00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening hunt podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first Light. Go farther, stay longer, David Allen. Yeah, Deadwood, South Dakota. Yeah, you never meet anybody from Deadwood. Yeah, not many of us escape. Yeah. So nice little western town it was when I grew up there. And now like nowadays, you are the president and CEO Rocky Mountain Olt Foundation. Everybody's here a Rocky Mountain elt Foundation. But just like, give me, um, give me the one, you know, the one liner, r m e F. What's it like? Rm F is a wildlife conservation slash land trust, I think is the simplest one liner that there is. We're we're the largest big game organization. But that's not just our focus. Our focus is really habitat um and that has been for a long time as well as uh, you know, the animals, the critters, and uh the hunting culture that sustains it. When you say land organization, to breakdown what that means, now you know what hold that thought. So that's what r MBF does. But I want to back up Deadwood South Dakota and then you work for a long time, like you came out of both NASCAR and it's like uh and rodeo. Yeah yeah, I yeah, I had a real strange trail to the to the Elk Foundation. Um. I ended up working for Dale Earn Senior. Uh when I went to Wrangler Jeans. I went to Wrangler Jeans in nineteen eighty and uh the what marketing their rodeo program at the tops? What I was hired to do? You probably grew up wear jeans. I grew up wearing Lee, but the I was in Wrangler pretty pretty quick. Um. But Wrangler signed Dale. That was Dale's first major sponsor. And so that's how he and I nah in nineteen eighty Uh yeah, late eighty. What year did he die? Uh February eighteen, two thousand one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a long day. Uh. I started working for him in nineteen eighty. While I was working with him and for him, but you know you didn't you did work for him. That's the way he was. I mean he um, he just had that kind of bigger than life personality and and uh he was awesome. Was he successful then that early? No? No, No, he had bounced around. He had dropped out of school. Um, he raced on the weekends to try and make it, and you know he made it and and lost it several times. Um. Then in nineteen eighty he did have, uh, a land developer out of California named Rod Austerlin Um came out and bought and owned about four NASCAR teams And in those days you could own four for about a million dollars total. And uh, what what was it? Now? I don't I don't know. I have to know that. Uh, it costs about twenty million a year to race now, so I don't know what you could buy one for, so, you know, a hundred million maybe, I don't know. Um. But Dale ended up driving for Rod austin Land in nine eighty as one of the four drivers that he had. And Dale had great raw talent and he was Rookie of the Year for NASCAR, and so things look like they were finally going to start taking off for him and you know, have a great career, and Wrangler picked him up in one and man, he was miserable for about three years. He wrecked everything he drove. But you know, and he started getting the reputation of this guy can't drive, He's just a maniac and blah blah blah. Well, his full philosophy was they called this a race for a reason. I'm here to race, and so if you can put equipment under me that will go, I can go. I can I can race it. And that was his whole lifestyle and his whole mentality. So when he finally got with Richard Childer's as his car owner, and Richard, being a former driver, had a better understanding of what what Dale needed, they clicked and I mean from there it was like he was the Michael Jordan's of the deal for well fifteen years or more. Yeah, he was. He was the man, and so it really worked for him, and I did. He He hunted Elk a lot he and Richard. He hunted with George Straight a lot um. They hunted White Mountain in the eighties when it was just still undiscovered. And uh, people probably won't know what that White Mountain. White. Yeah, White Mountain is the Apache reservation in uh what it would be northeastern corner of Arizona. Uh, probably the most famous for giant elk. And and I've been there. I haven't been fortunate enough to hunt it but I've taken some people hunting there. It is unbelievable. It's a long time. The world record ELK came from there, and you look in the record books, there's gonna be several that are in the top. I mean it's just and and the way they managed elk over the last thirty five years, I mean nothing but six by six has lived everything else. Boom out of here, I mean literally get them out. And they just kept at it and kept at it and and it's quite a story. But yeah, oh yeah, it's twenty two. Thou a man, whether you pull a trigger or not. And what do you what do you think it was just for comparison, say in the eighties when yeah, I don't, I bet it was. It was. It was a high dollar It always has been a high dollar thing. So yeah, yeah, and incredible elk. But yeah, Dale loved to hunt. He hunted deer everywhere. Um, what's date with the out of North Carolina. Yeah, he was from Charlotte area, u Knnapolis, North Carolina is his hometown. So you worked for Wrangler and that part of the relationship that time. I did. And then when Wrangler got sold to Vanity Fair in Uh, whatever year it was eighties eight or eighty nine. I went with Dale and Richard and we started one of the first in house marketing UH groups to market the race teams, which you know that every team does it now, but none of them did it then. So we we managed all of our own sponsorships and everything that was related to the sponsorship. His sponsorship drives that sport. That's what it's all about. That's where the money comes from. Oh yeah, yeah, So we started that marketing uh venture and uh I did it until he died, and actually I did it a few years after that and then sold it and got out. Had you guys become personal friends? Oh yeah, very much. So. Yeah. I've known Dale Jr. Since he was five years old, and Kelly his sister, and Carry his brother, and yeah, yeah, it was it was a personal thing, very much so yeah. Yeah. And then uh you got into went into rodeo. Well, I was actually in the rodeo stuff with the pr c A, the Pro Rodeo Cowboys before that. I went from prc A to Wrangler. So that was the chain of events of I quit college. My mother still hasn't forgiven me, and uh went to work for the pr c A and uh then we then went to Anger. From there, you never went back and finished college, never went back. No, I regret it now, I got why do you regret it now? Well, just you didn't finish You just start something, finish it, right. I got one in college and one gonna be there next year. And I'm telling him, no, you gotta get through that. You gotta do this. And it's like, well, Dad, you didn't. It was like, well, yeah, I didn't. But yeah, there's a generational thing. I got lucky too. I wouldn't want to try it again, you know, I just don't. And we've preached to our kids from day one. You start something, you finish it. You know, you go out for basketball, you don't like it, well you can quit at the end of the season, but you're gonna play through this year. Otherwise, don't raise your hand and don't go out. And you know, my old man, he um he never finished high school just because he enlisted fighting the war. And then just later I think he went and got a g D. Later, but he pounded like he was. He was, like it's he was. He recognized by then by the time his kids rolder, he recognized the college of something you need to get on board with. Yeah, but it wouldn't have been fair to be there. Well you didn't do it. It's a very different world, man, Oh completely, yeah. I mean I grew up. I graduated high school in nineteen nine, so my junior high in high school years were the Vietnam stuff, and so yeah, it was a whole different world. It was. It was pretty goofy. So uh back. So when Dale died, I call him Daleeed you got you worked your way back into rodeo. No, when Dale died, I mean it it it really hit me, uh personally, and I think what hit me the most after the initial shock was here's a guy who had everything, and he had a lot of money, he had a lot of fame, he had everything, and it didn't buy him one extra hour. And I had a two year old and a four year old boy, and I told my wife, we need to go back home and race these kids around their grandparents. And I don't know what that means. I don't know what it looks like, but yeah, like an awakening, Yeah it was. And I really lost, um some passion for racing. I mean, it just took the kind of the air out of my sale for sure. I know it did Richard too, because there was a time when I thought Richard was going to hang it up and he didn't. He didn't but anyway, so I we moved back to Montana. I still had my racing ties and whatnot, but I was trying to evolve out of that. And the whole time, I was really trying to find something in the outdoors that I could do. And uh, I talked to Cabella's, almost took a job at Cabella's. UM. I talked to you know guys at real Re. I'm known Bill since he started the company. And I talked to a lot of different companies and I was like, I was looking and uh. I was on the board of the Elk Foundation when they had issues with their previous CEO, and so some of the board approached me and said, have you thought about applying for this position? And I hadn't. I didn't even dawn on me. And uh then my wife and I talked about it, and I was like, well, why not. You know, it's something I like, something I care about, and it's a long story short. I did, and that's where I ended up. And that was ten years ago when you were a kid, they haven't were there. What was the elk situation where you grew up? There weren't any, my dad and I'll never forget because we hunted whitetail in the Black Hills, that's what you hunted at the time, and a lot of them. We hunted on an area that was up very close to the Wyoming South Dakota border around Newcastle. And uh, one morning, when real I'll never forget, this burned in my memory. We're walking in one of those stone quiet mornings, you know, were fresh snow and it was the sun was coming up, was just beautiful and my dad stopped and the pointeds, you know, on points at something ahead of us, and I looked up there. I thought it was a donkey or a horse, and it was a cow elk. I had never seen an elk in my life. That was the first elk I'd ever seen. You know, we couldn't hunt them, they weren't, but there was one there and and uh, but you know, I I didn't even hunt elk until oh, I don't know, it was probably in my late thirties because I just wasn't around them and hadn't I'd hunted everything else, but uh, I didn't know anything about him at the time, and and that was pretty cool. So we're that one you saw? How did where was it coming from? You know, I don't know. It had to have come out of somewhere out of the Wyoming side of the Black Hills, uh, but had wandered in there on its own. Yeah. Well that's the only one we saw. There probably were more, but they were sure, weren't very many. But that's the only one I'd ever seen, And and I was I'll never forget it. It was so cool to see it, you know. My the way I get like my little glimpses kind of like into your head. And and what you do is always read your column. Okay, it comes out in bugle Yeah, um what bug is it? Six times a year? Yeah? Yeah, every other month. Yeah. So the old foundation Rocking Another Foundation publishes a magazine, bugle Um, which really does a good job of breaking down in a in an epic scale, like a national scale, sort of like what's up with Elk and many other wildlife issues, predator management Um in a pretty digestible format. And the the thing comes out every couple of months. And you guys write a column, right, um, I have help but well it's good column. But yeah, I mean I have guys help me sometimes with words, smithing or something maybe. But you know, I pick and choose the subjects and and I try to input as much of mine and then let them tweak on it and then I'll look at it again. And it's a it's an effort. I can I can imagine it's good. It's like it's very well written well, and I have to be honest. Dan Crockett, who's our editor, Yeah, Dan is awesome at that. I mean that's his wheelhouse, and um, he makes me look a lot better than I am for sure in that column. But I mean we we go back and forth, and it's, uh, I don't let anything winner that I wouldn't stand up for or anything. So yeah, you kind of offer in it. Well, I like, is you kind of um you find you don't think about this way, but there's there like like kind of prophecies. I see it there now and then like try like you you you you are always looking a little bit ahead to where things are headed. Well you know, I yeah, I I appreciate that you recognize that because I think that's probably more of what drives my passion for this job than anything. Again, through the eyes of my two boys that um have grown up outside and and their buddies and and all that. That's I think more my focus, long term focus than anything is what are they gonna have? And what's this gonna be h twenty five years, fifty years from now. I mean I'll finish out, you know, it won't be a whole lot of difference, But what are they gonna have? And it shutters me to think sometimes what they might not have? And I hate to think about it. But yeah, but you guys, no, you do, like I said, you make you have some prophecies in there where you you anticipate and I know now from personal experience that you anticipate problems that they're gonna hit the culture of hunting before they do. Try to push some buttons once a yeah, I don't even know if there's a thing that happened. Let me see your pen and I'm gonna write down something, and you tell me if I could talk about it or not. You one day over a year ago mentioned this to me before. Oh yeah, yeah, I can talk about that. I don't care, Okay, So I'm sending in daod Allen's office. I believe I was in your office. Yeah, I remember that now I know. And you're kind of ran on off some potential trouble spots for hunting and you mentioned, uh and you said and now you got people hunting with spears and yeah, And it was funny because the mid that happened and sort of the way that was framed and the way it was not just perceived but portrayed. Um. I immediately thought of you that you'd pull that out of thin air as a thing that you're like, it's just not gonna go