00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is a me eater podcast coming at you, shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening. Don't make you eat your podcast. You can't predict anything there. He is already, did you just do it? He's done. I'll explain what he just did in a minute. But you know what happened to day that was kind of funny is I was flying with a a Muskox tongue, the tongue of a Muscox in a ziploc bag brind and I'm going through t s A in the airport in Seattle and uh, it flags right and they gotta check my bag and you're carrying it. Yeah, I haded my carry on a brind tongue. I mean when you look at you like, that's a tongue in a bag. And she said I need to inspect your bag, and we go over to inspect. Then she says, um, there's an organic mass in this bag. And I made a joke about organic masses. But then it was worried that you think I was hitting on her, and you know what I mean, like, I'm like, oh, you know those organic man, but I left it with an organic mass. She pulled it out and said and it's just a tongue in a bag and she said everybody loves their fish. Yeah, actually, but um yeah, meat sets it off. It does, because yeah, that turkey set it off. Got me in trouble. That wasn't a checked bag, right, Is that what you want? Oh tell that? Because that's interesting about t s A. We a lot of people who write in and asked various questions about how you fly with meat. And I think I've told this story before. We're trying to make short. But yeah, I got called back to security after I'd already gone through and come all the way back through and they're like, yeah, they need seeing the back room about your check baggage. And I go in there and on all the nice Stilens still tables, My big red Duffle is completely you know, taking apart all the pieces of laid out, and I happen to have a whole turkey chopped up in there cold. But there was like a tail fan. I was bringing the wings home for the kids, two breasts, the legs, it's all they're spurs, you know, because the kids want to see all that ship. So I'm like what They're like, well, this set it off, pointing at the turkey breast because again large organic mass. But the reason you get you're in here is because we were in there looking for that. We found a loose shotgun showy, Yeah, loose turkey bullets. And so that's what got me in trouble. But luckily in check backers they don't have to do the whole um check your background and and the and the cop report. But the funny part of it was that it was one of those heavy shot and you hunt turkeys and use heavy shot, you know, it's like you touch the trigger, there goes four or five bucks. And I knew that. In my nice case, I had some like cheap Remingtons stuff. I was like, hey, if you don't mind, instead of taking that one can of swap out, you can take my cheap Remington one a heavy shot back. Yeah, he's like a problem. Banks. You packed it all up and left. Now you just got the problem where you try to go walk onto the plane with amo rounds and you have to talk to the policeman. You know, that's what I had to do before. But it was Embozeman. They were cool. Yeah, it had to be an anchorage and they knew that I wasn't trying to pull a fast one. I had just haunted arm again that day. You know, they're like, yea, yeah, I get a buddy. But here's the deal. Now, we got to act like you're trying to sneak onto the plane with ammunition and go through all the steps, though obviously you're just like you know, every other idiot who comes through here with like bullets in his pockets at the Anchorage airport, but I had to talk to policeman and take some information down. I had a morning at the Anchorage Airport where I was coming back to the States with a blacktail in my backpack, and I remember going through security and the deer's entire head was inside my backpack concealed, but when I went through the X ray machine, they could obviously see inside the backpack and the girl's face behind the machine, and she like looked at her supervisor, and she looked at her coworker, and then she looks at me, and I'm just like, Hey, this Alaska and I'm taking a deer back to Montana. Cool about it, super cool about it. I had a friend that was carrying the antlers one time, and they had a big debate about the antlers, and in the end he was able to bring the antlers on cool. Another debate that they could be a weapon, whether yeah, whether it was weaponized or not. So we're just talking to had a bunch of weird stuff in its fishing vest. Who is that an old man was flying with the fishing vests. I missed that one and he had all kinds of like semi weapon like items and his vest. First he was really confused and they kind of said, like, um, they made him, let's just tell me this. They made him get on the plane and they're like, hey, you put it in the overhead bin and don't mess with it until you get where you're going. But that's gonna stop the flame and get hijacks. But but that's on one day, and you think it's entirely rigid, right, Like there's a set of rules and there's no room for individual interpretation within that. But when Nick Brigden had a set of deer antlers, they debated it, and apparently with this old man, they debated what he had going on in his fishion vest, and there was a level of you know, weighing in on it. But you know, their mandate is looking for hazardous materials that would be hazard justus to the plane and air travel. Like I've heard day like if you you could have other illegal junk in there, and it's not their concern, Like it's not what they're looking for. I had a man I flew recently. I had I had a bag pulled out because I had a big hunkle iron ore in it, and the guys like, I need to look in your bag. I said, yeah, I got a piece of iron ore in are. He goes at getting raw. I'm like, in facts raw iron ore and he let me go. Then I had another time in the last few weeks where I had a mammoth tooth and pulled that out, never even asked what the hell it was. Daved a good looking over sent me on my way, like I feel like you could have like a dude's arm in there. Defeated They it's not their mandate to pull it out, I think, mabe. Depending on the state of decay, they might take you side. Or if you had a hundred dollar bill duct tape to the arm, I'm like, oh, I'll look the other way here, Or if you laid a bag up they had one of those handcuffs. It was still handcuffed and you ran that through the thing. I need to check your bags, sir, um, joined by Chris gil Ridge Pounder. Um, Jeff Sposito, right, kind of Italian? Italian? I wonder if you're more Italian than I am? How many how many grandfi parents are? Do you have an Italian? Just my just my grandfather and my dad's side. But yeah, one grandparent. So I try to like relate to Italian culture. But um, but it's just really hard for me. Yeah, I'm American. Yeah was my last name. Yeah. My allD Man was brought up speaking and he was raised by his grandparents. So he was raised by full on balls out Italians immigrants, was raised to speak Italian in the home. Um. Later in life he moved out to Michigan. Was like it never happened. He wouldn't care about the language. South side of Chicago, right by what was Whiskey Park. So my grandfather lived and grew up in Pittsburgh, but came over same Italian speaking family. His parents never didn't speak in English. Similar similar story. Yeah, he was my dad's like I didn't eat the food, but now and then try to remember a word he was to one of his He had a handful of insults. One of them was that you were a minga la morta. Now, I've asked a lot of Italian speakers like what would that mean? Like, the best I can tell, it's like, uh, you're like a dead dick. He had another insult, which in my mind was was photonomy shako and I've that's many Italians and are like, yeah, I don't know that. That doesn't even sound like I don't know what that just made that up, but that was the Italian words he had. Yeah, I couldn't have cared good to meet you. Yeah. But interestingly enough, just tying off the Italian thing, I just learned my cousin, apparently we have enough Italian in there that you can apply for dual Italian citizenship. I don't know what the laws are really, but yeah, And then I started to ponder what would be the advantages of having this sort of disadvantages. But she, but my cousin, was able to get an Italian dual Italian citizenhip an Italian passport. I don't know what the advantage. I'm not sure either, but it sounds cool, so maybe something to look well, if you wound up in some you know, Mexican jail. You have two embassies that call. You could have like two embassies simon simultaneously working on your behalf. I guess that's an advantage. Yeah, I'm not sure there's an advantage, but there you go. And then Peter Pete, Pete, Pete, who's holding a dog? Shocker? Oh yeah, you got a dog out somewhere right now. Oh yeah, he's tied up outside. Oh he's tied up. He's in the truck. Yeah, we can actually see him from right here. So you're keeping an eye on him. And he would rather be killing house cats cats. I don't mean to say killing house cats cases family friendly. Let's just leave it to the wild ones. Yeah, tell him your last name again. I forgot your lastname. That's not occurring to me right now. Munich, Pete Munich yep. Um, So we got dual things going on here because Chris, you got nothing. Chris is just in town, and I felt and he just rather than being alone in his hotel trying to figure out how to get cable to work or something. Um, Chris is a cameraman that works with us, and you just put in a long hard day. Yeah, I wouldn't say a hard day. It was a fun day. It was a day we weren't climbing ridges or anything. Um, Pete Munich, you do many things, but Rocky Mountain go Tollions explain that real quick. So the rock came out and go to lines is as your child, I guess you could call it my brain child. Yeah. With the help of many talented people along the way, has become the leading conservation organization for rocky mountain goats across North America. Alright, do you have members? We do? Oh? Yeah, Um, it's a it's an animal that doesn't draw. You know, it doesn't have its focus group. Correct? It does now? It does now? It never did have its focus group. Correct. You've read all the books by Duncan Gil Chris, quite a few of them, and his videos. Not many mountain goat writers, but he is, if there are two, I'm guessing he's probably the best. Oh he's he's a pretty he's a legend right there. But the guy that wrote The Beast The Color of Winner, Chadwick not real hunting friendly. No, but nor are his colleagues. But um, but uh an informative book anyway. Yeah, The Beast of Color Winner is an incredible book. Um certainly doesn't highlight hunting in the way that we try to. He's still alive, lives in Montana. Yeah, yeah, he's he's a good guy. He's you know, he Um. I don't know, it's weird because like when you get a researcher, you know, but but they spend a lot of time in proximity the animal. You can kind of go with two directions and you kind of almost felt like this like anthropomorphic kind of relationship, you know. But it's an informative as hell. Yeah, it's incredible. You know, there's not a lot of literature on mountain goats, and certainly not a lot of literature for the general public. So The Basic Color of Winter is a very valuable book to the mountain goat. Yeah. Um. Gilchrist has so many awesome observations. I love that. You know, he's like an astute observer. Accidentally he's an accidental very good writer. When I said that, I mean I think that. I