00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther, stay longer, now, pat dir our. Coyotes really killing eating all the deer? Is it as bad as everyone thinks? No, it's not as bad as their bay thinks. Um, why does everyone think it's so bad? Is it more fun to think about coyotes killing deer than other ship killing deer? Yeah? I don't know what it is, but there's something about coyotes and something about wolves that really gets under hunters skin that you know you can you can show them research. It shows like in Wisconsin, and only Wisconsin. About five years ago they wrapped this research and the number one killer of aawns you know, yet one fawns that basically hit the ground in the first three weeks of life are picked off. Go ahead, black bears, exactly exactly. It's anywhere from ten of those fawns are being picked off by black bears, and a few guys will complain about it, but for the most part, they'll always default to the coyote. And you look at the numbers on this particular study, and that's probably a pretty representative study because they have all the major predators in this area. It was six percent of the kills were definitely tied to coyotes six and black bears. Oh, they had at least ten percent, but it's more likely close because as soon as you got about a month out of the finding season, because you know, part of that is he's unknown, they weren't quite sure what got it because everything is basically cleaned up, gone. And but as soon as they got out of that the first month, this is typically when the black bears are hitting them. That just dropped right off. Those unidentifies dropped right off because they can get him up until they're able to get up. Yeah, because the black bears, they probably gonna run very far to chased on a fun and once that phone gets moldering, you know, they let it go. Now, have you ever killed a coyote? Class I like, I'm guessing. I guess is no, because you call him coyotes. I could be here and I found in general, I've found that people who have killed him call him coyotes. Well mine, because I think they don't want it to sound so cute. And people that have not tend to call him coyotes. I called I'm more I guess I'm more formal, you know if but you might. But historian was telling me that I might be right about that about killing him. No, no, no, no he didn't. He didn't. He wasn't interest in that theory at all. But he didn't. He didn't think that was right just to history of calling him coylets and coyotes. Yeah, well, to answer your question, though, I shot one with the bow and arrow, I shot one with the shotgun and didn't get either of them. Both got away from me. Yeah, we're wounding loss basically. Now, why um, why were you shooting at him? That's a good question this man man dislikes well and in both cases is you know, it's it's one of those odd things that I can't really explain. I would never do that to a fox a kyote. I let their all go and I pulled the trigger on the shotgun. And my daughter was with me when I shot the one with the shotgun. Were turkey hunting, and she asked for why did you do that? I couldn't give her a good answer. Control have I have no illusion about that? Yeah, see, I don't. I don't generally like UM I have and the last one I shot at we eight, but I don't shoot at him. The first time I ever came to meet dog during here and we're in and right here and what dirt myth calls Casanova, Wisconsin actually miles south of Casinova, Wisconsin. First time I ever came to visit, I got scolded by Doug because some coyotes come peel them through. I was on We're doing a mooch a drive and some coyotes peeled through and Doug was a little shocked that didn't take a poke at him. I do remember that, and I and your reason for not doing it was not something oh they're just trying to make a living too, or something. I don't know if you were coming right. I don't want to go make and I don't want to go blouching and have the yeah you know, but no, I don't have but but but I have. I don't touch him anymore. I'm kind of the same if I'm kind of interesting, and I know that there are plenty of guys that are hunting him. And then I've listened to uh you talking with Dan Flores and uh and looked into that a little bit more of myself, and it sounds like you shoot them and they're just you shoot one that is being replaced by two. Yeah, that's not even why I don't do my thing about is I just don't like if I if I wanted, if I had need for a kyo hide, right like, if I was gonna if I had some, if my wife wanted something, or I was gonna make something for myself, I would definitely in the winter get a nice one for to use the pelt if I needed to, may have something made. But it's like, I just you know, what, do you walk over there and I eight one. I can tell you they're not like I'm not gonna get them for that reason, so you walk over and like, oh there he is, Yep, got them? Ye. I mean I just like I don't. I don't think you're like really turning the tide on um unless you're like doing it in a very concerted way, like in a very systematic, concerted way. I don't think you're like turning the tide on predation by like randomly now and then you'll never make a dent in him with a rifle, you know, just like like just through right. You can go out and call them, go afterm the gristly as you want. He's saying. You're saying actively from doing. Like Doug has a scrap pile here in the woods where he dumps bones and stuff. You could probably put those all the place and POLLINGDVI couty that comes in and it's still that's not gonna make it make a dent. The guys that are really serious about coyote control, and for deer management reasons, they pretty much are trappers. They're they're getting out there in the spring anton they can get them especially, but spring is a really good time to get him, I guess. And they'll build those trapped the ship coyotes. And then the guy said, as soon as you lay off and come back and call the months, it's like you never did, It's like you never trapped. Yeah, they replace themselves. It's just a guy I know named Creig Harper, Professor dont Tennessee. He he always refers to as weak control trying to pull weeds. You can go out in the garden, pull weeds, pull weeds, get that garden cleaned out, and if you leave it alone