you improve soil health, to deal with carbon still make a living, and I just think that makes a lot more sense. So when the executive order came out of the White House, uh yeah, we won round one. It had the word conserve in their and not protect, which was important symbolically. It also laid out a stakeholder process that includes private landowners to talk about how are we going to define this and what's going to go into it. And that process will probably be rolled out by the Interior Department in the next week or so. I don't know what's going to be in there, but it's definitely gonna be worth something to watch because it can blow up and be here thrown out and perceived as a land grab and the top down approach, or it could be aspirational and you know, has a lot of folks behind it trying to make it work, including private landowners. The goal is do you know what percentage is protected? Again, it depends on how you define that. You know. The USGS did some sort of you know study a while back, and they said that twelve of the nation's lands are currently protected but they only use the definition of I think national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments, you know, the hardest core protection that we have. They didn't, you know, they did not look at conservation easements on private lands. You know, they did not look at you know, like regular Forest service lands that are well managed but are not quite protected in that sense because there may still be timber harvest on them. I'd imagine if you're going to do that right, you'd want to find a way to um begin to consider even like recreational properties, like the more we're sitting on right now. Sure that a recreate that that a recreational property would have UM and I know there's conservation easements stuff, but that they would have pathways. Would it would have pathways to become that what I would are you even you know, like a CRP, which maybe are a ten or twenty year contract. I mean, we want as much land and that type thing as we can get. That's not going to get developed, we know for ten or twenty years. And uh, let's count that, you know, so let's you know, air on the side of counting more as supposed to lesson if we have more than protected, great, well that's what. I feel like they raised the goalposts, they got the car in front of the horse. I feel like you'd have to get your hands around. Uh, there should be like gold Star, Okay, gold Star being wilderness areas, Like how many gold star lands do we have right down to bronze Star? And maybe that catches CRP lands. Add that up and then say like are we satisfied with that or should it be more? I would argue that we'd probably want to increase it. But to just throw out some wild ass number when no one even though it came out from the international perspective, you're thinking about sub Saharan Africa, South America and the Amazon or Southeast Asia, a lot of these really rich biodversity areas that you know are not protected at all. I get it. I get why they're laying out these, you know, sort of what it seems like very ambitious goals for us. You know, we've got a ton of protected land. You know, we have six D forty million acres of public lands in this country that are never getting developed. Now you may argue that, you know, having a solar array or oil and gas development or timber harvest's development. Okay, we can have that argument those of three real different things, because I would go no, no, yes, right, yeah. So I think that you know, again, it depends on how you define this stuff. And that's a great conversation to have. Let's have that conversation. And I think that we win on the merits. When you're talking about biodiversity and carbon I'm thinking sixty doesn't have the ring. I think they did it because the ring, right, Oh yeah, no, absolutely, But I think you have to consider private lands and and you know, recreational properties. When you look at the amount of private ground that that is, you know, on the tax record, like dedicated to recreation specifically wildlife. Um m, that that outshines. That makes that six million acres look like million acres. We got a lot more in private because that approach is also saying that this this thirty and I know you're not like sitting here, you're like ready to take bullets for the thirty by thirty, but that this thirty will all happen to be west of the Mississippi River. No, yeah, it's gotta be, you know, that's it's got to engage private land, I think, and I think there's beginning to be broad agreement on that even within the Biden White House, so which is good. And then you know, then we can think about things like a farm bill and how that can be used properties like this where it may not even be under conservation. He has been and probably would need to be to be counted. But you know, given the work that's been done, the bio diversity we have here, you know, the myriads of habitats, you know, this is exactly what you want. And we ought to be figure out ways that we can encourage folks like the guy who wants this land to enroll, you know, be a part of that accounting. Yeah, because there's I mean, you know, we talked about them all the time, but like Doug Durren's place, man, I mean, you know, they got their families, got a few hundred acres of land, but I mean they they obsessed over every square inch of it. You know what's gonna look like in the future. What we need to do now, how can we keep