00:00:00 Speaker 1: M This is the me Eater Podcast, coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening. Don't eat podcast. You can't predict that anything. Everyone, This is the me Eater Podcast. We're in Missoula, Montana, celebrating Lanton He's birthday. Really, we're here for the Bad Huntry Hunters and Anglers Annual Rendezvous. And this is number five. Why did why did it takes alone to have one? I just knowing every thoughts like, hey, let's have it, get together because of what it takes to put it on, you know, And I think because the organization has been around how long I've been around for this our twelfth year. But you know that was when we first had staff. I think when we had the first one, So you had to have someone to plan it out. Exactly when I showed up here yesterday. I got here and the first thing I saw his callahan uh sneaking out the door going fishing. What did you catch you in a two hour two hour float? It was a little rushed three two hour cruise, little rushed. Yeah, um got one rainbow? You know. Um, you know my sister in law lives up that river. You run the Blackfoot River. You met her. Yeah, you caught one fish. You can catch one, but he did not. Was it a big one that you caught. It was a nice fish, it wasn't huge. And you guys did a full on float. Yeah. My buddy, uh Ryan Thompson, Caitlin two wigs, uh husband he name dropping. They live up there anyway, help me out a on and basically at the boat on the water, We ran up there, jumped in, floated down to their house. He continued onto the boat ramp and took care of all the stuff. Really yeah, and I came back here in time for the fish released it just like you do. I'm thinking about having you on. He's T shirt company made me a T shirt down on the back. It's gonna be like cud zoo a dandelion, spotted nap weed, leafy spurge in a rainbow. It's gonna be like UMVASI stopping vases. Now, how about bomb come on the front and bomb that good catching release into the pan of grease. So now, like, what's the goal of a of the the whole deal? When you guys have a you know, when the organization has an annual convention, it's like to rally people up. Do you guys actually do bis this? We do. We had our only face to face board meeting, and then we had chapter leaders that came in from all across the country. I think we had forty five chapter leaders, and so we did some training with them, and then, like what you talked about rallying the troops. You know, I think a lot of us only see each other one time a year, and so um, having the ability to like bring everybody together kind of coalescee swap stories just like kind of the traditional you know rendezvous where the trappers would come together, um, and then were rendezvous and his valley They never did in this valley. It's weird, such a great valley. Um. But then you have you know, like they go home fired up. And I think, you know, we accomplished that in spades. Now, when you say the board meeting, the board only gets together once a year, face to face, face to face. Yeah, how many people around the board? We have ten? Right now? Are you on the board Nope? Okay, I'm a lifetime member. You saw me try to take notes on the food judging contest yesterday? Oh yeah, I mean we got to mention that I was gonna talk about that. We judged the Wild Game cook and cook Off. Yeah, and uh, five teams had five teams and five different chapters. What was the only five five different chapters. That's just who signed up and who signed up. And it's also, you know, I think logistically, you know, camp Chef was obviously a great partner in that whole thing, and so um, just logistically that's what we could do. And so five chapters stepped up and unfortunately we were I was upstairs, so I would love you to do So. Yeah, five teams did it, and they all had they we had to rate them on presentation, taste, creativity they're trying to remember, also rated them on state. Yeah, Callahan. I looked at Callahan's notes at one point and he had made another category where he wrote down where they were from, which was like just bringing some your biased and do it not even being secret. And then Kaalien took all kinds of notes, and then later when we got together with the judge, he didn't refer to his notes, and every time someone asked him or were tallying the scores, every time someone asked him, he'd kind of look off in the sky and didn't give a number without like, without referring back to his notes at all. Pure genius. Thank you. What were you? Uh, what were you like? Had you memorized your notes or were you like just kind of still, it was very hard for me, and I felt very pressured and everything was really really good and there was no crazy outlier in there. Every I mean everybody put a ton of thought into every dish, and it was weighing on me. A guy made, uh, one of one of the teams made b bimbop the cream dish and then did it with They had it garnished on top with glacier lily, which is very pretty. That was a pretty dish, vibrant colors, and then you know, the nettles don't stood out great. They had there was a dish they had fried quail in it, and then uh, some sort of hoo dani I can't remember what the hoo the animal there was and then they had oh, they had elk hirt in the greens. Oh that was good. No, yeah, that's right. It was like a corned elk cart with greens and fried quail and like there was like a couple like a honey because they did like a not a waffle, but it was sort of a take on fried chicken and waffles. And I gotta say, I saw the corn to Elkhart. Uh, I saw a post of it or something. I was like, No, that's not gonna work out. Yeah, but it was great. You know what I did their day? I brined Uh. You were for dinner that night, weren't you? I brined uh moose heart and just smoked it how to go? She was good? Did you like it? Joannie? Keeping? It was good? You didn't like it? It was good. Every time I tried to do anything other than fry hard or slicing, throw it on the barbecue, and I'm just not me it doesn't work out. So now, Ryan, what do you gotta save for yourself? We gotta We got another man here that was gonna say you missed another meal. Callahan was there. Thursday night we had a big what we called tack barn dinner, four of us cooking. Um had some good stuff there. What did you guys do with that? For food? Uh? We it was all wild game hunter gatherer stuff. Four different courses cooked, all camp cook so uh Dutch oven grill over we had hank Shaw did five antelopine quarters over open flame coals, hanging by a big tripod. Killer good that we're dark good killer good. Yeah. We had four dishes. I did elk loin Montana chickpeas. We had Charle McGlen did uh Dutch oven. Lasagna made his own cheeses, two different cheese. Is um, first time you've ever done a Dutch of Amazagna nailed it. Of course, he's a he's a stud of a chef. He didn't make those cheeses out of like, uh, elk and deer milk, did he? Hey? Man, check it out. We met a guy you honestly, we met a guy in Texas who one time, um, because you know the hide hunters, the Buffalo hide hunters used to cut the mamories open and suck the milk out of the mammories and they're butcher and animals. And we met a guy down Texas. Remember that guy, which one the dude that hunts cranes with the zombie cranes. Oh Mike, yeah, nasty fanacy. Yeah he he one time was skinning the dough and and uh he didn't want to admit it, like he told me the story. And then later we were recording one of these, and I said, hey, man, talk about when you were drinking that milk out of that deer you were cutting up. Didn't want to talk about it. There's a private conversation that he wanted. Well, yeah, we're a hardcore man, but we're not there yet. So when the the whole legs, how did you how did did you get cooked into the bone or do you have to just keep catting away and letting it cook more and keep cutting away and letting the coat. It was a challenge on that one because we're cooking in colder conditions than Hank usually cooks him, so it was a little slower for him, but didn't It was rare on the bone. Um, but I'd say we got the we got it. Oh two thirds was cooked just right with rare right at the bone. So we had variations have done us through it. So it was like something for everybody. Yeah. Yeah, and he made his own had his own vinegar. He had over the top of it. Brought sage, wild sage from California cooked in there with it. Was fantastic. That's good. Where were the animal from not from there? Montana members donated them. Yeah, they're pretty short on analope in California. Yeah, they're they're running low over there. Um, So Ryan, explain your role at b H A chairman of the Yeah, I'm chairman of the board of directors. Now, so what do you do? Uh? Well, oh, we'll try to provide some direction and try to bounce ideas off of each other and give Land as marching orders and give the staff um ideas on where we'd like to see the word go. And we've so the board is chief over Land or Land is chief over the board. Honestly, it depends on the day. And who you ask, Um, it's his birthday, so I guess we'll let him be boss today. Land, do me a favorite run through the buckets again? I know you did this four year hour with this, and we did. We spent like an hour around the buckets, but hit me, hit me with the buckets, but hit me in like real shorthand. Yeah. Yeah, So we've got three buckets. First one would be that was five buckets, and we changed it because it was too much. Too many buckets you still can only carry. Yeah, I got I got one of my mouth. I got one of my mouth, So that's good. I know, we got three buckets. First one is access and opportunity. I gotta get back to why how did you lose? Okay, tell me the buckets and explain, because I imagine you poured a bucket into another bucket. We did, yeah, and so give me a trick where that bucket came from. So we have access and opportunities. The first one that was a regular bucket. Um, that's our public lands work. That's our access to public LANs as, our access to public waters. And then on the second bucket, which got a lot bigger, is the back country kind of controvation. And so within that you've got special Places which used to be a standalone bucket. And then you have kind of larger, big scale their nesting pots. Sure, yeah, yeah, that's exactly. And and then and then after that you have like larger things like the Clean Water Act. You know that has implications for everybody. Um, that's a lot bigger than like special places. And then our final one is fair Chase. And then that fair Chase bucket, you know, that's where our drone kind of work comes in. That's where o high fence work is going to come in. Um, and kind of our illegal oh v us is under that bucket as well. Why do you think that people have been able to Well, I don't want to stay at things on top of each other. So I think you kind of explain where the buckets went. It's just like your but but this is just the way you just think in your own mind, right, I mean, this is kind of way you guys categorize. Yeah, And we want to make it simple for people to understand what we do. Yeah, And so when I'm into five buckets, people start going to sleep, right, and and so the three buckets and the way I just explained, I think it's pretty sustinct. And so people can understand that right away, Yeah, you can. With the comedian Mitch Hedberg, Um, he died, but to hear that probably the greatest American one of the greatest American comedians ever. But he had a joke where he was um talking about someone gave him, what's the drug you taking? You have a d h D. Yeah, so he would take riddling but he's not but he doesn't suffer from the ailment. He would just take the solution. And he said that, um, whenever tell when someone told him something, he'd be like, there's gotta be more to that story fair enough. So no way, I like the five buckets man because I like a long story. But why do you think I want to talk about the drone situation? Because you addressed that last night at the dinner. Oh also did um who wanted buying the float trip? The float trip with you was your mom? Uh No, I won't make my mom pay to go hang out with me. Um, I supposed to get you a loan on the boat and criticize you know. It was Actually it was a friend of mine who after he bought it, as I'm hugging him until he whispered to me, he said, I'm gonna work that shift out of you. And so then I told him where I wanted to go and there's a portage and he said he's not going to do the portage, and so that means that I'll be working and I think we'll be going by holes and then just he will say, like make me get out of the boat and like drag it back up the river or row it back up the river. So now he told me last night he's gonna put like forty flies in the willows. It might be an expensive trips. So, yeah, you talked about the drone issue thirteen states of banned drones. Now why are people why do you think people are able to coalesce