for a week, come back it's right back everything up again. And that's pretty much the way coyotes are. You know what, someone here's why I want to get the well, we'll talk about this that we're done talking about now. I saw a new guy who was talking about why you know, and we're in the Midwest time my white tails right now. But with him I was about elk in the west. Why are people pissed about wolves when they know that lions kill more elk calves than wolves? Okay, in the area they were where they were doing work, he said, because lions have always been killing elk calves out here, and we've always had a sense that for every hundred calves, right, we're gonna lose thirty two lions. And that's just been something that's just been woven into the cultural fabric. Right when you're on the woods, you get this sense of seven out of ten cows, right, is packing a calf right, And we kind of know that that's like the rate and our harvest statistics are built around that, right. We just get used to that. But then you have some new additive thing which makes a noticeable change from what you've seen in your lifetime and your father's lifetime. And it's additive, and you focus on that, so you're not focusing on the three out of ten, let's say the three out of ten that lions are killing. You're kind of fixated on the one out of ten or two out of ten, the new things killing, because that's this new thing you need to deal with, and so a lot of blame falls to it. And because kyotes, like in my own lifetime, have come onto the scene in so many states. Like the first cow I ever laid eyes on in my whole life, I didn't even know there were any around at the time, and I caught it in a fox trap. Mhm. Now it's like the fox are gone in that area. It's just coyotes. It's like an everyday thing. If you're like, if you hunt around there, it's an everyday thing to see kyotes and they weren't on around. So then you have like some mortality, right, and all these other causes of mortality have always been around, but no always like this new kid on the block thing, And it does get a lot of attention. Yeah, I can buy that because I know in Wisconsin again and that's my base, people got mapped me when I point this up up and I first started working in this industry in the newspapers back in the eighties. There was no really weren't any wolves to speak of in Noulding, Wisconsin. There's a handful of them. It's just like mid eighties. And I've been covering the outdoors in Wisconsin all that time. I've never I've done other things along the way, but pretty much my beach Wisconsin. And I always remember, back in the eighties, you go to a public hering, grow up, public meeting up about deer, and people north have always complained about not enough deer up north. And back then they always played the Chippawa, the Chippawa Indian tribes. They always because they were on a treaty that allowed them they could hunt off off their reservation territory. So they you were blamed. They weren't registering their deer, they weren't doing this, all sorts of accusations. Well then the wolf builds up in the nineties and hunting back then, right, probably so, but a couple of times, and I'm not I'm not doing it just to be a jerk, but I'm pointing out to people that you know, thirty years ago, you guys always blamed the Chippewa for no deer. Well, now the wolves are up there. Now it's the wolves fault, you know, So that you're letting the Indians off the hook. Now, I guess they weren't just a big problem after all. But then I think my area where I hunting, Billion, Wisconsin is a prime example. You go up there, and the biggest problem with any animal basically is always their habitat. And where I hunt in Milling, Wisconsin is pretty much mature timber. There's not much in there for deer to really live off of. And so I go up there, and I have my common jolker around our camp is that that habitat so pour around us. Even the wolves don't hunt deer there because there's just nothing there the whole deer. And I'm not I don't think, you know, has always been bad. Well, in my in my friends camp back in the fifties when his dad was there with his buddies and forties, was a pretty good, pretty good place, and the forest hadn't been cut over that long before that. And then by the sixties and this guy's uh, he keeps camp journals like he makes. When you got at his camp, you got right in his journal before you leave, and he keeps track of every deer killed that basically back into the sixties, and his area pretty much has been bad, you know for a long time. Yeah, pretty much, you know, since since I'd say the seventies for sure. But um, the thing is too though, I look, I balanced that out somewhat because his friends are mainly bird hunters. They deer hunt, but they're mainly bird hunters until guys like I came along in the late nineties early two thousand's where you really go out and to sit all day and hunt deer the way you know, you almost have to, didn't kill a whole lot, dear, So I'm not sure how represented that is. But then now I've talked to other guys in the area, and that area we happen to hunt has always been a tough spot because it's sloss pruce, which deer don't really make much use of. So's it's I don't think I saw that in common. But then there's our parts in the north you go into and the aspens getting real mature. The gross aren't all that you know, basically, as you know, grass rough gross and deer if they're doing fine. Usually they have good, good young forest regeneration going on. And if you don't have that those young aspens coming up well, especially in the area that yeah, and then then that's northern forest habitat. You have to have that young growth, you know. But then you get down this area too, you can make up for a lot of the shortcomings of that natural habitat with crops and our stuff that can pull them through. But there's even research now in Wisconsins showing that they're even getting winter loss in central Wisconsin, which is farm country, because the woods have been so over browsed and there's really nothing left in there, and you have clean farming practices with nothing left in the fields, have no place to hide, no place to eat basically, And then that's another you're seeing winter starvation in this eastern part of