don't think he he set out to try to emulate styles, but he accidentally writes like Hemingway interest in these very like clear declarative sentences. He like says a very true thing, then says a very true thing, then says a very true thing on down the line and winds up having He's like kind of like accidentally beautiful passage. It's kind of hard to argue with a guy like that. Yeah, there's like an authoritative sense. And then Jeff Sposito, Yeah, from Italy, from from dual citizen. Possibly soon Oh you even have a hat. The reason Jeff, he's I want to talk a little bit about um. So we got to kind of like two organizations to two goody two shoe do good or organizations represented here. I've never been called that before that. You actually couldn't get that name. You tried to be the two shoot the Goody two Shoe Alliance, but had to go with the Rocky Mountain. Wasn't able to wasn't able to get it on paper. Yeah, so so right down when you got going on the two percent so so similar to Pete. Thanks to a lot of help. But but we started an organization called two percent for Conservation and UH and really the primary objective is to to help conservation groups UH get help them fund their mission work by bringing industry companies and giving away to get industry companies more involved and at the same time, how how this really came to fruition was understanding that that companies that do get back to conservation deserve recognition for for what they do, uh and and what they contribute, and trying to find a medium or a platform to help them get recognition from consumers for for what they do. For conservation groups. Yeah, so you go on there and you see that that that's there, and you know what you're doing. Now, I look, I don't know if you can even talk about this. Can you talk about like because I see that name and something pops into my mind, can you talk about that? You're not a lot of talk about that. I think we can talk about whatever, whatever everything. It's kind of like, you know, there's what is it one percent for its one percent for the planet. Yeah, and that's uh so one Percent of the Planet is an organization that that was started by of Entinard, who is the founder of Patagonia, and and a fellow named Craig Matthews who wants a fly shop here in West Yellowstone just south of us and uh uh don't quote me on this, but twelve or fifteen years ago they started One Percent for the planet based off the principles of of businesses that make a living on on the planet. Outdoor industry should be given back to UH to environmental causes and protecting the planet and UM and their models. It's been very successful. They have I think over two thousand member businesses now, yeah, and it's all in the in the software outdoor in well it's it's uh, it's very broad. I mean they have food, you know, food organic companies. Cliff Bars is a pretty popular brand name. That's one percent planet number. Remember if you look on the back of every cliff Bar, you there's a little logo. UM. So it's pretty broad. But but a lot of over two thousand I believe, yeah so so yeah, so they we I can't take credit for for inventing that model, but but really looking at what that model has done for environmental UH sustainability type nonprofits and what it's done for businesses like Patagonia who really have a strong reputation with corporate responsibility. We how many businesses, I mean, how many organizations do they backed? You know, they have UH I want to say thirty five hundred different nonprofit environmental they say, or within their network. I mean it's it's broad, it's it's super broad. Yeah. But but yeah, so that's kind of what our model is built off of. We looked at the opportunity to kind of leverage that and hunting and fishing conservation, and it made a lot of sense the more we learned about how one percent of the planet structured and what they do. Um and that's kind of what started us down the path with two percent of conservation. So what do you got to do now? Like it's pretty brand spigty new. Yeah, we gotta we got everything to do. Yeah, we uh to this point. So we've been working on on getting this going for about the last two years, really doing all the back and stuff, getting the r S determination for five of m C three status, getting some startup funding money, working with some uh some conservation groups and some businesses to really get feedback and involve the model, make sure we're going on the right path. And when you say startup money, what do you mean, like you needed money just to get like the legal stuff taking care of. Gotta get the legal stuff taken care of, got to build a website, got to create a brand. Who got to go out and market the brand and build value so, so who pays for that? Do do the did did the groups that you're gonna eventually support pay for it as an investment for the backing they might get down the road or did you have people who are participating the program help so so so a little bit of both. But yeah, my our first approach was to go to some conservation groups that I'm fortunate to have a relationship with the first one I went to was a Wild che Foundation, And yeah, it was exactly that conversation and hey, what do you think of this model? Is pretty open, casual conversation. This is an idea we have when we think that if it's successful, it could it could help raise more money for groups like yourself. Uh, and I need some money. But to get it going, we need we need some money. So they had they took a leap of faith. They believe in the model, and they said, yeah, I think that this just can impact us long term, can impact conservation as a whole long term, which is which is it just as important. So they were willing to invest some money to in in the form of a grant to get it off the ground. Did that come with stipulation that you're gonna have to pay them back. No, no, no strings they took faith. Yeah, no strings attached. How many uh are you guys? Is it launched? Like? Could I expect to go somewhere and go and be like, oh two percent for conservation? So we yeah you can. So we turned the website on for lack of a better term, about ten days ago. Yeah, okay, so the website's live. It's it's fishing wildlife dot org or two percent conservation dot org. Get you there too, So we have a website. I gotta put in a little percentage. You can't buy domain names and simuls two all written out, but yeah t w oh yeah, but fishing wildlife dot org. The problem with hunter eat No, we're into the problem. Someone else had already taken the numeral. Who is that? Just some jackass? Same way some jackass owns meat eater dot com. Did you try to buy it? The guys owns meteor dot com now and then puts up a picture of some dinner he ate in the restaurant. You reach out to him. We drive. We haven't tried yet. We don't have those kind of pockets yet. Have you even approached the game? Oh yeah we did, No, Yeah, we just sent just an email to saying, hey, we'd love to have that name. I don't think you ever got back to you any It's funny, not a hunting thing. It's it's the same thing. He's like, oh yeah, looking for a restaurant. He's hunting for a restaurant. Yeah. Be like he's going to be like, I'll go by going out to eat or I'll buy trying to find a good restaurant dot com. And then you give me the one you have because you obviously have the wrong one because that's going out to dinner. That's funny, Yeah, out to dinner. It would be a better at one for him. There's so many stories, and this is the right group of guys to know them all. But there's so many stories about like people right when domain names, you know, the domain name buying games, like people who like, yeah, you know, he might want to be in the big name in politics. Someday I'm gonna go buy his name. You almost like, go get my kids names now in case everyone have like a you know, if he comes like a tree trimmer and wants to have like his name. Uh So, speaking of that, but we were pretty fortunate to uh I play the domain game. No, we got fish and Wildlife dot org, which is nobody had that, and I think somebody lapsed on it. And I was on Go Daddy late at night one time when trying to find fish and wildlife dot org no, and I was putting in a whole bunch of random domain names and Go Daddy and it's like, I don't even know how I came to fish and wild life dot org but put it in. It was like available hunter Bucks and I was like, ham, that's kind of expensive, and moved on to like search of other domains. And the next morning I woke up and like texting one of my buddies that's helped me with this, and I was like, fishing wildife dot organs availables, Like you bought it, right, And I was like no, he's like, dude, you're a moron. Yeah. Man, So so we bought that domain name and that's what we're using to promote the platform A two percent for conservation. I figured if it doesn't work out, maybe we could sell it domain name and somebody needs it. Yeah, now the people know al right, so you launched ten days ago, Yeah, who are your benefactors? So to mean who would you okay, you aggregate the two percents? No? No? So yeah, So so I don't know. I don't I wouldn't say benefactors the word I would use, but I think that's appropriate. So we aren't taking the money from companies that they're giving back to conservation. Essentially, what our organization does a certify that a company does meet certain criteria. Oh, I got you. So so that is a common misconception I've had with businesses. And but this is really what the sending one percent of sales? Uh? But but to your point, So this was an interesting learning that I had from one percent for the planet, right, That's what I thought when I started studying the model too. I was like, huh so, how the hell are you going to distribute those funds? How are you getting these companies to write your check for one percent of sales? And and uh and and I learned that No, that's not how it works. I mean the companies, and this is a huge benefit of the model, are empowered to work with the conservation groups. They want to what what are you passionate about as a company, who do you want to support or you want to support the Rocky Mountain? Go to alliance back country owners and anglers. We don't we don't care as long as they are pro hunting and fishing conservation groups. We just certify. Okay, did you contribute one percent of sales to that and then one percent in your time? So so I guess we should clarify that first it's two percent for conservation. Is one percent of sales plus one percent of time equals two percent for conservation. But let's say they turned around, they're like, oh, yeah, we gave it all the Humane Society r H s U S. Right. Would you then say, well, that don't county of course. So that's so that's part of what we do from the certification is just we look at the criteria of Okay, who would you who would you contribute funds to? Who are those organizations? Make sure we have we have four kind of bullet points for lack of a better term, that kind of define conservation groups in our mind. Those are the obvious and wildlife and habitat improvement, right, that's kind of the most common one. Access and Opportunities one of them which is hugely important wildlife and have to be research and everything. That's research everything. Ye, um, what are there are to education and outreach. So this is teaching kids about conservation, about hunting and fishing, about how it works. And then uh, hell's the fourth one? I say, access an opportunity. Have to pull up the website