around drones when they'd be reluctant to coalesce around other uh technologies being eliminated from the hunting tool kit? Is it because it's totally new? It's definitely part of it, I think, you know, I mean there's no traditional use once you get something established, you know, like when you've got a lot of money at stake, but then you have a lot of people that have already you know, like that that's the way they do business, right, and so on the drone thing, we got out in front of that, and um, you know, there isn't like a a drone hunting association, right like you know, I mean they're a drone owners of the drone lobby. There's a drone lobby, but that's more for dot com Yeah, exactly, and so and so. But you know, we want to get in front of it, you know. So there's things like live action cameras on trees, right, and we have their band here in Montana, but in a lot of states that's okay, and like to me, that's kind of the same thing. And you know that's already been established, and so that's a lot harder to put that back in the box, right, And so um with the drone stuff, you have people I mean, I think people when they hear about that, they just can't believe that people were starting to do that, right, So we were in a good place when we did them. They give I don't know how many years you'd have to go back, but if you went back to the advent of trail cameras, like right now, if you said, like in a national sense, no trail cameras, people would have a ship fit. Oh yeah there Arizona from Arizona, Wisconsin. I mean just just places where you know here is weird when they did it that you could he had to pull them one season started, right, which I mean that's probably really hard to regulate. But I don't know, if you see one, you see one, true. But I think that's the thing with it with drones too, right, like were you know, there's all these laws about flying airplanes, you know, and and and what you can hunt within like scouting on an airplane. So I think it's twenty four hours, and so we we thought about doing that with drones. But drones are so much less invasive than an airplane. I mean, you can hear an airplane and you know when you're in the woods from a long ways away. For a drone, you gotta be pretty close to it. And so um, that's why we didn't do the twenty four hour rule there. We banned him for the entire season. So some guys, you know, if a law enforcement officer sees a guy with a drone during hunting season, that's a pretty easy way to do it rather than the twenty four Yeah, like in Alaska, you got you know, there's there's a lot of hunts you can people don't. A lot of people don't realize it's there's a lot of hunts you can fly and hunt on the same day, you know, for black tail deer and cariboo and stuff. There's some hunts you can some huns you cannot, But now you can't. Like if you fly a drone, you don't hunt that season, right, that's it. That's it, which is a little bit surprising. I mean, I'm glad I'd like to see it. I think everybody likes to see it. But again I think it's because it hadn't been in my mind. It just hadn't become entrenched, like it hadn't become like a traditional use issue. And traditions happen real quick if they do, you know they do. And I think a lot of those traditions that they come with money too, right, I mean you think you just talked about trail cameras. I mean think about the amount. Know what the dollar figure is, but it's got to be in the high millions, right, I mean, that's an industry now that would be taken away, and so it would be people that would fight it. But even more I think the people that are making those things. Yeah. Another thing that's been funny to watch is two way communications. Um, I don't know. Was some friends of mine Wisconsin, they they spend seventy of their time texting the time looking for deer. How's that work out for him? Well if they just text, you know. And then here in Montana, that first two way communications I remember years ago, for one year you couldn't use them, and people were pissed because people like, hey, man, I'm out with my kids. I want to know what's going on. I hunt with my dad. He's an elderly I need to know what's happening with him, and so then they clarified the language. You can't use it to assist the same thing in Alaska. You can't use it so you can have it, you can't use it to assist into taking a game, which I thought I wanted being a pretty reasonable Um. I thought it wanted to being a pretty reasonable compromise. But I know, guys, you know, guys especially it seems like down in the Southwest, if they can't have two way radios, ain't going hunting. You know, you get a guy at every point find an animal, nine guys watching it, one guy going after and they're all on radios. A goddamn seal team. What do you think of that? I don't know. I don't I mean personally, you know, you get into this thing all the time. I've had this conversation. I did a like a talk two nights ago in Michigan, and the guy asked me, like, what do you think of baiting? I'm like, I think if baiting is okay where you're at, great, is it legal? You know, if it's illegal, I think you should probably stop doing it. UM. I grew up first, second, third, fourth, fifth, dear I killed to kill over a pile of carrots. Uh. Later I got real curious about what deer doing when they're not eating my carrots. Um. What I learned about deer from hunting over bait is a dea bowl like carrots. As you get more experience, I think you start wondering what they're doing when they're not eating them, and where are they going? And how would you find them if they're going about their natural rhythms, you know, And that's just where I'm what I wound up being more interested in. Um. If I'm out hunting and I'm going after an animal, Uh, it's very tempting to have information like hey, man, it left, or a dude that got up and beded back down again twenty yards over by that rock. It's like tempting to have the information. But in the end, after the fact, um, I think that it would I think that it would diminish your memory of the animal. I think you diminish your memory of the hunt when not growing up in Montana, Right, no communicator. I don't know how the loss says it, but you can't use communication to target animals. Or yeah, they were an assist in the taking game. The first time ever hunting out of the state. I'm guiding in Idaho, and you just make some assumptions on some rules and typically if you assume on the side of the animal, you're gonna be correct. And we're riding up the trail, got the I'm just learning. The guy ahead of me radio cracks and it's like, hey, you guys just rode past the ball. Oh jump off. These guys are just writing into camp, you know, the clients, and you know ten minutes later, dead bull. And I was, oh my god, I was just part of something highly illegal. What am I gonna do? Like, what are you talking about? That's how you kill hell cup here? It's totally illegal and I don't and I just couldn't totally takes away from it. And doesn't that prove that legality is only part of your ethics. Well, it's that's tricky as hell, man. Because I brought this point. A lot of guys in the Southeast run deer with dogs that traditional use. They've done it for a long time. If you decided you're gonna you know, people in Michigan, when they see a deer chasing dog, they shoot it. I'm saying, when they see a dog chasing the deer, you shoot at it. So they would act like if I said, oh, yeah, I'm going up to Michigan, I'm gonna be running deer with my dogs, that'd be illegal, unethical, all that kind of stuff. In the Southeast, it's it's a traditional use practice, you know. I think, like I think that that's why the conversation about ethics gets so sticky, because everyone's brought up in their own area, and they're brought up to think that that what they do is the right way of going about things. You know, So it is. It is tricky. It's hard to draw definites. I do have some definites, I think, But I think that some stuff that I used to think is definite is tricky. Like your carrot deer, though your ethics you thought more of that deer after you got strictly from past the legality. It's legal for you shoot overcarets, but your ethics led you to something else. Your deer was worth more. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it did it. It means more. And in the end, oddly, they really started to curtail bait use in Michigan shortly after I left, because the disease transmission, because you're bringing animals in rubbing noses and eat and dirt that's infected with their own saliva, and you know, and you wind up having a much higher chance of disease transmission. So they started regulating when you put it out, how much you put it out. Now, that was kind of on the tail in. So then I think in that case you do wind up in a in a thing where someone's like, it's not healthy for the animal, you know. And another thing with technologies, man uh, Eldo Leopold had deadline about well, first, who's the guy? Not long ago rold A Peace like, let's stop talking about ethics and fair chase and let's talk about fair use or fair um fair portions. What was that? You know what I'm talking about? Nope, he was just saying that we're using the wrong language. His point being, you have a well, right well. This is how Aldo Leopold put it. You got a well full of water. If you improve the pump and never improved the well, right, the well is not gonna hold up as well as it did. So we're constantly improving the pump with technology, but are we improving the well. So I think an issue like that is if you go like, yes, baiting is in fact hazardous to our heard depletes the well, improves the pump, and then through disease transmission, depletes the well. I think that then you get very firmly and do an ethical issue. But if you've got a state, it's got a lot of deer, and they found it over the course of many decades, they've been able to manage deer at a level they're comfortable with. And people are baiting, and and it's how people do it. I have a hard time condemning it. The first two bears I ever eight were shot off bait from carp and invasive species carved to be shot with our bows and frozen and uses them bait deer to bait bears with my brothers drew bear tags in Michigan. Um, I have no like, It's just not that exciting to me to think I've never shot a bear over bait. I've been invited to it. I have no desire to do it. Just because it's just bears eating bait isn't interesting. But I have a hard time like acting like all I'm gonna translate that into an ethical conundrum. You know, it's hard for people. We think about all that land you can't you gotta walk a fine line, dude, because you're like I always like to clarify whent On talking to Land that I'm not, um speaking for us. I don't speak for Land, which I'm glad though you are much more eloquent than I am. Well, No, but I don't want people to confuse what I think with somehow because we're sitting here talking. I don't want people to confuse my personal opinions with your official policy. No, I mean we don't have an official policy on baiting. Uh. I'm with you personally, I have no interest in doing it. And you know, and I think sometimes when I hear about baiting, it's especially around bears. It's like we have better jelly donuts and they did and that's why that bear came in. And that, to me is not a skill that I want to acquire. Is knowing which like doughnuts bring in the bears. That's just me, you know. And um, but when you hear you know like that. I think it was in Maine, right, I think they were talking about the banning of baiting in Maine and they talk I mean, they have a large population with black bears there and they need to manage them. And when you talk to the fishing game, that was a tool that they were using. There's no other way to hunt them, as there's no other way to them. But effectively, it's like when you banned dogs for lions, you're kind of banning lion hunting. Yes, right in the East, like for instance, where I grew up, or where we first familiarized ourselves, like any kind of hunting bears. I talked about my brother's journal's bear tags. It's flat swamp, it's hemlock, and just like older swamp, you can't see your hand in front of your face. There are bears around. I think in all my time running around there, I saw one bear across the road. I mean, while it's got extremely high densities of bears, you just don't see them. So to talk about, oh, you're gonna ban baiting for bears in Michigan, it's like, okay, but let's just be honest what you're doing. You're banning, you're banning bear hunting effectively. Yeah. So I I advocated against the mains. I mean not that I had any real saying it, but I advocated against the thing in Man. So I thought that that's what it was doing. I always think about what are the private conversations that people have? Right, some guy reached the cane to me and he's