Wisconsin, so I mean central east, central Wisconsin, Central Wisconsin, and even parts of west central Wisconsin's seen some winter loss now, which is never something that they're worried about, you know, twenty years ago, No, Doug, do you practice clean farm? Are you part of the problem part of the solution. I would say that I'm part of the solution for two reasons. One because of our forestry practices and we've got you know, various age classes of of woods. But then our eggland is in CRP and though that's those CRP fields are planted to um clover, alfelf orchard grass, and then some of the edges have additional clover and that sort of thing. So that's great cover for not just deer, but for everything because you can solve because you guys have in this area the deer overpopulation problem, by some definitions, absolutely the lead. The definition in your mind, just to put words in your mouth, the definition in your mind would be that you guys, maybe, um, it may be like like disease transmission issues, there's enough deer where you could have disease transmission issues without getting into all that too much. What I was going to suggest, if you're serious about reducing the deer population, you can just make your farm real shitty, but then you're gonna lose a lot of other wildlife. Well yeah, fair enough, Like you could do clean farming and and and a lot and let everything get overgrown and then there wouldn't be so many deer. You know, it's interesting when I know a fair number of farmers around here and I know those guys are you know, they're it's it's clean farming. It really isn't. Uh. Someone referred to it as a desert, not farmers. Other people that's the desert once they've been out there. But I'm always amazed at the amount of deer that I'll still see in farm fields that it's corn stubble, and if they're stubble there, there's gonna be some something that they'll eat, just like the cattle eat the fodder from the ears and that sort of thing. Um, apparently you know, picking through the bean fields and stuff too, but it's a kind of at different times of the year and then what's exposed, and um, you know, they'll work awful hard at it, or you'll see them if we take take that right up around the and and look at those farm fields. Well, Joe, the guy who farms it up there is the hell of a good farmer. Yet, I mean, there'll be times we'll see seventy five deer up there, you know, working on those fields, and all there are grass strips and then it's corn and beans. So I get that the the clean farm thing, but the clean farming thing. But then I see there that it doesn't seem to be the case, and I wonder if it's just they've also attributed those practices to some of the declines and waterfowl that we saw back in the eighties and things that the people weren't leaving enough that that that we had waterfowl populations that had grown used to all the stubble leftovers, yea, and that the clean farming practices was one of a handful of things that caused a lot of duck species to collapse. I wonder one of the things I noticed around here, and I have to I have to ask Joe about it. It's like he's my farmer reference all the time. They do a lot of spring um grinding of the corn fodder and then bailing it rather than in the fall. And I'm sure it's probably a matter of time and you know, and those sort of things. But um, he's the kind of guy who would leave it because you know, it's good for the wildlife for the you know, through the winter and then in the spring doing it. But um, and then it dries out, you know, great. And and I know there's some rotation as to where they'll do that and where they won't. You know, they won't take the fodder off of each at that field every year, and you know every year because they want to put some of that organic matter back in. But I also think that up there now, and you know, as we start talking about it and thinking about it, that there's a lot of edge there. You know, there's there's brows, there's some other things there. So you know they're probably good working through there and getting a little bit of everything, you know what I mean. Yeah, I'm with you now, pat Um. You're kind of like a dying breed in that you are a like a like a regional one of your jobs, like a regional outdoor columnist. We'll have a new him. All they all died, Yeah, they died in the well. You know. The biggest biggest change is um the way that newspapers went downhill. And when I started off, there was about three or four guys in Wisconsin were full time outdoor writers. Two are at the Milwaukee Journal, always at the Milwaukee Sentinel. There's one in Green Bay. There's one I wa saw. That's when the cross is probably seven of them, I think about it. I had one growing up, the Mosquito Chronicle had I can't remember his name, Bob, I think I had like a dude. Now it seems like other worldly that there would be like the dude whose job it was a right about hunting and fishing opportunities, local wildlife politics, and that was his beat at a newspaper. And this guy had like a desk at a newspaper. Yeah, that was to cover like, hey, the perch are in it's just amazing, man, like big yellow bellies. Last week's meeting at the d n RC office. Well, my my, um, I still get grumpy about when when I see a door writer at a newspaper not taking that beat seriously and just writing about fishing roundups and I'm doing the I think it's not doing the hard report, not doing the hard deper because you know, yeah, but but but I my understanding is is it year well, first sketch out, like how how long have you been um doing? Like how long have you been a What's am I using the right word when I say, like a regional outdoor columns? Like what do you call it? What do you guys call it? I'm I just call myself note door writer. And you're like a syndicated outdoor writer in Wisconsin and you focus Yeah, The focus of my reporting and column writing is Wisconsin, and I've done I've basically my my beat a statewide beca as much as I can. I'm centrally located right in the middle of Wisconsin, so I kind of keep an eye on you try to cover the whole. I try. I try to cover statewide issues and but but I still find there's always those little local guys that do something that's will be a fast daing that I'll do stories and