well. Well and and yeah, it obviously didn't. Um, But I think here's here's where it really didn't go well is somebody took the time to record that, edit it and put it out into public and that made it that magnified it, what a hundred times? So uh, I don't know as I really have a personal issue with hunting with spears or not, although that's probably not what I would teach my kids. Yeah, well I know that a lot of states legally, but yeah, yeah, if it's legal, then you know, I'm not above the law and all that, so okay, but you know, it's the old saying I had a we had a football coach that used to tell us when you act like a jackass and stuff, it's like, act like you've been here, you know. And so that's to me where that whole issue really got in trouble was they took it out and said, look, everybody, look at this, and I was like, are you kidding me? Yeah? You want us to watch that? Yeah, outside of like kind of like meaningful context, which I don't want to point this out like you were in any way saying oh, it should be like you're throwing off out the top of your head a thing that even it's funny about it. It's because even when you said it, I remember thinking about that, why like why that? And it was then later when it became todates like when putting the public, when when put out to the public, the way people had such a viscerble reaction to it, it um it made me I remember thinking like, I'm gonna when David Allen talks, I'm gonna listen. What happened? What was it that tipped you off, David to that or just I think just common sense of I mean you just read somewhere that it was just now this thing or you do. As Steve said, it was starting to become legalized in some states, and I'm like, really there's a big demand for that. I mean, what is I didn't know that it was illegal. It's in some place. It depends how carefully a state spells out method to take, I think. So yeah, so I feel like like Alaska, um not. You know, it's like you're not looking for what it says you can do when it comes to meth of the take, usually looking at what it says you cannot do. Of course that's not the case. Like with waterfowl. Um, it's spelled out and like excruciating the minimum diet board diameter, MA, maximum board diameters, that what what your shots made of? Like all this stuff is spelled out right, But in some things, um, if you look, it's not saying like spears are great. But you're looking and say like legal method of take and it's like no artificial lights or whatever, and you kind of read between the lines. Just here day, I was trying to figure out for where I grew up in Michigan, you cannot hunt bullfrogs with artificial light. So I was checking in Washington, what the bullfrog rules were and there's no mention of artificial light, So you're like, Okay, you can use artificial light because it doesn't say not to. So I think now what you're gonna find is you'll probably wind up seeing that if that's become a thing that has demand, you'll see state agencies spell out that you cannot do it. And I think that the argument against it is gonna wind up being from a manager's perspective. It's gonna want be an efficacy because there a reasonable amount of efficacy or is there as they're like a higher than normal likelihood that you're gonna that you're gonna injure and lose animals. I can't imagine, for example, me out there calling in a bull and throwing a spear. See what happens. He even said he can't believe it. Oh yeah, I'm so say why when you when when I touched the trigger, I don't go like, I can't believe I got it when I touched the trigger. That's the expectation right right. I'm pulling the trigger because I have a certainty that this thing will die upon that action. So that's telling me that it's time now to touch it. But if you're like throwing out a hail Mary, and then you're like so shocked that it worked, as opposed to that you just hit in the leg and gashed and it ran off. Yeah, and again I don't know that husband and wife, those those people at all, and I don't have any animosity or issue with them. But if I were talking to him, I'd say, well, what did you think was gonna happen? When you filmed it? You must have edited it and then you you put it out, so you had plenty of time to think of you know what, maybe maybe the next one will show maybe not this one, or you know, maybe I'll get better at it first, or something with you And I don't even want to put you on to no no, but I think it gets to the bigger question of where's your respect level for the culture? Yeah? They should, I mean there should be a beat and you think is this our best foot forward? This good? Yeah? Right. There's a lot of things I won't include any of you here, but there's a lot of things that I do that are legal that I'm not filming and putting up on the internet for everyone to judge, because I don't think it would be my best foot forward. It was, oh yeah, in my let's see you needed your personal life. Yes, well even in my hunting life. I've hunted fifty two years now or fifty three. I can assure you're not. Every one of my kills was perfect, the absolute perfect, you know, fell over dead and and uh I didn't feel good about a lot of them. But I didn't have them on TV either, so you weren't holding it out as this is. This is yeah a no, and I learned from them rocky cool and everything. Right now, it's quietly listening. Yeah, I like that. Interesting, it's appropriate. This is what it's all about. Comment. No. The thing, you know, the thing that that they've said that did resonate was, you know, on Dale's passing, is you know serving. It's interesting to have this entire generation of people that have lost you know, buddies and friends, close friends, people in your own military were and some of us all a lot of friends, and how much it does retool your life and make you think about what's important and what what you want to be doing with your time and how you're going to pursue that stuff. And it's very very very eye opening. I'm I don't wish it on people. But it's a powerful, powerful moment in your life when you say, you know what, none of this has promised. So I got to make the most Yeah, I lost when I lost a close friend a couple of years ago. Uh. The the clarity it gives you, Um, but it's hard to hang onto that clarity. You go right back to like being mad that your kids left their clothes laying all over and didn't put them in the clothing bin. I mean, and you're going, wait a minute, I had such clarity a month ago about like what the meaning of life is, and here I am like yelling at a two year old er, you know, about like why why is you? Like? Why are you like purposely dumping your milk out? And then you just you look like it's when you get those crystal moments. They just they they fade. Man. You know, I'll tell you the one thing that and I purposely have done it since that day is I've never been afraid to tell somebody I love them, because you do, you know, as you had? Yeah, yeah, and um, and I do that. I mean I obviously tell my wife and my kids that, but I mean grown friends of mine, you know, double tough cowboys or whatever. I am not one bit ashamed or afraid to say it. I've done the same. I think got freaked out. Somebody's seals do that with each other all the time. They'll say it because it's like there's a real good chances the last time. I'm living on that line every day, and I'll say that to send to a buddy that the other day I could tell I took him sideways. Yeah, do you know something I don't I've seen you can't scans, buddy. I love you, so back to you, because there's the companies I want to ask you about. When I was reading the most recent bugle, you guys were celebrating some some milestones there, one in terms of land conservation, and two you had to wrap up of of what's going on with Eastern Elk kind of you guys work with Eastern Elk. And with the picture of Eastern Elkins, a couple of things struck me. Um, Is it true? Is this a fair statement? Elk right now only occupy about was it fourteen or tw like fourteen or twenty percent of their range at the time of European contact. That's probably true. So they're eighties some nineties percent absent from where they were when Columbus landed in the West Indies. Yeah, I don't know the exact percentage, but I I don't think that's sending a duration I know, something like that. But they're showing outside of a couple of state in the northeast. Yeah, across the whole damn country, the lower forty eight uh, including Florida. Um, there's records of elk in Florida from time to time, except yeah, one or two states in the New England area main Yeah, and you would think they'd be up there, but elk, we're a plains animal, you know, all that time, they weren't in the mountains. And uh, you know, there's I've heard the number of there was ten million elk roaming and I don't know how they knew that for sure, but there was an estimate that you know, there was large, large numbers of elk, and uh, yeah, that's probably very accurate given the amount of space that they occupy today. They're once native range is some groups like to talk about like vastly like because you you look at them and you think, like, oh, I mean they are very like where they where we have them tend to be very abundant. But like the East, you should not If you live in the East, you should not really think of like the West Elk counts. You should think of like you live in Elk country. Oh yeah, very much so. And they're doing really well in areas that they've been u either reintroduced or later have dispersed into. Kentucky is the most uh shining example that I can think of. The Elk were moved from Utah to Kentucky I think is about fifteen or seventeen years ago. They got well, they're fudging on their numbers. They've got more that and that's what I heard about It't want to say that, Yeah, I would have had I would have had written that down. You. I tease their director about it and he laughs too. But yeah, they have somewhere probably between twelve and fifteen thousand head of Elk. They're the number nine Elk state in the country. Now. It's incredible. Yeah, number nine in the country. Yea. And what's even uh I think more rewarding about it is that they were released and they still principally habitate on reclaimed coal mine property. So here you have a win win for conservation. You're bringing a species back, but you're reclaiming that ground. And it's an even better ground today than it was when you talk about like so that's when they take that mountaintop coal mining and they went in when they did the remediation they put in. I mean it looks like like the grasslands they did, they put in native grasses and whatnoty on, and it's it's these elk are just thriving. There's some giant dale. Well, I think you hunted Kentucky. Yeah, And if you read like if you read about uh accounts from like Daniel Boone's day Simon kent those guys hunted elk in Kentucky. They hunted Tennessee like their dads that hunted elk earlier in Pennsylvania, Virginia. They were always killing and like they and I know that they would uh criticize them too because the hides were a little bit too heavy for workwear. So when they were they'd like to kill white tails because they'd sell that because that leather was good for basic like car hearts back in the day were made out of box killer, and they wanted to kill white tails in the summer and the Elk's high it was a little too heavy and wasn't as valuable. They used it for harness material and ship but it wasn't as valuable for apparel. So they like the white tails, but they'd be wading through. There's an account of one of those guys that rolls into what's now Nashville, Tennessee and and makes the asthma that there was ten thousand bison in the area. M yeah, yeah, I mean the bison. And we're all over the uh lower forty eight as well, So I mean this this place was a whole different world before man got here. But it really like, yeah, it really kind of like fudges your understanding of it because like when I was growing up in Michigan, Um yeah, when he thought it Elk, you didn't think, oh yeah right here. You always pictured like an elsewhere and it was taken that thing though you guys had. This is something I hope you get some clarity on because you guys were doing a state by state roundup of I think there's now nine nine states east of the like east of the miss axually eleven eleven states and half rattle. You gotta if you got it right there, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia. And the last one is, uh, West Virginia just came on, just came out here. Now, Yeah, they're just just starting to move elk now from Kentucky into West Virginia. And in this in this wrap up of these states, you guys had notes about when elk vanished. How like how well is that known? You know, I did that. I don't know, Uh, the accuracy of I think they're going by a lot of anecdotal and you know, um uh oh, what do you want to call it? Um, journals that have been passed down and those kinds of things, because I mean there were no game agencies, so you know who knew for sure? Uh, So I don't know how you would really verify it other than the anecdotal and stories that have been passed down and passed down and it's like the last some guy and then he never heard of another one and yeah, so it kind of goes as the guy that got the last one. Yeah, yeah, And um, at the time of Teddy Roosevelt, they were, uh, the estimates were the elk population in the whole continental US was less than a hundred thousands, so there still worth some, but I mean not a lot. And and of course today we there's somewhere around about a million and a half. Probably what's the primary what's the impediment to heaven? Elk? Everywhere they used to be? Oh man? I mean in short, like, is it is it? Is it available habitat more? Or is it public? Will? No? I would say it would be available habitat uh um. I mean I get in you might find this hard to believe, but I get in debates with the pro wolf people every once in a while, and you know they'll say, well, wolves are not in there, there only in two of their once native range and whatnot, whatever the percentages, And I'll agree with that that's probably true. But same for Elk. And I always jokingly say to him, there's no Elk in Iowa. So but take Iowa for example, there's not a lot of national forest or wilderness area or just public ground. There's all it's either populated or it's farm ground. So where where are you gonna