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. Okay, quick round introductions. I'm gonna go the opposite way you do that, you deal Poker Spencer, New Heart brand. We'll talk about this brand new like I thought you're too old for tattoo, brand new tattoo. Uh, Sam Longern with his with his his? Uh, I don't know what. I don't know if I don't I don't know if I believe that's dry age? Is dry age? Dear meat sitting here? We'll talk about that. I don't know what to call it either. Uh. Crunch Niner's here, of course, and she has a desiccated partial fox skeleton that she's running around with trying to figure out how to make an art project out of it. Phil the Engineer, Brody and special guest. Rachel Schmidt so currently Director of Innovative Alliances for back Country Hunters Anglers like a staffer. Yeah, full time, no volunteer, garbage, no, no volunteer anymore paid member. Um Rachel, you asked about these little wooden boxes in front of you. They're beautiful. Okay, we finally got it. We're not really into it, we're not. We finally got our like interest meter. So everybody that's everybody in the studio has their own wooden box and and they're beautiful, like very artisan. It's like an artisan interest meter. Everybody has a wooden box as on off switch and a dial. And if they're we're not going to do this officially yet, but if they find something interesting, like watch, let me tell this story. Okay, now, everybody turn yours all the way down and I'm gonna tell a story. I want to see how it works. We're just me and my son, my ten year old. We're sneaking up on a turkey the other day. Nothing yet, and well it's just so okay. There's one red dot just indicating it was on, and I just strike a second red dot. We noticed a I notice, I'm I'm walking point. I noticed a snapper turtle under someone just lost interest because I loved because I was up front, so that that lost interest. And I noticed under about six inches of water, a snapping turtle laying there. I'm getting interested now, so I say to my son James and like, hey, watch, I'll show you how to sneak up and grab one of these things. And I talked about how you could tell by the shape of the shell where his tail is. And I went up the bank, kind of snuck down around, reached down under there, and latched down to his tail and hauled him out. And up comes not just one turtle, see it's already mated. Not just one turtle comes up, but two turtles come up, and their cloacas are like engorged making love. They were making love. And you've got in the way of that. Yeah, and the one So I lifted out the jacket of both out of the water. The under one drops free swims off um. And my boy, who doesn't like to have an opportunity passing by, was adamant that we now kill this turtle on butcher and cook it and and just chift focus to that rather than the turkey or after the turkeys in his mind, like that doesn't exist anymore. And I was like, you're gonna have a mighty big job, a hetty, if you're gonna saw that turtle's head off with a pocket knife, because that's the only way to do it, you know. And then I eventually talked to him and letting the turtle go and so hopefully they joined back up again. Now watch no, turn it back up the full blast green lights there? What what? What? Like? Nothing happened to be uninteresting or just it's fading. Now watch watch what happens When I say, let's talk about tattoo, injury and sex down Spencer's tattoo is just no, uh what was that, Rachel say? I mean, you're halfway through the story. You hit injury or sex. You're always you're going to get the green. Yeah, it's gonna like that's the cook the hook is there. So how can you work those themes into that? Tell about what your tattoop? Is? This your first tattoo? My first tattoos? Your wife have tattoo? She has like six? Oh bro, do you don't have your tattoos? Did your wife have a tattoo? No? I miss that. I mean my wife were the only people no tattoos. Now, I missed the window, you know, I like went through that early nineties period and thought about it and then just never did it. Well, I went down to get one and I didn't get it. Then I just got never made it there, My brother. My brother Danny got the world's worst steel head. I mean, it looked amazing thirty years ago, whatever the hell it was when he was like, I don't know, he's twenty one, twenty two years old. It looks amazing. He got a steel head on his arm. And I was like, seventy five bucks, right, And I was just burning up with jealousy. So I'm like, wanting to get a fly. I'm gonna get a steel head. Flocks. We used to catch a lot of steel head in Michigan. So I was gonna go down and I go down there and I had seventy dollars and the guys like seventy five, and I'm like, I only got seventy. And that's why I don't have a tattoo. Today. You could have found tattollars. With a change in your just you would be regretting that tattoo so much. Now. I have many tattoos, because how many tattoos you have on you, you're not gonna drop your short sorry tattoo lower lower back, well my reaching up the ribs. Yeah. My first one is a is a dry fly. It's the first dry fly my grandfather ever taught me how to tie. It's a royal wolf. And so I got that tattoo in the late nineties before they were called tramp stamps when you get one back, so it wasn't a thing. So I got it right there, and then they became known as tramp stamps. But by that time I was just collecting flies and they're just wrapping up my back. I've got three saltwater flies coming next. Zomi, do you have right now? Uh? Not? Nine? Whoa Spencer? You got some work to do. So Spencer got to tell us again what it is. This it's about ten inches long, probably about two and a half inches wide, it's biggest. It is a black hill spruce. She's the state tree of South Dakota only found. It's native to the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming. Looks like track marks running up his arm at a passing at a passing glance, you think he was a junkie. Yeah, it's no like that tattoo. Thank you. See I want to get Uh. I saw a guy that had a tattoo. It was the North American continent, okay, and he had a little turkey foot all the places where he killed his his royal slam. I like that, So what's thinking about doing that? What's the appropriate age for tattoo? You said I'm too old. I was just teasing. I don't think. I think it does seem like most tattoos occur between the ages of eighteen and twenty two. Though, yeah, there's the age when people are susceptible to tattoo artists. I feel like that's shifted, though, very much shifted. That was that was the time that I thought a lot about it, but then it's just continued to fade it. I tried to get mine in nineteen my fly, it's not too late. So my wife has stem Stephen Fever come on, cultivate the rock star image a little more. Um. We did get the turkey that we the snap turtle turkey, so uh, it wasn't his first turkey, because he got another turkey this year in Wisconsin. But we snuck in on a stratter and got pretty like a hundred yards from him and started calling at him, and he finally turned and was kind of coming and also to Jake popped up like twenty yards away. It just also in hears his head and I told James, shoo, shoot shoot, and he shot it, and uh he was this is like, this is embarrassing to admit, but he was like he didn't say it, but you can tell he was like bummed. It was a jake. But he already at that precious innocent age, it's already registered. I was like, man, I didn't know about that kind of stuff to I was thirty years old. We just thought turkeys like turkeys of turkeys, man, who cares already already like, I want to see its spurs. There's no spurs. I couldn't believe it, literally, none, no spurs. No. I just had a little works, you know, little nubbins. Um. Yeah, so that happened, which is my fault because when he got his first turkey, it was a long beard with spurs. And so we're all celebrate, you know what I mean, you can't. You can't if you celebrate the highs and people become aware of the lows. So that was a problem. Um. And then we caught um and think quite that's not quite fair. Almost caught a soft shell turtle that same day too. I found in the Queen Mother of All turtle trap and I want to go to the Queen Mother of All turtle trapping spots. Well. Um, for a while in high school, I would sell him for a dollar a pound turtle soup meat. But you had to take the carapace off. Had got him and take the carapace off? What did you do with the shells? Various stuff? Give him away? Paint him. I used to paint him the inside. I'd paint like the color of the binding on a National geographic magazine, like yellow and lacquer or the top of their sweet. So when's the last time you kill the snapper and ade him? Oh? A couple of years ago I got one bowl fishing in Kentucky. Moving on. Okay, Now, Brody explained, what how in your truck? Uh? Is that turkey camp at Janice's secret turkey spot and which I know about? Yeah, you know the general zone. Um, and uh, everything's going great for like three days, we're killing turkeys, and it rains the last night we're there, and I had I was pulling my camper. So I decided after the morning hunt to go check the road out to see if I could even get the camper out of there, and got like fifty yards from camp, put the truck in a ditch because it's all gumbo. Oh yeah, bad bad, Um, you better explained gumbo. Most a lot of people don't know what gumbo is. I grew up Michigan versus Sandy. Yeah, this is this really greasy, glooey mud that's impossible to drive in kind of clay based expandable. And I actually even put chains on the back of my truck and that made no difference because it just the changes like the gumbo. So it was just from snowmelt or rain or what. It's just overnight rain. Wasn't even that doesn't take a whole lot, you know, it's just like a steady rain. Yeah. Hunting those gumbo areas, you can go into a spot and then I mean it happens quite frequently. Um, if you drive in you know, ten twenty miles whatever on gumbo roads and it rains a lot of times, you gotta wait a day, right, and we're supposed to go to work or whatever, and you just can't. Manyeh, we're prepared to do that even before the especially go on private if you're on um private land, like we're hunting turkeys on a little chunk of private land the other day. And uh, it was very much like man you know, because then you pissed people off, right, You don't want to be teared up there Like the quickest way to get uninvited to branches to go behind through their gumbo things and cut ruts in it. Yeah, but either way, I won't mention the manufacturer's name. Um, but I recently got a new truck, and that truck has a white dogging on our trucks. Man, listen, that skid plate that they put on those things, that cloth material pressed cloth like that doesn't even qualify as a skid plate. And when I slid into the ditch, it just tore off. Yeah it's you know, it's over the transmission. Um. Yeah, that was disappointing. So it tore that off and poked a hole in the transmission fluid pan, which I didn't know, so I got like that steel, No, it's plastic. There's this whole new training fluid in Yeah. Yeah, well here's what they tell you. They tell you that it's about fuel efficiency and lightweight exactly. I will it's the most popular truck in North America. I think it's the best selling vehicle in the world. Yeah. I loved it up until this point. Now I love it again because it's fixed. But I love It's like having an apartment building. Yeah, if you got dogs and gear, Yeah it's great. Uh. Anyway, I got stranded for a couple days while the thing was getting fixed, which interestingly, it's kind of like the Bermuda Triangle of Turkey Spot exactly because Yanni had Yannie got stranded Yanni's brother in law. But j honest was kind of the fact I was stranded with him because his brother in law's truck broke down the same spot last year. Do you feel like your kids into turkey hunting? No, you were saying you got you liked it? Oh yeah, he said he's he wants to do that more than kill a deer because he got to see the whole show. You know, three gobblers messing around and one came down, and yeah it was cool. He liked it, yeah big time. Did you like doing that gripping grin? Oh yeah, yeah, he liked that. Uh, Brodie, what were you saying, like, Cody Luhan? Yeah, oh sent us this thing. Um, so this is the same river. I'm not being very clear. We have a friend Cody Luhan. I think he's on the show, though he was at the live podcast in Denver, the very first one he has been on the show. He um big New Mexico, Colorado guy. He found a he found a buffalo skull on the y'all say Yampa, right, I say yampa. Johanna says yampa, which I think is correct. It's ah. I believe it's the last. It's one of the last major rivers in Colorado that's considered undamned flowing dumps into the Green or yeah, no, yeah, dumps into the Green River. You know, our own friendly Yellowstone River here is the longest and man, they used to want to damn that thinks so damn bad. Now it's now it's like pride thing. They'll never do it. Oh yeah, people fighting him off tooth and nails to try to keep him from damn it. No, everybody runs around top Abo, how cool it is. It is not damned. They were gonna put a bunch of damns and a bunch of I think coal fired power plants along it enough and which would draw enough water to d water the Yellowstone. That sounds a good at one point. Can you imagine including damning the Paradise Valley too, That was a proposal. You imagine having a big right there. I'll tell you what well, I had a controversial idea about that, but I'm not gonna get into it. So the Yampa, the Yampa um our friend Cody found a school there and he sent us an article about this kind of interesting the guy found quite a while ago, but he just donated to museum. A guy found a Bison Antiquois school along the Yampa and uh radio carbon dating. They think it's about forty years old. He just donated to the Museum of Northwest Colorado. But the reason I bring this thing up is these I don't know what the current story is on these things, but the old understanding of it was that you had at the end of the you know, during an interglacial period when glaciers receded um step ice and came down and colonized the lower forty eight like came down through the ice sheets when they were receded from a melt, and then here they were, and they kind of like poured forward on this this landscape. That was that they didn't have any real competitors, this big grassland grazer, and they were living in areas that had recently been glaciated. Tons of Territory Forum. Great conditions, and they sprouted horns six ft tip tip, so more like like what you think of a water buffalo horns like going out straight rather than I'm almost more like buffles kind of got a muskoxy vibe to it, you know, longhorn after you steam or after do they steam it? Yeah? You know when you see those crazy ones, they like steam them and change of shape on him. It's real common. I did not know that. Yeah, I've never heard that anyways, big, big gass long outside of his heads, horns six ft tip the tip, this one that donated the museum. It's just the cores, like the sheaths are gone when you see one of those suckers, but the sheets on it. Yeah, can you imagine one and a half times the size of the current one six ft tip tip big, that's obviously that. That's not the kind you found that inspired you to write the book. No, mine was just a Joe blow one. Now there's this thing called horn coore morphology, which I was I became a discipline of for a while, and it's like you take all these relative measurements on on buffalo skulls and you can kind of try to age it at least like they used think they could do that with people to not agent, but they used to think that they could, like you know, like take measurements on your skulls and who's smarter and not smarter? What it called, Yeah, like you could tell like intelligent races by like eugenics. Yeah, it was that based in like measuring people's skulls. And I feel like it's teetering on that, like craniums are like, wow, it looks like my skull's the smart kind um phrenology. Phrenology. So I initially thought the one I found, the first one I found, I found a couple of cents. Then partially like not as cool as the first one. But the first one I found an Initially I thought it was an oldie, But then I had a radio carbon dated and I had a genetic sample taken from it, and it's just a regular one. And they think, what the reason I like it is? They think that there's a sixty six percent probability that it died within about ten years of seventeen seventy. Oh that's cool, just when things were getting going here, m just when things are starting to heat up around here. Uh, crank uh found this thing that's in here and she put in about she she mentions that it's not Gonnaly mean anything. I don't know much about professional sports, but I like this guy. A big thing in the news now, the Baltimore Ravens. Like, honest to god, if you sat me down and told me to list teams, I don't think I would have come up with that one. I've been like cowboys hackers, like the ones that were cool and when I was a youngster. But after the other week's podcast about Ravens, you know, can Yeah, when people say the name an NFL guy, I'm like Fridge Perry, like, I just don't no idea. Oh man, uh so this dude, I like this guy. Creani