I'll I'll drive down a mass and sometimes for a story whatever it might be. But I am That's why I want to put my job now, because you can't make a living as a freelance guy in newspapers. You can make it, you could, but now you can't. I don't know if you ever could because newspapers have never paid freelancers that much. And but you know, as newspapers declined and they started losing revenues, advertising revenues, they just started killing staff like craziest. So I gotta imagine that you had the first guy to go, oh, you would be you'd be one of the very first. Like I know, Um, right now we're down to one full time outdoor writer paid by a newspaper in Wisconsin. That's um Paul Smith at the Milwaukee Journal. Is he barely hanging on? I have no idea. I don't know what. Yeah, yeah, Paul. Paul's a very good outdoor writer. But you know the problem is that he doesn't do like chip shop Penny any He just pretty good stuff. I respect his work and where I where I um where I've made my niche. You know, an outdoor writing I think is covering issues as a columnist where I I like to always think that I give. I give an opinion, but I like to think it's an informed opinion. It's not just off the cuff before I had give an opinion. I've done a lot, done a lot of interviews, done a lot of reading, and I always hate I'm always sensed about the word research because I think I've worked with guys who do scientific research. I know then the research word is a real important word to them. They don't like, you know, to use it just for basically saying he went on Google and typed in, you know, a Google search. And so I'm kind of careful how I use that word research. But that's but by learning how do reporting work? The way I did you know. Back in the eighties, I started discovering that most outdoor writers working in a national scene on the magazine front and elsewhere, most of those guys don't like doing interviews. We call people up or sit through a long day of suminars and take notes to record interviews, transcribe interviews all the world nitty gritty work. What those guys do a lot of is they'll do a deal or like some company will host, right, They'll be like, oh, they'll round up like ten outdoor writers and they'll be like, we're going to Texas to asked, uh, these new bullets here on on wild Pigs right right, And then everyone goes down there and they all shoot a wild pig of these new bullets, and they all go to their respective publications and they all write an article. And you can tell because in there they'll be like I was with, I was hunting with. You know, Bob's the head of marketing and development at Bob's Bullets. And that is a lot of outdoor writing. Well not I don't know if that's so much anymore. I mean, like really it really was back in nineties. Well, you know, there are there are the gun writers and Ammo type guys that still do that a lot. But I would I'd never fit into that group. I mean, I know it is. I think of it as like gun writers. Yeah, gun writers do. I still there's probably still enough work there where they get those kind of those kind of things that come down. Plus they know what they're doing, you know. I like to hunt. I don't really. I've got a lot of different dear rifles. I kind of like deer rifles, but I don't really know the specs on them as far as you know which one you're blissed. The ballistic coy fish and stuff, I don't. I don't know any anything. Yeah, and that kind of stuff. I like the look of a good wallet stock rifle, and I like the old lever action three or weight um savage those kind of things. I find that interesting. But to go on these um, I think most of his companies figure out pretty quickly what your strengths and weaknesses are, and they probably have me on one of those kind of outings and go I don't ever bring that guy back. He's just knocking. He doesn't get this stuff. Yeah, he was doing research the whole time because this wasn't it wasn't it wasn't up my alley and the magazine I used to add that Deer and deeringing magazine. This is back. And I got hired there in ninety one, left there in two thousand one. So you're the editor in chief there for two eleven years. But backup for example, I still don't understand. So we like, what was your first outdoor writing job. Newspaper? Yeah, and I had a specific newspaper. Yeah, but I will study journalism. Oh yeah, yeah, but you came out of the Navy. Yeah, I was in the Navy. Nay, my dad told me. That's always one of the stories I enjoyed talking about. But when I was nineteen years old, that said I was going to Navy, and those days I decided and I followed my father's footsteps. He was a firefighter in the Navy. No, no, in the in the Madison, Wisconsin but Dad encouraged me to go to the old man hadn't been in the Navy. Now he was. He was in the Coast Guard and in the Army, but he was in the Coast Guard Reserve and he knew enough about the military that knew if you want to get firefighting training, you go in the coast Guard the Navy because they when a ship's not fire you better get that fire off you want to hurt so so they really can't run outside. That's one of the things I really liked the Navy was how every ship was basically its one little city and had to have all the all the services. So some of my dad when I went in the Navy, he was telling me, he's looking at all the recruiting stuff. He says, instead of doing this firefighting training, because I was gonna be I was what was called done a whole maintenance technician. They taught you firefighting, they taught you damage control, welding, all these great skills. My dad looked at all this stuff and he says, you should take this journalism training because they have they trained you to be a journalists who because they have people they have They have press releases on ships and they have little ship newspapers, and especially the bigger ships have regular publications. I don't know if they do now, but it's probably on internet now or wire based type stuff. But my but I was nineteen. I knew everything. So I said, no, I'm gonna go off and do this. You know, damage control. Yeah. But then by the time I got the Navy, which is five years, I realized Dad was right. My strength was was writing and editing, and I was a lousy walder. I understood damage