put them? Where where are they going to live and not get into and not get into trouble? And and Elk are kind of a pain in the rear for landowners. Sam they are, and that that I just wanted to ask on you know, West Virginia, I mean, or any of the states on that list. Really. I mean, it's been a long times and so was there some real pushback out of the gate because there's a lot of small farmers, a lot of small, small ranches. That's that's the biggest hurdle. And when you say real pushback, I wouldn't say it's it's certainly not uh like the pushback on grizzlies or wolves or something like that, where it's a huge debate, but um, there's there's it's not a uh support And we don't do it unless the state agency and the state itself have taken X number of steps. And the first step is they have to develop a bona fide biological elk management plan, and then that plan has to be accepted by the agency and by their legislature. I mean, it has to be approved and everybody signed off. We don't have the authority in first place, and we don't have the desire or will to come shove it down their throat. If there isn't that will to accept it we're not going to do it. UM will help gladly if there's a lot of support for weren't UM. But in the in those processes and in those public comment periods and whatnot, Uh, it'll be the farm community that has And there's a lot of times it isn't like, oh, hell no, we don't want that, but they have issues and they're like, well, now, what's gonna happen if and what about this? And you know, some of it can be mitigated by where these elk are located, because they're not great big herds. In a lot of cases, Missouri was just like that. The Missouri Farm Bureau really didn't want them. And uh, once it was identified the area where these elk were going to be released and it was gonna be like fifty or sixty had I mean it wasn't a large um, then that kind of diminished some of the resistance and it ended up happening. And it takes a long time for fifty head to explode. And we have game management knowledge and wisdom, we can manage those numbers and keep it at whatever kind of population you want to some degree. That's one of the things that was explained to me about why it works so well in Kentucky, it's because you had that southeast portion of Kentucky that was coming out of a long history of coal mining, was kind of being like underutilized by wildlife and you didn't have a big agricultural presence there, right, that's right. And then in a very short number of years it turned into a great contributor to their economy. I mean not just the hunting, but people coming from you know, neighboring states would come up there during the elk Rut and they want to observe and hear them and see them, and you know, it was economy, it was tourism and and uh now I don't know how many thousands of people put in for those I think maybe what do they have five tags or it's a limited number of tags, whatever it is, and they have like a lottery system and whatnot. But it's gender lottery system is like winning the lottery. Oh yeah, and it generates a lot of money for the state's economically depressed. Yes, yes, but they make it available to everybody. You know, some of the Western states where you have to buy a hundred fifty license and then you can you know, apply for you know, to win a tag there. I think it's just straight fifteen dollars. The last time I apply it was Yeah, I think And it's like you said, anybody, you and I, any of us can just go. Uh And I don't know if you can buy. I think it is like a just a real lottery. Can you buy more than one entry? I don't think so, No, just one. Yeah, I haven't done it, but because if I want, it would look rigged. So there's no way. You're probably really limited in your hunt because you got looking at you all the time. Yeah. I get offers to hunt all kinds of stuff, and I'm just like, man, I'd love to, but I wouldn't even pull the trigger, and the rumor mill would be so I just can't do it. Yeah, Well, Steve has a helicopter that we just fly. I fly on I was. I had a guy point out to me how I fly in a helicopter for all my hunts, which I thought was I've never been in a pretty good shooter to do that exactly. Yeah, I could pull that kind of thing off. I recently started describing you, and folks asked as I'm like, you know, Steve has likes to do things the hard way, And now I feel like he's just getting worse and worse in preparation for any sort of criticism future argument be like, oh yeah, let me tell you how we do things. Ye go on low success hunts. Um did I make this up? Do auto insurers do auto insurance companies resist elk creator? Yes? Yeah they do. Um. That was another issue I remember specifically in Missouri is you know they would talk about, well, how many of them are going to be hit on the highway, and you know, they just come out with whatever, they throw it at the wall and see And yeah, I wouldn't want to hit a milk with a car, right, no question. But when you're only putting out less than a hundred head, the the chances are so small. And um yeah, But it was just there's an inherent risk with being alive, right. I just feel that when it comes to wildlife issues, if we weren't willing to make some sacrifices, we would be where we were. We don't have any well, and most of these people were coming out of the metro area of some city, and they probably have more risk in their daily lives of something happening to them than you know out in the country driving along and people get hysterical when it comes to animals. Oh boy, tell me, yeah, it's but it's like I just feel like, yes, some things are inconvenient. It happens elk, Well kids, I can tell you that are real inconvenient. But people, you know, But yeah, I heard that about the auto But I mean, but you're never gonna how many deer does Kentucky have, Lord who knows. We look at look at Connecticut and the white tail issues they have. I mean, their auto insurance rates are through the roof because of deer. Then Greenwich in areas like that that are north of the city. I mean, it's crazy. I think they're gonna fix that because they're gonna tranquilize them all and then sterilize them that right, Yeah, that'll work, yeah yeah until the next generation. Yeah right. What are some of the other common fears I guess from like a farm Bureau of why they would not want to happen. Well, there's crop damage. I mean, I've seen what elk can do to a haystack. It's there, they tear it apart in the winter. You know, if a big enough group of elk come in and camp on your haystack, and they can rip fences out no problem. Oh, they tear down fences that you know, if they get run through a fence, that will get knocked down for sure. Um. I've seen what elk will do in corn fields, and they love to live in a cornfield. I I know a ranch on the eastern Montana right on the Yellowstone River. And when this guy's corn, he's got about eight hundred, maybe a thousand acres of corn, and when his corn gets about shoulder high, those help move in and they stay there until he cuts it. And I mean they literally get move over to the next row as he's cutting it, and they wait till the very last row. And I mean giant bulls. There's some three eight kind of they're just bedding in there. They can never see anything, No, they can't. You. I've walked in there a couple of times, and then you'll walk in on their trails, which are completely trampled down. Probably two rows of corn just all mash you down, and you'll find an area in the middle of it where it'll be a circle that might be fifty yards in diameter, and that's where they've been living and laying and then you know, and they pooped in there everywhere, and they they oh yeah, they live in there from end of June until the middle of September. And you'd drive by never know. Oh you never know they're in there. I mean you could, yeah, never know that. And they are giant because they're eating corn, oh summer long and yeah, literally industrial fire literally and they go over to the yellow Stone which is about a hundred yards away and water and go right back in there. And and I would say this group of elk is probably fifty or sixty. When this relationship tunes, you like or not like him, Well, it's frustrating for him, but he has uh leased his whole ranch out to an outfitter for hunting. So he's making it he's covered. Yeah yeah, and so in that case, I get it. And and uh and I think he ends up killing a good elk every year himself, probably right off the corn harvester. I don't know, but I'm not accusing him of that. I don't know. I haven't been there. Uh So, if to get these eastern the Eastern States, if if the state jumps through the hurdles that you want them to, where are you guys where the ELK Foundation is saying, you gotta be serious about this. This needs to be like very transparent, right. Yeah, well, in the process, the management plan has got to be in place. Yeah, so what do you get, like, what do you guys have to do with it? Well, then the funding is the biggest issue. That's usually the big hurdle is funding. Course, if you had to rate the hurdles uh being like public meaning business pushback, business of egg, business of auto insurance like that hurdle or just the money, funding is not that hard. It really isn't because uh are volunteers who were in those areas you know, Uh, well, Kentucky are volunteers there when nuts there's like, wow, we're gonna bring ELK out here and all this is gonna I mean, you want to talk about some motivated volunteers and they're getting out beating on doors, going hey we need some money, we need you to donate when this is for our backyards. And these are guys because I met a lot of these, the big volunteers on there. These are guys who will never hunt one of those ELK may not may very well not yeah very much against him, right, but it's something it's like not really altruistic because as always the thing you here like, oh you guys, conservation groups, you just want more ducks so you can kill more duck. And I tell that to a Kentucky elk vounteer, you know, the odds of him getting him or her getting drawn. But so the money is usually not that big a challenge for us. And we're fortunate enough now where we have an endowment that we can help match those funds. And so we have a lot of waste to skin that cat. What's it costs they'll like to put it? To put a elk on the ground. Oh, well you have to be uh, there has to be a holding facility at both ends. Um, because they have to be quarantine. You got c w D and all this other stuff. So and so the elk wherever they're coming from have to be in a facility for you know, probably a hundred and twenty days are better and they're tested, you know, drawn blood and everything else and neither wild capture. Yeah. Yeah, what what they do is they have this facility that's a great big type of enclosure where you might open up gates and um, you'll put out feed or whatever, an alk will start coming in there to feed and whatnot, and at some point in time you'll shut the game. Yeah, and then you've got them in the big area and now you've got to get them into the smaller areas. So they that's a gradual process to keep getting stressed. And then what is the optimal minimal number to start start their um. Usually they will move at one time thirty of them or so at a time, like the the Kentucky thing. They came from Utah, that was two or three shipments of elk. And it's a whole interesting process because when those and they load them on like cattle carriers type things, but when and a lot of times they're padded and whatnot, so they don't really And you do it in the spring, so they're no bulls have horns, but the cows are pregnant. So there's a real fine line of when you want to do it. You don't want to do it too late to stress the cows, but you can't do it too early because the bulls still got their horns on. You gotta have x amount of each um. But then the real interesting part is when they're loaded and leave, they gotta go all the way to where they're going. I mean, you can't stop like you're taking horses to a rodeo. You don't stop in Oklahoma City and let him out at the stock yard and water them and wait overnight. It's like you can't let them out, you know. So you got these guys that are doing it, are switching off and on, and they're driving straight through long trips. You get them there and then there's generally a facility almost identical to the one they left where they're let out, and you let them out right away in this holding facility and get the hell away from them, leave them alone because they are stressed, they're traumatized a little bit, and you know, you just gotta let them acclimate. And do you guys lose a lot out? No, you don't. Surprisingly not man. In the old days, I was working on my book about Buffalo, and I was talking about some of the processes of trying to re stock stabs from here and there and shipping them by rail card of summer. I had a lot of false I didn't know what they were doing. I mean, it was like it was a novel concept at the time. That's how the elk ended up in Texas. I found out as they were shipped a very rich man, wealthy rancher in Texas wanted ELK and he got them from the Black Hills and had them shipped to Texas on the train and that's how they ended up there. But the facility on the other end is very much like what they had and they're held in a very small facility for a while to keep an eye on them. And again you got to test them and and uh, just get him to come and then they're let out into a bigger area and they'll stay there for X amount of time and then they'll have a a release which is kind of a ceremony for the people that have donated and the volunteers and all that, and they'll open the gates and the way they'll go a lot of times, which is weird. They'll leave the gates of these open and they'll come back and go and come back and go, and you know, they don't know what's going, but that keeps them going crazy. Yes, yes, yeah, because there's two things that kind I just mentioned, uh, when I was doing research on on buffalo or bison. One of the there's two stories that what you're telling me reminds me of was one when they moved the animals that wanted the buffalo that wanted being in Alaska around the Copper River Delta junction. They caught him in Montana, put him on a train out to Seattle, then put them on a boat up to Whittier, put them on a train, and Whittier up to somewhere in the