like, oh, yeah, we got up. We're doing a thing where we want to ban trapping on public land in Montana. I'm like, that doesn't interest me. And they're like, oh yeah, we got a lot the hunters were with us, and were theyking Like, what is the private conversation of the person. What what are they when they're sitting around drinking in their house with their buddies, what are they talking about? They're talking about how they want to like cut away. Yeah, well, and I mean I think on the band on public lands, I mean, we do not want to do things like that on a referendum, Like it's up to in my opinion, it's up to the people who have the knowledge our fishing game agencies on how like we regulate, you know, in our fishing game commissions. We start doing that through about initiative, and that's where we lose at some point, right, And I think what you're talking about this chipping away. The woman that runs Trap Free Montana, um, I think she came actually to that thing that we had at the roxy and I don't remember that, um, when you were talking about I think you're doing a book signing or something there. And she came and she stood up, and then she was talking about it, and she was starting with uh, with trapping, but really it was about hunting, and she was nerves us about being in the woods during the fall, right, And and to me, um, so it's just it's like for her, it's it's just the tip of the iceberg. When you talk about trapping. There's there's more that she's going after. Yeah, I believe in incrementalism many I think that everything moves in incrementalism. Death of a thousand cuts, right, I mean in a positive and in a negative way. I think that the gay rights move has been like an increment, very incremental victory. That's very incremental civil rights victory, you know. I think that, like the civil rights movement, very incremental thing. I think the hunting is going the can go in the opposite direction of being just a very incremental death. Sure, I would say that on like the trapping side in particular, I think sometimes trappers their own worst enemy. And so like here in Montana, we've been trying to do, you know, get some mandatory trapper education, like you'd setting too close to trails and just having the knowledge about it, right, Like if anybody can go out, you know it's a bob boards tomorrow and buy a trap and you know, and has no knowledge besides, you know, they just bought a trap. And so you know, if bow hunting has mandatory education, why shouldn't trapping have that, you know. And and so they've they've you know, they've fought that every single time the state legislature. And I think that means that their own their own worst enemy, right, and so that gives people more credence to talk about this banning trapping on public land, which I totally disagree with. We can see how that path gets there. I had a good friend here, you know, I think he said it well. He was at the bh A and he said, will continue to be able to do this as long as we behave in a way that's defensible to the public. And so part of this, it's on our shoulders to do it, whether it's take bow hunter safety or hunter safety or maybe a trapping safety class. Definitely don't want to see it go away, but we have to behave in a way that's defensible to the public when they came out with hunter's safety to people bitch about it. Uh you're forty one. Yeah, I don't. I don't think. I don't know that because it's always been contentious. Maybe probably because it was like at that point, probably it was. I think it was contentious when they came out with drivers in. Yeah, someone's probably what you know, Kelly and talked about. You know what we're talking about, someone saying that they were afraid to be out in the woods during hunting season top a boat. If you're comfortable what you're telling me about. Remember we had a big email chain debating with you and me and Doug Dring and my brother arguing about uh, hunter recruitment. And you bring up a point about the way skiing is perceived in your town and the way hunting is perceived in your town relative to hazardous risk. Do you remember this, talk about that speak to that. Um, well, yeah, catch your Idaho skiing is the end all be all. It is why you're there. Everybody's a skier. That's how people love to identify themselves, even if it's not true. Um, it is the only it is like the only like truly acceptable form of recreation. I've I've found out there, and and uh, hunting hunters get a bad rap. We're in the paper there all the time, not ever hunters speaking out because for some reason it doesn't make paper, but people speaking out against hunters. And I just started thinking of how interesting it was that, um, skiing, you have you know, multiple just I mean just between Montana and Idaho and Wyoming, you have multiple deaths a year and people are, oh, that's just skiing. Yea. Also one dudes kicked down an avalanche on other dudes. It's not you're not even killing yourself exactly. Now, imagine that happening in the hunting community. It would be would be in a major, major fight. Well yea, every year you had two or three gunshot death during hunting season. Yeah, and and some of these you know avalanche fatalities there people doing just mining their own business and uh an avalanche comes down and wipes them out. I'd be like a hunter, you know, picking off a hiker. Yeah, let's not perceived that way. Not perceived that way. And I just why is that it's all a recreation for you to be out in the woods. Yeah, come on, um, thanksky, no problem. Let's go back to bucket number one. Access. Yeah, yeah, give me the lowdown on that. So, I mean, I think the biggest thing under access and opportunity is this, uh, this whole public lands kind of divest your movement that seems to be um very prevalent right now. And you know those folks that want to steal our heritage and take it for their own. I think that is like that, it's the issue. We can't talk about any other things if we get that one wrong. Well, tell me this because this is this fine is helpful. Put yourself in the place of a very smart person. That's gonna be I don't know, hear me out try land. Put yourself in the place of a very smart person who's explaining to me why we should divest federal lands. What would they tell me? Don't spin it. I think they would tell you that, uh that local control is better because why, I say. I would then say, why because it's their backyard and they know it's best for that land. Okay, that's what I think. That's what they would say. I think definitely you would get though, Um, I mean, I don't know anything in this movement that's not based on extractive resources, And I think the core of it would be in the argument would be our communities exist because we can extract resources from these federal properties. The federal them is inefficient at allowing us to restract to extract resources from these properties in the way that we think we should extract resources and we want to be able to more efficiently take the resources out to make more money on them because by proximity, by proximity, we have more of a right to that than other owners who are not living in close There's. I think there's two issues. They believe that proximity uh allows them more rights to those resources, and they also believe that distance meaning federal federal lands managers who are distanced geographically from their lands don't know best how to take which tree, or which mine, or which gas well or whatever it is. And so um, yes, it's more there's because they're closer to it. But also just generally speaking, federal government, you know, isn't perceived as the most efficient uh extractor of those resources, and and the laws that are adhered to by the Feds, that have to be adhered to by the Feds tend to slow down, um those sorts of decisions with good reason. And you know, um is that sixty character Twitter thing where it's like, well, who can manage it best? Somebody in d C or somebody locally. It's not do not have to know more? Yeah, it's not like the office there in d C flies somebody out for one day, he says, hey, can we cut down this timber? Well, I don't know. Better fly back to d C and talk it over with the boys. Yeah, there's regional offices everywhere, district offices, the close one. I mean, it's it's crazy. There are the people taking under a mandate to do a lot more than make there they're opera under a mandate to do a lot more than make a temporary amount of money for a said individual. Well that I think you hit on it. And the one sixty characters that we live in a bumper sticker world. You know, if you can't boil it down to something that can fit on a bumper sticker and piss somebody off, that's just not cool. And so these these things that are complex, um, like federal lance management, it's a complex thing. You have to satisfy all these constituencies. Um, nobody's gonna get their way. Well, there are people now who want their way a hundred percent and don't understand the complexities of it. My brother just made a bumper sticker that says, I heart gluten. He just feels bad for gluten. I I can totally see Matt doing that. But yeah, I think, yeah, there is. I don't know why where did it come from? The reluctance to grapple with complex issues we used I mean, I really believe the internet and frankly, you know, the twenty four hour news cycle plays into this. We used to sit around. Frankly, people used to sit around with beers and coffee and do what we're doing. Now you get on your computer and send a flamer to somebody, You get on Facebook and piss somebody off you. You know, there's no appreciation, or there's insignificant appreciation for the complexities and different and other people's outlooks and working together. So now go back into yourselves. Now you don't have to play the role the really smart guy who wants who wants to privatize federal lands or privatize public lands or whatever or have uh what's the word unfettered? Who wants unfettered access with no what I would oftentimes see as unfettered access with no real eye towards long term future. And you can kind of see that at play when you watch energy prices. When when like mineral or energy prices go up, people get really interested in something, they go down, their interest seems to fade, and so you're like, so you were kind of looking at this as a very temporary thing. You know, it couldn't even hold up through a market cycle. But go back to your regular self. That's that's me, not land talking, and tell me sell me against divester of public lands. M I think the I meant, I mean this is like a divester. I always add a syllable for some reason. This is what is uniquely American, right, I mean, it's what separates up from the entire world, that these lands belong to the people instead of the short term use. We have this conservation ethic which is for future generations. And so it doesn't mean no use, doesn't mean no extractiveness, but it means it has to balance that for future generations and also other uses. And so you know, you you divest those either to the states or to individuals, and we lose that intrinsic value that I think is uh the main piece of fabric that we weaves all across this country that is truly American. And and you know, the the idea that the States can you know, manage this better, there's been no study that's been done that says that's the truth. And you know, Utah came close and that's when oil you know, it was at a real, real high, high level and it was like a hundred over hundred dollars of barrel and then it dropped out just like you just talked about, right, And so now all those plans that they had, even though they were short term extraction like go crazy and do it, those an't even pencil out now. And so they cannot manage those lands. And so they'd have a couple of different options. You know. You you you either extract that very quickly and get a little short time money U or um you raise taxes. When was the last time you heard a politician get away with raising taxes like that's going to be their platform. Nobody does that, right and or at the very end of that as they sell it. And I think you know Ryan is right that there's there's there's the industry that is behind this. The extract of industry. I think that's very real. But there's also folks. I mean, look at the Wilkes brothers and what they've done in Montana here in the last ten years. They're now the number one landowner here in Montana. They're trying to, um, you know, take a public elk herd in the dirty hills for their own. They're salivating watching this all happen and ready to buy all their bits and pieces of a Marya. And you know, they're billionaires and they got the money. And it's not just them that I'm worrying about. It's the you know, foreign entities like the Chinese. I mean, the Chinese are buying places all over the world right now. And if they owned our