trying to get him on the show. Can you work on that real hard? If you know, I know we have NFL listeners. Ben would trying to get hold of Ben Cleveland Baltimore Ravens guard just got drafted. He's making the news all over the place because he eats a lot of squirrels. Then you have to clarify that his squirrel diet is being overblown. He's more of an opportunistic squirrel ead. He just says, he goes into his freezer and he eats what's in his freezer, and sometimes they're squirreling his freezer. But everybody's acting like the advice for celebrities, I think that like, if you want to make the news and you can't think of whatever and you just haven't been in the news cycle, will probably talking about eating squirrels because it doesn't piss anybody off. Like if you said, like I eat panda bears, you're gonna get the wrong attention. Right, if you eat squirrels, like, no one's gonna get mad. Everybody's gonna think it's kind of quirky. You'll get some good ink. That's my tip, My tip to celebrities. Did you see his quote about the squirrel taste. I know that he was saying that he finds them in certain areas to have a nut of your flavors, and another South Georgia, he said they're quite a bit nut of here, and then when you get up north, they just taste like squirrel. Now, dude, I want to have him on the show so bad. I don't want to talk about football. And then I mean, I appreciate that he's good at what he does right, right. I appreciate he's good at what he does. And then he's clarifying quote like I think made it better because he's like, I don't eat squirrels all the time. It's just when there ain't no dear meat left him. What happened somehow or another one brought it up is he was telling a story. I don't know if he grew up in a hard scrabble family, but he's telling a story about when he's a kid, he didn't have anything. There was nothing in his home that he wanted to eat, but they had biscuits and he shot two squirrels out of It's talk about making his own food when he was a kid, and he shot two squirrels out the window with the twenty two and made squirrel and biscuits for himself. He was on a sick day that he's home from school. I love this guy. I don't know, maybe maybe the worst guy in the world. We'll find out. I think he's a good guy. It sounds like it. Yeah, um, we're having squirrel for dinner night. I thought out two packs of squirrel and one pack of rabbits. Um, My kids just like it, like they like you. To brown it in a pan and then put it in an I had to eat out last night for a work thing, but they had uh raccoon last night. I love it. Man. They don't know what they just don't. They don't know enough to care. Um, we're talking about sis. I was explaining that, but I couldn't remember. My brother used to have my brother's old girl friend. We called her to the Tower of power. Uh she do you care to elaborate? I would like some clarification. He's like not a small person. She towered over him. Are you kidding me? Like he had like an eight foot tall girlfriend. Um, the Tower of Power just would beat your ass if you got in a fight with her. I don't wanna tell her name, as you can't remember name. They weren't together that long. I liked her. Remember, I remember one time we went I remember this. We took her duck hunting, and remember we were eating duck duck hunting and I finished my duck leg and through it and said, like ashes, the ashes dust to dust or something like that, and through the bone. I remember hung up in a barbeder fence. Interesting memories just stuck in my head. Um, where those dials that guys turned out, turn those things up, turn those things up. I was saying how she had a um. I remember while they were boyfriend girlfriends, she had this sister removed they had teeth in it. Okay, you guys talked about this the other day. I was eating breakfast. It's the first time in a long time. I just stopped chewing and I was done. Yeah, it's on appetizing. I don't have a like, not a squeamish person. No one wants this tooth thie sis but in them. But we have one of our, one of ours that we had a doctor right and the doctors like I know, you guys got all kinds of doctors that are always righting in, but you don't have many obstetrician guy in the Collegist he writes, and he's act. I think he's the first obstetrician guy in ecologist to write it. And he wanted to clarify a few things about the Tower of Powers Cist. It's a dermoid cyst. It's an ovarian germ cell tumor, very common. Most women who have one probably will never know it. And you are probably close to someone with and ovarian cyst. Whether they know it or not. And I'm only close to you too, Rachel and Krim. So one of you has one of these little buggers in you right now? Is that what we call them? All of them have hair and a copious sebacious fluid that looks exactly like Papa John's garlic butter. That's too much detail right there. That's how he that's how he describes it. A great way to set up my my little tasty treats we brought in here to eat. Yeah, we should have switched, we should we should have switched around there. That's a knock against Cran's producing a bill to have to have not put Sam up top before. This looks like I don't taste no, not taste like looks like Papa John's garlic butter. Occasionally they have teeth, sometimes a small jawbone, sometimes styroid tissue, even cartilage or tissue related to the eye. Hmm, that's what I haven't heard carrying a little person around. You guys might want to go down and get some kind of exam to find off you might have one of these buggers. Have you heard, like looked at video? Is that are they called? Is it sebacious? Cists. Oh you want to feel one of those right now? Well, or I haven't removed every few years. I had him one time come in like horns. They grew in exactly perfect for horse. What am I thinking? I'm thinking of like these like um like they're like pyloric, I don't know anyway, but it's like the infection goes no, no, no, it's actually young truckers usually get them. I watched this whole special. It's like a doctor pimple Popper special or something like that, right, and it's like they get like an ingrown hair like usually on their butt because they're strong on their butt all the time, and then it gets infected. But the infection goes in and it can actually like these like infected tentacles like go down the legs. So when they finally get them, it's like this little like ZiT. But then they start popping it and it's just fountains and they're like squeezing the puss up from the leg and like it's just fountains of this substanti. What are you're saying fountains? I keep thinking about how that community is so drawn to fountain pop too. Founting soda found thirty fountain sodas or not. That might still that might be a contributing factor. Uh. Another your clarification came in. I was saying it a long time ago. I wanted to do and never did it. When I was magazine writer. I wanted to do a piece for Outside. When I used to write, there a lot about camping and highway medians, Like you know in some areas where there's you have too high the highways right like two lane highways, interstate highways, and they have the obviously the median strip, but sometimes the medium strips because of whatever is going on with the road construction. There's hundreds of yards of no man's land. Can you imagine deer and whatnot crossing wind up in that meeting and probably find yeah, or like whatever, there's probably and there's no one would go in there, and I wanted to explore those with this guy pointed out. Someone wrote in that there is a guy that has a YouTube thing called Camping with Steve, which makes me jealous as hell because I didn't come camping with Steve and I haven't watched yet, but on Camping with Steve, he does the whole thing about camping and highway medians. He does. He's an expert in stealth camp I love that. I love that for is I've employed that a lot in my life camping with Steve. No stealth camping just like, well, I gotta pull over and sleep somewhere, and I do not want to pay for a hosted campground, So I was just gonna slide into the most interesting stealth spot you've The first time I visited Missoula, Montana, I tried to go hide out in this area under construction under a bridge, and it wasn't very stealthy because the cop came in found me. I ended up living there for eight years and it's a whole beautiful part of that didn't go very well. I don't know. That's just what came to mind. When you're younger, um, and you guys are quite bit younger than I am, but you have a very different attitude about like getting kicked out of places. I mean, you just want to sleep, and the idea that in the middle of the the night of cops gonna bang on the window and shine a light until you can't sleep there, it just isn't It's like, Okay, that's cool. But now I sort of like living fear of conflict like that. Yeah, absolutely, I would not. I would not repeat that. Yeah, I just don't like now that kind of thing just makes me like everything to be all like positive, sure that I'm okay to like sleep somewhere or camp somewhere. Stealth camping is not. I like it. I like the camping with Steve exists, and that he's a stealth camper. But I just got I'm too cautious now about that kind of stuff. Well, we got money and smartphones and stuff now that maybe back then it was just like, well I think I can probably get away with it, and I just need to sleep. So yeah, exactly, have no quick way to research where you were and to find a good place to go sleep and all that business. Exactly. The cops was super nice about it. He's like, yeah, I know you can't sleep here, but here's some ideas of where you can sleep. A couple of tips. It was real, real pleasant. I'm sure he's lunched those out to a lot of homeless people as well. Probably I think that's what he thought. It was like he was he thought I was cooking meth under that truck or something. Oh, speaking of police, officers. I was gonna mention this. I got a text message this morning from our friend guy's Uck, who has been on the show a few times. If you go back a ways in our library, we had an episode called something like the Brown's Back and the Baseball Bat, and it was it was about guy's Uk who was on the show. And he's an expert turkey caller and does it without He can call turkeys with no calls in his mouth. But when he's a kid, he had a Brown's back turkey and he would call it in and then you'd whoop it with a whiffleball bat a little bit hit it to spook it, not bad, just to let it know so that it would become less inclined to be duped. Not bad, not whoop it bad. I should I use a poor verb choice. He would uh, look it, love, tap it with a whiffleball bat and then call it in again, keep tricking it. Did it work. He's a really good turkey caller. He this morning took out a guy he uh where the land like? He's a land manager at a at a property that my friend zone and they use. My friend uses the property to have veterans and people, Um, allow veterans another, A lot of wounded veterans go hunt on his place and that's kind of his main focus of the properties he owns. And they had a guy out there that got a turkey this morning. There was shot on duty in Springfield, Missouri five years ago. Um, first time he has fired a gun since he was shot. It was first time hunting, got himself turkey this morning. So that was Yeah, guy's looks good, dude. Um. Someone wrote into a question struggle with why people name game animals. We've talked about the hundred times. What's your take on it? Rachel, Like, Old, it's just I mean, it's about where you come from too. And like I think, um, a lot of folks in the West because we don't necessarily like isolate ourselves to like a pocket with two routine deer, Like that's a foreign concept to us. It's like most of the deer I've ever shot, I've never even seen before to whereas in the East, like you are, you're in this pattern, You're in the same stand you have you know, deer that are you know, super you know patterned, and so it it's a way to I mean, that's just certain nature is to figure out how to mark some thing so you can keep track of it in your head. So for a while I thought it was super ridiculous, but now I'm like, what do I do? I care? I had to around it because people got clever, Like I only caught it once. People got clever with it because if everybody would be like, you know that one buck, right, the buck by Bob's house. That doesn't make anyone upset. I Saw's house. Yeah, but that's that's not a name either. That's not that's not a Christian name, I know, but it's it's an individual that you're communicating about. So the fact that someone would go, let's say it's by Bob's house, so he's Bob the Buck, why does that all of a sudden become like, oh, I don't know about that. It's fine to say the buck by Bob's house, But Bob the Buck upsets people? You upset? No upset me. I was just kind of like, it's weird. You got the like the the descriptive names to like the Big nine eighty. Yeah, my dad had. My dad is a huge white tail hunter for years, and he had this five year period where he was just like obsessively rabbit after this buck that he called the hook toe and because it's track like like the front, you know, like they would hook over, and so it always was like this hook and he would like it was a really big buck and he you know, catches track every once in a while, and he was just obsessed with it. Did he kill it? He didn't know? He didn't. Now Mark Kenny explain Because Mark Kenny, he's got a lot of little places he hunts, you know, he doesn't he doesn't have like some he's big white tail hunter, you know, wired hunt Mark Kenyon, and he's got all these little spots, you know, like twenty acres whatever. And he's always kind of watching what bucks are coming and going. And he might in any given time be sort of aware of eight or ten deer and he watches them. Over the course of many years. It's like what the hell is he supposed to do? And and I've also found that like in especially in Mark's situation, it's it's very useful for creating a narrative to allowing people to follow along with it to give an idea of deer he's recently killing. He was Tran Frank Drupi one he tried killing was Holy Field. So that those are like the names. What was the name of that crazy bock you shot in Kansas last year? UM, trying to think. I'm disappointed. I don't remember what they had named him at Buck's gotta have a name. He had a name. I don't remember, but that that was an example to where they had. You know, pretty much any deer that we would lay eyes on had a name. We have a very interesting white tailed lives around our yard and he's still just like the one big buck. Oh that one we were looking at last maybe last fall's look. But he's all velvet. But I have a hard time. I'm sure there's people that are good at it. I have a hard time, like, tell him what's going to happen. But he's got like celery stocks of velvet coming out top of the head. You know, I mean not the individuals man, I'm talking about. When you buy all the celery still hooked together, that's an exaggeration, and then cut one of those in half and then called those in half. That's what looks like big velvet knobs coming out column celery the celery buck. But here's a question, where does that all dovetail with like anthropomorphizing animals, and then I've heard many people say like I'm going to go and get my dear this year, or that's my bear, you know, like over the course of a couple of years, you think you see the same animal. You know, you're unsuccessful at, you know, killing the thing, and and it's like that's mine, and it's like that animal knows you. Of course, not like you're not. It is legally, it is legally yours. It's legally your problem. Sure, well yeah, okay, so they're just call on your show. Well, I think more than so. I think more than anthropomorphizing in this situation, like the naming of a deer, it's more of I think maybe the where our brains work is we just like something that's routined in our life, we like to label it, like you want, you want to classify, you want to label it. You want to because it's something that's familiar. And I think that's maybe the wear lives are. I mean, just our brains kind of worked, Whereas I don't know if you're necessarily like like giving that animal some human characters. Yeah, you're not putting a bow tie on it, and no imagining it's relationship with its skunk best friend and they go off and have adventure. So yeah, I just I think it's maybe just wear where brains work or want to work. I don't know. The guy from Oklahoma wrote in UM his hunting body is a farmer and you're talking about how they, you know, winter cattle on their place, and he says that they feed corn and then a lot of geese come out into the pastures where these cattle are at and pick the undigested bits of corn out of the nerve. And he's wondering what everybody thinks about that eating those But man, if you eat a duck anywhere, you're eating yeah. Yeah, I mean, if you eat a turkey anywhere in the American West, if you eat a colie, you're eating cowshit. Like I mean, come on, like they're eating You've seen him out. Yeah, they looked themselves, and they're coated in nerves and they it's all over in the grass. They're eating I mean everything, dear, I'm sure are picking up ship when they're eating. I mean, let's be clear, if