to figure out the fourth one wildlife habitat, access, opportunity, education, outreach. Come on, man, good thing the website which which thinks about all that? Chris, I'm into it, man, Like in what way? Well, I'd like the like for the one percent for the planet model that you're talking about, right, Like I will as a consumer, and like a lot of people I know will consciously go out and buy products from brands that followed that model. Makes it feel a little bit better, Yeah, it makes you feel good about it. So like, if you're into hunting and fishing and you don't really have like an outlet to donate your money, like you're not gonna you know, or if you're just some dude that works at a ski shop or something or a fly shop, you're not gonna like write a check to ex conservation group for whatever. But if you go and buy a new jacket from whatever company and you're like, oh, part of that went to you know, funding conservation programs. You feel good about it. Chris, is just safe say like you weren't like a big, full balls hunting guy. No, man, no, it's safe to say that I didn't. I never was. No, no, no, he liked the angle. Yeah, I was an angler still am what's your what was your angling back? I'm going towards a question I have for you, But what's your angland background? Well, same as mine, grew up in Michigan. Yeah, a lot of like, you know, whatever's hitting a lot of pipe whatever is you know, you guys go chase the wild steelhead. We chase the steelhead. Oh yeah, I'm sans fire rod though. Yeah, it was always drifting spawn or waxworms. But do we fly fish for steel? But we didn't really see that fly gear? Yeah, just fly gear or just run running line and we with it's a brand like Amnesia and run split shot in the eighteen yars Leader and yes we'll fly on it. But a lot of the spinning techle guys are running the yarnball same thing. Yeah, you know you're hooking fish off from under your boots all the time because you're just staying on the edge of those deep assholes and runs and just running it through there and act like your fly fish, and it's like you could have put a spinning reel on. And some guys get like high mighty about it and they're like, oh no, I'm a fly guy. I'm like, dude, we're essentially fishing the same gear and a shamano reel. You have a sims like to today. I saw sticking out of here in Bosman. I saw sticking out of the back of a truck a rod tipping a bober. Yeah. I'm like, what's funny, guys, what the hell's the bobber fishing for? Right now? Bluegills? It's like, just no bluegills on the beds around here. Anything There is a fly rod with the strike in yeah, but yeah, strike in bober. They've been selling those for a long time. We had this conversation before. It was like it's a strike indicator, you know. And I said before, like, yeah, well, okay, so my kid uses one of those to indicate strikes. What we call it is a bomber. That's what I call it. Man. You know what used to really mess up my client's heads when those when those what they called uh thing about bobber's rights fisherman. The guy came out. There's a guy that makes a product called a thing bob which is a bomber. Yeah, it's a strike indicator that looks like a bobber. It doesn't. It's like a plastic It doesn't look like I have that. Is it a plastic sphere? No, it's not plastic. It's like a soft umlass. Its soft plastic has air and it but it's completely sealed and it doesn't have a little uh what do you call spring spring in the spring home? You know, you gotta basically double up your leader, stick it through the whole flip flip the leader over bull tight you know that sounds like a breaking point to me. No, because you're doing it way at the leader. You know you're test. But people got used and they come in all kinds of colors, but they're all like one solid color and you can slide it up and down. Yeah at yeah, you just move that loop out, move out wherever you want, put the loop back over. People got used to fishing those and because they were just one solid color, they kind of look different. You know, They're like, it's my strike indicator. So they came out with white ones I took the white ones and some red marker freaking it would mess with those fly fish in mind and be like, really, you don't have like a pink one or a green one? Like yeah, they didn't want to admit that's exactly what it is. And by the way, we had a San Juan worm hanging underneath it, you know, calling you were you were matching, you were matching something those fish have never laid eyes on, which is a red worm. It just gave me a smile every time I look over off the oars and be like, I I've done it. I've spent many hours fishing that way, and I, yeah, you don't like you know what we would call it? I struck a happy me. A lot of guys call it. I was like, I can't call it a strike indicator because that's just you know, that's like mental masturbation. But someone isn't like a bob or either. We would call the float, yeah, because we use them for steal a lot. A float with a stick, which is just like ice fishing. You'd call that a bomber. Same rig up. What do they call the bomber that you put that uh water into to fish off spinning reel so you can actually throw a weight. Let's fly I'm talking about. Yeah, but I don't know what. I know him and I've owned them, but I don't know what they called. Have no idea. I've never used us. And you know what I was driving at. You first came out and worked with this win September September last year. Yeah. Do you feel like you've gotten like a kind of a crash course and a bunch of hunting related business? Oh? Yeah, man, Yeah, I feel like I learned a lot. Yeah. What's the business thing about all that? She's into it, man, she's supportive of it. She like kind of hates my job because of the travel. I can imagine, but she's in. You don't say, you'll say being going all the time costs little stress? Who heard of such a thing. Yeah, she likes she likes it. She likes it because I don't have to like go to super dangerous places. Now you know she just got back from the Congo. Yeah, but that's not like that. That is like like that is like if you worked in Afghanistan, Yeah, you work in the Congo. Yeah, you work in Iraq? Yeah, what's a dangerous place? I would say more I would say Afghanistan, well Detroit, Yeah, but Detroit, yeah, definitely. So she likes this better than Afghanistan. Yeah, grizzly bears to her safer than yeah, we bears. Right, that's good because most people don't. Most people think that bears. Most people think bears are dangerous, which they are, but it's still Ye, they're not gonna there's so much. This is the thing I wanted to Let's come back to the barrier things I want to thing alright, So, um, two per separate conservation. They picked the group, you certify the group. Now what's the thing you need most right now? Do you need businesses to go to percent? So you need customers to prioritize buying a two percent? So we need both. I think that are our strategies we need. We need customers to value what we're doing, because that's gonna make it. That's gonna make businesses understand and realize the importance of becoming a member. But um, but there are a lot of businesses that already meet the criteria, that are already volunteering time, that are already given back one percent of sales. So so our strategies to go find those businesses, uh and talk to them about what we're trying to do, uh and see if they believe in the models. Hey, hey, if you had this converse station internally about marketing what we do for conservation, right, and what would be their argument against it? Well, there's no argument necessarily against it. But your your business trying to sell products. That's your first that's where you're focusing. But know, in your case, you're saying there already because there's a lot of companies, particularly smaller companies I know about, they are already doing that. That's right. So so what would be there? What would be a reason they would have to not be like yes unless they just want they didn't want to be part of something that could hopefully They don't have very many reasons not to say yes, unless it was paranoid. Our model is unproven, so there's some risk and like tying your brand with with our brand, that's not you mean, you don't know what I'm gonna go do something stupid on with how we market our brand or something. But you don't have any chance to really do anything bad because they're not sending you like like I thought earlier, they're not sending you the money that it turns out you embezzled it. Yeah, so it's low risk to answer your question. For companies are already doing it, this is just another way for them. It's a it's a multiplier effect on their investment. Right So, you're working with b h A or so company working with b J they're not only are they given you exposure for your sponsorship and your dollars, right, this is another way for those same dollars don't have to invest any more to get more more recognition for it. Right so, so hopefully so that's kind of our goal the gates to start talking to these conservation minded companies out of the gate. But the real goal and the real long term win is if we could prove that value, right as I want companies who aren't currently working with conservation groups, who aren't investing one percent to see that value and then and come asking like, shoot, man, I want to do that too, How do I get involved? And we can say, well, what do you care about? Go in public land access? Yeah, go talk to the guys at b h A and see what we can do. And that's when incremental dollars will come to conservation. And that's really when the model is is effective at doing what it what we hope that it can do. So when you go on pitches to a company, you go and talk to the marketing guy at the company, talk to whoever I can talk to first. But but yeah, the marketing guys usually the guy the guy out of it because it's like a marketing thing. It's something in it for you. Yeah, it's a marketing investment the way most companies look. Yeah, Yanni's t shirt company recently sold a bunch of T shirts and gave the money all the way there you go, which someone might look and be like, dude, that's stupid way to run a t shirt business. Probably not, so you might think, like, man, you got it all wrong what they really do in business because they keep all that money. But you were thinking marketing sure, as much as you were thinking trying to do like you know when Yeah, so I think I think this model hopefully for something like that. Right, Like, there's a there's a marketing investment for what? How how conservation groups have evolved right as they offer sponsorships to companies as a fundraising mechanism for them, and that that really is a marketing investment for business. I don't understand what that means. So I don't know. You can go become the corporate sponsor of vh A or army, or you can work or whatever. You can buy advertising their magazine. You can as a business. You're not just writing a check to these conservation groups without expecting anything in return. Right. How how that models evolve of how they raise money is as they offer you something in return for your contribution. Right. So so it's a marketing investment, right, and this is just another way to leverage that investment. So that that was an interesting point where you saying, let's let's say you have a conservation organization that does the publication well, keeps that publication alive and drives membership for that conservation organization and allows