public lands and our clean water, I think about how crazy that would be. Oh, they do a great job environmentally in their own country, right, you know, I would say it's beautiful clouds, those beautiful clouds they made over all their cities. It's nice, you know. Uh. Some folks on the side of this argument, the pro side of the best. Sure, sorry, that's like uh adding a syllable there, But um, you know, they believe in American exceptionalism. They often tout American exceptionalism and all sorts of foreign policy issues and governmental issues and constitutional issues. And as far as I'm concerned, you know, one of the top two, after our form of government, examples of American exceptionalism is what we have in our public lands. I don't think you can be a fan of American exceptionalism and then want to ruin And the number two example in my opinion of what American exceptionalism is, we have this thing that every citizen in the United States has deed, as you said last night, has deed to these millions of acres. There isn't no other group of people on the planets ever tried this. Yeah, that was one of the frustrating things with me about the wildlife refuge takeover in Oregon is the way it draped itself in the American flag. In in a very literal way, I mean literally like draping itself in the American flag. And we're looking at it thinking, but what aspect of America are you talking about? It is not the rule of law, not the part of America where we don't tolerate pointing weapons at peace officers and civil servants. Not the part of America we don't terrorize the populace, Like what aspect of America do you mean? You know, it was just very puzzling to me to see, like what part of America were you promoting? You know, yeah, what do you think would have happened? Like an ices flag would bab be more? Well, but what with those guys? What do you think would have happened if they were of a different religion and they occupied a federal facility in some city with uh, you know, armed and threatening federal officers, You think we'd let that go on days? They would have got dusted up pretty quick. It was, Yeah, it was pasive. Like I just don't understand that interpretation of America that America is that doesn't admire rule of law. I think one of the things that makes as great is like we don't in most cases, we don't need vigilantism because we have a way to address the government. You know, I'm actually doing it right now. I'm in the appeals process fighting the federal government on something I'm not in trouble. Your rebel rouser, Yeah, me and Yanni, Well that's what you know. You look at those guys, don't get me invitance, They say, they're you know, they're they say they're they want to adhere to the Constitution, But I mean to your points, Steve, for them to believe in what they do, they have to first twist the hell out of the Constitution so that they can read it upside down her sideways in a way that nobody else reads it, including every constitutional attorney that's ever looked at it. So once you twist it, then you can find this odd way to defend it and wrap yourself in a flag that we don't recognize. Did you guys see the German gale that came by the food contest yesterday? It was amazing. She'd exchange student or something. Well, I don't want to talk to me out here. Think it just pressed me off too much. The She's like, what are you guys doing? Is this a festival? Said, well, it's a public lands thing. What are public lands? The stuff you don't have? Yeah, it was amazing. All of a sudden, I was like, oh, I'm representing the United States first of Germany was like I better get this right. All all I could think about was article I recently read about you know, going out and meeting your gamekeeper and paying your trespass fee because everything's private, and like, so you want to take those private lands, like, no, they're they're public. You can use them. Do you pay taxes? Here's like no, I pay taxes in Germany said oh well you can still use these lands and it was very cool. Yeah, yeah, I didn't know you were engaged in diplomacy last night. That's a big day, the ambassador. Um. I hear a lot of times people when you're having this discussion, Like someone mentioneds recently how the tracing back public lands use back to pioneer days? Um? How? And I've done it too to say, like, oh, you think of a guy like Daniel Boone. You know he came from British or you know, English to sin and in England, if you get caught on someone's private land, you know they would set traps for you and poison you and shoot you and you could be hung for it. To be hunting on someone else's property. Um, but when those guys came here, they were trespassing in many respects, Like Daniel Boone was often hunting on ground claimed by the British in an enormous amount of friction there claimed by indigenous groups. You know there was a muddy picture back then. I think the only the idea of like sort of what we're talking about when we talk about wildlife in the public trust and public trust lands is something that is not new, but very much you know, a nineteenth and twentieth century creation. It's an experiment, right, I mean, it's it's such a new thing, um that that we don't know. I don't think we totally know the value of it yet, right, I mean, I think when you were talking last night, um, you know, it's just having it there has this in intrinsic value and I don't think we fully realized what that is yet because it's such a I mean, the history in this country is so young, and particularly the public land history is so young that I don't think we understand the breadth of what that means to us yet. No, it comes gradually because now we've all settled in I mean, both sides of the aisle have settled in that. Roosevelt was a was a you know, had incredible foresight and was a great hero. He had to do. He had a twist lot of arms and do a lot of shady dealings to create the national force that he created. Yeah, the Midnight Force. Yea, so he was really pissing people off. Now we're like, man, what a visionary. I mean William Clark, you know, one of the Copper Kings, was senator at that time in Montana when he set it aside. I mean, this is a guy that was hanging out a hundred dollar bills on the Senate floor to get votes. He became a senator in Montana and he fought this because they wanted to do nothing but rape and pillage. And so it's not like, you know, everybody with this idea, they're like, oh, that's awesome, good idea. No, people, now it's like what you know, what a tremendous you look at like, yo, Samity. It's now hit where we widely regarded as being a great move Yellowstone. At the time, someone could have made a pretty good argument you could draw a lot of money, and you still could draw a lot of money out of yell Stone. But it's becoming our minds now it's like, wow, we're visionaries. There was the argument. Yeah, it was contentious at the time. I just don't think we're done having that conversation, and I think things are gonna keep moving into the realm of of Wow. I can't believe those guys had the foresight to have this stuff. No one else has it. I mean, these these these places that are still like they were thousands of years ago. I could become much more valuable as this country it develops. Yeah, as the world, as the world goes to ship we're going to be more and more like I can't believe those dudes have that. Think about how it's similar to our government. I mean, uh, lots of mistakes were made, we learned, We learned from European mistakes, We learned from all sorts of mistakes and what mistakes we made as a as a populist, and we formed our government a constitution, a government owned by the people. Same thing happened with with land. I mean, we made all sorts of mistakes we've had, We've done horrible things to indigenous people's we've but we learned through trial and error, and we came up with a lamb system very similar to governments owned by the people. These are two very similar things, our constitutional system of government and our public property, same same sort of thing. Most egalitarian thing on the planet as far as I'm concerned. I think one of the best arguments for public lands in wild places is that we don't want to have people like like, um, British people who do nature shows because they don't have any trees in any woods left and then you look like like bear grills. He's I was like, holy shout, I'm in the woods. I gotta get out of here quick for something bad happens, you know. And um, yeah, I think that it's like part of the American tradition to find comfort in wild places instead of having to be like this adversarial relationship. You know. That's why I think about it, just to limit Yeah, just because I hate those kind of nature shows. Oh my god, it's an animal run. Speaking of big wild places we talked with the other day. When we talked to Dan, he was talking about the is it the American Prairie Project. Yeah, Are you guys in as h involved in that at all or can you speak to that? Yeah, You're gonna keep twisting their arms make sure it stays open for for yeah, I mean so, I mean what they're doing there is quite amazing, right And for those that don't know about this, it's a Central Montana they're trying to tie into the Charles m National Wildlife Refuge and the Missouri Breaks National Monument uh CMRS about one point one million acres. I think they're looking at trying to pull together um property at about three million acres. And you know it's it's native Willing seller William exactly, private market for sale and nobody's forcing anybody to do anything. And so I think the American Prairie Foundation has a really long term look at this. And and so I think they're into almost a half a million acres that they have that is dated plus like least Land on on on blm Land, and so their ideas to try to be able to bring all this together again they're able to buy. They do grazy they like get grazing leases, They get grazing leases, and they're turning those over so that they can have those used for bison. And you know, when they get they're getting past the whole brucellosis issue, which I think is pretty hilarious because you know, elk in this state carry more brucellosis the bison. But they're such an established species that we hunt and that everybody loves that nobody's going to touch him. But with a bison, old man he might have brucellosis, and so we can't have any bison from you know, Yellowstone that are up here in a p R or in this this regions. What they're doing is they're taking those bisons from Elk Island that have never ever you know, up in Alaska, that have never been exposed to brucellosis. And so that takes that argument away really quickly. And so now they don't have that argument. Um, it's it's more about competition for grass, which I think it's always been about. And so think that's even a debatable point. People will debate it all day long. But I don't think the argument. I don't think it's about brucelloisis and as soon as that bison eats an elk placenta, they could get brucell Bison do love elk placena, don't they. I don't think so calories are in No. I mean, I think that argument it doesn't hold water. It's just one of those like red herrings, right, that's easily easily to talk to people about, and it's scary. Um. But again, I mean the vector there that I think they should be more worried about as Elk and you know that's never gonna like, nobody's ever gonna take that on. I don't think anyone should be worried about. I mean that they should be maybe using as their argument, not that they should be worried about. Yeah, I love and I've written about that group, and I really talked to anyone with that organization. But am I clear that they do that that that they enroll lands and block management public acts? I shot um um, I shot sharp tails on their on their property this year, and uh yeah, they're I mean, they were being very good stewards. And I would love for them, instead of doing block management to kind of get into like a long term kind of easement, like an access easeman, because I think everybody's fear is is okay, right now, you're doing that, so every all these hunters are happy, but then they're gonna pull the you know, the rug out at some point. And so you know, if they truly are committed to access, which I think that they are, they should think about doing these long term kind of like access easements and so that that gives a lot more certainty to this whole situation. And you know what I mean, I'd get behind I'd get behind their mission a lot more if I didn't have, if I didn't have similar suspicions about it. Yeah, and it's I mean, and and hunters, I think in general are suspicious kind of have a suspicious nature, right because every guy that grew up in the out of doors has to look at a lot of places he used to be able to hang out or they used to be pretty good and now they're