Fairbanks, saying, loading them on a truck and eventually dumped some out of road leading to slant of mine. And they didn't, I know, it's crazy. They want to have them. They want cutting thirteen loose out of truck. This is out that they had been well established in Delta, and it took something to a road leading to a mine and just pulled the truck up and open the gate. And for a decade they thought they all died because no one ever saw him again. But it was a hot release, and they eventually turned up about a hundred thirty miles away, having greatly expanded their numbers on the middle of nowhere. And then that's when people started putting together. You do like a cold release. You let him get a little used to the areas that's kicking them out the bank of truck and having them sorted out well. And now with the issues of c w D and other stuff, Um, it's highly regulated and you know, the Feds aren't going to let you move across state lines without all of this and where I want you rolling in with brucellosis. Yeah, and we're getting concerned because of c w D that this whole thing could get shut down and for a while anyway, and uh, just from my federal regulation. But is the quarantine process not well it works? I mean we know like for instance, uh, the elk that just went to Virginia and West Virginia and North Carolina came from Kentucky. Oh yeah, yeah, that's kind of rubbing them raw too, because everybody's going back to him because that's the most tested herd of elk in the in certainly in the lower forty year. Yeah, and so we know people want to clean out. Yeah yeah. And originally when elk we're being moved, you know, uh, twenty five years ago or so, they were coming out of Elk Island in uh Canada, and that herd has been tested in a very pure blooded strain. But now with c w D in that uh APIs and whatnot, they won't let you cross the international border. So, um, Kentucky's getting picked on a lot more. They provided the elk to Missouri, too, did they really? Yeah, so they're moving them back westward. Here's a good one. Uh the elk that went from Utah to Kentucky. Uh, one of them that was a calf that went to Kentucky is now a cow who's had calves in Missouri. That's kind of cool because they're tag, they know where they came from and whatnot. Yeah, that thing's perception of reality a different than most. Yeah, what are we seeing c w D wise? I don't know. That's a great question. We get lots of emails and lots of what are we gonna do? And nobody has an answer. I mean literally, that's the honest. But do we have doc community cases a c w D in elk herds in certain states? Or yeah? Man, do we um dear in dear? Yeah, not not in elk yet and uh, we haven't even really had in like in Montana. It hasn't hit yet, but it's just across the border, so it's a matter. But they have had But so do you know how many states have had mule deer and white tailed deer get CWD. I don't know how many, but it's it's several. Yeah, ELK CAVIM in Colorado, el cas CTWD in Colorado. And I believe that's correct. Yeah, but the whole, the bigger picture issue is what are we gonna do? And we don't know? And it's so it's it's one of those things that we don't know what causes it, and we sure don't know how to treat it or what to do about it. And it's very frustrating. If I can, I like UH doing bone in necros because I love the neck meat and I take a saws all and and and cut it and it makes this gorgeous butterfly, you know, enjoying that dish. Last Man and uh I had a talk at the b h A Rendezvous last weekend, and that's what every everybody who wasn't really from Montana was, Well, what about cw D Like, we can't touch the spine, we can't do this. Yeah. I really had a big I don't know what to tell you, but this is the way I like to do. Some states you can't bring it in. You can only move boned out meat. Now, no correct, no heads at all, or the head has to be clean clean. The head has to be clean, right, Like if I, uh shoot a bull in New Mexico to take it back to Montana, well I gotta go through two other states. But um, I got a have it boned out and whatnot. Yeah, zero bounds. Yeah, to not be moving it around. Um, it's I know, it's a d percent fatal. It takes a long time, but it's a percent fatal. When animal gets it, goo will die for a while. If you look at the states that have really dealt with it aggressively and and ultimately unsuccessfully so far, like Wisconsin, they kicked around this idea of doing this like eradication. Um yeah, but they find that's hard to do. It's really hard to do. I've had a number of of all the older biologists that have been around a while and whatnot, and there kind of like, well, one way or another, we gotta get to where we have a strain uh that's um immune to it, and to get there, we got to start eradicating and culling and everything else. But man, I mean that's a I know they did. It's a huge undertaking. Yeah, it's it's expensive and hard. They tried one in right on the Alberta, Saskatchewan border, um and you shot a lot of deer and the basically the test results from the cold deer, we're completely inconclusive. And then they were sitting on a pile of dead deer too, And then hunters go ballistic from the head of Wisconsin, where people are like, because right now there's no known case. You know, there's no known animal to human transmission c w D. So a lot of people are like, you know, you tell me you're gonna be like, wipe this county. You're theoretically gonna eliminate every deer in this county and hopes that, like some of you know, that the disease goes away. We don't understand how long it stays in the soil anyways, and then we don't even know that there's a real problem. And meanwhile, for the next ten years, I won't hunt deer to see what might happen, like, you know, pretty hard. Yeah, you're not chasing like, oh no, it worked here, We're just gonna try it here. It's just all experimental. So I think that that's one of the one of the hangups. I'll tell you, if I was eating this last thing, and I said, it's a bunch of times. Now, if I was eating a deer that I knew was positive, it would be hard for me to enjoy the deer, very hard, especially feed it to my kids. That's the thing. But my wife would kill me. That is it's completely within that spinal column, right, No, no brain, um, yeah, nervous system, yeah, I think the brain is a big area. Well, they always want to cut out that tissue and test it brain, nervous system and then but I you know, I think there's so many unknowns and you see people calling it a conspiracy theory too. Have you seen that, like field and stream blog and stuff. I can tell you always been there and it's it's not it's not I mean, it is there. It's uh, it's genesis seems to be not well understood. But yeah, there's a conspiracy theory about it. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. We get a lot of questions about it and a lot of emails and everything else, and you know, it leads to the debate over feed grounds and other stuff. And it's like close proximity animals, animals, rubbing nos about our animals and well and here in Washington, we got the hoof rot issue going and there's no cure for that that we know of, and it's just their toes grow off. Disgusting to watch, you know. I mean when you look at them, they can't hardly walk. They look like a horse or mule. You haven't worked on their feet in years. It looks like an old feed lot sheep. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's really hard to watch. And so I truly haven't looked into that at all either. But is that a fungus? I think so, but I don't. I don't know. I mean, I've heard theories that it's coming from being too close to dairy cattle operations. UM, I don't know if that's accurate, and you know, and then there's other theories of where it comes from and whatnot, and again we just we don't know what to do about it. UM. Now, brucellosis is one that there is a fix that could probably uh work, but we can't get the brucella agent whatever that technical term is off of the terrorist watch list. UM to develop a vaccine. UM, we have of agencies that are have a very high rate of UH. They think they can make the vaccine and they feel very confident that it could be developed and we could literally if if that's true, we could literally be vaccinating the cattle that are in that oh I got area. Uh yeah, we wouldn't be vaccinating elk, you'd be vaccinating cattle, but they'd be the ones that are in that area of the of the park, which is where brucellosis is a real issue. And uh, that could probably be dealt with or minimized, but so far we haven't had luck and getting that removed from the terror agent list or well. What one of the things that I saw some is I went to a livestock investigators conference one time. It was like for stock detectives, but they had people speaking on all these different issues surrounding livestock and and there was a guy from Department of Homelands Security there and he shared with the audience, Uh, stuff that was seized in Afghanistan in the in the early invasion of Afghanistan, we went in to rout out al Qaeda, and there was a lot of communications about UM disease agents in lives and even like and they ran models. They ran models where if some guy went out and nose swabbed, like if some guy went to a certain holding facility. I can't remember what state it was. It was like South Dakota, you know, with big cattle state, And went to a holding facility and swabbed three or four cows and the nose with the mouth some livestock, and they modeled it out how quickly it would spread around the country and just paralyzed livestock. Oh yeah, think about what it would do to our food supply. So they had serious Yeah, so that was a little incredulous. But then this guy gave a whole extra on it, and they had seriously looked into Yeah, yeah, it's I'm not I'm not saying that I hope that it you know, I'm not trying to worth the research, but yeah, it was the thing they look They definitely put time into livestock to well, I don't know if they put time into probably a thousand ideas and maybe they never went anywhere with it. Well, and obviously human safety is gonna overrule animal safety every day, so as it should. But uh yeah, so how much money have you guys, you guys being Rocky Mountain Owl Foundation, how much money have you guys? Uh, you might not even know this. How much money do you guys spent on Eastern note Oh boy, um millions, Oh yeah, easily millions. I'm just trying to think how many millions that might be. But I don't know. Ten millions probably not a It's probably low. But I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, from time to time when you consider all of the things that are involved and what it takes. Um, wow, yeah, hard to tell. And there's even been some false starts, like they tried, like, uh, someone did a half assed effort in Wisconsin once and then yeah, came back and got it right second times. Right and well, and something interesting in Wisconsin right now is because of a combination of a wolf population and black bears, some of the elk that that they had in one area, they've actually are now taking in relocating them three or four hundred miles south of that, Yeah, to get them away from that predator base because they can't. It does not build. They're not well, no, they're losing ground. They're not they're not growing. They're heard is shrinking. And yeah, most people don't count uh Texas at the east as the east, particularly Texas, but lets they kind of count that as one state only, I think, Yeah, this loan thing. So Texas historically had elk yep. Yeah, and then there was a period of absence in Texas has elk. Now that didn't come through a formal did not come through a formal reintroduction process. Correct, correct, it's more like bucket biology on the land. Yeah. And uh, somewhere in the mid nineties it changed from being a game animal to an exotic. That's what I want to ask about. I don't really understand that. Well, I don't know. I don't know exactly what happened, but I can guess because in Texas. Yeah. Well, and it's a different culture down there, hunting as you know completely Uh, so that it's pretty much the land owners run the day in in uh in Texas as far as wildlife is concerned. And uh landowners wanted that change, and so they were. They were redesignated as an exotic where they can be hunted in high fence and they can be hunted at will um for whatever price you want to charge and everything else, so without without any regulations required that I know of. So that was like that I know, you don't know officially, but that would be a motivator when when I heard that that that they had sort of they're they're kind of like trying to his like this this is harsh. I know you wouldn't put it this way, but they're kind of trying to like to deny the legitimacy of Elkin Texas that this is me talking, it's not David Allen talk. Certainly don't have the same view of them that we do, I would assume, Yeah, but I've when I heard that, I figured it was trying to keep that it was land managers, agriculture whatever that could have been not wanting to deal with regulations. But I never thought of the other added thing that this way, if you do have ELK, you don't have to deal with state management. Yeah, and that's the way to treat them like vermin or what ever you wone to treat them. Yeah. Well, I think there's a lot of that goes on in Texas just because, like I said, the landowners pretty much, uh control the process down there. I'm not saying that's good or bad. That's their culture and that's just the way it is. And uh they have they have you know, like like wildlife management in North America was in some very literal ways meant to be in a repudiation of the European system, where the wealthy landowners own the land, they own the animals on it, and common little dirty people, uh, work and stiffs did not have access to that kind of stuff. And our system is in large manasic like a reaction to that, where we have probably on wildlife, but Texas follows a year a year more European. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I say it a lot in when I speak at different events. Is we have the most successful wildlife system in the world. And I believe that. And uh, in fact, I think we might have the most successful wildlife system in the history of the world, which is kind of a bizarre statement. But there isn't another one like ours. Ours is state based. It's the North American model, and it's it's very regulated and very well managed. And um, like you said, Europe doesn't have that. Um, Australia, well, none of the other countries. No one's that, No, no one's come close to it. No. You could have places that don't have a big human pie population and haven't been really impacted by the industrialization of the world yet and they have maintained through isolation, have maintained strong wildlife populations. But to have a place that had like you know, this eden, right, and then to have pretty much wiped it clean and then rebuilt it back up without losing a single large mammal, and to keep it going today amongst three fifty million people walking around with one of yeah, with one of the biggest like g dps and g MPs in the world. No one's And that's part of the case that I like to make for you know, we we have a slogan that we use. Hunting is conservation, and it is a very significant part of that. And of course for some people that's a hard dots to connect. But it isn't the act of going out and shooting something and saying that's conservation. It's the process. And our process doesn't work without dollars and cents, without boots on the ground, and without passion for the wildlife and in a lot in a lot of political will, yeah, and hunters bring that and represent that. And um, I talked to an animal I talked to an animal rights UH activists and professor, and um we're having that conversation, and I was pointing out that I was actually citing him. It's on the work the Rocky Mountain. Our foundation does with how much we'll touch on us. But one of the things I d F does is very simply take money there's raised from donors and buy big as chunks of critical wildlife habitat and turn it over to public management. Correct, You're like creating your your saving habitat that otherwise would not be saved. So he was telling me all about all the terrible things, how terrible hunters are, and I was saying to him, well, let's look at this aspect, because if you ask any expert, any wildlife expert in this country, they're gonna tell you that it comes down to habitat for us, because we're not right now faced within an extinction crisis, right, We're facing just like providing habitat for existing populations of animals to carry on a live And I was like, who's doing that, Like, no one is doing this except hunters and his And I'm like, if it winds up being that the motivating factors that someone goes on a hunt. So someone goes on to hunt and kills elk, and then sure they're removing an animal from the population, but they then turned around and devote their life and thousands of their dollars to perpetuating that thing. It winds up being like a net benefit. And his response was, well, it's just too bad that it takes that to motivate people. And I'm like, hey, I'm just glad there's something that motivate people, because otherwise it wouldn't happen. Well. Yeah, I asked him, how many acres have you conserved and how many dollars have you donated to these groups? Yeah, they put a couple of horses out of business in Central Park. Yeah. I think over the last ten years as their biggest accomplishment in the area that has like a lot of excess horses and a lot of horses and handiment and a lot of horse feeding, is they found a couple more horses that to give them no purpose. Well, and that's again part of the argument I like to make with people of without hunting, our wildlife system completely goes away. Yeah, it's financial, and it's the passion and the political will and everything. I mean, it completely goes away. And they just can't imagine what you mean. Less killing of the wildlife is going to destroy the wildlife, And it's like you're looking at it all wrong. You know, the killing of the wildlife is farming as part of what it is. I mean, not all that wildlife can sustain with all these bodies running around here anymore. We put we put it out of balance. Man, does we have an obligation to bring some balance. That's our role and you know it's I'm sorry, but nature does not balance itself anymore because we have tipped the scale system. Yeah, well do it. I mean like we do a very good job of like creating a managing a system. Yeah. But another thing that that hunters do and that you guys did is and I know that you didn't do like you guys didn't It's not fair to that rocking out an foundation like did Kentucky You were a key player. You guys point that out all the time. It's like there was an effort that had many people, including Kentucky Fishing Game heavily involved in it, other outdoor organizations. But they're like, it's easy for people to sit back and you know, you have like a yellow a New Jersey cat lady, right, and she's like, well, what's a good landscape that I want to invest my energy? And people pick like Yellowstone, Yosemite, Right, and they pick these like gems that are recognizable from a great distance. But to imagine someone looking at a degraded coal mine site right in Kentucky and being like, we're gonna correct a mistake that was made one years ago with the extra pation of the elk, hundred plus years ago with the extra pation of the elk, and we're gonna take this which the rest of the country is not looking at and thinking about and caring about. They're just like disregarding it. It's just it's just shitty little spot in Kentucky right old coal mine ground? Who cares and like make that bloom and put like a key stone like missing species back on the ground there and make that work. Other people aren't doing that. If that's not conservation, I don't know what it is. No one else has the motivation to do it right right exactly. And and you know that goes on day after day after day in this country, not just with us. There's a lot of groups that are doing great jobs and and just good sportsmen groups and and guys that like to do it. And but a rancher or farmer would do the same thing on his rancher farm every year he's calling his herd and he's doing this, and then there's reasons that he does that. It's for the health of his herd, and it's you know, that's how it works. It doesn't sustain itself otherwise. No, but those guys never have to do. A rancher never has to have some and come and say, don't tell me you like these cows, because you know, I let me say, I damn sure, do you like these cows? Yeah? Like to the bank that sends on the slaughter right. Uh. Another state I want to ask you about. And I read about this stuff all time. I don't understand it. Like what is the elk situation in California? You got like a native to Lee elk, right, okay, and that was the elk that was there, But then you got other pockets of like not to Lee. There's three species of elk in California right now. Um, you got the Rocky Mountain of Roosevelt and the Tooley And that's three of there were four species at one time as as I know it. The other one was the Miriam, which I think came from the same guy that named the turkey. In the old days, you could just name stuff after yourself. And like the guy that did Stellar Stellar's j Stellar Sea line, he named like ten things after himself. It's bad for him to do that. Now I understand, you know, no one doesn't matter. We have a miriam He's like, I don't wanna call that, but just California has those three species? Where where was the miriam The Miriams has gone from From what I know, the Miriams were in the Southwest, I think most of the Arizona Yah, Arizona and New Mexico. And they feel that when those animals were shot out, that was the end of that. That's what I'm toking, end of that strain or whatever. The uh. One of the best bok biologists in the country I think is John cade He ran White Mountain for thirty two years and uh he was on our board UM and so he was telling me the story of the Miriams from back in the day around uh the Grand Canyon area and that um which I wasn't aware of. I didn't know there was a fourth species. But yeah, it's like with big horns. Now they now they call it into question, but taxonomically they used to think there was the audubon big horn eastern Montana, Dakota's and now now it seems that the trend in taxonomy is to is to get rid of those divisions that we used to think we're significant, not like you know, it was a big big I've seen some big ones turkey hunting over there in You can't hunt them there either, but I've seen them. So the Miriams was in the Southwest, and that in that strain or subspecies whatever is gone long gone, And the Roosevelt is coastal California, uh, and Oregon, and they're in Oregon, probably more of them in Oregon than any other thing. Yeah, they're in Washington too. I think at one time they went up into BC. And I don't know if there's much up there or not. They're they're just they're much bigger bodied, smaller horned. They live in the dark, timber stuff and uh, but the tuley Um is a whole other interesting species. They're smaller all the way around. And uh, I think the only place they're at is californ arn't you. Yeah, So the Twuly, how do you have any idea like how is that? Like you are you guys as an organization, are you involved? Because that stuff's all private land. Well, we're involved because it's elk, but because it's private land, that limits what we can do. And if we're asked to do things, um, and we wouldn't even do anything on private land if it didn't somehow have some kind of very obvious benefit to the species. But we would also prefer it had some kind of benefit to the public at large and certainly the hunting post. So that's something you guys consider. Well, we sure, you know, put in a bunch of water tanks on a private land, not unless we're asked to, and probably wouldn't do that unless it was really benefiting the elk population in the greater area and it was like, hey, this is the best place for these guzzlers, So this is what we're gonna do. I mean, we get questions a lot of times about well, why do you do those easements on those private ranches. They don't even let us hunt. It's like, no, but those elk are living there over of the year, they spend their entire winter there. That habitat is critical. Winter habitat is really critical. And so if we have a willing landowner that will work with us and work with us to keep that habitat ideal and will agree that that habitat is going to be protected in perpetuity. We're trying to keep those corridors open for elk because the elk move a lot. They move everywhere, and so yeah, we have to look at the bigger picture when it comes to them, and we're not trying to just take you know, I get letters of oh yeah, I suppose you're hunting over there and that guy gave you a lot of money, and you know he didn't give us anything, and I'm not hunting there, So it's it's for the helm, well not. You guys do a lot of matching also, really matching funds for different programs, and then I think that's something a lot of folks don't understand. It's um because I do hear that often as well. And one thing, and I don't know if people really confuse it or they're just looking for something to confuse it with, but they think we own this land. I mean, I've still read on the internet over and over about how many ranches we own and oh yeah, all their v I P s are hunting them and stuff. We don't own any ranches we don't own. We own less than ten thousand acres of ground right now. And that's only because we haven't gotten rid of the ten thousand. But so how do you get like if you let's let's say you you you identify a piece of Okay, here's what you guys work on. Like you guys work on a willing sell, a willing sell a willer buyer. So there's a ranch you identified it as key L cabitat, it goes up for sale. UM, those that we do, less of those, we have done. Some of those. I'll give you a different example that's probably more common. Uh. In in Montana about too three years ago, we completed a project that was called the Tenderfoot Project and it was up in the Smith River Drainage. UM. And what it was was a combination of checkerboarded public and private, public and private all this land and it was the private, uh was owned by a foundation of when a family died and they left this money to a foundation, and it was checkerboarded with four service ground. And they came to us, it's called the Bear Foundation out of Billings, and they came to us and said, uh, the airs of this family would like to sell this property. But we don't really want to sell it and just see it developed and ruined and blah blah blah. What can we do? Can you guys work with us? And this is very common for us to be drug into a project with the BLM or the four Service because we can go out and and pull these deals together so much easier and faster than the government can and get it all permitted and everything ready to go, and then you do a simultaneous closing or it'll close from private to US and from US to public that day. And this involved eight me in dollars worth of LWCF money as well. The dirty old oil company that's Landing Water Conservation can break that down. So land of Water Conservation Fund. You're probably be hearing a lot about that later because now and then Landing Water Conservation Fund will expire and then it will get caught up in like a custody sort of battle, and people will use it as a pond and it'll get delayed and then refunded. But what it is, it takes money that the that the federal government raises with offshore oil leasing, and they take that money. So the you know you're talking about out in the ocean land and is not owned by an individual, but it's like considered US property. And they pull oil about of the ground under the ocean, and there's a there's a fee that the the extractor pays to the government, and some of that money goes to fund the Land of Water Conservation Fund. And the Land of Water Conservation Fund is used on public access while life issues, habitat enhancemation boat launches. Yeah, yeah, yeah, something goes direct to UM directed all Americans and sportsmen. And right now we're in what seems like been dragging out forever some you know, people a little bit worried about the future of the land of Water conservation and like you said, it's used as a political football, and it's it's so intellectually dishonest, I believe by politicians to do that because these are not government funds. These are royalty funds that were paid to this fund, and they're supposed to be our dollars for conservation. And we're not getting of them anymore. We're getting less than fifty of