you're eating the mints that are on the lake hostess table as you're leading restaurant some matter. Yeah, it doesn't bother me. Now. We one time had um, we one time had a duck hunting permission in a pretty famous waterfowl area and there's we got a duck hunting permission where there was a municipal sewage facility, and uh, it was so bad. I mean, we got a lot of ducks there. It was so bad that there were prophylactics now and then. So we were hunting in the treated stuff or the untreated stuff. You know. I was never clear, sounds kind of untreated down the line. We were down the line. We were down the line a bit, and it had like a lot of aquatic vegetation. I was like some kind of like later settling pond. I have to go back, and we visit. We didn't pay too much attention at the time. I later realized it seemed like a good way to get up Titus the topic of plastic in the environment. Man. We're like, man, we got this place all to ourselves. And when the guy gave permission, he uh didn't even hammer hall about it. I was, I can't leave. No one has the spot. Yeah, we hunted for several years. Um, so I don't know that doesn't bother me, all right, Sam. Now, after we talked about those little toothy siss and eating nerve, Sam longer in here texted me one day, I was asking about Okay, just to clarify, I feel like you said, have you ever tried to dry? How did you put it to me? I said, I think, I said, have you ever tried to do like a purshuto ham with a deer? Yeah? And I said that it won't work? Yeah, Well, and you're basing you're basing that off, I think off of trying it with hogs in Texas and and saying that there wasn't enough enough fat on them to to make like maintain the moisture in there. Because when I did it successfully with a friend of mine who's like a sharkootrie expert at a restaurant, he um was dismissive of all this stuff. And then we made it with pig legs with the skin on scraped skin on pig legs, which worked very well, really, you know, but there's a lot of protection, right fat, right right, and and there are a lot of methods for kind of emulating that with with deer. And I mean, let me apologize upfront that I do not did not get into the science of this as far as I could. I mean, i've I've I've read a lot of this is my This is my is my first attempt at it. But basically, both my freezers were full because I killed a moose last year as well as a baron, an elk and a deer and a turkey and a bunch of other ship and uh, I had one deer ham left, and both my freezers were like packed to the to the brim. And I always kind of wanted to do like a big hole muscle cure. Read a lot of stuff online, mostly just kind of like experimental blogs and eight something turning my dialoge. You're talking about the process. So the process, what I did was I just salted the Jesus out of it for three weeks, but just rubbed it all over the exterior of it. Yeah, and then and so I just like had it out and there's all kinds of water coming off, all kinds of water lost, pounds of water, room town um colder than room timp. It was like out in the out in the garage at my last place in my in cool weather. Yeah, I killed my my buck like mid November. So you did it back then, Yeah, you did it right, Like he never frows the thing or anything, never froze it. Probably probably deer pulled the skin off and started putting all kinds of salt on. Yeah. Yeah, shot shot the deer, gutted it, dragged it out, which I don't usually do, but we had a skiff of snow, and I was a mile and a half from the truck, and I was like, you know, it seems easier. Hung it for a week, butchered it and then just like left that ham hung it for a little while longer than then salted it real heavily for for quite a while, took off pounds and pounds and pounds of of of water it um on a tray, and so I would like pour off the water occasionally and flip it, put more salt on, rub off the old salt, put more salt on, uh than After three or or weeks, took it out and washed all the salt off. Hunging out in the sun for a day because after I washed it, I don't wanted to didn't you wanted to rid it of that moisture um. Then I put on more salt a little bit of curing salt, uh, dried garlic, um, dried rosemary and pepper, and then kind of let that set up and kind of make a little bit of a crust. And then I mean melted down a whole bunch of large that you gave me and allowed that to kind of cool, and then just kind of painted it over. Caked it, just caked it almost probably probably a quarter inch thick in large, but you know, thicker in some places. But I mean I put on like five or six pounds of of large and then it was the whole Yeah, I went started. So after I coated in a large, then I wrapped it in just a just a cheap game bag, so cheesecloth, and then kind of bound that up with para cord and hung it in that basement. I was living in um in a dark closet, so ambient temperature of the house, so you know, fifties sixties, no sunlight, um and just ambient moisture for Montana, so you know, generally pretty arid. And then when I moved to my new place, it was I put it in the in my I got it like a it's like a house on top of a big, big gas garage and hung it in the in the basement out of the sun. Same thing, you know, forties, fifties, sixties, a lot of air movement, not much sunlight. As soon as it starts to get hot, out you want to cut that thing down because once you're getting into like seventy eight degrees, you're you're gonna run into different types of mold and you're going to run into um, just run into more trouble. It's gonna dry out, it's gonna this and that the other thing. And so to three weeks ago, whatever it was, it was like it was getting real hot, and I'm like, I just started getting nervous about it and decided to chop it down, cut it up, and and see how it was um. And honestly, I was surprised by how moist it was. Silky. Yeah, I ended up smoking a lot, smoking a lot of it after I after I parted it out, because it was so moist and it was it was still very much raw. It did not the cure did not really penetrate, and and and and next time, and and and I have reached or why do you think the cure didn't penetrate? Yeah, it's salty I mean it feels like that salt. Yeah, but but like but you know, what you're tasting here is smoked as well, like really low light smoke. But it just it felt very raw. You know. What I wanted to do here is like trail meat, you know, something you can kind of throw in your backpack. Um. But yeah, I was like, again, I was shocked by how much moisture was maintained. And I feel like it's got kind of a fattiness to it from having that large coating. Um. Yeah, so that's the best thing I've had. Did you have any mold on it? Yeah? Yeah, the outside definitely had some white mold. Um there, Uh, there were some little black spots that were appearing, and I think that might have been like kind of concurrent with that hot weather. Um the outside you know that that that large kind of seeped through the cheese cloth and it was starting it was starting to look pretty fucking weird, to be honest with you. Um, I mean it's very very yellow and kind of congealing at the bottom. But but I would always get you know, like as you moved out and left that hanging in the garage, someone would throw it away. And now eat it for an investigation probably, But man, I mean I got ten pounds of sliced you know, or well like ready to be sandwich meat, um and so and and like that with some good cheese on some sour dough and then toasted up. It's like it's it's really good. And you could kind of when you take it, you and almost rolled into a ball. Yeah, you know, you could take a piece and kind of trimmed if you trim the edge away, that's exactly that's when to make the meat and make like a little sphere out of it, tenderized the crap out of it, and man like exceeded by wildest expectations. Yeah, man, that's good. I'm gonna try top Sam. Are you checked out on the the lobster fight? I am okay, explain this lobster fight thing. A lot of stuff in the news like UN peacekeepers coming to Canada to settle a lobster fight. A tribe in Canada, Psycanuka teat on the Bay of St. Mary, which is on the Bay of Fundy. And you know that's a giant cutout of Nova Scotia. That's the biggest tide swing in the world, right one of them. I think Bay of Fun might be the biggest tide swinging. I heard it was somewhere in England because where I grew up as one of the biggest big tide swing I was familiar with the name a lot of the towns because the show Trailer Park Boys is set in that area. UM, I wouldn't expect everyone to know that. One, it's a phenomenal television program. It is correct three point five ft Holy crap. So last year, this this first nation tribe in Canada decided that they were going to have their own lobster season. The Canadian Fisheries Ministry has you know, a set season and um like federal federal, federally set season. So kind of like their version of our like you know, Noah or National Marine Fishery Service. UM. So this this tribe you know, is trying to uh, you know, really kind of build more of a kind of a career path for their people, create more jobs in lobster fishing. And they've leave that the that the lobster populations can't sustain a more intensive fishery than the you know, the Canadian government believes. Um. Last year they went ahead and did this fishery. They just they went for it, um, and and caught a whole bunch of lobsters. But there's a lot of people in that area who were very upset about this. There's people pulling their going up and pulling their pots, stealing their pots two different presumably other commercial operators who are operating under the federal law exactly. So you can hear they are like, you're you're catching lobsters that I can't catch. Exactly, yeah, exactly, so you know I could you know, you can see where that they might perceive unfairness. But it got really out of hand. The um the like mobs attacked these lobster storage facilities in West Pubnico um, and you know, stole lobsters and then they eventually burned of those places to to the ground. Um. The cops came, people were arrested. UM. But and like what I read, you know is that the cops were just glad nobody died. But really nasty stuff. The chief of the or leader chairman. Let's see what it was, chief, Yeah, um was it was assaulted. UM. One of the tribal members vans was set on fire. UM. Really nasty ship, really nasty UM. And and they really insist that you know, they're right right across the way from from Maine, and Maine conducts a year long lobster season, and and they think that they should be able to do that in order to really you know, access those markets and and build you know, build up there their fishery and their kind of way of life. Um. And they're planning to do again this year. UM. And it got so nasty last year and they're basically fighting against the you know, the federal government of Canada. And so they have this year requested you and peacekeepers to come in and using little blue helmets exactly to come in and avoid the the violence. UM. That's very wildly out of the question because it's interesting because it ties into the thing we were taught over the other day. Of the other day, we had a law student who's from the Choctaw Nation and he was explaining, like he's explained the concept of sovereign nations that when our government, um wanted to strike, like when our government wanted to negotiate with tribes, they had to for our government to negotiate with an entity like it can't negotiate with an entity that's not a sovereign thing, so tribes became legally sovereign nations. So it's interesting that you'd say, like, no, our sovereign and I know this is Canada, but like our sovereign nation, our tribe is in a dispute with another sovereign nation of Canada. And what happens when two sovereign nations are in dispute oftentimes the U N. Yeah, but but the u N always Uh, it's far fetched. I think it's the logic is. I think it makes a point, absolutely absolutely, and I think it got it got a lot of attentions. It got a lot of attention that we would be talking about We wouldn't be talking about it right now if they hadn't requested UN peacekeepers. Yeah, and you know, and there's there's there's some kind of mixed up Supreme Court decisions within this um that they affirmed the right to a moderate livelihood from fishing and hunting um, which which opened the door for First Nations in Canada to be able to hunt and fish outside of the established regulations and um, you know, pursue more more subsistence kind of hunting and fishing. But then there was a follow up to that um that indigenous treaty rights are subject to regulation as long as the regulation is shown to be justified on the grounds of conservation or other public importance. But would be helpful for people listening to kind of understand this where I want to give a state side, like a US version of something similar. Where UM in your home state, Sam in Washington with razor clams. I was reading about the regulatory structures from razor clams. So there's a basis as a shellfish management panel, right, and it includes representatives from the state of Washington, and it includes tribal representatives from coastal tribes. They together like with with each of these representatives are Each of these representatives are represented by biologists who do shellfish surveys, and they start out saying, like, what is the harvestable number of say, razor clams on said beaches. It's already agreed that the percentages of whatever is there, Yeah, are allocated tribal state state being to anyone that goes and buys a state license, tribal being just the tribal members. So they already know how they're going to cut it. They just don't know how big the pie is, but they know how they'll slice the pie. And every year they need to or whatever, I don't know, if it's every year, every two years, whatever, they need to come to an agreement like okay, how big is the buy and then we'll cut it in a half. But that's sort of like the moving piece there. Absolutely, and that comes out of the nineteen seventy four Bolt Decision, which which was a byproduct of the salmon wars and and where they were like there was actual gunfights out in like the Straits Wanta Fuka among commercial salmon fishermen, um. And what what that did was reaffirmed the treaty rights of the tribes in Washington and and and cut it in half. It's at fifty for triabal harvest fifty percent for non indigenous. So that plays out across sam and steel head, everything any fish you can or shellfish you can, and crab and everything you can think of in Washington's frustrates the hell out of people because I think a lot of people look and um, I mean, I'm frustrates the hell out of people on both sides, I'm sure, but a lot of people look and they think themselves, I'm an American, I belong to the state. We're all Americans. I thought the whole thing with America's all Americans are equal. Why is this not divided equally? Why do some Americans get you know? And then and then on the other hand, people are like, well, would be all mine? We're not taken from me by your ancestors. And so I'm pissed. Two. And it's getting it's getting especially sticky with steel head right now, which are declining precipitously in in Washington's implementing all sorts of different regulations. But you know, when I wrote about this earlier this year, is that they banned fishing from a boat on most of the coastal rivers for steel head. Just what all they're trying to do is exactly just trying to reduce the catch rate. But you know, kind of a bit of the elephant in the room and that discussion is the fact that all of those rivers are still being gill net for wild steelhead by the tribes. UM, and catching release does count as take under some more recent court decisions. UM. But you know that it's it's harder, harder mathematics now that you know a lot of these steel head runs are like under a thousand and the tribes still assert it in their fifty take on a very small escapment um. But you know, it's it's the math is a little the math is pretty fuzzy because it's you know, it's gill nets and stuff, and it's like you get these days a week estimating how many you're going to get. Um. You know, to me, it's important that they still have that the right to do that and maintain those traditions. But on the other side of the lane, like and some of the tribes are totally at the table here, like, hey, there's a problem, we're trying to fix it. We're and are working with w DFW and the other stakeholders to try to solve those problems. But then there's there's some other tribes who are like, God, pound sand, look at the bolt decision, We have the right to do this. Yeah. I think that's one of the areas where there's a lot of frustration would be that exercising tribal rights takes precedent over sort of like the state of the resource, and at a point it gets into the finger pointing. It's like, well, the resource wouldn't be screwed up if it weren't for you guys. But it's like, okay, but it's still screwed up. It was white men that put cannaries on the mouse of all those rivers, you know, years ago. But does that then mean that when you have a population of a thousand fish entering a river, does does the fact that it's your fault? I mean that we should kill half? We should continue to kill half of them