not so good that they can't hang out anymore. They're locked up or their least or whatever that said. Though, I mean there's phenomenal upland bird hunting down there. The waterfowl hunting is very short, but you know, they not much water down there, and so before it freezes, it's phenomenal. Yeah, it just gets good then it gets over. And I mean, can you imagine, I mean you've you've I've never hunted bison, um, but like to be able to hunt bison in that place, and you know the bisons they had, I went out and watched them and um, and I was ready to kind of you know them to be cows, you know, and like when they saw us, they come up and you know, like you stick your hand out and they eat out of your hand or something, take a selfie with them. Yeah, yeah, that's very dangerous Yellowstone. Um. But when we saw them, I mean they were wild animals. As soon as we got out of the truck, they were running. And by the way, that was gorgeous to watch, you know, on the prairie, you know, heard of about a hundred and fifty bison running. Was just gorgeous. But I mean there is an opportunity for a true hunt there and you know down in Yellowstone coming out of there, and again I haven't hunted them, and I think that's that that as all as all changed, but it's it's not quite as much of a hunt as this would be. No, I've been down watching that happened, um, and it's not I mean, it's you know, yeah, I would categorize more like in the harvest category. And I don't think anyone who draws that tag thinks of it much beyond that. And I've gone down there and observe people doing it. Um. When I drew a tag in two thousand four on the Copper River area in Alaska, it's a very difficult hunt. My brother drew that tag last year and they were they blew a number of stocks. I mean, those animals just but you know that they have been there a long time, and they've been hunting a long time, and they've adapted the human pressure, and um, yeah, it becomes it becomes a very legitimate hunt, which I think is awesome. But I think the ones, yeah, I think the ones leaving the park have a hard time adjuscent to it. Elk have over you know, Elk have been pursued for so long that they have a tendency to know sort of what the rules are where they happen to be hanging out, you know, and Elk can being in the park and be cool, and he leaves the park and he knows that it's a whole different game going on. I think it's gonna take more time for those animals to figure it out. But yeah, I mean personally, you know, I've been admirer of that animal since of of Buffalo, since I found a skull in the Madison Mountains and um and studied up by them a lot, and I think that helping that species become you know, we never we almost have biological extinction. Um now the term people uses ecological extinction, where we got a half million of the animals in North America, I think or privately owned are basically manages as a livestock, you know. And um, I think that would be one of those things hundred years from now, if we were to able to have some large, publicly owned herds that Americans could interact with. UM, I think be one of those things where it became like people would be surprised to hear that there were adversaries to that plan. It become the future, It become the future. El so people like really people didn't want this to happen, like yeah, you know, as they didn't, But think about this. I mean, as hunters, we've played a vital role in establishing just about every game species back to wild Honnable populations in North America were only one short. The only one we haven't accomplished yet, as Pozzis would say, it was bison. And I know there can be opposition to these things sometime, but imagine a small town in eastern Montana near the only free roaming bison herd, Honnable Bison herd in the lower forty eight re established. Do you know how many hunters and sightseers and wildlife watchers and everything would flood to that town every year, it would be like a tourist trap on the edge of Grand Canyon. You get familiar with the writer, um uh, Bill Kittridge from a long time Missoula resident brop in Oregon. But he has a book called Hole in the Sky and and it's it's all about issues, land management issues and environmental issues. And you know he was talking about an old version of this called Buffalo commons. It's an idea that keeps coming up. But he in the end of his book he says, um, go to Jordan, Montana and talk about Buffalo comms is a very good way to get your ass kicked. It's it's a contentious issue. I totally understand it. Man. I could put on like a different costume and go argue and probably somewhat effectively argue against it. It's not that I don't see where people are coming from. I understand both sides of it very well. If you go like, oh, yeah, you're you're great grandparents and your grandparents fought very hard and suffered all kinds of economic calamities and gave their hearts and souls to this idea of settling the land, tilling the land, making the desert bloom. And now we want to go and say, oh yeah, yep, but we're going in a different direction now as a society is a hurtful thing to hear. Yeah, I man, I mean, it's one of the toughest places in the world to make a living, you know. I mean, as a rancher, I mean, it's it's one of the toughest places in the entire world. And so you know, as that population was established, um and and folks came out to a prospect and you know, and and set up there kind of own flag on a piece of ground like that population has been dwindling since those people came out there, right and and and but they're tough. I mean, they're tough, and they're some of the greatest people in the world. And you can see how they've been watching kind of their populations shrink. You know. I'm in Missoula, where it's all prosperous, you know, and everything is on the up. There's their whole generations where it's been on the down. But they're so tough and they're hanging onto and and it's and I mean I respect that in a lot of ways. And and so I and I definitely see where they're coming from and it's a different, you know, way for them to think. And you know, I think it you can almost have both in a lot of ways to write. I mean, this big scary thing about the American Prairie Foundation, it's all willing sellers and willing buyers, right, so you can still have cattle next to license and it's whole Brucelison's issues out the door, right, And so I mean, I mean you could definitely do it, um, but you know that that population has been doing for a long time, and it's because it's a hard place to make a living in order, because because these issues are so complicated, it's it's helpful, I think to try to find some kind of shorthand things. And the thing I often come back to where I'm when I'm trying to find clarity on the issue, often think like like what are the lines? What are my personal lines? I tend to always look at an issue, and I tend to come from the angle of what's best for habitat and wildlife because everything is so complicated, right, and every issue has so many things. But that's sort of what I've decided are like my primary interest. Well, I think it is best for the country, the best or future generations is to advocate on the behalf of the thing that is is most likely to suffer. And I think that wildlife and habitat as we go forward UM are going to be the things that have the greatest potential for loss. I don't worry about running out of roads. I think if we had a group, if we had a meeting this weekend and it was a group advocating on not running out of roads, I don't know how many people would show up for it and donate money. It's just I don't think we're going to run out of roads. I don't think we're gonna run out of concrete, you know, like to save the pavement foundation. UM, it's not going to inspire I think. Yeah, it's just like there's some stuff that if you look at what's happening around the world, it's just there's things that are getting lost at a rapid rate. And we're in a good position to find a way to coexist in an economic you know, in an economically feasible way to have prosperity and coexist with wildlife in a way that hasn't been done. I think, you know, using your UM Pavement Association of America or whatever you know it would be the advocacy group. Is that on the flip side of that is that you can you can continue to make roads. Like you said, we're not worried about running out of roads because we can continue to make and make and make more roads. We're not making any more of this bad country, right, We're not making any more of this pristine wild that fishing wild, that habitat. And so that's why I think it's it's and that's like that second bucket, right is this is it protecting special places? And there's Since we're not making any more of it, let's make sure that we keep that stuff the way it is right now. Yeah, you never go to your friends. He just bought some property and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna put some wilderness in over here, and my hotels going over here, right like you know, I mean, I think another good examples, you know, is wetlands. You know, all these wetlands that are drained um and then people try to make them again. We can't even come close to making them again, you know. I mean, you can kind of have a semblance of a little bit of water in there, but the complexity of those wetlands and all the insects and the plant community is in there. You cannot replicate it, you know, I mean, as smart as we are, as much as I you know, love our ingenuity, we haven't figured that out and we never will because that happened over you know, Eon and how that was developed. Funny is that funny case? Studying Phoenix? They made artificial wetlands, but it got destroyed by beavers? For real? Alright, is probably be good to take some questions? Oh, yeah, we're gonna do questions. Yeah, Land lead the question thing? Ryan, all right, is there any questions from the crowd? And I think we'll have to use this other microphone. Is there any questions from the crowd, Just restate the question. Oh, we can do that. It's good. Any questions? Didn't that I didn't invent that. He's done this before, Josh Kins. You we're at a campaign here. The candidates out there, they probs, can they not look at Mount rush for? Where Pedo Rosel's on? The four presidents selected do on Mount Rush for? And then they're up there for Racus saying I want to do something completely opposed to him, his most powerful latencies talk to the mapulating Oh yeah, so and so I'm sure he's probably could be on alt Rushmo left Field had a good face because he's in direct opposition like Theodore Rosemo. No, I think they'll have to chisel down Roosevelt and put up because you're not gonna put him next to the guy. You have to chisel him down and put up a new phase on Well. I mean, I'll hit this without tangentially, I'll hit it. So the question is basically, I think, um, how can politicians now claim to be claimed to carry the mantle of Roosevelt and be anti everything Roosevelt ever did? Um, I would say, it's kind of what Josh is asking. I think our problem with Sportsman and as advocates for habitat is that, through whatever political um nefariousness has gone on, we've allowed our issue to become one of these partisan footballs where it can only be kicked around on one side of the island, not the other. And um, you know, if you go back fifteen years, twenty years, conservation, lands management, environmental policy, these are debated, but they weren't partisan issues. Nobody was against clean water fifteen years ago. Nobody was against public land. You couldn't speak. I mean, could you imagine fifteen years ago presidential candidates loudly advocating in the Western United States to divest ourselves of federal land. They'd have been run out on a rail tardan feathered and it was e p as a Nixon policy. Um So I think what we have to do, and what I think groups like v h A do. We're pulling this back to the center where it's no longer a partisan thing. Democrats are for it, Republicans are for it, and it's because it's a good idea. And I believe that most of these people in their heart, they know it's a good idea, but they're in the business of playing political advantage. It's not about doing the right thing. It's about playing political advantage and getting reelected and getting big pack contributions. We got to get it back to where it's doing the right thing, and that's that's what we're trying to do. We're not one side or the other. We're pulling it back to the middle. So everybody's for it right up front? What for you? A little bit of devil's advocacy here and means not necessarily might assas. But some of the folks who are less interested in the back country and more interested in the extraction might take the argument back and say, well, you know what, America was never populated. Would you want to protect