control, but I realized, God, the skills I have, I'm getting bored doing this stuff. You know, end up being a locksmith. In my final three years in the Navy, got trained to a locksmith, and so I was breaking in the says all time for in these little wardrooms on Navy ships. And so you're like, so the ship has a locks move. Oh yeah, well that's a little city, right, yeah, I mean it gets locked out of the boat. Well, I was on a I was on what's called destroyer tender. It's a big repair ship. And so like our job, basically we pulled into a port. Then all these destroyers and cruisers would pull up alongside of us, and that'd go over there and do all the locksmith work. You know, people locked all their rooms locked out. I mean my biggest job everyone as I spent Christmas Day in seventy eight on a submarine all day because the duty officer lost the key ring to the to the submarine. Every every key that went around that sub So that's been all day of replacing all these these keys. But to get back to your story, so did you say so it was like a war free period I had perfectly. It was right after Vietnam and when I was getting out, it didn't even have to do Grenada. No, I mess missed that. But the closest I came to anything interesting was we evacuated. We helped evacuate a bunch of people in Lebanon. You know, it's like my my five years and was from eighty and when I was getting out was during I ran the Ran hostage crisis, and so yeah, a little bit of you know, worry about where that would lead, but eventually it all calmed down. But I never had to do anything interesting. And so I'm I'm always. I'm always probably the fact I served the Navy because I really I enjoyed it. I don't want to make a care out of I enjoyed it. And their friend as their friend Rurk says, you you earned your seat at the table. Yeah, the table being America. Yeah, and I believe that kind of stuff. I like, I believe in public service, all those kind of things. I encouraged my daughter, oldest daughter. When she um was heading off to college. She asked me about navy, and I was told her I said, I didn't want to make a care out of this, but I liked it. I liked that sense of community, that sense of service. She's career, she's been ten years now and she is a she's now a doctor in the Navy, a nurse midwife, basically the equivalent of a doctor. And so I'm real proud of that. And but you know, by the time I got the Navy, though, I had so many people tell me they'd read my letters. Because this is I actually bought typewriter in the Navy, a manual typewriter, which I wish I still would have kept, and I typed on my letters because I don't know type, and I I cranked out letters to everyone, anyone that would write to me, I'd write them back. And I bought my God. Yeah, and when you started having people tell you that when I read your letters, I feel like I'm right there. And I thought, well, that means something. Well I got when I got out there, I i stuff. Following my dad's footsteps, I went off to college and got my degree in journalism, and then I but timized Um. In my junior year, I started working for the local newspaper in ash Goosh, Wisconsin as a local sports writer, which was kind of a yeah because it was anyone who knew me, and it was a joke that I was actually covering high school sports because I un't read any Tristan and most of the sports up for the Packers and Green Bay Packers I liked. Oh yeah. I covered him for two or three years and it was a miserable because it was like being a fan. I don't like being a you know, working on a beat for you're covering in the team, team that you can't cheer for, because what do you guys like me? Not that I mean like specific like everybody likes their team, but why is it that you guys that people Wisconsin are so fired u about the Packers. This is win the super Bowl or something well they wanted, they wanted four times, Steve. Did they win recently? No, not, not since two thousand ten. But there always competitive and in the last twenty years we've been spoiled. We've had incredible quarterback in the last twenty years. But to answer your question, Wisconsin dugs yawning, but you don't want to get into the Packers because you don't give a not until it gets cold and shitty outside and then you know, December, I start watching. Well, no, because you guys are telling me that that's the perfect day when the Packers are playing, that's the day you can hunt everybody else, Like if you can. You think we were going to talk about been kind of curious about hunting someone else's property, Do it while the Packers are playing, because you damn you're not gonna run into the guy, and then you can go and shoot some deer off his land. Uh, you got a question earlier looked like when you're talking about the Navy. I'm gonna move on from all this, and I don't want you to. We're in Doug's, Doug's farmhouse. I don't want to board Doug in his own damn farmhouse. Get away from this. I've known Pat for I don't know a while, and uh, I don't know ten or twelve years or something like that, and uh, we've had we've talked about all kinds of things, but I guess I've never really heard the whole navy story before. And what I'm really curious about with you know, he was a locksmith in the name. I didn't know he was a locksmith in the Navy. I do about you know, guy, your whole life, but I wondered about your father. You here, you're telling your father that I'm interested in becoming a firefighter and all that, but yet your father's going so he discouraged you from He encouraged me to um go into firefighting. But I should have finished that story. Yeah, that's a good point, Doug. What happened when when um, when I came, that became that juncture I had to choose. Dad's advice was to go into the journalism school the Navy offered, because he said to me, and he was right, he said, every the Navy teaches everyone firefighting skills because everyone in a fire has to has to respond. And Dad had been through the Coast Guards training, and he been through prior. He probably been to Navy, actual Navy firefighting schools, because the Coast Guard will will help out with the Navy stuff and they'll use the Navy facilities. So Dad probably knew all that stuff. But again, you know, because I was nineteen and thought I thought I was