every year as a as a display of our tribal rights. It's tricky, No, it's tricky as hell. You want a good segue? Yeah? Please? This connects Washington with Canada. Phenomenal. So this was another Canadian Supreme Court the case that was just decided um in two thousand ten. Rick Diswattle of Washington State. He lives on the Confederated Colville Reservation north of Spokane, crossed up into BC and killed an elk out of season without a license, crossed uh No, in his in his truck there with his with his wife. So wasn't like he wanted across the border without knowing it. No, No, this is very deliberate. He killed this elk and then reported himself and then went and told the game warden, hey, I killed this elk and I'm exert I'm exerting my treating international boundary. Yeah, he's a member of the Sinics tribe or the Arrow Lakes people that were traditionally lived in the Arrow Lakes region of British Columbia. I don't know who that is, but I'm told it's up there. The last Canadian member of that clan died in nineteen fifty three, and it had been declared an extinct clan by the Canadian government. Basically when they're making you know, the reservation systems and everything and and uh, you know more. Around the turn of the century, that band mostly moved to Washington just because they were kind of they kind of got squeezed out of that area. Um, and very few were left and then the last of them died. Um. But I got a quote from from Rick to Swaddle in seventeen he said, I knew for a fact of my ancestral grounds were here. Um, if somebody didn't start this then it would never get going. So he was he was cited for this elk Like he went just went in and said, hey, I did this, this, and I'm i'm this, I'm exercising my treaty right, he was cited, he was acquitted in trial, and then the Government of BC appealed and lost, and then appealed and lost, and then appealed to the Canadian Supreme Court. And they just recently ruled um that he had the right to do that, that that he is a Aboriginal person of Canada. Let's see um. It's ruling. The Supreme Court of Canada firms that, regardless of citizenship or residency, Aboriginal peoples of Canada do Canada, do have rights and those rights are protected by the Canadian Constitution. Um. And this is the first time that the Supreme Court of Canada has interpreted what means to be an Aboriginal people of Canada. And that does not require living in Canada. It only requires that your ancestors did. Was this his intention when he killed the elk? Yes, this was This was definitely his This was his goal. Did they seize the elk? That's a great question. I don't know this one as well as her era. It's gonna be dry age by No. That's really interesting, man. Yeah, you want to think that there's a huge ramification, isn't. I mean, it's like there's like it's legally interesting, but I don't know that it's going to be. That's you know, with with all of these it's easy to make a lot of smoke. Yeah, but but it's not always it's not always like it. It's not always born out that it's hard to tell in practice, Like in practice, will there would there be a flood of individuals leaving northern Washington driving into BC and shooting elk or would it be a thing that like will that become a thing or is it just that it will be I wanted to clarify that I could and ten years ago by and you don't hear of anyone going elk hunting in BC from the Colville. It's hard to know. It's a way, it's a waste, it's ways to travel, and that that country up there is vast um and I'm not convinced that the all kind of was it would be better there. And I believe that they have you know, treaty hunt rights in Washington too. So yeah, that's a that's a that's owns a head scratcher, and I need to read more into it. It's interesting kind of duel citizenship. Yeah, Uh, we're gonna hit on something quick. That we talked about quite a bit. I don't want the hill a long time ago. The Horrera case of Wyoming very similar in that has to do with, like, you know, trying to clarify, codify treaty rights. So there's a guy in the Crow Reservation Herrera, what was his first name, Cyn Cleaven Herrera was on the Crow Reservation in Wyoming, former game warden UM. In January, he and two friends crossed out of the Crow Reservation in Montana UH into the Yeah, into Wyoming. They crossed, they crossed the border on foot. They still insist that they didn't mean to that, that they didn't know they had crossed the border, but kind of immaterial at this point. UM. And they killed a couple of elk onto a national forest Bighorn Bighorn National Forest. UM locals found some partially bushered animals, reported to game warden. He conducted an investigation UM, which was assisted to by the fact that Claven Herrera reached out to him UM asking if he had had knew about some poaching or something like that because he was he was a warden at that time, and which lad this this game warden Dustin Sharma, who I've I've spoken to. UM started looking at Herrera's Facebook page and saw pictures of him with elk that He's like, that looks like it's on the Big Horn National Forest. UM went up into that area was able to match those photos UM to elk carcasses, tribal game warden or tribal game warden. Yeah. UM. All three men were charged with poaching and the animals are confiscated. Two of them pleaded guilty, but Herrera claimed UM that under the eighteen sixty eight second Treaty of Fort Laramie, UM that gay and tied his tribal right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long as game may be found there on. UM. So this this has this had been litigated before in like, uh, they that's an interesting go ahead language in the treaty, very very interesting so long as game can be found there on because it would say that at one point, elk, we're extirpated from the Bighorn National Forest. Yeah, but all this stuff was there. I mean, yeah, it's just weird to say that that. UM. Like let's say, let's say there was no game there and then someone's walking around they said, well, I'm hunting, and somebody like, but there's no game here, you're violating treaty, right, there's no game here. It's just a weird thing to add in. I guess they probably mean like in perpetuity. Yeah, but you know eighteen sixty eight, you know as well as I do, the you know, the Bison were on their way out in that in that area, and so and some people I have spoken to about this are like, yeah, that was an acknowledgement of the fact that like they saw it as like we're wiping it out, We're wiping out this this area of of game, and it just strike and all these things are so carefully worded. I would love to talk to the person and be like, well, if there's nothing there, who cares. I would love to hear them and go like, oh yeah, but right, here's why I want to clarify. And and but the word unoccupied is by far the most interesting. That's that's the sticky one. And and so this this went before the Supreme Court January nineteen um and they were really interested and unoccupied. And it's pretty interesting to read the transcripts because they were just like goofing off on like what couldn't signify occupation. Is that that because because there there's there's past cases that have said that, um, the area became occupied when Wyoming became a state, because all states enter on the same footing and are able to manage the game in the hunting within their territory. Whole other court case said that those treaty rights had been extinguished when the Bighorn National Forest was was designated and theme occupied by the forest exactly became occupied by the Forest Service. The Supreme Court of the United States disagreed with that. They didn't overturn. They didn't go so far as to overturn that specific opinion. And it's interesting because that specific opinion was the exact same thing. It was a cro tribal member crossing into Wyoming, into the Big Horn National Forest and killing an elk. And so there there's and that does Supreme Court decision from. But then there's another Supreme Court case UM Minnesota versus Millock's Band of Chippwa Indians that designation of of public land did not extinguish hunting and fishing rights. And so basically all the Supreme Court said is that there is unoccupied land. It did not become occupied by statehood or designation of the of the Bighorn National Forest. They toyed around with the ideas like if it's close to a road in a trail, maybe that's occupied. But like, you know, a big gass wilderness area, like you'd be hard pressed to prove occupancy because you literally can't live there or stay there occupy like the permanently occupy the area. So they said that there is not occupancy and that the treaty right is is well and good. But as the Supreme Court usually does it, they gets very narrow ruling and then they remanded it back to the lower courts. So they come back and say that you people are going to need to better defind some things exactly basically in the descent that the Samuel Alito was like, you know, the real issue here is is the is the concept of issue preclusion because this same court case has been played out before the Crow tribal member killed an elk on the Big Horn National Forest and was prosecuted, and they said that that that area was occupied. So that basically this this first lower court uh just went back on that. They're like issue preclusion again because the Supreme Court of the U. S didn't didn't address that except in the in the descent and they said issue preclusion. So now this is being appealed up from the county Circuit Court to the to the Wyoming Circuit Court um, which will likely hold in favor of issue preclusion again. So it'll likely get appealed again. But where a major speed bump in this comes. And so you know, a lot a lot of people were supporting this guy, Claven Herrera going to the Supreme Court, and there's the presumption that he'll go there maybe maybe two more times to work out a bunch of these issues. But he's gotten himself in a lot of trouble with the law since then. In Um he was charged with stealing a car in January, um buying meth in March. When they seized his phone, they found eight hundred and fifty images containing um explicit materials related to children. To be clear, these are all claims, right, This hasn't been this hasn't been gone through jury trial or no. But he's been but he's been officially charged with these with these crimes. And then in July he was accused of strangling somebody. Yeah, so so this this case was like draws into question his ability to revisit the Supreme Court exactly. And it also draws into question his ability to maintain the pro bono support of some of the biggest and fanciest law firms in the United States, because the all those lawyers you know, are always thinking about their public image and a and uh pro bon giving pro bono support to an accused child pornographer does not look good. And even the crow tribe isn't isn't happy about this anymore. And they've been like pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. So like what some people who are reading the tea leaves now are like, they may drop this appeal, they may they may settle this they they may end up not pursuing it. And because the concept of issue preclusion makes it so difficult, because this exact same issue has been litigated before, so they may take a step back, let this one slide like and you know, next time it goes before the Supreme Court, cleavend Herrara maybe in prison. Um, so they're they're like, what, they may stake a step back and let somebody else go push the issue some other time. And if they were smart about it, they would have them poach and elk on Blm land or shoot it, shoot a deer in the in the Big Horn National Forest because the issue of crow to Big Horn National Forest and and killing an elk out of season, that's already been litigated, and that's why we're issue preclusion thing. So they need to take it. They need to take a fresh crack at it if they if they want to get their hunting rights in Wyoming. But it's worth mentioning that after that Supreme Court decision, Montana was like, yeah, you guys are good. Like on public federal public land in in Montana, the Crow tribe can exert their treaty. Right. Can you back up for a second and just explain that, because there's probably people that aren't familiar with what's going on. Like what her Ara is trying to establish here, presumably is that they can go hunt these unoccupied lands without following state fish and game laws. They're they're they're exercising their right too kind of follow their own hunting regulations, if you will, Like they can just go where they want and when they want and hunt how they want rather than following state laws exactly. Okay, And I think the lesson that we had covered this, we sort of drug it out to like the most extreme example would be them going into like Yellowstone, which is within within the territory they're they're old territory. Yeah, especially you said federal land in Montana. Uh, there's like three of Yellowstone National Park that's federal land in Montana. Yeah, so my but Montana doesn't regulate the hunting within Yellowstone National Parks, so that'd be a question for the Park Service specifically. But since we're into the concept you know, of of optics here, that one's that's not a good look. You would get Congress involved in on the wrong and on again against you, and Congress would be the final arbiter of something like this. So it'd be real bad idea for for them to ever go try to shoot something in Yellowstone. Um, and that that would go very poorly go through. Oh I had a comment for it. You jump on the next thing. What was interesting when this went to the Supreme Courts was all these details like rumors that you're here and I don't know how substantiated they are. That um I had heard a rumor again, a rumor unsubstantiated, Like I don't don't have any evidence of this, but I heard a room or from someone that one of these elk had been shot on seventeen or eighteen times. I don't if that's true or not. I had heard that, and I think it is born out that they were only like gourmet butcher only part portions and some elk backstraps, some some Yeah, so they heads and backstraps. One elk not touched at all. Right, and then you factor in the these new revelations or these new things that coincidentally involved this individual. It's all immaterial to the court. Like no one's saying, like the court, the Supreme Court is gonna be like, yeah, well he only just cut the head off. That's not cool. It's like it doesn't matter to them. No one's asking them their opinion about that. It's like can you go shoot out? And so all these little details that in your head are like, hey, I don't know, man, seems real, you know, seems fishy. It doesn't matter. It definitely matters now because you know, the even even the members of the Supreme Court are going to take note of of some of this bigger, bigger stuff. But like especially like Holland and Heart and the Crow tribe. They don't they they may not want to have this guy's name tied up in the in this big, in this big court case. It's just it's a it's a bad look and uh, politically disastrous. So the one final note I want to point out, um again charged, yeah right right, alleged, Yeah, like he was charged with. He hasn't gone, hasn't gone a court, It hasn't been like jury verdict. Charged. Yeah, and so charge of stuff that they didn't do. But that's he was charged. And I know a bunch about a bunch more stuff that is purely alleged, not charged. And I'm not even gonna go so far as to mention it here, but formal charges. Yeah, exactly, Okay, try to uh here, let me see this one up, and I want to talk about this one too. Then we're gonna we're gonna move on to some different subjects. But but I know where to start. In Alaska. You have, UM, Alaska is different. You know, we were here down here in the Lower Ford. You hear about reservations, right, tribal reservations in Alaska when they've kind of divided up Alaska formally, UM, we created these tribal corporations, right, and they maintain a lot of subsistent tribes up there, maintained a lot of subsistence hunting and fishing rights. Game is managed through like federal subsistence boards and the state kind of negotiate together and come up with rules. UM. A couple of years ago there was a thing to happen in south central south central Ish, Alaska where a federal subsistence board made a move in favor of tribal interests that limited big game hunting on federal demount on federally managed public lands, limited big game hunting to exclude certain individuals and to make it certain like big game hunting for moose certain times a year only open to tribal groups or subsistence sistence subsistence groups um. And those are pretty small areas. Now in Alaska there's a move to I think it does it encompass sixty million acres of federally managed public land to make it tribal members that that subsist or tribal subsistence. For my messiness upper is it just federal subsistence. Federal subsistence and I think sixty million acres of federally managed land would be closed to not just non residents of Alaska, but closed to residents of Alaska. Sixty million acres closed the residents of Alaska, and during the fall Big Game season only open two federally recognized assistance users. Um just for to demonstrate my own