it the way it is? How do we not break it up? You know? And I think that even the habitat side, I mean, let's make sure we have some snags for woods, and it's all happening there and then you imagine that um, and I don't I don't have any proposals, but if we really wanted to get serious about this thing, um, that there would be more of a sort of I guess some really smart person would come up with some expression, like like a more sort of elastic uh, expression of like the nation's goodwill towards that consideration and activity. That it's not that that if a family is thinking about it in a certain way, it's not just like one person's death, Like it's not one person's death away from development, you know. And I know we have mechanisms in place, but I know they're like they're sometimes ownerous and and hard for people to deal with. And I don't know. I don't have the answers, but I imagine that we have any There's just a I'm just thinking about anoxially think about this, this this percentage thing. We have an enormous amount of land in this country. That's that people are thinking about, right for not just like waiting for it to hit a certain dollar figures so they can cash out and and turn into houses. They're like, man, I'd love for it to stay like this. Well, we haven't even talked about the ocean side too, and that's really what it got the you know, the hunting and fishing community kind of spooked on this whole thing to start with, because there was a process back in California, you know, a couple of decades ago that set up marine protected areas off of California that did not allow recreational fishing and even well managed recreational fishing like catch and release something like that, and uh, you know, and that was so when thirty by thirty I was starting to be talked about, and there was you know, there was a bill in California to you know, to be the first state to adapt thirty by thirty and it died in the California legislature because the sponsors you know, basically would not put in writing that recreational fishing should be allowed. So that ought to be a warning sign to the preservationist community that you know, let's be sensible here. We want people to get on the water, to enjoy it, to be a part of it, because you know, they're gonna be the you know, the future generation that's going to be there to protect this thing. They're not they're the best stewards out there where you know, you and I going out there fishing and catching a couple of fish for dinner. That's not the threat. The threat or bottom trolls that are trashing the habitat. It's ocean dumping, it's ocean mining. You know, it's that sort of stuff that ought to be you know, out of bounds in a protected area, not you know, us going out there and maybe killing a couple of fish to take home for dinner. As well as people want to feel good about themselves, but I don't want to feel like they're like totally screwing themselves to get there. Yeah, exactly. And plus it's just you know, if you're just you're create division and you create dissension where there shouldn't be any if you did something like the has no biological basis, like banning recreational fishing area the ocean. Now, if it's a spawning area and there's a good biological reas, gonna do it, fine, do it. There's a there's a every year we take our kids down to the area in Baja Peninsula in there's a small closed area there and it's uh, they really go out of their way to express the value of that closed area. So the signage around this this marine this marine preserve. The signage has calculations of the number of fish caught by small commercial harvesters thanks to the closed area because it becomes a fish producing and it's like very it's like it's articulated in many ways in many places that that's what this is, you know, it's you could see that there's a little bit of a psychological game there. Um, don't be pissed, Like what you're harvesting comes from here. And that's I think a very reasonable way to look at it, because obviously that they've done some science there. They know the key or spawning areas, you know, and they've made a public education outreach a program around it. But before you just go off and zone off huge areas of the ocean just so you can meet some mystical goal, let's be thoughtful about this stuff. You guys, got any more questions? Nope? Good job? What kel kel seriously thought about whether he had a question or not. He didn't just say no, I did, like what direction? Can we start a new direction? And all certain? You know, No, you did a great job. That was great, all right, guess always good talking to you. Thanks for joining us. With again with Fosburg. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership can be phone at TRCP dot org. Right on, send him a big old check, thank you? What'll write? What'll write you? Thank you? Note many right your reminder next year. He might convinit you if checks begging up? All right? Thanks with um. Remember when we used to do closing thoughts. I don't even remember what we used to call him? Is that what we call the closers? Closers? I just I still believe in them, especially got to the point where people would just I don't know. I just thought that people would know what to say him. Yeah that and if you've been going for two hours, then you know, closing thoughts just got another half an hour. But I have one today to actually one I found. I saw a tree. There's an old dead snag. Speaking of snags, I was near the power line and I see an old dead snag and about I don't know, head high. There's a plastic collar on this dead snag. This doesn't ring a bell. I mentioned it to guy. The guy says, yeah, your buddy Steve a dog collar. Oh yeah, I'm doing this with my arms. I know, but I don't know, man, I thought you meant the tree was like that and the snag was smaller and there was a plastic. Yeah, because we've been talking about that too. Oh yeah, we did tell a nasty story about a dog collar. Yeah, that's why I thought you meant a play. I got you, UM tell me about this plastic. I was walking along with guy uh and saw a wood duck come out of that tree, and I said, you ought to wrap that tree and something so the rack the raccoons, of which there are plenty, um, so the raccoons can't get up there and kill the wood ducks. And the way I remember the story is he was already planning on doing it. I think he's giving me credit for because he's a generous person, but I think it was on his radar. And now, is that something that you can just buy or is that cost him what I meant for him to do and what the practice I was familiar with, And it's probably expensive. If you had a lot of wood duck trees, is you remember people used to wrap them in Uh you'd buy sheet metal like aluminum, flashing whatever and wrap it in that. But I mean if you went out and if you wanted to do a dozen trees. You're probably you know, big trees. I mean, that's that's a hit to the pocketbook. So I'm glad there's some kind of plastic. What you do see is those things people sometimes put on, or those things that look like you're trying to keep squirrels out of your feet, are a flange that comes down to the angle. But I knew that. You know, in the old days you used to put flashing around it so they can't get purchased with their fingernails on it. But there's gotta be less, you know, cheaper less sort of visually. I mean, you know, it looks like a tree wrapped in aluminum from yeah, a million miles away. So I'm glad to hear that. He glad to hear they did it. Yeah, it was, you know, because at first it looks you think like that's kind of weird, unsightly, but then you know it has such a good purpose stoked about it. My other closing thought is, uh, you've seen this big, giant oak that we called the gobbler from yesterday and killed him and we went we took a walk around that oak now a few times during this turkey hunt and uh, standing next to that oak in awe of it. It is, but you were off looking at it from afar when we killed the bird. But I've also stood now. I sat underneath and he called a bird from it, and he called a bird to it, because they show up at that so you founded turkeys around. See. I've just been looking at that field and seen him. I've described to people like there's one by the you know, gallant. I might go sit under that oak here in the next an hour too. But it's like, it's a a big tree. I mean, what do you think the diameter of the base at least six ft? Yeah, yeah, I mean if you're on one side of it, you could hide three grown humans on the other side and not see them no problem. Yeah, it's a big tree. Huge. The first branches are long enough that they could be their own tree if you just cut them off and were able to just to plant them into the ground. They're like, I mean they might be sixty I mean, it's a giant and it sits right in the big in the middle of this. Uh, it's a cornfield. You like whoever you kind of have a soft spot for, whoever was clear in the land. Well, I got to notice and there was a there was a chunk of rebar drove down in the ground at the base of that tree. There's probably a corner at some point in time. Well I felt I thought it was either a corner or it had lightning protection. I was gonna say, somebody tried to ground. I think someone had such a off spot for a big old tree that they left it there. That's what I'd like to think. Well, you'd have to be some sort of evil person to cut that thing down. Well, I mean, it's got me to thinking about like the way that like like whatever you want to call it, preservation, conservation um, the way that it can hit you. And I was just really standing there like in awe of the special thing and thinking how like like you're saying, you have to be evil to cut it down now, but like some special person had the forethought back in the day, and now you could take anybody from anywhere in the world and put them twenty ft from that tree and they would sit there and awe. And I think that we all need to like have that try to have that mindset sometimes, you know, when you're just going about the world, just have forethought to think what stuff gonna be like for future generations, you know, when it comes to nature, because something like that is just spectacular. But you also got to be the person that can look at an old dead snag and know the value of that too. That too, that too. There's a lot of wildlife value in that. Ok, there's a lot of ship using it. Bunch of coon crap at the base of it. Oh yeah, cardinals, rubs, it's it smells like a like a farm. There's so many deer laying underneath it. When you're sitting there you catch that. I was like, man, it's like elky almost, but I think it's just so many deer, so much stuff uses it. Yeah, that's cool, all right. Thank you Johnnie for the closers. Now you're welcome, and thank you everybody out there for listening. See you soon.

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