the whole thing? Would you never want to let anybody live here? And do you miss the animals who were extincted? Yes? Yeah. If I could get a mammoth tag tomorrow, I'm all over it. Yeah. So, so no doubt when you restrict the march of industrialization somewhere, does that not full fact people who are not as wealthy as we are. And I say, every funny in this room, is it very wealthy to even be here? Anybody who goes to the background of the hunt, regardless of what you can see your reconolicets, is very wealthy. And the argument give it many times is that when you want to spress carbon the nations where you want to preserve too much background doing so, And it's a bunch of rich guys. Whether you feel like you're the rich guys hold the land for everyone, it's a bunch of rich guys trying to hold back other people in industrialization. And so that's one of the arguments here. And I have fred progress that us not my advocation, but what do you say land restated? So I think the question, like the restated for me is is that there's this uh, this rich elite. They're trying to protect us from ourselves. Is that fair? And and and and trying to and say that these these these lands are only they're only do they want to be set aside for the rich early and not used by anybody else? Is that fair? Very few number of people? You look at, how many people really going to the backup? You about our owners, the stuff on our back. We want the government to preserve this for us, not that other people maybe have their rayed standard of living, better medical cares on. But that's majority of people do not necessarily made direct life, so that direct benefits. So you're so, I think, because because I'm what's probably gonna happen is no one's gonna hear that, and we're gonna accid like so I'm trying to find a way. Yeah, that that's great, but everyone else ask a question has to be like a tight clean question, but not that that's not tight and clean, but it's gonna be hard to follow. So a gentleman, that's a two pronged questions just Devil's advocate. He's stating people who are into uh, saving animals, preserving wild places, if they went back in time, would they have said, no one can come into America because it's all wilderness and we don't want to lose any wilderness. And if you want to save buffalo, does that mean we should save the short faced bear in the Willia mammoth? Um, let's talk about that part first. It's like, I don't know if people from outer space came and lived here, would they be covered under civil rights protections? I just don't know. It's so um. It's just something that it's a fun thing to juggle mentally. I don't know how it really um. I don't know how it really helps us to ask that question, because it's the kind of thing where you go to someone and they say, I believe in clean water, and then they go, oh, yeah, but you use dish detergent. You're a hypocrite, so nothing you say matters. UM. I can't speak to it on a very personal level. I wish Wily mammoth hadn't gone extinct. I have a wily mammoth tooth. I wish the whole thing was still there with its tooth in it. Um. Uh, yeah, I don't know. It's just like it's too revised, it's too revisionists for me to even grapple with. And I just sort of tend to look at it like, where are we now? What's going on in the world. I think that whatever definition we were to arrive at and how we define and wilderness, how we define wild places. In my mind, um, if we got a giant panel of interested stakeholders together and came up with a working version of what is a wild place and we agreed on that nationally, and then we just said, do we want more of this stuff or less of it? However we define it, I would say I'd like to have a little more. The second part of the question is, isn't this all just a bunch of rich recreationalists trying to get the government to curtail people's ability to make a living so that we have a fun playground. It's a great question, Um, that one I think is worth wrestling with. I think that one of the big things about wild lands advocacy and wildlife advocacy is we don't really know what we have yet, and that there are a lot of activities that can occur on it that will not diminish it, including some extraction extractive industries, including very light footprint things. Um, I don't look at wilderness is being defined by people can't go there. Hell's You know, you have the Hell's Canyon wilderness. It has a wonderful avenue through it in the form of the Snake River. It's very accessible. People can go and experience that level of wilderness. I think there are many cases where people can. I just don't think that it has minute to minute be able to justify its existence based on what's happening there right now. I'll say this too, I think a lot of a lot of the beauty of the public lands is an aspirational American kind of thing. I don't get to Alaska there as much as I'd like. I wish I was up there, you know, every other week. Even if I got there only one time in my life. Hell, even if I never got there, the aspirational nature of being there me dreaming about it is worth something to me. A single mom in Chicago. She may never get to Glacier Park, she may never get to the Badger Tombad or the Flathead National forest, but it's an aspirational thing. She can go, you can dream about it. That aspiration, that and that sort of aspirational stuff is driven Americans for you know, over two centuries. And if you remove that, even the ability to do it, the aspiration goes with it is gone. So just because I would say to to a single mom who might say that it's not just for Yeah, we're using it a lot, maybe we use it more than everybody else, but it's there for everybody to use if you want to. You can aspire to do it because it's there. There's some inspirational, soulful thing of it just existing, so you can do it. You can dream about it. But if someone came to me and said I'm gonna make it, if someone came to me, like like God came down and said to me, I'm gonna make a deal with you. I'm either gonna destroy the boundary waters or you and any child you ever have and any children that ever come from any children you will ever have, can't go there. I would say, we'll step back. So I don't think that it's always a highly personal thing. Do I like to go there? Yeah? It does me going into these places affect them in a long term negative weight. No, if I had to decide between my access and its existence, what would I go with? I would go with its its existence. There are many places I will never go. I just probably won't get to all of them. Does that mean I have antipathy towards their well being? I think it goes beyond the personal well I want to I'm gonna address like give been an answer of some might you know might ask him this, um, it's now being presented as this. I think the genesis of the question is that, well, you are an assumption based on it is you're sacrificing a bunch of other jobs and economic opportunity because you guys want to hunt there. You're making the rest of the company country suffer economically because you guys want to protect your elk hunting spot. I say, no, what about the elk hunting jobs, the guides, the outfitters, the restaurants, the towns. What about these What about these vibrant communities Missoula, Montana, Bozeman. They're based largely on outdoor recreation. There are jobs associated with the wilderness. It's not just all or nothing. There's other kinds of clean jobs. I mean, I work in an industry. We were all here because of it. You know, it's not tied to a volatile market. We wouldn't be in the fight that we're in. If these uh single moms in Chicago, to stick with that example, they may see these places as aspirational, and I hope they do, but they will not fight UH fraction as hard as we do without being there for themselves and and seeing what it really is. And and I think those are the people they're going, Oh, National Forest, I don't even know what that is. That's on the other side of the country. You know, they're yeah, understanding, appreciate. I recently had a conversation. We've been working on a documentary project and as part of it, I interviewed at length UH animal ethicist. He's a he's a professor, he teaches animal ethics. He's animal rights advocate UM activists. And we're in a conversation about how you saying he was. I was asking him like, let's say you're a really smart hunter. Tell me what you think a really smart hunter would tell me to justify his existence the same way I did the land earlier. And he talked about, oh, you would tell me about all the money you guys spend on wildlife habitat and wetlands. We kind of holding on the duck idea and talking about ducks on limited. He's like that, you tell me that you spend all that, But I would just say, you're just doing that because you want to shoot it, right, And I was describing to him after this. I was describing him, you know what happens when you go to ducks on limited banquet and people who hunt maybe a day a year go and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars and give money to an organization that is just going to turn around and buy wet lands and open it up to the public. And he's going, oh, yeah, but yeah, but they only are They only do that because they want to kill ducks. I'm like, man, you know what, I don't care what they're doing it for. If it takes some level of exposure to wild places to turn you into an advocate of wild places, does that then make it a negative because you have this ulterior motive. I'm like, oh, I know about advocating for it because I've experienced it. How can you expect that? How can you expect it to How can you be suspicious of a person who advocates on something, but you're suspicious of them because they like it too. Who doesn't do that? I mean, who advocates on ship they don't like So it's just it's like the weirdest roundabout argument to be like, oh, yeah, you just like you just want to save it because you like it, or you caught me red hand. Yeah, I do love it a whole bunch, you know. I mean the way I would answer that question when somebody says that you're just setting it aside um for this elite kind of hunting preserve or whatever, I would ask them a question before I answer that, And I said, do you like clean water? Our clean water starts on public lands, and so do you want to make sure that you have clean water? That's the that's that's the question. Yeah. Now I would get into that too. Just like you don't understand ecologically, we don't understand as a people ecologic what these places mean entirely. I mean, you have this like interwoven connectivity. I recently heard this theory that was really interesting where a guy was taking He was saying he was looking at the ocean as an organism that you would take an entire ocean and say it's an organ is the same way we have like our body, ourselves, and we're comprised of organs and fluids, right, and electrical impulses that allow us to move that. He's like, imagine that we have the ocean and we treat the ocean as an organism, and the fish, all the fisher, organs, everything that happened there. It's like this living being and think of it that way. I think you can think of our cology in that way, and we don't really know what we're gonna lose in other places by messing with these things. Look at one, when agricultural practices in Louisiana and Texas changed and they started doing a lot more rice production, you created such an explosion of snow geese that it's denuding portions of the Arctic and damaging wildlife habitat in the Arctic. It's a long ways from Texas to the Arctic, but you create a wave that travels with activity. I don't think we're really understand in a wildlife sense and in a clean air and clean water sense, what would happen if we don't draw the line on wildlands protection. I don't think it's just gonna be like you can just pluck it away and act like that's gone, but everything else stays the same. We're not done making mistakes. I mean, we've done ridiculous stuff and made ridiculous mistakes, and now we laugh about what our grandparents did. Our kids and our grandkids are gonna be laughing about ship we're doing right now that we think is perfectly normal. Hope they're laughing in the back. Much briefly on badrics you mad and Glacier, and then also of water because you talk maybe a little bit about what's still going on on the tribe. It's Bessie, what's going on the tribe up there? And what was trying me down? And where we're at with that? Yeah, so, um, I don't remember the exact number of leases, and I don't remember. Won't restate that question, Okay, So the question is what's going on with the Badger two medicine? And I'll orient everybody about what that is. That's a area of the Rocky Mountain Front, essentially south of Glacier Park in Montana, all the way down to Chodo. Um. It's about a thirty five mile by thirty five mile area