biases. I hunted this area one time for care. But which would now be if this goes through, which would be illegal for me to do. Yeah. Absolutely, And I think it's really important to acknowledge the Rhode Islands. Yeah, this is this is not a this is not a tribal thing. This is this is not a tribe versus versus the white man. This is this is everybody against everybody. A lot of these communities are very diverse, and have you know a lot of Korean influence and uh, there's a lot of there's a lot of a lot of white people and all sorts of races out there. So it's it's it's more locals versus outsiders. And that sixty million acres is really easy to picture if you like think of Alaska. It's basically like the upper left hand corner. It's a giant area unit units twenty three and twenty six A the Northwest Arctic UM and the and so Yeah, the Subsistence Board up there in April submitted a special action and request to close that UM that that special action request is submitted to the Federal Subsistence Board UM. That board is made up of three local subsistence hunting community representatives and five representatives from government agencies including the BLM, the Forest Service, National Park Service, US Fishing, Wildlife Service, and the Indian Bureau of Indian Affairs UM. Basically, uh, they they've been getting really upset with with with UM out of outside hunters coming in like you and me flying in. They think it's disturbing the migrations. But it's not. It's not a resource issue, it's social issue. It's a social issue. The herd is strong, there's a lot of animals as people don't want to deal. They don't want to deal with other people. It's not like someone can say, like, hey, that carib we're vanishing. It's that UM. There's a plenty of animals, but the spot I go to and sometimes there's other people they're not don't want those other people to be there. Well, and you need to explain that. Like so it's what is subsistent. What is the subsistence subsistence community? Like, what's the difference here? Certain certain in certain zip codes, your your subsistence using you can qualify not in a major metric, not a major urban area. Is that an economic space thing? Yeah? I think you could be Bill Gates with all his troubles. Bill Gates could live in uh. Bill Gates could live in certain areas ones up being the majority of Alaska and be a local subsistence user. It has nothing to do with your has nothing to do with your means, as to do with your primary place of resident. What I'm saying is, what's the difference between subsistence and say, if I went up there to hunt, you would not be up there hunting under for the subsistence law. You would not be hunting under federal subsistence. Let me give you, Okay, if I lived at if I moved my fish shack, okay, and that became a primary place of residence is at my fish chack, I would be able to right now on federal lands, my dear season as a or if I lived in Fairbanks or Anchorage or anywhere in the lower forty eight Okay, as a person lives in Montana has a fish shack there. I can hunt deer on federal lands starting on August fifteen. If I lived at my fish shack full time, I could start hunting deer. I think sometime in June. I am limited to only antlered deer. If I lived at my fish shack full time, I could shoot dose. If I lived in my fish shack full time, I could run a halibit long line with thirty hooks. If I lived in my fish shack full time, I could run ninety black cod hooks on a on a long line. Yeah, that's why I would have I would have no halibate limit off my long line. That's why I have. I have a halibut limit of two per day. This way, the subsistence rules and regulations are different. You can run and it's it's funny in some areas because you could live an anchorage. But there's areas where if you go and you're you're an Alaska resident in a subsistence area, you can then operate under subsistence regulations. For instance, a person from Anchorage could go to certain areas on the Alaska Peninsula and run a drift gillnet. Does your brother do any of that, Like does he have access to that? No, I don't know, but you know they do. See it gets a little I get a little bit over my waiters on this because they go dip Like he every year goes dip netting. So he every year goes to the copper or Kenai whatever these rivers um and they'll go down there and it's like you're a loud twenty five sock eyes for the head of a household and ten sock eyes forevery additional household member, and you can net them. Can you explain the principle of I mean, I think we know what subsistence means as a word, but the principle of establishing subsistence, Yeah, it was that when Alaska entered into statehood no Anilka. That's what established as we know today. Yeah, so the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. I probably got that backwards, but um in the seventies, which was what you know under the Carter administration, which was what kind of created the the tapestry of the federal public lands that we know today in Alaska. That's what established the reagonal subsistence boards and the system that we know. And it also gave pre eminence of subsistence harvest over recreational harvest. So in any of these considerations, subsistence comes first. The people who the people who actually live off the land, they get they get they get first, they get first. Helping always, but no, go ahead. It doesn't need to be the act. They don't define it. It doesn't need to be that you actually live off the land. It's where you live, right, billionaire and eat twinkies. I have a great example. And you could be a subsistence You can be a subsistence users just where you live. And I think, and I'm pretty sure when I was talking about the dip netting, I don't even think that's federal. I think that's a state thing. But still state. I think dip netting is still states. I'm sure thousand people correct me on that. Again. Man, it's a it's a byzantine Um like regulatory structure that I know a little snippets of. I am not a subject matter expert on this stuff. Yeah, And and it is really interesting. Byzantine might be a good word for it, because these regional subsistence boards, of which they are ten um, basically can do a lot of the season setting for the area within you know, within their kind of their their territory. Um. So this this Regional Subsistence Board in the Northwest ARTIC has submitted this special action request to close cariboo and moose harvest during the cariboo and moose season for just just this year. That's what the special action request August in September closed to non federally qualified subsistence. It has the final goal here, no, of course not no. And it's worth pointing out here that the State Game Agency hates us, hates this because they're their management authority. Their management authority is being pulled, attempting. People are attempting to pull their management authority from a quadrant of the state. And it's not even an issue of resource abundance, no, not at all. And they're fighting that. That that the one you mentioned that from a couple of years ago previously, the nel China Unit g MU. They're fighting that in court like tooth and nail and um they they said, I mean um. Ben Mulligan, who I talked to last night, said like all avenues available to us. You know, this is like all out war against this. So there was a hearing on April on April before the Federal Subsistence Board. UM, and that was pretty interesting. I wasn't actually able to go to it, but ran four and a half hours long. Uh. They opened a five day written comment period. All of this is brand new. They're they're used to being a rubber stamp agency. They're used to being thanked for everything they do by these subsistence communities because there does their Their government governing structure is meant to be very permissive towards these regional subsistence boards and to be to assist them in what they would like to do and the changes they'd like to seek. And they're not used to anybody paying any any the slightest bit of attention. There's never more than a dozen people there and it's mostly just like agency representatives. They took um spoken testimony from a hundred and six people over six hours or something. UM. They're fourteen in support of this special action request and ninety two against it. UM. There were several like entire families, including the grandfather, father son, grandson. Kind of because you're you're locking out. It's a lot of stuff in Alaska. You look at it being like outsiders versus insiders, you know, certain bag limit things and like you know, you kind of non residents pay more, they have less, you know, less access to resources, and and that's fine. That's that's how it goes in every state. This is like Alaskans against Alaskas. This is saying to Alaskans, um, you just lost access to too, like the northwest quadrant of your state on federal land. It's also a violation. There's always been, not always. I think that in the country we strive towards this sort of like separation church and state. You have a lot of federally managed lands, right, and I think that's a great system. Federally managed public lands are pretty secure. And I like federally managed public lands, while they found it at its best is managed by the state. Some people be like how can they both? How how can it be okay for the government to manage land and stay selangel wild? Like it just works really good and I don't like to see Yeah, it round up and it's been successful and people don't want to see it interrupted. Yeah, ain't broke. Are the locals that are in support of this, the minority of locals that are in support of this justifying it because they're saying they're having a harder time feeding themselves or what. So that's what they're saying. They believe that Caribou migrations have been drastically interrupted, and they're blaming that on outside hunting, where a lot of people are like, might be climate change, the snow patterns, the weather patterns, the seasonal UH temperature has been a lot different, well, plus migrations migration. I mean, it's a whole field of study. Carribou migration routes change gradually all the time. And this Cariboo population Ta tonics, they drift all over the place. Yeah, for twenty years they'll cross the river in some place and then twenty years ago by and they don't come within a hundred miles there. Yeah, And like s C I and b H A and t R c P all submitted comments on this and have taken an active role. And that's what I mean. B h A specifically in my article about this, I quote you guys said, it's saying like, hey, you know, might be some other it might be some other things, but there's also an element of um. There's a lot of stuff in the in the testimony and in the special action request about poor treatment from outsiders that people are are rude to them when they run into them on the co Book River, that that they like, this guy was an asshole to me. Social it's it's completely social issue. I don't think you can hold sixty million acres of land hostage over some people not getting along. There are other ways to solve There are other ways the resolve issues, especially when people have you know, a constitutional right to the same access to that you know for a service or US Fish and Wildlife Service ground uh. We first covered this on the website on April sixteenth. Now over a month later, has the sentiment changed at all around this or like organizations in the state and everyone else, they all still have the same stance as a month ago. The trenches are deeper. UM. This is likely going to going to go before of a vote of the board in mid June. The date hasn't been set yet. UM and A d F and G is is very worried that it's going to pass. Like Fishing Game, Alaska's fishing game. My my my contact Ben was was saying that it's like it's very likely that this will pass. The board may try to the bit board may try to dismiss it. They may try to seek compromise, they may also pass it. So, like I said, there's eight members of that board, three of which are regional subsistence representatives. One's Bureau of Indian Affairs, so that's four in favor of The rest are federal agencies. The one from the parks are the guy from the Park Services new So they don't really know how he's going to go, but they've and they've had they've had a hung vote before because it's it's even numbers, so like that, they're they're working on that math. They don't know, but they're definitely bracing for this to go through. You know, this is like if you have any interest in any interest in hunting or fishing in Alaska, this song you gotta pay attention to her. The more talking about the guy crossing from Washington and to BC to shooting out, it's like significant legally, but what is it really going to mean this right here, because there are plenty of other areas. We're already talking about sixty million acres, there are plenty of other areas to say like, oh, you mean, we can just cite the fact that we don't want to have to deal with competition as a reason to shut down millions of acres of federal land and make it that it's for us only. You don't think that that's going to be an appealing prospect to people. Yeah, it potentially, um, it potentially completely completely rewrites what if they said, Prince of Wales, is you know for blacktailed the blacktail deer harvest has been because one time I was going to fish this spot and there was another guy there. He had a bunch of TV cameras with him. You know, this is this is a perfect example. I mean, populations are growing, there are more people on the landscape, more people, you know, using all of this space and interacting and social science is a huge problem, and we're not equipping our agencies with social scientists like we should. We're you know, we're expecting these biologists who are used to managing animals, right, that's the job is managing animal populations. They're now in the throes of managing people and the people interaction with the people, and then the people interaction with the animals. And um, they need they need more tools in their chest to be managing this will be in your in your opinion, what would be one of those tools, literally more social scientists working with the agencies actually dealing with people interactions so the biologists can work on the animals. Um, it's about people interaction. You see things like that in Montana all the time. You see you know, the Madison going crazy, you see controversy over there. You just see this stuff is happening. It's increasing increasing as more people are outside enjoying everything that we enjoy. Yeah, UM, explain your job a little bit. My job Director of Innovatible Alliance. I don't know what. I don't know what that means. Yeah. So I have created and building out a business development and fundraising arm for back country hunters and anglers. Um So Yeah, basically, I like to call our team the energy development team. So we're out finding resources, um to support all of our members work on the ground. What does that look like? Money? Fundraising, fundraising and partnerships, working with people like you've been on b h a's board for a long time or b h A volunteering and board member positions state level? Yeah? And I you know, I have a I have a super fun career path and life that has led me in amazing directions. Um. I started working with b h A as a volunteer when I worked for a farms manufacturer. UM. Actually, um, you know, Kimber Manufacturing, and you know, sold guns and started um displaying at rendezvous UM back you know, like eight nine years ago, and yeah, go and set up and and talk about guns and UM that's how I got to know b h A. I just you know, in that action, started interacting with the members of b h A and was just like so awe struck by the amazing people who are out there really caring about and loving public lands and wildlife and hunting and angling heritage. And so I started to get more involved with the organization. UM. Then you know, through volunteering and everything. UM, became a board member on the national board. UM. And then I ended my work. UM. I was tapped as I was working for the gun manufacturer kind of living a pretty awesome life just roaming the world hunting and shooting. That's kind of what my job was. So no one can really argue with that. I know you guys don't know what that's like, but UM, not at all. UM. The governor of Montana came and tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, I heard you might be good at creating this thing called an office about a recreation, And I said, I don't even know what that is, but sounds amazing. Maybe I would be no problem, no problem, let's figure this out. So Montana was a fourth state to create an offs about de recreation. I started working for the governor in two thousand late SEV. Who are the other three? The very first was Utah UM, followed very quickly by Colorado and Washington. So Montana became number four, quickly followed by Wyoming. Then there were eight of us. The eight of us formed what's called the Confluence Accords UM, and now there are sixteen states to do. What are the offices? Like, what is the sort of purpose of the offices aboutdoor recreation? Yeah, the purpose of the office about the recreation. I think it's the culmination of something that we've all known for a