smart and that you know, I know what I want to do. I just blew off Dad's advice and came to realize, you know, like a couple of years a quote, you know, the pen is mightier than the sword, The pen is mightier than the fire. Hard So I've never met I want to move on, Go ahead, let me please. So I've never met Pat's dad, but he's a a famous character in Madison. He was the fire chief and and really interesting guy. So he's like a high level fire man. He's the fire chief during the six Oh. I I thought he just hated fire, just wanted fire to be put out. And I thought, you know, in the stories that I've heard about him, he's a bit of a character, you know, and I just kind of thought that, um, maybe he was just saying sorry, son. Now Dad actually told me, and not not making this up. Dad actually told me that of his four sons that he thought I was the one that was most most personality wise, most cut out to be a firefighter. And I never quite knew it was true. What is the person that Okay, I don't want to talk about it. Well, just things like not not being afraid to go up the ladder and not being afraid to hang on to ship and just you know, yeah, stick your nose in there. Yeah, rescuing maidens and distress and whatnot. He thought that, he thought you were that guy. So then you Okay, then you became so that and I want to skip writing about sports because that's not that's not interesting. So you wrote about athletics, okay, now then you then then you became a professional outdoor writer. Win. Um, where where I could construed out full time wasn'tuntil I got the Deer and Deer Running magazine. And but but the Nash Cash paper, well I did because this is a small, you know, like a midsize city in Wisconsin. People and the newspaper couldn't staff a full time outdoor writer. But they let me basically be a halftime outdoor writer. And I also ran the week. I was other of the week on newspapers. I also covered the education beat for a while, you know that school board, that kind of stuff. But the reason I I should just say that real quickly, the reason when when in the sports let's get first, was because I knew that was the quickest route to the outdoor page, because yeah, the sports sections almost always legitimizes it my eyes, because it was it was that. That was my my ulterior motive was to get into the Outdoor page and eventually got control of the Outdoor page. And I really worked that beat now because my my dream was to use that platform there to get the Malwaukee Journal's eye and go to and become the Malaukee Journals at door writer. Because you grew up hunting, fishing, Yeah, Yohni, what point did you become so bored and making notes that's what you're doing? Ok Um, So at that point then, because you we're gonna syndicate, can you explain that? Yeah, my my syndication. They didn't start to actually started working at Deer and Deer running magazine, and Deer and Deer Hunting was look E. When I first went there, it was it was a neat magazine because it was started by local guys up in Appleton, Wisconsin. Is two guys. It was yeah, oh yeah, that was started in Appleton, Wisconsin and seventies suventy seven by two guys and they started off their magazine. It was called they had to some traveling road show. Basically they go to high schools and civic groups and do presentations of white tail deer and they're doing all sorts of crazy stuff that they put speakers up in trees and blow noise to see how dealer respond to it. And so they're like they're like doing their own like shoes stringing their own deer research exactly. That that's plus they're the first guys to really start actually go on and digging out scientific research and putting it to practical use for hunters. And that was the tagline the magazinish Yeah yeah, you're there ten years yeah, loving years. Yeah. And I really enjoyed it, and it gave me opportunities that I never had gotten anywhere else because it gave me a one of the things I really got out that it was a big benefit that made me realize how much I liked, as boring as it can be, sitting at these different um scientific seminars and waiting for that that little nugget to come out of some college kids research on deer that they could use in the magazines because they're like, part of your job was just to cover all research pertaining the white tail deer. Yeah yeah, and especially this stuff. The magazine's tag I was and it probably still is practical and comprehensive information for white tail deer hunters, and that was right up my alley. I like that. I see, like I've always found that I love deer hunting, and that's the number one thing he's welk in my hollis you know, this guy's a deer hunter. That's all all he does. But I realized early on that as much as I love deer hunting, I'm not a predator to waste. I met guys and that up magazine that they are predators. They know how to kill deer. They they're good. And I that's one thing I really love about what I do is I get to meet guys with their hunters and fishermen that if you think you're a good hunter and fisherman, you're jealous. And these guys you see on TV and wherever it might be, I hope there's sometimes I really respect the fact that these guys really are in many cases better than you are at deer hunting and better than you are at bass fishing or walleye fishing. And Yeah, but that pisses people because people like always be reading magazines and people are goof on. People be like, well, goof on, do like me who like like do TV about hunting like, oh, he's the moment. Yeah, but not many of people get to go out as much as we go out. Like if you're in an occupation where you're hunting, where you're spending a hundred and fifty plus days a year actively out in the woods, hunting and fishing, you're probably gonna see some things and learn some things. I mean, just you could be the biggest knucklehead in the world, but something's gonna rob off on you, and that amount expos of exposure, you take that out like you attend your career doing that. At the end of that, you have seen a ton of ship happened in the woods, and a lot of these guys that got good at like in my in my my generation, those guys like, um, oh he's older than me a little bit, but like Miles Color, it was just I'm not sure how he's doing these days, but the