them to advertise. Yeah, it's like the people advertise in that magazine. So a company that is buying ads in a place in support of a conservation organization, that's a conservation spend on their part. Hell yeah, it is that that that conservation group depends on those funds to execute their mission work fundraising, and that's a recruitment tool, way to seminate information totally. Yeah, I mean going to uh, the wild Chief Foundation is a good example, right, buying a booth at their show and exhibiting at their Showy, they'd have that show to raise money and awareness for their brand. That's important for them executing their mission work raising funds. So so going to work with them, miss, that's a contribution to conservation. That's important. So would you pick your uh, would you picture that a fella is gonna go like, a fella is going to go make a purchase. They would go check on your They would go check on on Fish and Wildlife dot org and be like, oh, you know, if I'm gonna do this, maybe I'll do it at a at a group that's pledged. Sure, I hope that that they can do that. Check the website. But you know the way that the model gives companies flexibility to leverage it how they want, Right, So I would hope that a guy's going to buy Ammo right at Sports and Warehouse and he's going looking at the giant wall of freaking boxes Ammo, and he's sitting there looking at the two seventy and there's a box of Federal with a little two percent for Conservation logo on it, and there's a box of whatever Rimington that doesn't have a logo on it. Hopefully, if we're doing our job right getting our brand out there and recognition or right with the consumer, he'll see that and know that, you know, a percentage of that purchase is gonna go back to conservation. He'll buy that federal AMMO rather than whatever else. And that's kind of the the end goal and that consumers with you. Uh two more questions, maybe more what um, what's in it for you? Like? Why are you doing this? Nothing? I kind of thought that you weren't getting the checks. I was like, no, uh, you know. So, So my background, I work in the hunting industry for for for sika Um who sells clothing, hunting clothing, and I just sales and market. I've I've been with them for a long time and and we've always internally talked about this, this opportunity to talk about what we do for conservation and struggle with how we do it. And then so part of my job at sick As I work with all the conservation groups that that we have partnerships with, and I've gotten to develop lots of relationships there and learn about how they function and the challenges they have and the challenges they have from fundraising and and kind of those two perspectives. This just kind of hit me one time and it's like ship man, that we could do something here to make this easier for both parties, right, And so I just started working on nights and weekends and it's kind of it's kind of come to this. So so really, I'm married, I got two kids, kids six and three, well three and two weeks um. And then two percent. It's not two percent of profits, don't it's it's actually it's one percent of sales, one percent of sales, and it's one percent of time, which is uh which we've based off of roughly two thousand and eighty work hours in the year, right, so twenty one hours, and that's not per individual at the company, that's just company wide. We want you to commit to, you know, twenty one hours going back to volunteer work and that could be sell raffle tickets at a banquet, sitting on a board, doing a river cleanup project. We just want you to do more than write a check. Right. That's I shouldn't say it's easy to write checks, right, because that's not easy. But anybody company can essentially write a check, but can you can you show commitment beyond right and check and go out and foster that that volunteerism with times. Yeah, you know, And and that was a learning that I had when when pitching this model, getting feedback to conservation groups are like, yeah, money is really important, but to a lot of them, arguably time is more important than the money. Like we need voluntelunteer time. Yeah, we need volunteers to help us execute that the actual conservation work that we're trying to do. So so yeah, so that's how you get to it's one percent of sales plus one percent of time. And that's that's where our naming convention comes to two percent for a conservation. So like if if if a listener like, what's your call to action? Man, if you have to give a call act, like, what do you need most right now to happen? We need we need people to uh to communicate to the businesses of the brands that they love the products they want to buy, that this is valuable to them. So I want a guy that that loves that's a die hard Matthews guy, loves to shoot Matthews pose, that's all he wants to say, Hey, man, why aren't you guys give the back one percent to conservation? Why aren't you volunteering time? You should be a member of the YEP. And if some dude is out there, you know, stitching up uh backpacks out of his of his garage and selling them like he could heck yeah man. Yeah. So so there's a cool thing too where I think there's lots of opportunity for for non dimmit companies. Like it's not just hunting fishing companies, right, that's obviously where there's the most direct correlation. But but a guy that owns a construction company that's just a passionate hunter, right, ship that construction company could be a member too. He should They should be contributing a conservation or or whatever it is. So so there's a lot of I think there's a lot of opportunity when you start looking at the world of businesses outside of just hunting fishing companies too, which is exciting. There you have it fishing wildlift out org or if you know how to spell that, good to for conservation, but yeah, fishing wildlife out orgus. That's your favor that that's easier to remember. That's that's my domain name. Win for the year. Beat was it you? Yeah, your hand? Okay, well let's do this though, let's do this two percent for conservation. Do you have concluding thoughts about two percent for conservation? We do have something I can say about it. I don't. It's like, don't, don't waste our time. I'm just glad to hear that. Yeah, you guys are like really trying to get out, you know, get out of just the hunting and fishing industry, cause I think that will help raise awareness of what the hunting fishing industry does already and just get more people in on the conservation boat. You know, you could make it. You could already be because you could take and look at all the money you gave away off the T shirts you gave away, Like he's like, yeah, the volunteer time. No, you know what you've done. The money was well, you got the volunteer time, man, you know the volunteer time. It's gonna be interesting when we go talk to businesses that you know, that might be hard, That might be the hardest thing. Sure that we find out that that we do, which which is good. I think it. We don't want it to be easy to be a member of this right people you don't want people makes it more valuable firm businesses right, because it's a commitment. It's hard to do. You'd be like, well, if I drank all night at a Duck's unlimited thing, does that count of volunteer time? You got any concluding thoughts about that? Chris, you already kind of told us about what you thought about it. Yeah, help me do it. Um. Chris's real name is Ridge Pounder. It's not my birth certificate because this man um is. You know, I talked about Duncan Gil Chris being an accidental uh good writer. Chris is an accidental good higbelievable lucky dude. Attitude and stamina. I think it's just attitude, man. I think it's not even that you're hurting deep down, like not in pain, but like I get winded, you know, I'm not like just you're always just right there. He's always just right there. About that? So much is that that attitude can almost in the end trump the stamina because you can take two guys and look at him and look at their stats in the gym and be like that dude's gonna crush that dude. But the guy that's like looks like he's the gym rat. Might not have the good attitude and those long days on ridges and on trails, attitude really just takes you home. Long smiles, makes a short mile and yeah, big smile on Rich Pounder's face all the time, like you're having fun, Dude, I am having fun even when I'm like, dude, did you run ahead lately? And get that coming on? Shot? I haven't seen you up ahead of us lately. And then I'll go ahead the Um, but he's ready, you mean, he's ready to run up and do it. Yeah, so what I've been telling him, and that this is the second time I brought this up today, becauase worked today? Um, you're not that old. Yeah, you Here's what I'm afraid that you're doing. I'm afraid that you just think that you're just gonna go on him through life, slicking up and down hills like a grease hog without putting any investment in. And I think you might be at the apex of when I can do if you go on just thinking that that's how you are. Dude. You know, I've been having that attitude I think for most of my life of like, oh yeah, it's fine, but I think you're right. I just gotta hit it. But what do I do? I live, I live in flatland. Man. I think he's got ten more good years. I don't know, but that's not that long once you're there, when you listen, when you've been alive ten more years, Yeah, when you've been alive ten more years, you'll still be younger in me, which is insane. I don't know what the hell point I was trying to make. I was trying to make the opposite point. He'll be my age. That's what I'm saying, because I really everybody keeps telling you know, it's been telling me for ten years. My tablan's gonna slow down, You're gonna get beer gut yettata YadA. Well, now, just in the last year, I really am like, man, watch what you're not getting a beer gut no, but drinking beer. You haven't drinking beer like five months. Yes, he's on a Lavan cleanse, but I still think that, Like I just know my body feels different finally, like I'm kind of accepting this. Yeah, I feel it, dude. I live in absolute fear because because I know now. The other day, for instance, I woke up in my neck hurt from sleeping. Funny, Okay, normally by eight in the morning, it would not be that way. My neck hurt for five days. That's a bad Well, that's that's it's just happening. I'm starting to live in fear. I need a new pillow. Yeah. Well, I was at my brother's house. He's got he's got a foot and food. Well, you know, because we got the house and so my wife and I had were like a bed, but you know, the kids. We brought all the kids in my brother's place to fish, and they were confused about what the hell is going on. Like We're like, okay, you guys all go in that room and sleep, and we're in this little not a little bit, but like a bed, you know, and pretty soon they're in ours. And I was just like, came there in mind, I'll go back and find another place to sleep. And that's where I hurt my neck. But it took forever to get better. And it's just because I'm getting old. My wife keeps telling me I'm getting old. She's like, you've really aged a lot lately. It's well, no, it's not, because it's like I like to know what's going on I don't want people tell me a bunch of lies. Yes, you know, speaking of that, we should bring up our friend who we hung out with last week. Did we mention that podcast we did in Wyomen about his bluntness and about how people about that. It was like we it was a