UM, sacred to the Blackfeet Indians, sacred to me personally. UM. In the eighties, there were oil leases let in the Badger too med and it has long been argued by the Blackfeet tribe the improper UH environmental review was followed before those oil leases were let because the tribe was not giving was not given UM proper overs at a proper comment period on it. That's been fought in the courts for quite some time. Company in Louisiana called solan X has one of these leases, and solon X stepped up a few years ago and decided, well, out of the several companies that own several of these tens of thousands acres leases, we're gonna push it. We're gonna drill there. We're gonna call the bluff, we're gonna see what happens. And so they started pushing to drill, exploring, sending, you know, applying for permits. They're saying, we're gonna drill. And so these leases had just been set there kind of simmering for some time in a place that's you know, really really is a sacred, beautiful place. UM. My kid's name badge after the badge of two medicine. Um, well, just recently the federal government decided with the Blackfeet tribe, we have one of those leases. The federal government said, you gotta do whatever you gotta do or get off the pot. And you either got to cancel the leases or you gotta let them drill one or the other. You gotta go and find the federal government Sally Jewel Environmental secretary or the Interior secretary canceled the lease. So we have one gone, but there's still a whole bunch of leases. There's we think probably that the president is is that that's going to be too difficult to drill there, and we'll hope for some kind of system to retire or buy out or whatever the rest of the leases. We have a good precedent, it's on a good path, but the fight's not over yet. Up front. Yeah, So you know, the n r A does their candidacy indoors from the rate candidates political candidates in like Yo, we are free national delegates all get a radis. But they're also the ones we the char for the transfer of public land. So I'm curious if he's been talks of maybe like doing some sort of rating system for candidates that are positive for public plants. Yeah, so the question is is uh is b h A ready to kind of start rating candidates right and letting people know where they stand on issues. Uh so this last year or in this cycle right now? Um, you know there's with the presidential candidates, they all went down to Nevada and um, and then I think it was the Renal Journal that asked them questions. There was five questions. One of those was about public lands, and so it was a great way for us to without doing like a candidate scorecard, to like just just provide information to people. Now, I will tell you that the legalities of a scorecard are very complicated because right away they're looking like endorsements and you know, and and so you have to be very careful as a five oh one c three, which we are where we cannot engage in political politics at all. So it's be very careful of that. And you know, the I've been involved in the scorecards, and what the way that you kind of get around that is have instead of having like two questions about public lands that are very leading, you have to have a big array of things that you ask them, right and and that threshold is I mean, that's it's very complicated, but that threshold you can do it. Um. Is that something that we want to do? I say, yes, do we have Do we have the resources you know to be able to do that? Uh? This last cycle? No? Um, But I think it's something that's uh, you know, providing information to people is something that we're supposed to be doing right and giving them letting them make their own decisions. And so without us endorsing candidates, which we cannot do, we can provide that information. I think that's something we'll probably do in the future. You know, I totally agree with landing without getting in the exact politics of it. Are endorsing anybody or anything? And back to Josh's question a bit. I firmly believe that until some people lose their races because of their public land stances, it won't change. And you know, I'm not saying who it is or who is endorsed or not, but until a sportsman rise up and penalize people at the ballot box, this is not going to go away. Because there's political advantage in it, and we have a lot of power. By the way, it's unharnessed yeah, it's I'm not gonna get too deep into presidential politics, but it's been. It's frustrating to me that of all front runners either party, there's not a person who has even an idea of a background in the out of doors, an idea of a background and and and hunting fishing. Um. I don't think it's over, but you know, we've had such a strong tradition of of outdoors people in politics in this country, and there are some phenomenal senators and congressmen who have, you know, a strong land ethic both sides of the aisle. We're just we're lacking at right now. I know a lot of hunters get frustrated because either have you got one party who tends to advocate on behalf of wilderness and clean air and clean water, you got another party that tends to advocate on behalf of firearm ownership and hunting heritage and UM. I always feel like a political eunuch because you're just you're torn between these two things. I lament the days um of having both. I think that I don't want to say a name. There's a guy, there's a senator out of New Mexico that I think hits a very like a wonderful balance. Yeah, super to start for us. Yeah, strikes of wonderful balance between hunting, heritage, firearm ownership, clean air, clean water, wild their habits at But right now it's just absolutely missing from the political realm. John Tester, same thing. So you heard it here first, Steve Ronello for President. Nope, I talked about a whole bunch of stuff that most Americans could care to less about. Man couldn't care less about, you know. To Steve's point, though, that's why organizations like b H are so important. Because we don't have Teddy Roosevelt's uh in office. It's gonna take advocacy from very sharply minded organs like us to influence policy, you know, in the smoke filled rooms, and without you know, orders like us doing it, we don't just have the innate knowledge of it in the corner office anymore. I was laughing at this internal, very brief, internal debate I was having when you mentioned the Badger two Edicine, because it is a very very special place and I love it, and I was listening to you talk and thinking, I don't say that, don't say it's beautiful, And I'm like telling there's a lot of grizzly bears. Don't go up there, you know. But in every hunter, every fisherman, any birdwatcher, you know you have your special spots and you don't want to show up and see other people there. But you've got to be open about this stuff now, and you know it's time you got to take the gloves off and be willing to say, Hey, these places are incredible. You should go there. Just so you know, I've been known to fly across the room grab the phone out of my wife's hand as she starts to mention utter the first letter of the name of a creek. I might have been in her So for me to even mention this place, I will tell you I killed the bowl in the batch of tomad Uh two or three years ago. I saw six different Glusay bears the day I killed that bowl, six different bears. So I'm not lying when I say there's a bunch of bears there. But I like those places. We allys uh well when we're our cold is steing Cole Creek for every creek, every creek? All right, you got in the concluding thoughts were done with questions, Oh no, we need more questions. I just I don't know how long has been been, just over an hour really, two or three things that um, folks that are listening to this podcast going to do after or lands, whether the lawn Chicago or whether it's sportsman or just aspirational, what would they they you to talk? So the question is is what can the listeners of this podcast do to advocate on behalf of these wild places? It's up fair? Can I give one and you give to sure number one? You gotta start voting your sport. You gotta strip your sport from the rest of the partisan politics. Make ballot box decisions based upon this stuff. If it's important to you, So I totally agree. Um, I would say join an organization. You know, I'm I'm I'm selfish, and so I said, join back Country Hunters and Anglers because I think we are, um you know, we're tapping into something and we are the advocates for public lands. So join b h A. But if you know you want to join the Elk Foundation that helps protect Elk habitat, ducks On Limited that helps protect duck habitat, mean the list, I mean, you know, National Wild Turkey Federation. There's many many groups out there, um, and often times people like one of the UM. I'm gonna let you get back to your list. But one of the things that an organization like this provides is a sense of camaraderie, brotherhood and sisterhood. Right. You can meet like minded people and share information. I mean, there's a tremendous um reservoir of experience to draw for um. If you have a passion for particular type of hunting, particular type of fishing. Let's say your thing is trolling salmon on Lake Michigan, you can find an organization that is fighting for clean water in the Great Lakes, you know, um, and then you will find like minded people and and get a lot out of that engagement. I would you know, and truly if if, if, if you want to, if you care about public lands, there's not another organization besides the BHA that's advocating for you. These other organizations that do great work. A lot of that's on private land, which is vitally important. But if you like public lands, BHA is gonna defend that such very species specific. We're not we're ecosystem why so I think that's one and that's another big plug for b h A. But I think too is make a phone call. You know, I mean a lot of people think that their voices don't count. And you know, we had we had Centator Tester here earlier this week, and we're asking them how can we be better advocates? Like what can we do? Your voice counts is what he told us. He said, when somebody calls them on the phone, that represents a hundred other like minded individuals. So then that's one call. Let's have ten calls in a day. That's a thousand people back home. That's starting to get somebody's attention. So that was the first one, make a phone called. Second one is as newspapers, you think they're going away, but they're still read very widely. And you know, senators and congressmen have staff that every single day they go to those editorial pieces of the paper and if that senator or congressman's name is mentioned, that thing is flagged for them right away. And so while we that's kind of a venue that's going away in a lot of people's minds, it's not the chip shots on social media exactly exactly, and so it's something that has staying power. And so I like getting involved, and I think, you know, we can help you do that, but you can do that as an individual as well. So those are the like the two things that I would say. I think too, it's important for people to to learn how to parse out the planks and the politician's platform. You know, it's easy to fall into. I guess so sick of hearing people tell me, like, you know, oh I'm a liberal, I'm a conservative. I mean, boy, good luck applying that to me, because I go by, give me an issue, man, give me an issue. And I think that if you admire a certain politician and they have, you know, a platform made up of many, many different things, you don't need to go piece me. You don't need to go like wholesale throw in with them on it. You can challenge them. You can still like that person and like what they stand for and challenge them on particular issues, and people can move someone in the right direction on a particular issue. It doesn't mean you're abandoning your political identity. I think it's hilarious when politicians are called flip floppers. You know, now, if if they're flip flopping back and forth within a week, that makes sense to be but what you just described to me is getting more knowledge and and having a different view on things, which I if I if I was beholden to everything I thought when I was an eighteen years old, if I was beholding everything, I'd still be shipping my pants. It's like people change over time, man, exactly right. And if you're not, if you're not using the environment around you to help educate you and help you evolve, then you're stuck in this space, right and you're just this dogmatic views. And so I think you know, when people um uh are educated and and and learn more about an issue and they change that, that's not a flip flopping. That's evolving. To me. Yeah, I always admire someone one if they've had an opinion and then later on they have to say, based on what I'm hearing from my constituency, I'm gonna have to