guy could really go out and find he go out in a new area, look it over, figure out pretty quickly how to hunt during that area. Greg Miller back in the sixties and seventies, but was killing really nice deer noldn Wisconsin, and like lot of guys didn't know big Bucks existed up there and those guys like that, and they always find fascinating about of these guys I've met over the year as a hunted with They can't tell you a red pine from a white pine from a cedar, but they know how to kill deer. They know how to line things up to figure out what's going on. I've heard people others say that the guys say that, like the talking about some like white tail expert and being like in saying that's some bitch didn't know the kind of tree his trees day was in mhm, but he he didn't need woodsmanship. He knew how to hunt white tails. Yeah. And the point I make because you have all wolves don't they can't tell trees of heart either, but they probably figure out habitat. And you don't know how they conceptualized trees. Well, they probably don't do the Linanean binomial nomenclature, but they might conceptualize trees. And someone I want to dot one bit. They figure out real quickly when they walk into go through a cruise to a section of woods, which which ones will bear fruit, which ones productive? And yeah, they it's like you've mentioned the past, hunters look at treat bottoms a whole lot differently than somebody else going buy in the car. You know, it's just it becomes part of your you know, they won't live long if they can't walk into part of a wood row quickly figure out how this thing works. Happened. I couldn't go over at Colvert without slowing down or backing up. Yeah, I had to expect every bit of water every time. And that's that's where I I love meeting those kind of people. And I learned real quickly to pay them respect for that that. You know, I might know more about some guys research project and how it turned out, and I might be able to give him law facts. They'll they'll blow off, you know, as far as you know, like we talked about earlier about coyotes and kind of an interesting subject because all this country that they're having different impacts on deering, different different levels. You know, there's there's areas in northeastern Minnesota, like talking before about um the idea that they kind of accept a certain ob predation somewhrea because I used to it. Well, you know, you go to know the Minnesota and you look at the research going back into the six these you know, fond survival through that first year, it was like in the range often that's regularly because it's our harsh environment, winter would kill him off. They come through the summer, okay, never make it, never make it out of winter, and survival you know, for that first year was not uncommon. So what's it around here, Doug? We uh something like one point one fawns per do survive because we have so many twins, you know, and it's you know, I mean, you'll lose a few very good recruitment because there's parts of um South Caroline right now where they had like point for you know for fawn recruitment one point for no no point for like zero point four. What's the reason for that? Because right because because right now there's areas of the South in South Carolina the other Southeastern states then are known counties. Really until recently the deer they having figure it out. Those things are going well. We have When we kicked off as a little teaser, I said, are they really killing all the deer? You said, no, I'm some guy in South Carolina's his hair. That's kind of why I circle back, because you want to get it, but I want to get into it. Two but I need to clear something up just for my own understanding, because I anestly don't know this yet. I do want to talk. I want to talk about a lot of that, but I just also understand this. I'm just unders I'm still tripped up and and maybe no one else in the world is on on the demise of the outdoor columnists. And as a way, I wanted to understand that. I think it might be helpful. I understand the survival of an outdoor columnist. So when you start doing that. So so you went to Deer and Deer Hunting and became the editor in chief and as a national publication, became a national publication. But how did it wind up being that you write a article about Wisconsin and it appears in a bunch of different newspapers in Wisconsin. Um, the way I did it. When I went I went to work for Deer and Deer Inn, a magazine. I was lucky because back then I still was independently owned, and the owners I said to him, you know, I explained to them that I really like newspaper work. I like newspaper columns. I like writing a weekly column. It's something I really took a lot of pride in and I asked him, would you mind if I kept writing it. I won't do it at work. I'll do it at my own time, on the weekends and at night. But it is this is important to me? Is this something that I like doing? And they agreed, and then I um, when the company I bought out the magazine about that deer and Deer on me a year and a half and get bought out. Well, the company that brought us up wanted me to drop the column. Did the guys that sold it make a lot of money when I sold it? Yeah? I think they did and they count pretty good. So but um so like along the way though, I started what I did at first as I had a woman um who was trying to launch her own syndication service. You know, she has based in masks. And then she asked me if she could pick up my outdoor commas put over her package. So she she pitched it to a couple of different newspapers like the Wisconsin State Journal and back in those days, We're Seen Were Seen newspaper picked it up. Ashcosh picked it up, and Waka Shaw and our Tunnel by Milwaukee picked it up. And then eventually I had to know Claire, and then they dropped it. It's not all sugar and spice either. You know, about two or three of them dropped me. But then over time, No, my nut game was right now, I'm at seventeen newspapers around Wisconsin. I carried my column right now, right now, you should I know there were seventeen newspapers in Wisconsin. Now when Doc so, when I when Doug, I can't remember after before I met you, Doug was talking about your work in Wisconsin and how people in Wisconsin are so serious about