them, So they're robbing that piggy bank as well. But you know, that's a whole another The first time it was the first time it was putting. It was put in place for for like what felt like forever, and then now there are was like dragging an out. They'll fund it for a year. You know, it's just it's it's it's always like kept up in the air. But if you like to hunting fish or wander around outside, you should be you should be involved in making sure you have water conservation funded sound. You should be calling your senators and beating on them every day until they permanently re authored and not using crazy riders at it all the time, including the senators from Utah. But I won't point anybody out, but I don't think their phones work, said, I don't think they unplug those phones. That's that's a kind of a typical project for us work. But you're saying eight million dollars million dollars of of those funds and then our sel we were like the lead, uh, the lead group, if you will, lead public group in this. There were other local sportsman groups and whatnot. They didn't have a lot of money, but they wanted to be a part of it, and you know, we welcome that, we want them to be I think we probably had two million in it. The whole thing ended up to be about eleven or twelve million, but today eight of that being eight or nine. Yeah, and then you guys had a couple million into it. Yeah, and what was the end results. So the end result is over eight thousand acres. Now that is one contiguous block of public land. Uh, this is your own private hunting ground, right, David Allen's right. Yeah, yeah, me and the Chief of the Forest Service get to hunt it all by ourselves and uh Steve's helicopter. But I mean it's spectacular country. It's just like it's like a new public land. Yeah. Yeah, forever open to hunt right now. Ye, Well, the fishing is spectacular. The Smith River Valley. I don't know if you've ever been on the Smith River. It's one of the most pristine rivers. Yeah. You got to apply permit the float the damn thing. Yeah yeah, and but it is spectacular. But the whole area is And my kids both caught their first trout on the Tenderfoot Creek which runs right through this property. And yeah. So that's that's a typical project of how we would work. The Force Service or BLM primarily will look to us to be the lead partner. Get that's just because you guys are more nimble and don't have as much regulation, right, no red tapes and all that other We can just go do They don't need to go get a congressional approval. Correct, And uh, then all of us will go lobby our senators now that tenderfoot one specifically, Um, I would be the first one to give Senator Tester most of the credit because he got that on the priority list for LWCF money that year. And uh, you know, the Democrats were in power at that time and he was in a position to provide that and he did. And uh that's how it works, already trusted their own kind on it. Yeah, yeah, um, but we'll do a lot of projects like that. But we'll also have mom and dad rancher probably in their seventies or eighties, and the kids don't want that ranch, and uh mom and dad don't really want to let go of it or see it busted up or see it sold to a Californian or whatever you know, and it yeah, um, the joke is that that's where So it's pretty common or fairly common for these older generation ranchers to start looking for avenues or what are they gonna do? With these ranches, because there's a lot of them now in the West that are you know, in the third or fourth generation. And the kids don't necessarily want to stay on the ranch, or they don't want the ranch or whatever. They might want to cash in on it or something. But the folks who have lived there most likely born and raised there. We want to see that ranch stay whole if they can, and we do too for a number of reasons. The most important one is again to keep that that migration uh corridors healthy and to keep the habitat available for the elk and and other deer and so uh they'll come to us in uh you know, one or two or three different types of scenarios. One is um it might be a paid easement. They want to do an easement where they'll sell you the easement so they can get some money and do whatever. We're not doing many of those anymore. We're trying not to. But what we'll try to do is either find a public way to keep that landhole, or we'll try to go out and find what we call a conservation buyer and somebody who might be interested in a ranch like that but will agree to keeping it in a conservation easement and keeping it whole um. And this would be in these cases you're talking about the landowner, yes, knows they're not going to make as much money on this as they could correct they're trying to get Oh yeah, the land means more to them than the money in most cases, but they want out or need to get out. And if they can get something and know it is protected and frankly, the buyer knows that he or she may actually be buying something that is going to be very limited for them on the other end to get rid of someday. But if they have a conservation passion or ethic um, I actually think that sometimes that enhances the value of the property. But I you know, everything's in the eye of the beholder. Because this person saying that like they're right in a check for land that they're not gonna be able to change their mind and they can't well, they can't develop it, you know, they can't break it up into twenty acre ranchets or and then most easements then you know there's covenants in those easements, but most of them are not so restrictive that you can't do anything with the land. But breaking them up and into parcels is one that would hardly ever, if ever agreed to. And there's some on their part. There's are some tax incentives that ease that burden for people, and oh yeah, they get the person putting it into the easeman gets a significant tax credit based on a couple of things. And one is how much is that their principle place to live or they're making a living off of that land? What's the what's the place a praise for I mean, we're into the beginnings of a project now that will be really significant if we can succeed at it. Again, LWCF would play a role in it. It's not a huge piece of property, but it's in the Paradise Valley north of Yellowstone, really critical calving area and winter area for elk. Tons of elk there. But there's a lot of bears and a lot of wolves there too. But the owner is wanting to sell. He was a million, he's now dropped twenty two million. But that's a lot of money, and um, you know, the state of Montana is interested in the property. If we can put the thing together and make it work, it would become again public ground forever and would be open to the public. So you know, we're trying to work on that one now and and fundraise. And there's actually some pretty significant uh people in that Paradise Valley that own property that probably would donate. The founder of Home Depot has a ranch over there, and Richard Schilder's, you know, from NASCAR, has a ranch real near this property, and there's some others. So, uh, we think that if we can get some l w CF, we can get it high enough up on the list of priority for l w CF. We think we can. Um made me make this thing happen. You know, an interesting land deal. I know you guys are involved in. Hope you you remember some details, more details and now I remember. But the story goes this is again another story from Montana. But uh, a guy was driving somewhere to get some twenty two shells in north central Montana and on the way, his wife picks up one of those little flyers with like cells used cars and stuff, and on the drive she's like, I find this little weird patch of ground that's for sale. And they check it out and it winds up being that it's sort of a bridge that connects the road system with a large chunk of land locked BLM. I don't know that. I think I read about this in bugle. Yeah, he probably do. Then you guys, you guys came in and uh facilitated with that couple did to purchase and and and I believe the OLT Foundation was evolved in it. And want to becoming a public access well to give people access to and we're developing some software right now that will identify, uh where properties lie with corners lining up or not lining up, etcetera, in all the Western states. But a good example much like that one, um you mean, in order to enhance access, yes, well, and to find these opportunities little pieces. That was a forty acre piece. But yeah, but just to be clear, that's not that don't really doesn't really do anything for the ELK. I mean, obviously if you buy that, it's good for the public. Yeah. This particular one, uh that happened is you had the county road and you had this great big ranch over here and they owned some property over here. But they're property corners for some reason, I don't know exactly how to draw it didn't line up square. There was a hundred feet where they were off and there was a forty acre piece of private where the corner was off by a hundred feet, you know, where they didn't line up exact. And we heard about it through a volunteer of ours that it was going up for sale. It hadn't been offered yet, and the guy that owned the big of a chunkle at this was forty acres. But what it did is it opened up twenty an acre. Yeah. We bought it sight unseen, uh, for a hundred and ninety dollars because this rancher, very large rancher, wanted it to keep things locked up and and we and we turned it over to the Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks and they made a parking lot in a trailhead out of this piece right here, and now today you can go in and access that whole twenty acres. That's what that was, what I'm talking about what could be. Yeah, it was a volunteer and it was a funny story how his wife was like, oh, what's this little piece? Yeah. Yeah, And but there are a lot of those out there that just we don't know about and people don't know about, and those are so ripe for the picking to open up. So you guys, so the Elk Foundation like you guys are looking at um. You guys have a mandate apparently to enhance public access. Access is huge for us and are our members. It'll come back as when we pull our members, it will come back just about every time. Is one of the two top priorities UM that they won't expect from us nowadays. What would be another one? Well, another one who's advocacy advocate for you know, hunting and whatnot and obviously habitat Those are the three big um across the board every time, and you guys try to stay responsive to what people. Yeah, we try to put a lot of effort into all three. And I would say we're we're more actively looking for the access opportunities today than anything else because that just start around that much and somebody private is gonna buy up. It's a tight issue. Well, I'd have to be honest. If I knew what I knew in a different time and place, i'd have paid a hundred nine acres for that piece of ground. It's a beautiful little piece of ground, A little tiny stream goes through it, and I would have had my own private I couldn't do it in this job, but yeah, you know, I mean it would have sold easily. People would have bought and that's why that rancher wanted it. So what's that relationship like now? Is he pissed at you guys? No, I don't think he's so mad so much. Uh, it's been kind of an adversarial relationship with the public anyway. Um. I've actually met with one of them. It's two brothers. It's the Wilkes brothers that are kind of infamous in Montana. They own, uh, well they own I think they might be the largest private landowner in Montana. Now there are the two gentlemen that perfected the fracking technique, and they sold company for a couple of billion dollars bot land, and they're buying more and more of it all the time in in different states, in Idaho and in in Oregon and whatever. Um. But you know, we don't have like a warm and fuzzy with them as far as the relationship. But I try not to get real cross ways with landowners either, because you know, you gotta they gotta be a part of the equation. Yeah, but I mean in that case, it seems to me you're performing a you're performing a public service. Oh we were, no question that's that. Yeah, usually when you try to perform a good public service, probably someone's gonna be pissed. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a general thing, that's true. Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean they're not hurting for land or elk. They probably control access to four or five thousand head of elk in central Montana, a low and in that area, so they're okay and they'll yeah yeah yeah, And we would still work with them on anything that made sense for our mission. So I mean, I'm I'm not trying to pick a fight with him, but we'll compete with them if the opportunities there. But that's that same Dirty Hills. Well, that's where the Dirty Hills are at the Dirty Hills are as the crow flies probably oh six seven miles from that little piece that we bought. Yeah, the same thing, you know, So what are the like, what's the what's the future of the old foundation? Looked like you guys are you guys are in a good financial position. We're in a great financial position. Um, yeah, we really are. We've eliminated all of our depth that there was and uh um the ranch that was gifted to us and two thousand in New Mexico and then the family later let us sell that ranch with the agreement that we'd put a hundred percent of it into an endowment fund. It was a concept that I took to them because we're not ranchers and we shouldn't be in the ranching business. So we went back to them and asked them if they would be willing to amend the deed restrictions and whatnot, and and uh, it took about eighteen months when they agreed to it. And so we ended up turning a hundred thousand acre unbelievable Elk property in New Mexico into a thirty million dollar endowment fund. And of course, now that thirty million in the stock market the way it's been the last few years, has grown substantially, so that's given you guys a lot of muscle for somebody's projects. And we agreed that we would not spend anything on that from that endowment on general funding, the light bill, salaries, anything would all be spent on mission and we only take a percentage of the earnings every year. The corpus is never touched, and so it's been generating roughly a million and a half to two million dollars a year of gravy for us to spend on core mission on mission, but even not all your money like you gotta don't you got your obligator to spend. Oh yeah, we have a lot more were I mean, we're spending a lot more than saying like what percentage of you what percentage of your total money goes to mission? Oh? Um, you're talking about how sharing charity navigations, And it's right, it fluctuates depending on the year between to um and some some of that the remainders administrative or promotional. Yeah. Yeah, and that's all in your administrative and cost of fundraising and that kind of thing, which is very good. I mean we we uh nearly every year have a four star rating. Every once in a while it might drop to a three. Actually, the sale of that ranch caused us to drop a star in the rating one year because the way Charity Navigators rates organizations nonprofits, it's based on a formula they have, but it's basically how much of the money that comes in is actually going out towards mission. Well, we bring in thirty million dollar sale of a ranch and a million and a half goes out, is like, yeah, made it look bad on paper, but so you look at the bigger picture. Yeah. Yeah, so but that all works out and then we're back to a four, and you know that's okay. Do you feel generally optimistic for ELT when you look ahead ten years, twenty years, Yeah? I do. For that short term. Um, I think, like we talked earlier, I uh, I have more concern maybe for the little bit longer vision down the road of will this culture sustain? And um, I don't know. I just see how much chipping away there is at it from so many angles, from you know, gun rights to UH predator issues to the social issues. Um. I live in Montana. There should not be a public school in Montana that you can't talk about hunting and fishing in. And I can assure you in most of the Billings high schools it isn't very high on. I mean, it's probably frowned upon as much as it is embraced. And that's kind of scary. Um it just I mean, it's such a part of our culture and the legacy of that state that it's like, what is wrong with it? You know? I dealt with well, I lived in New York for a while and dealt with that with my kids there I've dealt with here. I looked that ship in the face and stare it down. I win every time, though, I win every time when I'm dealing with these people. You know why is because you're just speaking the facts, you know, and and what I you know, what I like about the way you do it is you do it a methodically, very matter of fact lee and honestly you don't get all hyped up and you're not making up a bunch of gibberish. And it's like, yeah, we eat meat, this is how you get meat. I mean, most of the people that are criticizing hunting are eating steak and lamb and chicken and whatever else at home. If they had any idea how that actually got to their to their plate. And and not only are they eating meat, but they're not putting a dime or a thought, a diver thought, and a long term like the long term well being of wildlife in America, not a bit. I think it just all happens with having nice thoughts. Yeah, yeah, they live in a in a mythical Yeah, I just think enough about how much I like animals, everything will be taken care of. It's like, that's not how it's gonna be told. So when we grew up up it's you know, we all grew up with that, or at least I did. It's the Disney syndrome of Bambi and all of that. And folks, even the people that talk about man needs to get all the way and let nature take care of itself, if they had any idea how cruel nature really is at times, and it is, that's part of nature. Uh look at the winter we just had. Oh yeah, yeah, and then you look at you know, and I get it a lot over the predator debates. Well, and I don't uh fault the predators for it. That's what they are. But it's a grizzly process for no no pun intended for a a wolf or a bear to bring down an adult elk and kill it and need it. And sometimes they eat it before it died, before they kill it, you know, And cruel is it's if exactly how we look at it, exactly that DearS me eating half alive might not look at it as tho. We do not know that, yeah right, yeah, I mean I don't know what they think. It's just their day to day. Yeah, they're they're surviving every day that's that's there. That's all they're worried about staying alive, you know. So, um that stuff worries me because there's so much political that can be injected into this. And um, I mean you look at the state of California. You know, we we kind of laughingly joke about it once in a while, but it's getting harder and harder for real wildlife uh management to take place there. It's getting so restrictive and so controlled by oh well H s U s and some of those folks that the influence is so heavy. Ah, So you feel that like, uh, like you might see a gradual erosion of people who are incentivized to perform duties of wildlife conservation, financial work donors, just because of a degradation of like the culture around hunting. Yeah, and we become more and more urbanized all the time, and we're more and more removed from the wildlife and from rural and um I I want us the Elk Foundation to start an effort in promoting rural values because that's where really all of this hits the road, is the wildlife's in the rural areas and and it's uh, it's so key to the future of wildlife the rural. Besides, I just like rural better I do. I think I think they're more aligned with my values. I'm not saying the you're person yeah right, Oh no, I I hear you. You know, I think that one of the best ways ever heard it put was, um, that there's a you know, I've lived much of my life in urban areas, but I was born in a rural area, living an urban area. Um, but there's a perception, I think it's kind of a toxic perception in urban America of wildlife as a relic of the past. Yeah, where it's like you're looking at this thing that doesn't really relate to us, and it kind of exists as this reminder of the way things once were, and um, it's best just kind of like looked at, you know. And that Foster's kind of a naive perspective on what it takes to maintain and manage these things that are not going to just because the nature of civilization and being in the industrialized world, that aren't going to remain static with no one minding them. It's like every islence of the ground we have at this point up until eight I don't know what the hell was up until eighteen nine when the Frontier officially closed. Up until ninety we had accidentally wild areas. They were wild because they hadn't you know, no one had gotten there yet. Had everything we have now, all the wild life we have now and all the wild places we have now are because someone made an took active steps to make sure that that was the case. It's not just there because like, oh, it's just there because God put it there. It's like now, it's like there because someone or somebody of people made some sacrifices and did some stuff and spent some money or whatever to make it be there. It's a very different kind of like we live in a very different kind of world. And to act like we're gonna somehow step away from wildlife management and wild wild lands management and have this eden, you know, where no one even looks at it or touches it, it's just like it's false and you can't. You're not gonna go anywhere around the world and point out of place that works like that. No, you're absolutely right. And that's why the whole public lands debate and all that other stuff becomes even more Germane today is we have to have it. Without it, this whole thing crumbles when it goes away. And the fact that we're back to happen like that conversation. And that's like one of the things that are very happy with with some of the people we have in power right now, is it seems like there's some good resistance. I mean, you have people in power who are pushing against federal land management on behalf of the American people, but also some powerful people now who are uphole are very old and very successful idea. Yeah, land management on behalf of the American people. Yeah, and it yeah. And and not to get into that whole debate because you know it's been hashed over so many times, but it's just physically and fiscally impossible. It's just it's just a ludatic idea to think that states are going to take over these places and all of a sudden it's just gonna be so much better. It's like, for what what what are you basing that on? There's no there's no good example to go look at. Well, but where that's coming from to me is where the debate needs to go is what's driving that guy our gal to want to change ownership or direction of that public land. Most of it's coming from there's some deficiencies on that public land now and it's making people crazy. And that's where the debate needs to go. And we got to fix our public land management strategy. Part of the problem is we don't really have a strategy in so many areas now. Has just been so much lawsuits and fighting and political posturing and all of that. It's time to like treat some of the symptoms. Yeah, yeah, forget instead of euthanizing the patient. Yeah exactly, yeah, because you will absolutely kill the patient, you know, and then we'll have nothing. So let's fix Let's get some real uh debate going, and let's make some adults get in the room and sit at the table and say, Okay, when I say logging, you say clear cut. That's not you know, we gotta stop this stuff. Having clear cutting over thirty years in this country. But the minute we say, well we want to do a timber harvest or a thinning project, they're gonna clear cut. Oh my god, let's get to the courthouse. We gotta sue them. It's like no. And you feel that that kind of stuff creates that animosity, it's driving a lot of it. It's driving a lot of it, and it's not helpful at all. And it's not it's not helping the wildlife. It's not helping the land and and it's uh ruining the whole debate. And you know, we got to start managing these lands. We can't make everything wilderness. I am sorry. I love going into world. I've had some great experiences in wilderness, but it's not the best habitat in the world. Um, the best habitats where these animals are hanging out most of the time is private land. That's because it's managed for another reason, you know. But um, we we gotta get some adults at the table, and it needs to start with our political leaders. They got to quit trying to take advantage of the squeaky wheels and trying to you know, make political hay out of it, which is all they're doing. They're just trying to leverage uh, somebody's passion or somebody's heartburn, and they're not providing any solutions or any answers or any fixes. They're not trying to. It seems a lot like burning the house down. Now. Oh it's crazy, it's it's insane. So yeah, ye, including thoughts. What's uh, what would what would be like a surprise state that's like that you know of that that people are thinking about trying to decent elk work that it's not on anyone's radar, like maybe back east that might be coming up soon. Well i'll tell you where we get right now, the most calls from through our volunteers and whatnot, uh consistently is New York, upstate New York. And we're not opposed to it, but they gotta get you know, the state on board, and they got to get their wildlife agency on board, and some wildlife agencies just for whatever reason or probably a number of reasons, they just don't want to bite it off. It's you know, it's hil with the hassle. Yeah. Yeah, and they know that it's gonna be a hassle. And I'm not saying that's New York. I don't know, but but it comes up along. Do you guys help um? If you have private citizens saying hey, let's make this happen in New York and you say, well, you got a lot of You've got a lot of groundwork to take care of before we can get involved, do you kind of help them understand what that might look like. Yeah, we will tell them. And the very first thing is their wildlife agency, whether it's fishing, game or whatever they call it. That agency has to sit down and start to eveloping a long term management plan. But do you guys help with that? Sure, absolutely, will will stance. But you can't make them want. We can't make them, that's correct, right, they have to want to do it first. And like in the case of West Virginia, this was a governor, uh, the governor who was just turning out there who he's from the area where they're releasing them and reintroducing them, and he is like, we're gonna make this happen. And then all of a sudden, everybody got religion. But until that happened, it was like, yeah, you know, well we don't know, we got other things to do. Didn't have a good partner on the ground. Yeah, and it has to come from the state agency first, and then yeah, then a lot of wheels can start sharing and upstate New York, from what little I know about it would probably be a pretty good area in something around that. Yeah. Yeah, our our members out there and be like all over it, and you can imagine the people out there that would be all over it. So yeah, I'll be watching for it. Yeah, I would love to see it. I mean, catch one right now and turn them loose. Yeah, between the four of us, we could drive straight there. I was kind of the second one. You have a high level position. We uh we touched on a little bit where you're where you're saying, how in California, you know, it's getting really hard to make any sort of you know, real wildlife management decisions. And it seems like a lot of places, and I believe Michigan sort of is. They're trying to address it, but where um, we're not letting science no make those decisions anymore. And I kind of feel like science is stuck in the middle because you have people like um, humane society, you know, just they get people emotionally riled up. They can let them, you know, make get decisions made point that direction. And then on the other side of the spectrum you have the you know, you know, if it's like a predator issue or whatever, that again isn't you know, science base, and it goes you know, and it's just like science is stuck in the middle. And yeah, it seems like a big problem, but I don't know how to address it. Yeah, science is being manipulated and used, and um, you know, put it in the jargon of nowadays is there's probably some fake science and some real science and whose science are you gonna believe? And um, it's sad because when we lose real science, we're really gonna