very long time and we've seen for a very long time. UM. As economies grow and change in states, So you know, back at the turn of the century, states like Montana or other states, they discovered like, oh, agriculture is a really important part of our economy, Like this is a big contributor or livestock, right, like UM ranching from like these really important parts of our economy, and so they would form like Department of Agricultures and States and so dedicated to protecting guarding. Yeah, just making sure. So the Office about Derecreation UM in Montana House and the Governor's office, Um, they're all they're all very similar but different in some ways. But it's really formally identifying that outdoor recreation is a very significant part of state and federal the federal economy. Um. And so why don't we have and it has tentacles and fingers and like everything, and so why don't we have one person that's their job to look through everything through that lens about de recreation and identify what is helping this economy, what is hindering this economy? Um? What are the unique facets of this economy that we need to look at in a different way? Um. So really, I mean this is conversation and work that's been going on for years and years, but it's just slowly manifested itself into this UM. So Yeah, it's it's very interesting, it's very positive, it's it's great. And then the then the winds of change, right, So you came in under a governor he turned out, Yeah, Yeah, I worked for Governor Bullock. Um, he was a two term governor. He's done and will the office? Will the office continue to run on a different leadership. It's still remains to be seen. It's a permanent office that's been created and it's up to the new governor if they want to appoint somebody. Have they staffed They haven't staffed it. They haven't staffed quite a few things. Is there an argument? Uh? Is there an argument for that? Is it plausible that they would be like that? That didn't need to happen in aw'll go away? Um? Are Anything's possible for sure. But you're not involved in that conversation. Oh no, not involved in it at all. But you know it's Um, it would be unfortunate. You know from Montana, you know a very significant portion of our state's economy is linked to out to recreation. We have these amazing numbers. And two sixteen, the Wreck Act was passed and that was actually the federal government like identifying that, like wow, the recreation economy is like really, like how big is it? And so they passed the Wreck Act and that basically mandated the Bureau of Economic Analysis Analysis to establish a sub account like a prototype sub account. UM. Really you know, identifying you know, what does outdore creation contribute to the economy because like you and I, like we all sit in this room and we're like, oh my god, outdoor recreation is what we do. It's our way of life. It makes us feel good, it makes us feel alive, We're healthy, we're happy. Um, we all make our living around this. Like I was a fishing guide for a while, I was in the ski industry for a while, I was in the gun industry. Like that's how I have made my livelihood as through record recreation. So clearly it has a second on my impact. So actually there are three, um I believe economic firms that worked on them. One is here in Bozeman. It's called Headwaters Economics. They consulted with the e A. They created UM the very first economic numbers in the US related to our g d P as it relates to recreation. UM. Their first numbers were believe it was two point two percent of the U S g d P is contributed to outdoor recreation. And that's everything, that's the spectrum, that's the that's the barefoot trial, tree walk in, Sleeping under the Stars, and going out and killing stuff. Right, that's the whole rainbow of us. But man, I've seen some too that that have the that capture these huge numbers, and you look and they're counting like Ebagos. Absolutely that's part of this. Yeah, it's motorized, it's non motorized. I'm a super outdoors for some people. What I'm saying it like it catches a lot of stuff. It does. It catches a lot of stuff. Um, And so to put into perspective, two, that's twice the size of the U. S. Automotive industry. That's twice the size of the U. S. Pharmaceutical industry. So it's a huge, you know, portion of our economy. The part that I think is really interesting is and I'm gonna botch this one. The numbers are not quite right, but I believe there's like it's like seventy two. Like if you look at g d P, there's like seventy two categories of like basement GDP. And when somebody establishes a sub account, they actually say, okay, like what parts of this is contributed? Um? But outdoor recreation touches like someone godly number. Like I think it's like sixty eight of seventy two. Like basic US you know GDP functions, So recreation like has its its fingers and everything. Um, do you think there will ever be a Secretary of Recreation in the US. So here's the but here's the funny part, is like that I've now worked with some really remarkable people in d C and um, you know with the Park Service and the BLM and the four Service and just so many great people. Uh. There was a period of time where we actually had an office about de recreation federally for a brief period of time. UM, And I wonder who, I don't know, we gotta go look at it. But I remember he was He was like oo back in the day we had this, And I was like what I didn't know about that? Um. So yeah, it's it's a it's really interesting. It's it's great. Uh. Where were you born? Was born a white Fish, Montana? So that was your tie to Um? Is that were Kimberg's based No, the sales office, there's part of it in um kalispell Yeah, I so I Um, I'm a Montana girl. UM. I have been told I'm embedded like a tick. And I guess I'm going to own it. I just I'm owning it my entire adult career. I've traveled the world and every time I come back to white Fish, I'm like, and I'll live in the best spot you know. So, um, yeah, I actually my parents were born there, My grandparents were born there. I was born there. I'm finally held stay there and raise my boys there. It's a great place to be. I have two boys. Um, they're twelve and fourteen. Do you, um, when you were a little did you did you like, did you like think about and identify that there's an outdoor industry in which you would work or was it just that that's what life was and it didn't seem like a it didn't seem like a like a thing you would move into. You just went into it. So I don't know if we were I don't know if it's classified like that, but yeah, very actually apparent because I grew up my dad was a hunting and fishing guide and a knife maker, and so literally I spent my summer breaks about ornament on his on a whitewater raft going down the middle fork of the Flathead right like that was he took me to work with him. Um, I would go on fishing trips with him. I would do seven day packing trips with him, Like that's how I spent my summers. And so my dad was in the wreck business right like he was a guide and he knew all of this and something that I look back on, um, you know, because I was exposed to so many people coming to experience what I lived like it was my every day and like there are people that are saving years and they're coming and having experience like a once in a lifetime experience that's literally changing their being. It's changing their thought patterns. And I didn't have the context to put that in, but I watched it, right, I would watch these people just like lose their minds and just you know, see everything and like the but the water, like I can see the bottom like how you know, like it's so deep? You know. My dad would crack wise jokes like they're like how do you water would be like just tow to a duck, you know, like a you know, to guide you know thing. But UM didn't know. Like the thing is that I understood is that I didn't know where they came from and I didn't know what they're like life was like. But clearly I have it way better than they do because they were dying over what I just called my everyday life. And obviously, as I grew older, like I definitely be you know, I started to put that into context. Um you know, I started working in fly shops before I was old enough to pull a paycheck in exchange for fly tying material and fly rods. I was like my sport that I did. I was a competitive rifle shooter. Like I didn't. He's like, you're tall, You're a big girl. You must be a basketball player. And I'm like, I can't dribble ball to save my life. But it has it has a trigger is a totally different story. And so as a competitive rifle shooter, um you know it, thought about leaving, you know to go to school. Wasn't interested. I wanted to stay in Montana and you never see Montana Resource conservation is my degree. I chalked it up to being an over educated fly fisherman because they were like, okay, so to get a job, you got to go to Oklahoma or Nebraska and like work on mud puddles. And I was like, I'm not sign up for this. I'm staying in Montana. And so went into the organic produce industry, like randomly because I could stay there. So I was actually like brokering produce from field to table on the national market at the age of like twenty two. And then I got a knock on the door and they were like, hey, we heard you sell stuff, and you're from Whitefish and you can ski. We've got a ski and ski out office. You could be a regional ski you know, ski salesperson for Big Mountain Ski resort. I was like, you want to pay me more money to have a ski and ski out office, and I'm going to travel the US partying, golfing, skiing and drinking and convincing people to come ski and totally do that. I got this. I totally golf. Yeah, does not look like he just he doesn't look like But I golf with a lot of guys that look like you. So the golf is in this room, yea. And I got that tree tattoo and stuff. You're not gonna let you golf anymore. Drink. I show up to drink, and then I golf while I'm there. Yeah, so that's great. On the golf course, I spent my I spent my twenties like just like in the ski industry, and just like having a great life, was married, UM had kids, and UM decided I'd stay at home, stayed at home and work part time. And then I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go back into like the work, you know, work, Like what do I want to do when I grow up? And I was at a rocky Mountinolk Foundation banquet and I was with my cousins and I was pretty drunk, and I turned around. I saw my buddies have worked for Kimber. I was like, oh, Kimber, I got a Kimber. They still guns. I love guns. I could sell guns. So I just inquired and ended up getting hired on and worked for Kimber for eight years. And now here I am, um, is your dad's a little guide? Is he still alive? He is still alive. He is not guiding um he Um. He's a knife maker. So my great grandfather started a knife making business called Track Knives that turned into Schmidt Knives. And so my dad actually has always been a knife maker, but then with just guide on the side, stopped doing that. He actually was in blacksmith thing. He's done amazing eximithing work, but he no longer guides is he is your old man. Um and like if you imagine your grandfather and stuff. Are they sympathetic to the cause of b h A or they have been like reflexively not love love. My dad loves b h A, loves it, loves it. Um, he's you know, he's even I've helped him write op eds in support of like wild and scenic rivers. And Um, my grandfather actually was super tight with my grandfather. He and I. He was my best fishing buddy and I'm so thankful to have had all those years fishing with him. Um. But he uh no, it's it's very like they're they're very like they're b h people. For sure, they didn't have that. They didn't. Um, I mean you're telling me they didn't. But uh, even like dating back that far, they didn't have a sort of a reflexive like not really liking um strong public lands advocacy or restrict actions on public lands that might be like tinder industry. Well, so and I come from so, I come from extractive industry. So my grandfather was in the timber industry for sixty years. Um, and so Q was involved in you know, like I mean, like seriously like the logging of the sixties and the seventies and the eighties, and in Whitefish, white Fish was a timber town. The original name of Whitefish was Stumptown because it was clear cut and the railroads came in. And so Whitefish is this like literally this quintessential snapshot of the evolution of the West and the economy and how things are shifting. And Whitefish really kind of I think was like a little bit of head you know, like one of the first towns to go through that. But literally, my my generations of my family, like paint that picture. My grandfather was in banking and mining right with the other grandfather. Um. And so what happened though, is that obviously in the eighties, I mean like timber harvests and everything, like you know, it was there were yellow signs everywhere that was like this this family is supported by the timber industry. Right, Like when the timber industry was crashing, it was putting so many people out of work, continued to put people out of work through the two thousand's, right, like all the mills were shutting down. Um. But what was happening is like at the same time that like the timber industry and everything started to go down. Whitefish is this amazing little community with this lake that's really fun to like boate on. And then there was a bunch of people in town that thought this like big bald mountain up on top, you know, out of town would be kind of fun to like go downhill on and those ski things like you know back in the day, like my other grandfather was one of the first people to pioneer big mountain ski resort um, which, um, you know it's it's so you saw this like gradual increase of like this recreation opportunity as the timber industry dove and that crossover period was in my life and that was a really hard time. Um. And now you you do see that recreation um, you know, resort kind of community growing and evolving into then it becomes amenity based, and then it becomes and it starts pulling in industry. So so you guys, your family would be like, um, it's almost like this like Larry McMurtry novel about the like Lonesome Dove Man. Okay, I was thinking, like the last picture show, all my friends are going to be on nwees, Oh is it all my friends are gonna be strangers. Anyways, he writes about the transformation of the American West. So if you capture like generationally loggers, miners, and then like big game guides and then outdoor recreation, it's like just the evolution. So the flat the Old West of the New West. Man when you talked about like okay, so like my my grandparents, my grandparents, my father, like do they find like this like resentful like nature of more protection on lands And it's like, actually that area, the flat of River system was one of the first world and senior river systems in the country. And as a result, like they were the first ones to see it laid out, it had zero impact on anything anyone did. It only improved the way of life and improved everybody's you know, just lifestyle and so yeah, like so it's totally different, you know up there. Every time, you know, more protections established, like the more the community thrives and the better people are doing. Um, there's you know, the white Fish Legacy Partners have started the Whitefish Trail System, and the Whitfish Trail System is this like amazing network of trails, multiple use trails that are in and around Whitefish and It was started by residents for residents because they were illegally poaching trails on state timberlands and that timberland was going to be sold off into development. There was a bunch of like bikers that were like, no, this is crap, like you can't do that. I was like, yeah, actually we can. And so now we have this amazing trail system that contributes like six point three million dollars to the Whitefish economy every year just by its existence, um and so, yeah, it's been a very proactive community, very aggressively proactive community with surrounding land managers and um just evolving what it is to live there. This is a huge deal from Montana. Montana is way behind the eight ball in funding recreation. And then we could go off on tangents talking about who really funds recreation, who funds our infrastructure? Um and so in Montana we've been very behind. We don't have any state funding mechanisms of significance to fund trail maintenance and expand all this kind of stuff. Whereas states like Colorado it's called go co. They it's literally like, isn't like like one tenth of one percent of lottery dollars in Colorado equals four hundred million dollars a year to go towards recreation and conservation. And so we've not And there's there was a big there's a big paper that was done I think in like two thousand and sixteen, and it was statewide funding funding mechanisms for outdoor recreation and that the array of different ways that states will fund it. Um and Montana literally had virtually no a no fund. So if you come up with a oh my god, this is a brand new tax, you know resource like, how often does something new come along that you can tax? Right, So you've got this new tax and that's why everybody's like, we want the