little uncomfortable at first, but when she got used to the way that this dude operated, appreciate it. You appreciate it because you're like, there's no gray area. Everybody knows exactly what's going on, and that's kind of how you like it. So he's yeah, he's very very successful businessman. Um accomplished in that field and has been in management roles for a long time. And we uh at one point found a couple of move sheds. Rather than have any awkwardness about who owns these move sheds, those will be staying on the property, and at first like whoa there? Like, hey, you know what better that? Right? Then him being like, man, those guys found him and they took him home, and now I'm mad and wish I had him. Just keeping it real, we got don't eating dinner. He's like, let's clean up, right, It's like, please, everyone should just be like that. Just tell me what it is you want. My wife would be like that more often. Yeah, well, you know I say that, but I say that, but she obviously is just lately. Yeah. Alright, So Rocky Mountain go to Lions or mountain? How's it going? It's the Rocky Mountain, go to Lions. Rocky Mountain go to Lions. Now, like, what was the genesis? It was early two thousand and thirteen. I went to my first Wild Sheep Foundation convention and what reason. I was working at SNAIS at the time and we had a booth, so I went. I was on my first trade show circuit. I was like twenty two years old or something, even younger than Ridge Pounder. I'm twenty six now, Yeah, still younger than Ridge Pounding. Are you younger? Are you younger than rich Pounder? Getting old too? I saw the Montana Governor's tag sell for two the big Horn sheep permit self for two hundred, four hundred and eight quarter. Wow, I'm really butchering this. Half a million dollar sheep was sold that year. Those funds went to Montana Big Horn Sheep Conservation and Management, and I have a relationship with a regional biologist here Julie Cunningham, a very good friend of mine, and I came home from that convention and literally Monday morning, I was knocking on her door and I had killed a mountain goat in two thousand eleven, and I'm obsessed with mountain goats and asked her how I could help out with mountain goat projects, if there was any volunteer opportunities or if anybody had orchestrated a conservation group specifically for this animal. And the answer was no. But her quick follow up was, I've been waiting my entire career for somebody to walk in here and say that. So she and I sat down and over a cup of coffee, um, they go to Liliance was kind of born that morning. So we came up with the idea, We're going to start a grassroots conservation group to assist with mountain goat conservation and mountain goat management, and uh, that's all fine and dandy, but then the biggest question was like, Hey, what are we gonna what are we gonna do? Yeah, what are the mount Like what problems does the mountain go have? So because they're like they're generally above development, sure they're higher than development, but they would have very low fecundity. They don't have like a high reproductive rate, so what's their problem? Nanny harvest is probably the most detrimental thing to a mountain goat population. And what's unfortunate is across North America, the average mountain goat tag is in either sex permit and that's that. Can I break in from it? Just clarify cult points here? So what are you talking about there? Is is you know, when you get a permit and either sex permit um, you'll find the animals that are very hard to sex or they're hard to sex, they don't. They generally do either sex permits. So for instance, bears, it takes a trained eye two sex a bear. You I don't know if I've ever seen in my life a bear tag good for a gender specific bear. It's asking a lot wild picks. A trained I you never see like it's good for a male or female. Um. Things that are easy to distinguish. She got a big damn set of antlers on its head or not, stuff like that. You see it. Mountain goats, it takes a trained eye, an educated eye. So rather than putting that on people where you're basically sending fifty of your people out to probably end up breaking a law. They do it just because it's so hard to enforce, I'm guessing, and it's puts a certain level of um responsibility on their shoulders, I'll point out, and I'm sure you're aware of this. I drew a goat tag and the ken eye. But it's law, and they say it's either sex. If you kill a nanny, you can't even apply for this tag for seven years or something like that. So they penalize you that way, and that's not even the end of the repercussions of that harvest. The Alaska model, if you harvest a nanny, the quota for the following year is directly resulted. They lower their tags. If you go in there and kill a nanny, you're taking a tag out of someone else's the next year. Alright, So so go on about that nanny harvest being a big issue. Yep, we could have a hell of all out more goats. Sure if people would draw a tag, and then you get when you draw a tag, you got months before you're gonna hunt. Sure, So mountain goats are extremely robust. You know, they don't they don't deal luckily with the extremely detrimental issues that big horn sheep deal with as far as pneumonia outbreaks or anything of that. Like, they're they're a lot more durable of a mammal than a wild sheep my opinion. Um, so they're they're survivors. They do very very well when introduced to areas, and there's not a lot of literature explaining that. But mountain goat introductions um, if done with the large amount of mountain goats are extremely successful. Other animals introduced are a lot more finicky. So mountain goats are total survivors. Um. They flourish in a handful of different environments. And what's an old mountain goat like a sheep? Like a fourteen year old ram would be a dead sheep walking right. He didn't have any teeth left, just like a billy. Um. But the nanny harvest is extremely dangerous because they do reproduce so slow. The average mountain goat doesn't reproduce until it's three maybe four years old. Kid recruitment rate in the first year is sub uh and most of the populations in the lower forty eight are pretty small, So if you have a couple of years of heavy female harvest. There are significant repercussions from those harvests, and you can't incriminate these people. Uh, you know, you can't blame the fourteen year old kid that draws a mountain goat tag and it's an either sex tag and he doesn't know anything about mountain goats and he goes out goat hunting and he sees one and he shoots one and it happens to be a six year old female. Well, that's a really valuable animal to that population. She's important they give off one ofspring. Correct, they have one? Yeah, twins, Twins do occur. Uh, it's pretty rare. It's very rare for the twins to both survive, but nothing near what we think of like a white tail pumping out twins every year. Pretty much what white tail will have faunds its second year, right, So it's very different. And you can't expect the average sportsman to understand that when you hand him a mountain goat tag. So a lot of the stuff that we're focusing on moving forward is public education and raising the public awareness and raising the responsibility of the mountain goat hunter. And uh, do you talk about are you talking about raising it in a legal sense or raising it in like, hey, buddy, you should know this, or do you guys think it would be a good idea to maybe mandate a little more education, a little more responsibility, Like what what's your take on it? Because I can see that you get sideways with some people who want to just be like that. They're going and they're going and they don't want to have to do anything. Sure, it's a little bit of all of that. Um, I think the more you raise the public education, the more you raise the you know, it's embarrassing for a guy if he goes out, you know, and I'm I got this once in a lifetime mountain goat tag. Well, I don't want to. I don't want to accidentally shoot a nanny for a bunch of different reasons. So it's a little bit of that, and it's a it's definitely part of I think that the judging the gender of them and being educated on it is up to the guy with the tag in his pocket, and the educational materials available to that guy at this time are poor. Duncan Gilcrest produced some phenomenal Mountain Goat educational materials that happened in the nineties. Nobody's done it since then. So we orchestrate on the ground boots on the ground volunteer projects throughout North America to assist regionally with mountain goat surveys and population analysis on a larger scale. You guys are out poling the mountains checking stuff out. Do you ever find all stuff that no one knew? I found a mountain goat. I found a nanny in South Dakota last year and she looked like she had this horrible infection on her face and she just had scabs all over her face and it was gross. I mean, as gross as you think it is, that's what she looked like. And uh turned out it was this contagious exhuma of Capri species that South Dakota didn't know they were dealing with. So that's probably the closest thing we've ever found come to finding out that nobody knew about before. But so you never found one that jumped mountain ranges in a weird way, and oh no, that happens quite a bit. Um. Just we're sitting in Bozeman right now. Just north of town is the Bridge or Mountain Range, very well known mountain goat population those goats came from the Tobacco Root mountains just west of here in the ninety nineties. Did they really on their own? No, they were interesting. So they brought a trailer full of goats up to Ferry Lake. It's the trailhead for the Sack of Jewaya Hike, the highest peak in the Bridge Range. They turned loose. I don't know, fifteen mountain goods. One of them was like an eleven year old billy. He hiked up to the saddle down the west faced and forty miles across the Gallatin Valley walked back to the tobacco. Yeah, there's pictures of that goat jumping fence in Belgrade, Montana. His buddies like, man, where you been. He's like, don't even get me started. You don't even know about the walk. I just said, there's a goat right now. There's a there's a billy right now that just showed up in a Dinosaur National Monument on the west side of Colorado. And this goat came out of Utah from Washsatch population and he walked east. It's got to be thirty forty miles and all on his own. He's you know, some five year old Billy showed up in Dinosaur National Monument, which is controlled by the FEDS, and according to the National Park Service and the FEDS, that's an exotic animal. Yeah, so they are trying to figure out how to deal with him right now, and the proposed solution is to kill him, which breaks my heart. It sounds like a pretty badass, badass billy that went for a walk and went went. But he came from an introduced population though in Utah he did. I can see how that would put him in a sticky situation. I was gonna say, because like in Colorado, all the goats, they're considered and that must be just in general, like a sticky subject for you guys. Right, But Montana has Montana has native populations, but the northwest we do Bob marshall the bitter root stuff, everything west, everything west of the Bob. There's an argument that some of the mountain goats in northern Utah are in fact native or not, that the current mountain goats are native, but their ancestors did in fact live there, That mountain goats did inhabit into the northern Utah. The Willard