support this because in that way it is it's like you can take that too far. But in that ways, when there's like overwhelming pressure from the majority of people, I think it's perfectly acceptable for political figure to say instinctively, I was supposed to this, but I cannot ignore what I'm hearing from my constituency. If this is overwhelming. I have to go against my what my my gut reaction on this and support wilderness or any number of things. You know, I think, yeah, we're too like, you know, we're it's too easy to be like, oh, you're a flip flopper. Yeah, but again, if someone changes there, if someone says something and then there's an immediate Twitter revolt and they go a hunter eight degrees, It's different than having then listening to your people who are just driving you insane by telling you you're wrong on this, you're wrong on this, this, and then you change your opinion about it. That kind of stuff happens all the time. Man. We should embrace it, and you can move it. You can move people in a certain direction just by being around them, articulating them and not being I'm being an a hole to them, but trying to explain where you're coming from. We did it, Badger too mad, We did it. I mean, that's a great example. We move people. We motivated b A. You help motivate our members. We sent letters, we made calls, we went to meetings, we contributed um, we swayed opinion, We got u s Senators asking Secretaries of Interior to cancel leases. I mean we can on both sides that we can make we can have impacts. Um, there's a lot of victories we've had. So you're saying the people spoke up and the government made changes on behalf of the people the shot at them, right, Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but it works. You know, instead of like like you said to your Facebook, instead of just throwing something up there with half baked facts to piss off the whole world. Um, you know, try being constructive, make a call, get involved. They listen. They listen way more than some men on Facebook. I like that. Well, last question. There on the left have talked pretty extensively about preserving the ecological integrety probably I used felt generations, and we hadn't really talked about what is pass the elephant is corner, and that is that the same science that we rely on for our management decisions, for our biological matter's decisions, for our eutological integrity assessments, and suggesting that by a lot of the lands that we rely on for the production of the animal species that we care intense and about are going to be very significantly harmed by climate change. So what do we do as sportsman and sports women and life and its associations that are interested in preserving the ecological integrity of these lands to consider climate change is an issue. So the question is, all, this is great, but what about climate change? Is that fair? I'm gonna try to answer as quickly as possible because we should just have a whole other discussion of this for an hour and a half. I think that the solution about saving wild lands and wild places I think is is the solution is personal and political. I think the climate change issues, it's uh technological that issue. I don't think that issue is going to be resolved by American restraint. I don't think you canceling your vacation is going to move the needle on climate change because you're not going to be in a jet. It's like there are some gigantic countries out there who aren't thinking about this. I think that the solution is going to come from technological advancement, is going to come through market incentive. On the on the wildlife side, it's a monster issue. Um. Anybody who thinks about this stuff, I think personally struggles with it. I say, the beautiful thing from a wildlife from a b H. A kind of standpoint is even if you even if you, even if you struggle climate change and what if and all that stuff, Um, you can't tell me that preserving wildlands is contrary to good science on climate change. Perhaps it's not enough, but I know we're gonna be on the right side of history there, even even if history is a little uglier than I it proves to be a little uglier than I wish it was. Preserving some more wildlands is not going to add to climate change. You know we're on the right side of that. The way I would answer that is that you know, we are seeing impacts already from climate change, and what we need to do to help fishing wildlife have a chance as this world changes is keep these wild places so you have connectivity of habitat, whether that's an elevation or that's north south or east west. And so if we fragment the wildlife habitat that we have, now they got no chance, right and so and and you know, whether you believe in climate change and the impacts or not, we're setting up a place for them to be for a long time, whether or not the impacts are huge or not. Right now, give things room to adjust exactly. I just there's a lot of people in other areas are just looking at as you know, again, I don't want to get into the to the housing the too details the house and wise, but whether we're seeing a natural phenomenon that will naturally reverse. So if we're seeing something that is a one way street, I'm not gonna address my opinion on it right now. But there are people looking at just if all this stuff is gonna move uphill what's up hill? Are we ready for that? Are we making it that animals and and that that that wildlife has like some room to change and adapt um and and go to new places to feed, to go to new places to bead, new places to win, or new places the summer. So I think again, like Ryan was saying, you're on either way, you're on the right hot side of history. You're not gonna, uh exacerbate the problem by removing connective corridors between wild areas. Yeah, totally great, gal Yep, what are we gonna lose? I mean, what are we gonna lose by protecting these places? What are we gonna lose if we don't protect them? You know, it's it's a very simple thing can we do concluding thoughts now? Be honest, I think we should. Okay, you're honest. I have one. Today. I had a great conversation with the gal I was from a third time in my life Floridian. She lives all over the country, but I got lucky for the third time on the left and got upgraded. So I feel like, what's not just great about the leg room up front? But I actually have great conversations with the people I get to sit next to in the front of the plane. So I was I was stoked, and all I had work to do. I engaged. But anyways, she's out on the board for the Florida Wildlife Federation. Not a hunter, like just a little bit of a fisherman, but she she basically introduces herself as a conservationist. I said, really, because really, usually if you're not like hunter fisherman person, you don't identify with that. Are you sure you don't want to call yourself an environmentalist? Like, isn't that who you are? She's like, no, no, I'm a conservationist, you know, first and foremost. And so that spawned this great conversation. And I guess my closing thought is that I think we need to find adversaries outside of hunters and fishermen, you know, allies. Yeah. Sorry, I was struggling with that, but anyways, Yeah, she was telling about how in Florida she seems to think that they have no problem whatsoever getting hunters and fishermen together with the environmental types and and you know, meeting in the middle zone and moving forward. And I just feel like, too often here we're like setting ourselves apart and not you know, getting find those allies in other places. Because I really feel like in the end, if we're talking about public lands and clean water and whatever, we all have the same goal. And so yeah, well, if you're a guy in Florida and you have to open up your newspaper to see pictures of literally tens of thousands of dead fish from sugar production runoff, I think you get some fishermen fired up. Yeah. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes an image like that. Um, other things play out in slower, less dramatic ways, and they don't get as much attention. Concluding thought, please, Yeah, it's like dealing poker. Now it's Cal's turn. I think I'm all set. You know. In room fall out, folks, it's an easy crowd right, like everybody is here for the right thing. Like we're fighting the good fight and keep it up. And uh as our new chairman here, Ryan Bussy said, you know change, she'd just said, how change is possible? Don't go occupying any buildings. How's your remodel coming? Oh it's rough, man, is there just not doing it? Cal's remodel in the place, all buys lonesome. You don't need to sell me on. It's going good. I'll find a gal here. Don't worry about it. No, but no, but no, is it coming? That was going? No, I'm not going. I'm not going in that direction, honestly. Is it coming along? Yeah? Is it like done? Yeah, next time you guys come down, I'll be short. You gotta kitchen in there. He's cooking out. He's cooking at a camp stove for a long time. Congratulates only six months land. Uh, great to have you here, Steve. I was really glad that you and your team were able to come. You know, we've we've you were here five years ago at our first roundnboo and you got to witness Ah, the growth and the energy of this organization is experiencing and and I think, Um, you know, and for the listeners that weren't here, Um, you know, b h A is on the rise. We have members in all fifty states. We have chapters now in twenty four states. The stuff that we are trying to put in this bottle, this lightning that we're trying to put in the bottle, you can't experience it unless you go and meet with other people. And I think what I heard over and over this weekends as people found their tribe and so that energy that we had this weekend, I want to make sure that goes all across this country. And so the stuff that we've been talking about today, Um, we have that for future generations and and and and so for the listeners, check us out. And when there's local events, come talk to those people and see who we are and make up your mind for yourself if you want to come engage. Ryan, Yeah, I echo that. Um you know, we've we've just come from end as Lee far. Everybody wants to be a part of a winner, and I feel like b h A is really winning. And I really appreciate you, Steve. Not only have you witnessed it, you've really influenced it. You're a role model to a lot of people in this orc um, you know. And I met here over the weekend a guy came from Washington. Um, and this is just an example the sort of people that we pull in and how this energy is building on itself. You know, we got a guy like Steve Ronnella, who's the ultimate badass, doesn't have a problem killing stuff, grilling it up, eating it. We've got this guy from Washington who I ran into heard about b h A. It got him fired up. He's never punched a tag in his life. He drove from western central Washington to come here to meet other people from He didn't know a soul to meet other people from Washington to meet people in b h A. He wants to know how to do this. He wants to know how to punch his tag. He wants to know how to preserve wildland. So we've got this spectrum of people who want to be involved, from from the old you know, like I said, the ultimate badasses like Steve to the guy who's starting and it's gonna be the ultimate badass. And you know, we want people on board and um, we're thrilled to be doing this. Yeah, that's what I want to do. For my concluding thought, is it something I've talked about a bunch before, is we get probably the number one email. If you're gonna categorize the emails we get in, I think the top category would be people saying, UM, I want to get involved in the out of doors. I didn't grow up around this, Um, how do I do it? You can? You know, even if that's your motivation, you can find great inspiration and great business information by joining an organization like this and finding like minded folks. Um. Yeah, the way you can do a good thing, move the needle in the right direction, and also learn a lot of skills. I mean that's not something we've gotten into, but a big part of what's going on at a weekend like this is people are talking shop. You know, I hould some good information about an area I've always been interested in. Last night, eating my dinner, stay out of the badgeck too. Man. You No, it wasn't there as a different spot, but I'm real curious about going in there. So it's like, yeah, it's not all you know, it's not. You don't need to come down and just have a big weekend. A good e two shoe and I mean you can come down and uh enjoin the group and find some people who like to be out there as much as you like to be out there and m yeah, man, develop a tribe, you know, and have it be the tribe that's on the winning side and doing good work. That's it. Thanks for joining h

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