money, right. And it's a great opportunity though for us to you know, figure out a way to start investing in our recreation infrastructure. Now when you say when you say outdoor recreation, I gather that you picture a big umbrella. There's a very big umbrella. Um, you're not just talk about like you think about our recreation beyond hunting and angling. Yes, But now in your in your new situation at b h A, you've got to kind of refocus, right. Um, Well, you guys aren't like b H a isn't beholding of the ski community. No, no, no, exactly. They do appreciate the fact that I come with such a broad background and understanding. Um. I also, you know, definitely on the scene when I was an office about direct you know, director I was, I was kind of the hunting and Angling girl, like I was that representative. I was that voice and all of us because you know, quite honestly, when I first came in and there were eight directors and then more and we would be having conferences and we're having discussions, I'm sorry, hunting and angling is not well represented in the broader conversation about the recreation. And that was really really concerning to me. So that's why I made sure to really try and elevate that conversation. You mean, when people would say, from an like from an industry or governmental perspective, outdoor wreck they were biking, skiing, correct, like ari I stuff correct not And so that's why it's constantly bringing it back around. And you know, like I've heard you say non consumptive or consumptive, which is just the most I am. I hate, hate, hate hate that it just got your hiker bikers and you got your hunter fishers exactly well, and we have like different things. But the notion to me that that would instill in someone who likes to hike, the notion that they don't consume, they don't have an impact act. That's terribly dangerous. That's dangerous. Can you break that down a little bit, right? Yeah, first you better explain consumptive and non So traditionally it's like we have non consumptive and consumptive users and hunters and anglers are in Lumpton this consumptive mushroom pickers. No one ever talks about mushroom picks. Right. The foragers, they're consumptive right there. There's they're they're supposedly killing or taking a piece of the resource with them while they're out there. Now, if you're rockhound spencer, you're consumptive. He's not consuming those rocks. So like a detainer, it's this notion that someone is taking from and or having a greater impact. That's what it's meant to be. So well, that's what it's cut. Yeah, consumptive absolutely, Like I always thought there was like a little negative thing there, but I couldn't figure out what it was. And then they're supposedly Supposedly, the non consumptive is someone who is just simply out leaving no trace, walking on a trail for you know, yeah, like like, oh, I'm on the landscape, but I'm causing no disruption. I'm not having an impact on anything. Well, that is complete and utter horseshit. Um. Everybody is having an impact of some level, whether you're motorized, non motorized, like you name it. Everybody plays apart. And that is something where I don't like people, and I never tolerated it. If someone wanted to use those I said, Nope, not allowed to use those words. We're all having an impact. You just need to start understanding what kind of an impact you have. The other the other week, we discussed this this these guidelines that came out, and it was that what does someone had done some research on it. What distance do you impact wildlife? So I listened, I was catching up and I was listening and fifty yards on rodents, fifty yards on chipmunkster likes on you know. And that's the thing is like people think that they're not having an impact, and so that's something too Like, Um, I just feel like the outdoor recreation economy and the people that are in the outdoor recreation economy like we're talking. The reason we're talking about it in an economic sense and the reason we have now a percentage of the g d P and we understand how many tax dollars are going to this, we understand how many jobs are related. The reason we need to do that is because we need to speak the same language that all the other lawmakers, all the other policymakers are listening to. Because every other segment of industry, whether it's you know, like mining industry or you name it, they talk about jobs, tax dollars, like what are we contributing? They're able to do it in really concrete terms. But I would imagine wouldn't like a lot of these outdoor recreation companies would not want to be categorized they were like, they wouldn't want to be categorized as consumptive, say that the mountain biking industry, skiing and well, consumptive, but contributing. That's the thing is what we're trying to do, is we're trying to calculate the contribution of to the economy because that's what everybody else is beating their chest about, what do I contribute? So It's like, okay, what you mean you get priority because you're touting these numbers. Well, now, the outdoor recreation industry has these numbers. And so when you go to a county commissioner, when you go your state legislature. That's why I put together, you know, a state legist, you know, a package on what does the auto recreation of mean in Montana? Or when you go on a national level, it's like no, no, you want to talk about jobs. You want to talk about tax dollars. Oh, I'll show you numbers and I'll show you bigger numbers in employment because there's so many people. And that's the thing about the recreation economy is it's not eleven conglomerates right, like that hold all of the pie and there's you know there, there's eleven entities are pulling all the strings and calling all the shots. This is I mean huge numbers of people, like vast numbers of people. Seven seven to ten of Montanans are employed because of outdorecreation. Like that's a huge percentage. It's to go up and it's only going up. There's four hundred fishing guides in Gallatin County. How many mountain biking guides are there or jobs in mountain biking. I mean there are some. It's growing, I mean, but everything plays its part. And that's retail. Oh, that's you know, that's that's gear and goods, and like that's what I want to look at the big number, you know when you see like it's X billion dollar economy and you look at it. And I used to be and I'd see things rolled in there that I would feel are almost anthema, you know too, what I like like for instance, and I shouldn't say this now because we now have a camper trailer. The man, we've got three little kids, just hard to get everything that is where it's at with kids. A camper is where food is in it, the beds, the sleeping bags are in it. Throw bodies in the truck, and marshmallows are in it. It's like it's just and then when you're done, you throw all that stuff back inside there and drive away, and then you spend the whole week digging through it and stop feeling bad about a long time. I'm saying I'm gonna dog on big window bagos, but I want to clarify that I'm dogging out myself when I look at the numbers like nationally, I look and I'm like, man, they're throwing stuff in there that doesn't belong in there. But let me finish because I'm like that, like that is an outdoorrect that's I'm what that is staying in It's just you. Your sliver aboutdorecreation might be a slimmer. Yeah, it's it's mean. It's mean spirited, but that was That's why. That's what I'm trying to get at the next part of this. I looked at him like, man, they're throwing in some wild ship into those figures. But I'm like, why not, because if you anything you can use to combat the idea when someone says, like the national force it's just sitting there doing nothing, it's nice to be able to say, well, on the contrary, Um, x percent of the economic activity that happens in no surrounding towns is to thank for that. Ex percent of the jobs that happen to those surrounding towns is to thank for that real estate prices are tied to that tax base, And go like, so, don't tell me he's doing nothing because if you plucked it away, um, you would impact the lives of like a hype sentages people live in this area, like I like being armed with those and all of those figures exist as much as I was a little bit suspicious of when they started drawing them up because people throw around some crazy numbers. Well, and that's the thing we were just like so the evolving economy of the West, right, So we were used to talk looking at national forests as um timber producing, right, And that's an easy like you're going in, you're cutting a stand of timber, you have board feet, you're doing the calculation. There's the money sitting right there in a tidy pile getting piled onto a truck. Very easy to calculate. And then you can also do the then the extrapolation out into the communities and what kind of a recirculation where you have. But with recreation it's different, right, It's it's you're not just loading things on a truck, and it's different to comprehend. But the four like USD a forest service, Like they have economists that that's what they do. You can go in and you can actually search and find out like what is the recreation economic impact for such and such a forest on a community, And they'll extrapolate it out in their own way. Um so yeah, yeah, and we're way past hunters and anglers being like but and here's it's just there for It's like, but this is where I think hunters and anglers need to So I talk about infrastructure, like the infrastructure that supports the derecreation economy, and so like every segment of the economy has like this unique like what's the unique infrastructure that that defines it or supports it? Right, It's not just the roads that go to the parking lots that go to the trailheads that go to the trails. It's also open space, it's habitat, it's aquatic habitat, it's terrestrial habitat, it's viewsheds. Like though that's infrastructure, just like a bridge might be important to a certain sector, Like that's the infrastructure right well, by and large, Like who and what has paid for the infrastructure that the entire recreation economy now sits on. It's hunters and anglers like that have like built the foundation that that it's writing on, right, and the care of wildlife, the maintenance of row el life, and that it just is this then the segue of like oh my gosh, and there's so many more users, and how are the users helping pay for it? And and there's no silver bullet by any means, but you know, like passing habitat Montana weed money is like one little piece of the pie to helping support that it's getting to be almost a trillion dollar. Yeah, oh for sure. So seven they figured, uh, seven eight, but this is for the country seven eight billion and economic output. This is the outdoor industry numbers billion economic output two per one two like you said, two point one percent of US g d P five point two million jobs. And it's domestic that doesn't count the import of gear, right, Like this is like gross output. They're they're geting, they're rolling in Okay, they're rolling in boating, fishing, r ving, hunting, shooting. Oh, even trapping made the list. Motorcycling, trapping. There's no dude, not that me buying uh not me buying m B seven fifties. Uh, motorcycling, a TV and equestrian sports mm hmm. Yeah. It's it's huge, it's big and and so but and that's where when I was in the office and you talk about this a huge umbrella like hunting and angling has been a very very very important piece to this puzzle and I really want to make sure that it continues to be very relevant. And uh, like you're just a little tiny snapshot, right. I talked about like the white Fish trail system and Whitefish. Um, this amazing you know collaboration between private timberland and state land and federal land and private land like to put this trail system together. And the timberland is a block management piece in Montana and block management. I'm sure you talked about block management all the time, but it's people enroller land and for access for hunting and um, but you know, it was very important to maintain Like if you had just anybody going in there, they'll be like, yeah, we we have a trail system going through there, so there needs to be no more hunting because that's what's happening right, Like it's but that's not the case like that, you know, everyone made sure that like no hunting is a traditional use here, Like we are all sharing the space. We all need to be doing these things together, so we do need to keep hunting in these areas. Let's just make sure we're doing it in a safe way. So um, you know, if there's not a voice that's constantly talking about the heritage of hunting and angling. Um, I'm it's very concerning, you know, and we often we often times are talking in this like inslary bubble like hunting an angling, like we're king like you know, no man, not even kinda And um, so there's a lot there's a lot of interests out there, and so that's why it's really important to stay um in the mix and and understand like everyone else's perspective and where they're coming out of from. But do you feel that that's the case, and like for everyone in this room, right like knocked on folks who you know motorbike and make noise and right or like you know, even you're knocking on Yannie for skiing and liked be the last one trick pony on the planet. We hunt and we fished, and that is it. Back you're not a true outdoorsment. That doesn't mean you're bad. I prefer it. I wish that everyone. I wish to everyone the ice fish scheme instead. I don't, but I don't think that they're not true outdoorsman. No. But okay, so here here's the where I'm going with the question, like, because so much hunting angling money goes into supporting the outdoors, it seems better in my mind that everyone's like, we all do this. Yeah, but when you're discussing the idea of hunters and anglers and other outdoor users, there's a there's an important distinction here. Um. I think that hunters and anglers have developed an elevated sense of importance, perhaps even a supremacy when it comes to discussing sort of like their share of the pie on public lands or outdoor recreation or however you want to define what we're talking about, because they have historically had such an important funding role. Correct. So a lot of the land like management, state management of wildlife. Okay, certain land management agencies um having issues having to do with access, wildlife mitigation, disease research on down the line were funded by people who bought hunting and fishing licenses. So they felt like, naturally, we need to have a real seat at the table here because we're paying for a lot of this and other user groups don't have that. Other user groups don't have that legitimacy. Yeah. I refer to it as an infantile. It's infant Uh. The new it's so new users Like there's hunting and angling, right, and like this this evolution and now there's you know, like phishing access sites. The stupidest name ever. It's a water recreation site and on Hannah, right, but fishing dollars that paid for him. And now you look at the reality of like how many people that use those fishing access sites are actually fishing, fewer than the recreation user that never paid a dime for him. I loved one recently, though I can't remember where I saw it. If you held a fishing license, you didn't need to pay the fee, yeah, because they're like we already hit you when you bought your fishing license. So and that's and that's different states are doing different things to what when people show up at those fishing access sites and they're launching a kayak and not fishing, they should be kissing fishermen or they should be required to buy a fishing license. And these are all things that have been proposed. These are state funding mechanisms, and you need legislative you know, follow through to establish all these mechanisms. And so it's it's discussed like like explained like what people say when because I think you're gonna get into this, broty is like the backpack tax, and no one knows what it means. But what's it getting at. Well that you're that you would create the same kind of funding through an excise tax on camping gear or um campers or like mountain bikes, and so you know, then they're contributing in the same way hunters and anglers are, which initially as like yeah, man, like they should be paying two and they probably should. But if they do, then they want to sit at the table. Yeah I would if I could have it my way out, have them not pay and not be at the table. Well, they're at the table and they're not. So there's a situation here. Well, and here's the thing. Okay, so you guys are referring to like paying so like the it's licensed dollars, it's all of that, but it's also then pr DJ dollars you know that have so like all of that, all of this explain that real quick. It's over mentioned. But when you buy, uh, if you go buy a pocket pistol, okay, you buy a pocket pistol for seven hundred bucks for personal self defense whatever whatever you buy, like, you go, you go buy a personal self defense uh compact nine millimeter. Of that money funds wildlife. It's ten percent of wholesale but close and the bullets for it. But not reloading supplies UM, not optics, UM, you know, like archery equipment, fishing equipment, but