lose. So, um, there's a lot of that. Playing on emotions you mentioned is a huge one. Uh. You know there's things that oh, look at this. Uh, this is the thing I kept wanting to talk about, is the House Joint Resolution sixty nine, right exactly? Let me yeah, can I can? I? Yeah, I wanted to comment on this. But so a state, like generally, states managed wildlife in their state regardless of who owns. So, um, if you have a state, let's say Wisconsin, right, you got some state land, some federal lands, some privately held land, some county land, and let's just say we're talking about turkeys, turkeys living all this stuff, but those turkeys are managed by the state regardless of what bit of land they happened. Now, a lot of people will say, like, well, how come you are I saying that federal land management is good and state land management is good, Like how could that be? Like how why wouldn't it be that one is better for everything? Well, the same reason that like, uh, the federal government is really good at maintain in the military, the state government is real good at licensing vehicles. And a lot of it has to do with inertia. States have managed wildlife very successfully for over a century, and the federal government has done relatively a pretty good job with large tracts of undeveloped land over a century plus. And interrupting that static system that has proved pretty successful is going to lead to problems or could potentially lead to problems or lead us to unknown areas. And state management works well. But in Alaska you have of the state is refuge land National refuge Under the Obama administration, man some management, some wildlife management aspects were stripped away from the state on national wildlife refuge lands, so they had always managed it. Then there was a period that came up during the eight years the Obama administration where they lost some of that management capability. Now we're correcting the situation and we're in the process of handing Alaska man its own management of the wildlife everywhere in the state back to them. So we have this thing. Now, all the management practices that Alaska does with predator control or whatever is happening on eight of the state already. It's happening everywhere, always was happening there, Okay. So all of this killing wolf babies and digging grizzlies out of holes in the ground and torturing them and killing them and slaughtering cubs is all ship that has not been happening categorically across of the state. And they were doing the same management practices on the chunk of land up until recently anyways, And in their tool kit that they have at their disposal to do management is a thing called predator control. Where now and then, depending on the situation, you will have a rise of thing where you have a population of animals that becomes somewhat endangered through predation, and in a way to alleviate pressure on that population of animal, be at a herd of moves, herd of caribou could be a non game species, you might get aggressive about curbing predator numbers on that spot. That's something that Alaska, like I said, they do it in eight percent of their state. They used to do it in one they're gonna now be doing it on again. The fact that people have turned this into that they're now being allowed to like torture baby bears is what they're getting at, is this. It would be like there are bear seasons, Okay, so if you move a bear season early enough, people like, oh, bears are still in their den at that time, but the season is now open early enough where they're in the den. Therefore, now there's gonna be den digging. I'll point out that the Coyakok, the Native Alaskans, the Coyakok who live on the coya uh Con River, they know they dig bears out of den's because they think that any chicken ship could shoot a bear out of the ground. Takes special man to go down to the the den and drag him out of there and kill them. So there are some den diggers, and that's one group, a Native Alaskan group. But all of this talk you're hearing when you go on Facebook, all this bullshit about like all this awful stuff it's gonna happen all these animals, It's just like you're looking at what they're doing is taking management policies, looking at some kind of absurd worst case scenario that might arise out of a management policy, should they deem it necessary at some undetermined time in the future to do some level of predator control on of Alaskan ground. That's what this is all about. That's absurd and welcome to the playbook of the h you know, extreme environmentalist animal rights whatever. That that's right out of their playbook. If it's like I said a minute ago, If I say logging, they say clear cut. If I say, uh, wolf management in Alaska or bear management in Alaska, they'll say what you just described, that's slaughter till every wolf. Take it to the absolute extreme because they know there is a percentage of the population A doesn't know better and B isn't going to research anything, and they'll they'll buy it. And the Obama administration, primarily Dan ash who was head of Fish and Wildlife Service at the time, caved to that kind of uh uh social pressure uh And basically because Dan knew he was leaving that job, and he came to it on his way out the door and said, here, Trump administration, Merry Christmas, here's a little present for you. That's about what happened. And it was like it was like someone the way animal rights works is you'all, you're always sort of looking for like a they're preg they're pragmatic in a way. They always look for like a little thing you could win, sure, right, so don't have to win the whole thing. Little. Yeah, it's like let's say hot mountain lions with dogs. We'll probably win that because if you pull Americans, hunting has a higher approval rating now that it didn't in the now in the seventies seventies, some percent of Americans support regulated hunting. But when you parse it out and start asking about individual aspects upon you'll find areas that enjoy less support. So you manipulate those areas when when people are like looking at that. Sometimes Alaska and and I'll point out that oftentimes when Alaska is doing heavy duty predator control. Due doing heavy duty predator control to aid subsistence cultures rural Native Alaska and subsistence communities to rely on a resource of moose or cariboo for as their primary protein resource, Alaska will oftentimes come in and do heavy duty predator control to enhance their and they have a right for that subsistence. Yeah, that's in fact, when Alaska parses out fishing game. That's the top. That's number one category subsistence, and it probably should be. And then it goes like then you got like commercial interests, and then down down you have like nonresident sport honting. So it's a thing they do and at times, yeah, at times they have like general you can't kill a sow with cubs, But if you deem that you have a major issue and you're trying to dus predation, you might ease restrictions and say that a sow or or a club could be killed, or you're gonna move the season early enough where some bears would still be in hibernation because you're trying to do like a very you know, you're trying to do a fairly isolated case of reducing predator numbers. So in this, in this blowback about sixty nine, they're acting like sort of like someone has said, you know what I wish, I wish that we would go into refugees and torture all the bears and wolves and kill them. And no, it's like the last thing they would want to do is actually explain the whole picture that these management practices are already being implemented on the vast majority of Alaska, which, unlike our own portion of the country, happens to have bears and wolves on ninety five or ninety six percent of their native range, and they have a lot of them. So you're kind of like you're kind of like taking the people who and granted historically they it was kind of handed to if you're sort of taking like people who are doing a phin I'm in a job with wildlife management trying to trying to hamstring them because you have no sort of memory of how things went down in our own area. See, and that's those those folks will be the first ones to scream science, all we gotta follow the science, blah blah blah. And here you have the state agencies that are living and driving the science every day, but they don't want to buy into their science. All. It's like I said, it depends on whose science you want to well what they attacked, though they generally attack like you'll have let's just take like grizzy bear dealistic. Okay, the people, you know, all the people who are working with the agencies on the grizzly bear problem will come and say, like you have a sustainable population to grip bears right, you've got enough of them in a big enough area wherein a hundred years we could still have this many bears in this area. If you're asking me, have we achieved recovery in this patch of ground, the answer is yes. When when people go to shut that process down and close your listing, they're not attacking that. They sort of pick around the edges to find legal loopholes or problems. Are like in the review process, did you look at X? Yes? Did you look at why not to to not satisfaction? Okay, we're gonna suit you on that. They never they're not like suing the big picture idea. They're just finding little things where some federal judge is gonna come in and go like, okay, yes, you're right. They gotta go back. And they didn't dot that I quite effectively. The conversation is never is this all true or not true? That's not the conversation. It's how can we hold this process up through the manipulation of minor details. And that's the process that they played out with the wolves in Montana, Idaho and why me? And then they got so mad when the legislation came down and put an end to it. And uh, you know, they attached that to a continuing resolution in two thousand ten or eleven, which went back and reinstated the two thousand nine d listing rule, and it said, and it is no longer subject to judicial review, which means they can't go back to court anymore unless Montana or Idaho would to wander off of their management plan. But now Montana and Idaho have lived out the five year probationary period and so wolves are just wolves now, and they're subject to Montana's management or Idaho's management. And uh, but it makes them so mad when they say, well, yeah, but politics jumped in and delisted the wolf and the wealth. You kept over playing your hand. You wouldn't leave it alone. And that's why finally the politicians got tired of hearing it on both sides of the aisle, and they're like, hey, this is enough of this. It's been in court sued over silly things and and and it's ridiculous, and it's uh, you know, they're tired of getting phone calls about it and everything else. So they just said, all right, we're gonna we're gonna do this. We're gonna go back to the rule that was issued in two thousand nine and it now becomes law. Period debates over. There's plenty of wolves and they're not threatened, and like you said, there's always a fallback plan if they veer off that management and think the numbers. That's the science, that's the beauty of our process. But that's the funniest thing about the the delisting issues to the even things that you have, Like you know in the Upper Gray Lakes, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. Do you think that those people are going to go through so much trouble to recover the species and go through the d listing process and turn back a state management just to shoot them all dead again. It's not gonna happen. That's what they just dedicated decades to solving that problem. Well then, what, like, what what guy in the world I would think that that would be a good idea. Well, and what that really tells me, because you're absolutely right, Steve, what that tells me is the endgame of the animal rights movement in that case is not their concern about the wolf. It's the endgame of they want to keep at hunting and keeping it. I think they want to continue to shift away at it. The more they can, the happier they are, and it's just what they the ironic part, like for the wolf reintroduction in the Yellowstone area, if elk hadn't been brought back in such a successful way, there would have been no way to bring the wolf back because there would have been nothing to eat. So they don't understand how they really have to have the sportsman and the hunting side of the aisle for this whole system to sustain. And that's what they don't get or they don't want to. I don't I don't know which it is, some of each, probably damn it rich field of inquiry. Um, Yeah, David Allen, what you got? What? What final thoughts? I want one of these jobs like this? This is fun? Um, your elbows get so you're you've been my hero, but now you're really my hero. You're getting paid to do this. This is fun. So thanks for coming on. Man. Well my final thought is I just I want to compliment you on how you represent our culture and and uh, you're representing it in venues where I wouldn't do so well, but where it needs to be represented well. And that's for the sake of my kids, your kids, their kids, those futures. Um. I I appreciate what you bring to the table. I do. It's uh, um, it's needed. We need that kind of leadership. Five years from now, you'll be here. I probably won't, but I appreciate you saying that. But um, no matter how much I do, it's not going to be Uh, it won't be as much as putting a bunch of public land on the ground, which is what you guys are doing. Well. Yeah, and that's sure. That isn't me. I didn't invent that, and no, no, I just wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to suggest you did. But you you have to be closely involved. I get to be a look an organization and it has a track. Yeah, and and I'm so humbled by our volunteers and our field staff and whatnot that for the things they do and how they do it. Um, it's just really cool to be a part of this whole thing. And I uh, it's like a second career for me, and I'm just really enjoying it. I am I'm I have the greatest job in America, and uh, I wouldn't even give it up to do this, so I don't think you should. You know, I don't want any competition. I have a face for radio, but that's about it, all right man, thanks for coming on. Hey, thank you guys.

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