Peak population matters. He asked, so and they were potentially like wiped off from human causes. Yeah, hard to kind of put your finger on what you know, there wasn't a whole lot of testing of animals until the last couple of decades. But what's an argument in favor of um, what's an argument favorite putting mountain goats in places where they haven't been before. It's a it's a natural resource. You're you're increasing your natural resources. And if you're supporting sportsmen who fork over their dollars, if you're the if you're the state manager of mountain goats, I believe it's your responsibility to have a lot of mountain goats and to provide this opportunity to the citizens of your state. It's a it's a renewable natural resource. I asked this question about turkeys one time, because you know, well, because I mean forty in states of turkey seasons. They said, it's been yet to be demonstrated that there's a deleterious effect. No one's pointed to. Uh, No one's pointed to a good negative. It's a lot like the pheasant pheasants everyhere. People love peasants from Asia, straight out of China. It's like no one has yet said, man if it weren't for these pheasants, so they just winds up being like it just winds up being in many cases like a win win, Like you're not you know, put them there. It's not that you can point to um endemic species that have gone extinct because of mountain goat grazing or the other species have been in displaced because of mountain goat activities. There's two main arguments against mountain goat introductions. The one is the destruction of alpine plant life. Take that for what it's worth. The other is conflict of sheep habitat and people that like sheep don't like seeing goats near them. Oh so, use there's a conflict. They find a conflict between goats and sheep. Certainly what they co exist the over place, um they do well. Are they worried about disease transmission? Correct? Yeah, so there's a little bit of fear. There's a population of goats and Nevada and the Ruby Mountains, pneumonia has run rampant through them. It's the only population of mountain goats in North America that is very clearly suffering from a pneumonia outbreak. Obviously, navonia. Pneumonia has rereaked havoc on wild sheep across North America, not so much in the wild goats. Nevada has this problem. It's kind of ground zero for this, for this disease outbreak. Uh, certainly they can transmit it to a wild sheep very easily. So a lot of people are living in fear of pneumonia transmission. It's called m o V and it's the infection that can cause in the mania and living in fear that goats could potentially in fact our Wild Cheap so a goat tested positive in Washington last year, it could be a false positive. They don't know. A goat tested positive in Jackson Whole a couple of years ago, again very realistically is likely a false positive in the testing. But those are huge red flags to Wild Cheap enthusiasts. And uh, let me let me back up and say, one of our most cherished relationships is in fact with the Wild Cheap Foundation. We work really closely with them and a lot of stuff. But um, disease outbreaking wild animals are certainly something to be cautious though, Oh yeah, man, hugely are there any areas there are? There? Is there any native mountain goat range that where mountain goolts were extirpated from the range, they've never made it back. Like if you looked at it a map at the time of European con the showed where goats are are they still everywhere they were there was and you know, before the Europeans, mountain goats were as far as Mexico, and it was a an ancestral goat. Um. It's not an actual mountain goat as we know it today, but there was a subspecies of mountain goats that lived as far as Mexico when the ice fields were that far south, and then they started receding to the north and the goats kind of that particularly think it's called the Harrison. Harrison mountain goat is the subspecies of goat that existed all the way into Mexico. They are completely extinct now. The mountain goat that we know today um inhabited everything from Alaska into parts of Idaho and arguably Utah. You've ever read the book The Big s Guy, I have not a mountain goat saves his life, say what, He shoots the mountain goat and eats it, but it stays his life perfect in the end of the Big Sky. Yeah, it's uh we always though about that. It's such a good book. Man who wrote it? Huh Uh? That's why people call Montana Big Sky Country because that book. Yeah, you coin thing the Big Guy? Why not? I've never heard. I can't read, so what it like? Uh? Where are you guys at with things? How long has you been around? So the idea came about an early two thousand thirteen, I believe about a year later, we were granted five oh one C three status from the I r S. So we became a nonprofit UM and things have kind of exponentially escalated every year. So we started off just doing super grassroots projects here in Montana, assisting with regional biologists. Mountain gets are very hard animal to keep tabs on UM, and they are nowhere near the top of the list of priorities of the average state biologists. Public you know, public interest certainly hasn't been focused on mountain goats, and it has been on several other species. Were because it must of them live on public land, right, probably more high high country all the there on, all the unwanted lane. Yeah. So yeah, they say that the the goat hunt starts where the sheep hunt ends. But in Montana, the average mountain goat hunting district is surveyed every four years. The average sheep district or elk district is surveyed once or maybe twice a year. So very low on the totem pole of priorities comes the mountain goats. So when why do you think that is? I love those things. Oh yeah, they it's just kind of out of sight, out of mind. You know, there's there's no public effort behind him until now. You know, if you got the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and all the weight and money they pull, of course elk is going to be a big priority in your state. And uh, do you think part of it has to do with how durable they are, that they're we just have confidence that they're just kind of let them do their thing. Yeah, I mean I don't know. Yeah, but man, that's the kind of attitude that's dangerous. But yeah, because you get a few bad years and and lord, you know, and all of a sudden you're like, hey, we have all those things. I feel like we're just general wildlife. You you just you know, plucked a random citizen out from somewhere that you know, eastern Mississippi, like they want to see a mountain, go like them. When I lived here, we would take people up and with a spot scope and just part of the whole tours, you take them up and in glass up. Some of the ones in the bridge arranged will be like, oh, you know, very cool. You got what's going on? You gotta be somewhere just making sure the babysitters, uh doing all right, You're doing good. She's doing good and drinking too much hopefully not. You know what I got interested in them is uh after moving to Montana, I had a girlfriend in and I was always putting in my applications and I'm like, man, you should put into you know, she never hunted. One year she drew a big horn you tag a goat tag, and we got her a black bear. On one year she had a big year, big game hunt. Cool the goat tag. We drew it in an area called Blogic Canyon, which may be familiar with not so on the west side, but we didn't know. That's how I discovered Duncan Gil. Chris was just trying to bone up. I had no idea. You know, I've never been in a mountain go hunt. I didn't know anybody that been on a mountain go hunt. So we went up and it was I was inexperienced that mountain hunting and just generally experienced that big like definitely inexperience of mountain go hunting and inexperienced that big game hunting outside of a handful of animals that had just moved from the Midwest to the West. And uh, we're shocked to find one and killed the first one we saw, young Nanny. Next I went on a go hunt. It was a couple of years later, and by that point we'd logged just some massive amount of time in the mountains, and we went up and our method then, our sexing method then was to sit in this pass and look at a ton of goats and we're like that one out of the eleven that we're looking at is far in a way the biggest one we're looking at, and started at that point great way buffalo, just being like, it's way bigger than everybody else. Let's go investigate its male nous. You's learned from this guy. So what do you like? What are the what do you tell people when you get into the male female thing? It's like, like, I've been a lot of time looking at animals. I've been on go hunts, I've skinned several of them. I can't if I look at one from three yards way, I don't immediately be like, oh, yeah, it's tough. I meant you're lying to yourself. You say it's easy. Um, So what are the like, what are the things that in your conversations and your experience, What is like the thing you're looking for? You gotta watch him p r Yeah, that's the nail in the coffin. The boys stretch out like a big Clydesdale and pe like a horse. And the girls squad do they pe every hour the p every time they get out of a bed, they do. I mean, I would bet bet. I don't have the data to back this up, but probably the time a mountain good gets out of its bed, it takes a pass. So that's like the thing you're looking for. That's the that's the dead giveaway. You can determine the gender of a mountain goat without watching it. You're in by the by the glands on its horns. Yep, you gotta kind of kind of take a look at the big picture. There are several key identify irs that will indicate the gender of a mountain goat, and it's important to look at all of them and not just one of them, because if you make your mind up on just one attribute that you see in this goat, you could be wrong. So, uh, nanny, A girl typically will have a skinny, tall horn with a kink in the top quarter, a sharp kink, like almost a point where it looks like it was bent something bent it. Yeah, a boy is gonna have a heavy horn and a gradual sweep, a big, gradual curvature, no kink, just a clean swoop. But dude, dead alone is confusing because I've looked at the pictures. You better not just you better not make your decision on just that that now. And then you see one a picture you're like, oh, yeah, dead on. Sometimes you look at it and you're like, oh, that's like, no, that's not So we host these billy verse nanny quizzes on our social media platforms and they're pretty popular and people eat it up. So we'll put up a picture of a mountain goat, so what do you think is billy or nanny? And there increasingly popular and uh, it's a good educational tool throughout the throughout the work week. But we definitely there's some very very experienced, legitimate people that participate in these quizzes that get stumped. I mean I get stumped. It. It's tough because some of those old nannies have some big, old long horns too, right, So it's not like you can judge them on just pure size. Look, you gotta look at the whole picture. So the gland. So a common misconception is only the billy has a gland. That's not true. Girls got glands too, They're just way smaller. So both the boys and the girls have glands behind the horn. The billies have significantly larger glands that look like hockey pucks late in the season behind their horns. And he's all run it out and he run late, right, yeah, November, and um, the billies are obviously