chunks and pieces. But anyway, so voting equipment that doesn't boat gas from when you buy gas me, Marina, there's no equivalent of that. There's no equivalent of that. When you buy a set of skis, is that a back country touring skis? There's no equivalent correct, And that's and that was just you know, like hunters and anglers UM started funding all of this, and you know, maybe not the average hunter and angler, but but we started funding this out of crisis, crisis, like we're at the bottom, like we're like we are losing everything. So then now we have this history of fighting to get it back and investing to get it back. Well, these other recreation you know opportunities, they have never been through crisis, they've never lost anything. They're just getting going. Yeah, there's no but but as but as a result, like if now it's just like a bunch of like recreation pissing match, right, it's just like, yeah, well this trail is my trail. I don't want you on my trail. And you know it's like no, your stuff doesn't belong here. And it's like wow, everybody, if you don't back it up to like thirty feet and look at like the real core of like what is enabling us to do all of this, and if we don't work together, you know, like on public lands on a on a larger scale, will all lose everything. But it goes back to that consumptive versus non consumptive because if they're quote not having an impact, which is why it was very important when I was in office. There is a twenty year old um document that was done by the Montana Wildlife Society twenty years ago and it's the Impacts of Recreation on Rocky Mountain Wildlife and it hasn't been updated for twenty years and so you can go and look at it. And so I spent a lot of time when I was in office like this is really important, Like we need to be able to give our land managers the tools and the scientific knowledge so that they can resolve disputes. And then we can also tell everybody like look, no, you're having an impact, like you're pushing animals around more than a hunter would push animals around because of what you're doing in your actions. UM. And so that's why that was a really really important piece. That is, you know, go is the work is going forward, their updating the document, UM, we're finding funding for it. So it was really important to get that done. It seemed like most of the states you said before they have an office about door wreck were like in the Rocky mountains. Does it make sense for every state to have it, like Delaware in Indiana or so, it's not a Rocky Mountain thing the first but we've got oh my god, we've got like three in the Midwest, We've got UM, We've got Vermont. Sorry it's been a long time since Ratley's off. We've got Vermont, North Carolina. Like, it's kind of all over the place. It makes sense for every state, Oh, absolutely so. But it's office about the recreation right there. It's the outdoor recreation economy, which is really like to see and understand. In the asked iteration of the UM national report that came out for g d p UM, it had these great infographics because you have experiential expenditures around outdorecreation, and then you have the manufacturing expenditures around outdore creation. And so you see states like like Florida and Illinois where in every camper on the planet's manufacturing I think it's in Illinois. Um, but you see these like hot red states that are making all this money off of manufacturing the stuff. And then you've got these hot red states that are making all this money off of people using that stuff and experiencing the outdoors. And so you have you have to know, like none of these states, like these guys wouldn't be making money and manufacturing if they didn't have a place to go, and if we didn't have the place to go. You know, like it's this symbiotic relationship between the differing you know, demographic of the United States and are differing economies within states that intrastates stuff makes you think that it needs that we need a Secretary of Hey, it's it's young. We could see this first Secretary Hunting and Fishing, but it has Secretary of Outdoor Secretary of Hunting and Fishing. Then I actually actually did find the history of that Federal Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, which was founded in nineteen sixty three by a secretarial order. It was subsumed into a new agency called the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service in nineteen seventy seven, which was then subsumed by the National It's interesting. Yeah, yeah, so we used to have one. Now we don't. Can let me hear you up to last questions? Um, they're big ones all. What so you're you now currently? You're like fundraising for a nonprofit Background and Anglers. What do you guys, Let's say you had all this money, get all this money, what are the top priorities did you like to spend it on? So the heritage of hunting and angling. Um. And then it's it's the voice of wild public land, water and wildlife and spending the money. And that's the cool part. B h A. Back and Hunters and Anglers. And by the way, we're having our tenth rendezvous this year and you're the speaker at the first rendezvous at the same space we're having it this year. It feels like about three people there, I think a hundred a hundred people. Yeah, super small. Um. But so this is what I've always found that is remarkable about back country hunters and anglers, back English is about its members like it is its members. This is people. These are hunters and anglers that give enough of a crap to be involved, to be active, to support what they love and believe in. Right, and so b h as an organization, we're simply finding resources to elevate their work, to help them do their work, to provide support because for as much as we're definitely used to UM you know, like your CPS awesome organization, and it's an organization of organizations, and it's you know, taking the collective voice you know of of organizations and talking on the national level. And b h A does work on the national level, but you you need that, you need organizations to have these formalized conversations with like policymakers and you know, involved with legislative actions. But what really moves the mark is an individual voice. And you know that is what b h A members do. It's an individual voice. It's that I am an individual and I believe in this and all of these people believe in this too, and so it's this amazing, awesome symbiotic relationship like these are These are the people on the ground getting the work done. Like if you ever think that you're a badass hunter angler. Just go visit with the average b h A member and you're just like, I need to up my game. You know. It's just and but the humblest, most amazing, you know, group of people and diverse. I mean, like our demographic is remarkable. There's you know, it's a third Democrat, a third Republic and a third independent. Membership is forty five and under UM and so it's you know, it's people that are not It's so much of conservation work is done in the tangible, like let's go and put this fence up, because I can act and I can do it, and I can see it and I saw the process start and I saw it finish. And so much work that b h A members do is the hard, long, grueling, thankless schlog of working on forest plans, of working in legislative sessions, and so much of the work that's done it's not tangible instantaneously. It's it's this, it's a long haul, and it's it's the really hard work that requires patients and perseverance. UM. So I couldn't be happier to be where I am. And UM, every career move I've made through my life It moves me one step closer to expelling every ounce of my energy only working on the stuff that I really really give a shit about, and that's my family and my life and you know public lands in these spaces that has sculpted in my life. So the more I can do to support pH A members and the work that they do, happier, I am. Uh. The last one touches on something you just brought up, which is your family. A few years ago, I saw you give a talk and you were kind of laying out the it was a slide show presentation. We were were a story we were storytellers. It's really funny, and you were laying out the storyteller this year like how hard it is and just like messy and inconvenient to raise kids in the outdoors. Just pull your hair out right, what is my life become? Yeah? So what um? And I know it's really important to you that you do that, that you raise your boys outside. What do you think they'll get out of it? Because the other day we had on UM we had on a spearfisher woman really identify with Kimmy a lot. And what I said, we're kind of like laying out like how much her dad, how much time her dad dedicated to bring in her spearfish, and and she kind of like dispelled any romantic notions. It was that he was going and he had to watch me. Therefore I had to go. I don't think there's anything else going on there, and it's landed or where she is. But just like a different version where um, I am kind of split. I guess like I'm going, which means you're going, but also I really want you to go. I'm in the same boat as you talk about a little bit like what you want them to get out of it or why it's important to you. Yeah. And I actually listened to that one with Kimmy and when she was talking about her relationship with her dad and her upbringing with her dad, I was like, oh my gosh, like I really identified with like everything she said. I remember my dad. I remember waking up in the middle of rain storms, sleeping on the top of gear piles in the back of rafts from overnight trips, and my dad is lining the boat through a precarious rapid. I'm just sleep on the boat and he's like, you're a good babe, just go back to sleep, right, And I've got one of those horse collar, you know, life jackets on, and you know, it was like that was his job, and I just got to go with him. Um yeah, with my kids. And I'm very very front with him because now I have a fourteen year old, and um, teenagers are the worst, but I love them in the same notion. But he's very much flexing his independent muscles, and he has had the most idyllic childhood, growing up in just the most amazing wild places, doing remarkable things, and he's just like, yeah, it's just so my jam. I'm just I mean, if I have my pick, I'm just not really and I just want to go hunt. I just don't want to go fish. I don't want to go camp, Like, I don't want to do that. I'm not really into that. And I tell him over and over again, I say, okay, yep, but I have one that's gone the other way. So with that guy, I just tell him, I was like, look, you are going to have to go do some of this stuff with me, but I am going to compromise with you. But what's really important to me is that if some day you decide that it's something you want to do, you have a skill set to fall back on, like you can. And I told him, I'm like, someday you're going to meet the super hot chick and she is going to think that, like, hunters are super cool, and you're probably gonna start hunting again. You know. It's just like I want you. I want to know that you have the skills. You can hunt if you want, you can fish if you want, you can ski if you want. If it's not something that's your top priority, okay, that's fine. But then my twelve year old is just like this just rabid outdoor kid. Like he he loves passionate about skiing, he's passionate about um mountain biking, but he loves hunting. Um, he loves to go out fishing. He you know, he's getting his life membership from h A as a gift for me, and he's pissed that there's not a fly rod incentive. So I had to buy him his own. He got his own Winston this a couple of weeks ago. Used to I know, but that's not one of the perks at the moment. Yeah, exactly. And so he was just like, well I wanted the fly rod. I'm like, oh, I didn't get it for you soon enough anyway, So um. But yeah. He on the other hand, is like he's already been like so when he was like eight, He's like, so, I'm going to go to college in Bozeman because I can go for snow science and I can be a fishing guide in the summer and then I can be ski patrol in the winter. I was just like, oh, my kid, if I had figured out like you and I'm sorry, um, but I was like, I like where your head's at, and like your heads at So yeah, it's it's so it's just a compromise and yeah, it's you know, when I was doing that presentation, it was like going from a person outdoor in the outdoors to a parent in the outdoors. It's like this complete rearrangement of priorities in your head. And it's like I used to, you know, go so hard over here and so fixated and so focused, and now it's like more about the snacks, and you know, like it's just it just becomes different. But it comes full circle too. When they were little, did you find that it was just so hard to get everybody out the door? Um? Yeah, and so much preparation, like so much preparation, Like you're like like the bags of the gear and the getting and the like what did I forget? And it's so much more work, and you understand why some people, if they're not really dedicated to it, it's just like, let's let it go by the way side. Too much work. Boots were just here, Yeah you had a jacket on exactly. So yeah, it's it's pretty wild, but it's it's totally worth it. I think it's worth every every minute of it. Um, it's fun. You know, like last then one day you catch tea turtles having sex. Yeah exactly, but yeah, you can be like that. Last summer I took my kids, we did the Main Salmon River in Idaho, and so I, you know, my kids thought they had seen whitewater and they had never seen Idaho white water. And so I wrote them down the main Salmon and even the one that even the one that doesn't want to go, yeah, and the one that's like, well, I don't really want to go, but if I'm gonna go, And then you know, you get him out there and he's just like this is a sick trip. He you know, he just he loved. Yes, it wasn't that bad. Wasn't that The beaches are amazing? You know, so it all it all works out. Yeah, fourteen and twelve, fourteen and twelve dread. Yeah, I see I still have where everybody likes me, and I know that that's going to go away. Oh is it? Yes? Yeah it does. And then I think, what did we When did we all start liking our parents? Again? It's not that I didn't like my parents, but you're like, died before that happened. It was it was like postmortem for me. He died in ten years later. I'm like, yeah, kind of he is getting at Yeah, but you know, and I look at it like my grandfather he used to take me out fishing all the time too, and you know, like we would you know, like I remember like driving like two and a half hours to like a fishing spot and then like we get all of our stuff out and get the flow tubes out, and I just looked at him. I was like, I was like twelve. I was like I forgot my flippers, and he was just like, okay, we'll pack it all up here, we go home. You know, Just like it's just the way it ghost. It all comes full circle. It's upsetting um, but man, there's like magical moments because my little boy just caught us first, like where he did the cast, the hook up, the real end, no assistance, and he was just ecstatic. It's amazing. That's a big moment. That's to say, come to his laugh is the best man when he gets going. Well, like my win, my one win this winter was I loved ice fish. I love ice fishing, and I think it's like the best kid thing too. So drag the fourteen year old old fourteen year old out ice fishing and he's just like I can't believe this, And I'm like, what we're doing in the afternoon, We're on for the afternoon bite. It's all gonna be good. I set up like whole camp chef set up. I'm like cooking tacos and I'm just running and like literally it's hot perch and like one boy is like pulling it. I'm like doing a triangle like fish off, you know, magat On down the whole, fish off, megan On down the whole, flip a taco, run back over. I'm just like doing this like circle in the hot chocolate, and I like I'm doing my own thing, and I hear my fourteen year old look at his his twelve year old brother and was like, dude, this is really fun. It's like I win, Like I won this winter. I won. I won. That's great. It's a good mom. I'm working on it, trying, trying hard. Well, hopefully someday you'll be on your deathbed. They were like, you know, ma, thanks, you know, yeah, thanks. Thanks. When you told me that chick would really be into fly fishing schools, you were right, she was. Rachel Schmidt, thank you very much for joining us. I was gonna do that thing where I tell you what how to for people, how to find you check out b h A. Let me talking about it a lot. Everybody is pretty involved and it's a good group of people and you learn a lot of stuff and it's good. But yeah, if you want to find me personally, um Instagram, it's Montana Ray ray m t r a r A or Rachel Schmidt Montana Ray ray m t r a r A. Latest picture is a giant black drum. I just caught in Louisiana. Very pumped about that. Yeah, well check are you active on there? Do you put stuff up on there? A lot? Yeah? Not as much as some You don't live by it. No, no, what are you eating by more pocket meat while you're packing a chaw? All right, Rachel, Hey, thanks for happy, Thanks for joining us sing, Thanks for bringing down all that stuff. That's very helpful. Grybody, See you next time.