going to be significantly larger. A ten year old billy looks like an albino silverback gorilla walking around the mountain side. They're big, they're big, and I see that like when you see like the man. Oh you kind of know he's the man, but we're looking at a band of him. It's tough I tell people that the mountain goat you want to shoot is the one that you look at and immediately make your mind up. There's no question about it. He's just a tank and there's no there's no two ways about it. He's definitely a billy and he's definitely big. That's what they tell you about about grizzlies. Yeah, right, you can look at you know, you look at adults all day long. But I don't know. I think it's this. I think it's that, but it goes. But you know what, as soon as when he when he steps out, you're like, oh, big boar, that's him, you know, and all that sussing out those minor little things. How long we've been talking for? Al right? So what do you need from people? You know what? I think there should be a rule if you draw a goat take, you have to join our organization. Yes, I like that. How many states have goat seasons? Okay, not kind of Alaska, because Alaska you can buy the registration, hunts and all kinds of well it's count Alaska. You gotta don't draw that. You can just get them states that you can hunt mountain goats in. Though I think it's I can count them off here. It's Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, South Dakota. South Dakota has a tag. They're They're crawling all over to Crazy Horse Memorial. I'm headed to South Dakota in the morning for a mountain goat project. But they give a tag out. They gave two tags out in two thousand and fifteen. It was the first permits they've issued in over a decade. And did did you guys get billies or female? They've got two billies. Yeah. Um, they're in the Black Hills there in the Black Hills. It's a really incredible story. The back in the nineteen twenties, half a dozen goats broke out of a petting zoo and Custer State Park. I heard this before, no joke. Flash forward fifty years later. They had like a hundred of them and they hunted him. And they were there and obviously an exotic animal to the Black Hills of Dakota, and they hunted them and then their numbers started to dwindle. Uh for a handful of reasons. They augmented the population with an introduction from Colorado. At that point, they wanted them, they want them. They owned up to them. They were like, we like them, they're they're doing well. Let's make it happen. Hunting had been closed for ten years. This is our Tomorrow morning starts our third annual volunteer project and the Black Hills of South Dakota, and two thousand and fifteen was the first time in a decade that they decided to give permits out. So I like to give the God Alliance a little bit of credit there that we got boots on the ground and eyes on the hills and helped out a regional biologist doing some counting, doing some counting and doing some gender analysis. Yeah, tell us about that, you guys organized. I think last year. I try to make it, but my wife actually shared it with me. She found it on like the Bowsman the Bowsman list Serve or something like that, like the I don't know if that working internet thing that goes out to everybody. You know, it's like the Twitter, like boson or something on those lines. Anyways, I want my wife. My wife gets emails from it. It's usually good, a lot of good, interesting stuff going on around town. And I want to say, you guys were organizing like a big two day go count in the Craziest, big camping trip. Yes, we orchestrate backcountry volunteer projects and several different states. The one that you're referring to was in the Crazy Mountains last summer and the Craziest. I could talk to you for an hour for about the story of the Goats and the Craziest, but essentially that is what we do. We UH started a nonprofit with no money, and as Jeff with two percent can relate, it's a lot of headaches and a lot of late nights. But the thing that we did have was enthusiasm and momentum and passion and time, and we turned that into volunteer work. So this summer alone, we're working in several different mountain ranges in Montana, the Black Hills in South Dakota, the Frank Church Wilderness of Idaho, the Goat Rocks Wilderness of Washington, the Ruby Mountains of Nevada, the Willard Peak population of Utah. So it's bloomed into a lot of different UH real, real interactive volunte I was going to show up at that one that was up here in the Crazies, what would have that been? Like you would have put a backpack on. I would have gave you a folder and told you good luck, and I would have found you at the end of the weekend and asked what you found. So we divide and conquer. We we separate our volunteers out across the mountain range and we document every mountain goat side in and we tried to document the gender of the animal, AH, general observation, social interactions. Guess photograph we do. Yeah, we film them in, photograph them seat. It's we also have the responsibility of kind of is the goat healthy even if you're not a hud be like a fun little thing. You know people do that like geo cashing stuff and must go out look for damn go What do you think about all that pounder? I think it's cool, man. I got one question. Um, if somebody does want to do that, say they live in like Miami, and they're like, I really love mountain goats and they want to go like on one of these things Miami, Florida. Yeah, you're saying somewhere, Really, are you worried about them being a detriment? No, But like, say they want to go on one of these volunteer things right where they go and identify do you guys? I guess it's hard, But do you ever do like travel stipends for anybody? Like if you come and volunteer time, will help you out with a ticket or put you up or something like that. We're too poor for that. But uh no, to answer your question, No, we guys provide mountain house. We do not provide mountain house. I will provide you with a folder and you're like, I need that pan back, give you a hug, and I'll ask you for the pen bag one day though, offer that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. For our Idaho project this summer, we're working out of Yellow Pine, Idaho with the regional biologists out of McCall, Idaho. We have two pilots volunteering their time, airplane, fuel, and aircraft to the project. Serious counting. This is the first time in the Go to Lines history that we will have two fully donated airplanes surveying from above with boots on the ground volunteers on the mountain below. So how do you guys get money? Do you have like state? Do you get government Granswers just come from donors. So we have a membership base annual annual dues. UH take care of a lot of our operation aational expenses. What's it cost to join for your thirty five bucks? We got a three year membership for a hundred, We got a lifetime membership for five. We have an annual business sponsorship available for two hundred and fifty dollars. So companies like Sitka gear behind us UM and are also going above and beyond sponsoring our educational projects and donating to our conservation fund UM. Besides that, we do a trade show circuit every Winner, and that's kind of our bread and butter. We got a pretty pretty badass logo, and so people like our shirts and hoodies and T shirts, and to be honest with you, that's where a lot of our revenue comes from selling shirts. What's your guys website? We have a handful of domains and it's a backwards question mark and then no, it's go tolions dot org, r m g A dot org. Did you have any problem finding that dot org? Go to Alliance dot org. What's really funny, though, is we were talking about someone else has Mediator dot com or something. There's like a junior high school girls cheerleader squad that uses the same acronym rm g A. So if you look at Instagram hashtag rm g A, it's tons of mountain goats and then like twelve year old girls doing backflips. Yeah, it's pretty weird. But they didn't lock up your website though. No, tell me a get what it is Goat Alliance dot org. All right, So if you've drawn a goat tag and see this, I had to stick by this because I did draw a limited draw goatag in Alaska one. If you draw a goat tag, you have to go down there and kick in man, come volunteer with us, lace your boots up. Yeah, go look at some mountain goats. I love looking at mountain goat me too. I like how you sometimes stumble into them in weird places to like when snow gets deeply come down the timber a little bit more so. Just last week, north of Bozeman, a giant billy showed up just off a county road in the Bridger Mountains, and a buddy of mine was out looking for bears, and he said, you're not gonna believe what I'm looking at right now. It's like I gotta go two hundred yards off the county road. Start sending me pictures of it. What was he doing looking for bears? No? No, no, what was the goat doing eating? Yeah? He was just eating down in a super green gut right off a county road, just fed all the way down to the flat. Yep. So I got it. I was. I was at work, and I got on the horn and called a handful of photographers I know in town and one of them was free, and he bombed up there and photographed this thing. And it's like easily a twelve year old billy by himself, two yards off the county road and like borderline Antelope country, pretty wild. Hey was it you? Was it you that this guy that got our friend Randa will Lams into a bear? I did go hunting with Randall Williams this past weekend. Yes, and you got a bear? We got a bear. He was pretty excited. Oh yeah, Randall is a good friend of mine. Randall and I went to high school together. And uh, I've taken Randall bear hunt. Randall's a very accomplished hunter, but I have, So I shouldn't have said you got him into a bear? Well, I heard a rumor that you had found the bear. Yeah, I go watching the bear for about two weeks. Yeah, I'd go see him every night. Is that right? He's holding tight? Yeah. So Randall Randall's very good friend of mine, and I had taken Randall hunting here for bears in southwest Montana. This is our third year doing it. In two thousand fourteen and two thousand fifteen, it got real western it. We just had these really god awful backpacking trips where we got way in over our head. Uh a combination of weather and trying to figure out new hunting spots and it was just a total goat rope and never got Randall of bear. And it was kind of on me because I was showing him around my hunting spots, you know, and we got ourselves into some pretty god awful situations on a handful of different occasions this year. I was like, I knew when he was coming. I was gonna drop everything to make it happen, and so we did. We invested a lot of time scouting before. Yeah, we found a bunch of them, but this one was extremely consistent. It took us five and a half hours to get to him. Randall shot him at four hundred and thirty one yards five and a half hours to get over to him, or to get to hike up into where he was. Took us five and a half hours when I left the truck to when we put a rifle on the ground to shoot. It was far. It's easy to put a spot in scope on something. It's a little tougher to walk over to him. Yeah, we used to wind up, like when I used to do a lot of spring bear hunting here, we'd wind up. Just got some miserable situation his band because the weather was very erratic. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we were hiking and anywhere from two inches to two ft of snow. We got some snow late last week and it's stuck. So our whole hike was in the snow and it was pretty shallow. But then you get on the north face and you'd be up to your hip until this stuff, and it's just miserable. Remember that, just on a getting off again with snow shoes. I'm not smart enough to carry those. I just post hole my Oh yeah, man, it's nice that spring snow. You can just grease across all right, Sonny, Chris, Uh, Chris, Gil Yet you got concluding thoughts? Uh, you're thinking about dinner. Yeah, I kind of think about dinner, enjoy the conversation, learned a whole bunch. I like learning. I want to hear more about Uh oh yeah, I do. You don't have that point, No, no, I do. It's kind of off topic, but it kind of goes back to the suffering. Um on that first shoot that I was on a b C. We're talking about like observing, observing animals, and I'd like never seen why I'd seem like a black bear on a ski lift in the summertime. He was riding the ski lift. No, yeah, yeah, he was sitting um, but I had not ever seen like a wild grizzly bear, and like we saw one one of those early days. But then it was like, uh we saw that pack that dude came in on top. Yeah, and that one was really that was cool, man. And then it was just like after that week of fog and rain and snow and hail and like the whole thing, and then we're just seeing those ones like feeding and flipping boulders over and just moving. It was like so worth all that gnarly suffering just like watching it, you know, And I don't know if that's just because I don't get to do that often. But no, dude, it's magical to watch. Yeah. Magic was a good word. It's it's magical to watch them. One of the things I wanted to talk about, We're gonna have to save it as I was gonna talk about some current political issues surrounding that animal. But um, yeah, man, it's cool. It's it's uh, it's you feel privileged. Yeah, that's the word. Especially outside of the park. Oh yeah, you know. We used to always have a thing like when people be like, oh I saw a blank, we didn't count it if you saw in the park. So you'd be like, have you ever seen a wolf and be like, oh yeah, in the park, Like that's not I'm talking about the real ones. Man. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's all I got. You don't want to plug your new Fish to Eat T shirts ever? Sale? It is, I like it. It's not selling. People don't want to fish to Eat shirt. Yeah, And we forgot to get that picture today. I clad to Whitey today on the head man, I had my T shirt on it, and we totally forgot he's something on a mountain. Whitefish not whitefish. Yeah, people don't like a fish to eat shirt. Well, you know what it is, We're probably just not marketing it properly. They might like it better if you gave all the proceeds back. That's right, they start giving them away. Um, I got yeah, that would be my concluding thought. Is today fishing as much as I'm always talking about, how like, yeah, that five fishing, I'm not gonna I'm not that into five fishing anymore. I was enjoying. I was telling Chris. I was like, you know, I'm not really into like, I don't need to catch a bunch of fish right now. But standing here waters washing, rushing around, they got a nice view. There's something nice about this. I'm having fun. And then I caught a fish and then all of a sudden, man, I was just like change, yeah, man, my focus got into like like all right, I'm gonna really pick apart this riffle now, and just started like you know, getting all technical, and I could feel this like energy, and I was like, man, I really didn't like what you caught the fish though, Yeah, because I've noticed that fishing with people, how when someone catches the fish, all the lazy asses all of a sudden start fishing hard for twenty minutes. You'd all interested all such you watch the kind of fade away, you know. Yeah, concluding though, Pete, Well, it John Muir's birthday, so he uh, he was born on the day Prince died. It's a weird way to look at it, but it's extremely factor. That would mean nothing to him. No, he wouldn't be too concerned about that. I'd say, what prints, So tell me about that. What's that mean to you? Well? John Muir's extremely uh inspirational conservationists that I look up to, and you know, founder of the Sierra Club and everything that he's done. And yeah, just my social media got blowing up with John Mire quotes today. It was awesome. Sorry is he has some good ones? Oh? I got like six in my head right now. Can you give me one or two? I think my favorite one I read today, I hadn't heard it yet. Everybody knows the mountains are calling and I gotta go and whatever. And the one I heard today I've never heard before. It was between every two pines is a doorway to a new world. And that kind of struck home for me. I like, I like walking through the woods. You get anymore? I said, I had six, right, So I no, I think that's it. I guess my only ending note would be, uh, you know, I like there was a miracle. I like when he was going up I can't remember it, but he was went up nearer. I have a cabin in Alaska, and he had talked about I'm gonna mutilate it. But he had talked about, um that the islands. You know, there's so many of them. They look scattered like someone who had been sowing seed. Oh but I remember the quote. It was a doozy though talk about a visual Wow, good stuff. Do you have any concluding thoughts? Yeah, you know, I'm going to offer some postive nights super still thinking about getting my dual citizenship over here. I'm figuring out what the value is going to be. Uh you know, my mind is just running and thinking about how the heck we can well I think too too concluding thoughts. I'm really interested in how we can educate people to not jo Nanny's Like, that's a tough one, Like what do you what do you do to people? Here's all it takes in my mind. Like I generally feel that people with notable exceptions, I generally feel that people want to do the right thing. Okay. People are generally very receptive to information that will help them do a better job in life in the out of doors, especially if you can say and here's why that matters. Yeah, I don't disagree. I think yeah, I mean it has to take it. I think that's what you've you've discuss is how do we deliver what is that better information? How do you deliver it to people? Get them to actually read it? People don't read stuff that type of stuff. Remember like with the with the with the grizzly brown bear thing. I remember watching the thing put out by UM the Wildlife Management Agency and Yukon saying that if UM we restricted the harvest to mails only, we'd have three times as made bear text. I think, I think Alaska. I think, I know I could be wrong, could this up? But they have Alaska Parting Fish Game put out this. It's like an hour long video all about identifying bore for brown bear hunts. But I think right, maybe it was. And I believe they require you to have it to watch it, don't I mean loosely require you. But I say you watch some bitch of thousand times and still look at a bear and like, man, I cannot tell every bear looks big when it's alive. But the p thing it's good stuff. Oh yeah, I've heard a lot of people, a lot of people say about observing bears, like do you really want to know? Wait for pete. But the problem on bears like a goat, you might have a long time to watch the goat and you might be able to find him again tomorrow. Bears Man a lot of times and I disappeared. Maybe it's just like there he is. Then it's like then you look for him for a week and you never find him again. What was your You got a second concluding thought? Yeah, so my my last thought for the concluding concluding including thought for this shameless plug is this to your your question, Chris, about that guy in Florida that wants to volunteer, got it? That guy more than wants to volunteer, And here you are struggling to get volunteers and and part of the organization two percent that we're trying to do, it's it's foster all this this volunteerism is that I'm just excited to hear about those questions and and hopefully what we can accomplish is is can acting that guy up with this organization and getting people out there to to get involved. Yeah, you could get some contractor that gives a ship to fly Chris out from Chicago out here to help. Did you have someone in mind in Miami? No, I just it's far away. Just feel like feel like a far away place. I mean, I'll sweet to be that guy that he works for a business in Miami and that that business is telling all the employees like, go along too, We're gonna pay you today. Go put the Montan account goats. I like it. It's yeah, doing stuff. I uh, let me start that thought over. I reaped the benefits quite literally, reaped the benefits of the out of doors for decades before I ever thought about settling up the debt that I had a crude during a life time of amazing adventures and seeing things that no one's ever seen and doing stuff that I will think about it for the rest of my life. It's just like I think that people get to a point when they go like, holy shit, have I had it good? You know, maybe it's about time I don't just think about everything that that the outdoors is going to give to me, pay it forward. Yeah, it hits people. I mean some people. It doesn't some people that hit the young. But uh, I think that in some way, you know, organizations like like what you guys are trying to do it just to sort of say to people, listen, man, and I say this all the time. We live in the good old days, by many standards, by many measurements. Right now it's the good old days. There's a tremendous amount of opportunity out there. It's a lot of elk in North America right now. It's just but it's not by accident. It was by accident a d fifty years not by accident. It was there a hundred fifty years ago. We messed it up. It was built back. I'm speaking very specifically to the US. It was built back from the ground up. The resources, hunting and fishing resources we have in large measure by hunters and fishermen. That needs to be continued because it can very easily go in the other direction. Yep, yep, you got it. And so I remember my fourth bullet point right which ding ties right in, because I was thinking a lot I was taking a lot less of you through. Don't even know what's on the website that I wrote, but but it's recruitment and retention. It's about you know, getting youth, minorities, middle aged people who have never hunted or add the opportunity hunting fish. You know, how do we how do we get people involved and educate them on what controvation is and the way our our model of conservation funny of our state and wild life agenctates works. We need people to buy it, fishing licenses, hunting tags. Right, So so what are we doing? Very little hard funding from the states. Right If people are people aren't fishing, hunting, then then they're struggling and funding. So so recruitment and and getting new people involved in hunting and taking somebody out to fish for their first time so important. So organizations that that are have programs that that focus on that type of activity are are crucial. All right, Get any last because there's a lot built up after your concluding thought. I don't have a concluding thought, and I kind of gave my concluding thought, oh thought, yours is great about you know what to get back those get concluding thought though. All right, thank you guys for coming down, Thank you for having Thank you very much for having us

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