deer and deer hunting. Do you know the statistic I can't remember what it is, but that like Texas has four times as many deer. God, I wish I knew how this went. Texas has four times as many deer, twice as many people, but half as many hunters or something like that. I'm not sure how they're I don't know their numbers in Texas. It was just about how do in Wisconsin hunt? Yeah, if you look, I think Wisconsin's population is about seven million, six six seven millions in places. But it's it's um. They give you something to do with what I done A really neat piece of research, you know from about ten, you know, about twenty years ago. He's not a friend of mine. Um Tom Herberline. He made a comment in his he was a sociologist and he studied hunting and hunting motivations, these kind of things. And you always would say of Wisconsin. He said, in Wisconsin, you either are a deer hunter or you sleep with a deer hunter. And he wasn't and he was an exaggerame he was said, he was multitask, you know, and but you have you have you look at an average Wisconsin household, it's unusual not to have a family or some deer hunter somewhere in that family, you know, immediate family. And what Doug was talking about when he was telling me that is he was saying that, um, not that you get like, I don't know if you get actual death threats, but I think like as a joke, he was saying, Pat Durkin gets like, you know, people mad enough for you, they wouldn't be surprised that they would give you a death threat over white tailed politics. White tail politics is vicious and it's it's it's not it's not always say a deer make people stupid. It makes people stupid and means sometimes and especially um, if you piss off a group of people real fast, it's it's deer hunters that they they can be very What would be a thing that you found would piss off deer hunters? Um, Basically, you write a column about like like, obviously wolves is gonna piss piss him off. And if dosease pisses deer hunters off, not this, he's somewhat not not as much as like baiting. Baiting relates device of divisive issues. Yeah, and people like frame for me an article. Let's say you said I'm gonna go piss off Wisconsin's deer hunters. I will write an article about this subject and frame it this way. Well, it will be like the most divisive thing you could say. I'll say, I'll try to address that question. I will say that I've never written a column, and I mean it's from the bottom of my heart. I've never written a column with the intent of pissing someone off. That's just not how I work. I but but will write a You have to have done it in anticipation, definitely. You know, if you bring this topic up, whether it's some polite society or not, people some people are gonna get mad and right and write a rotten letter to you and bias. Figure again, this is I don't leber. One of my core beliefs is that I look at my writing from the newspaper as a as something I do as kind of a public service. I get paid for it, but I've really believe and putting information out there. And if they don't want to believe the information, that's up to them. I can't change their mind, because you know, people have their Once they have an attitude towards something, you're gonna change their mind. But I think it's important to find the information. And I hate to use word vet because you know, on what really how do you go about vetting? Besides talked a lot of people and finally get to a point where you're saying this, this makes sense, this is factual, and put it out there. And yeah, but that's an interesting point to bring up right now, because we're sort of engaged in this big cultural debate about like what you know, this is who? I mean, I don't want to say it f A K E News. Okay, So we're like really caught up in this well what is right? Like can anything be factual or yeah, listen, I think on some things there is On some things you can you can achieve a scholarly consensus. Okay, on some things a scholarly consensus or an academic consensus could be evasive. But there's a way to present a contentious argument in a way that is transparent about what is known, Like explain what is the where does the scholarly consensus end? What direction do you feel based on like a reasonable amount of work things might be going when you get beyond the known facts and not known facts right and be open about the things that might prove you to be wrong. I'm not ready to give up on this idea culturally that there's a way to present information and it's like, because we don't know, let's just have it be as deceptive in as wrong as possible because we don't know. I I really firmly believe and I still think most people think this way, that they still want facts. I mean, there's there's a lot of people out there that when I joke around about science not being an alternate facts and that's that's you know, that's b s. There's really smart people out there that you can dig up their stuff and you can look back in you know, thirty or forty years of research and see it. This stuff keeps lining up and lining up and lining up. We got this, this is this is the way it is. You know what. You know, what would frustrate my old man about issues of what we would call fact is he was frustrated with anything that the that our understanding would evolve. Okay, so if under if your understanding of something evolves over time, he didn't see it as being a natural process. He saw it as the minute a position evolved change like our understanding was enhanced. He then thought, well, I'm gonna disregard the entire system that he've made. This so you can say, like, I mean, take it even feels a matter of like human evolution. Okay, so you have some idea about human evolution. You know, organisms change over time. Corn used to be the size of your pinky. Corn is not real big, Like an organism changes over time based on certain pressures. But he would get into some issue of like like human human evolution is almost too controversial to demonstrate my point. Let's they were talking about what kills dear fonds. Okay, so we have an understanding that that uh, black bears kill deer funds. Then someone will come up with a thing that says, well, you know, we never looked at bobcats, and I were looking at bobcats. Realize the bobcats are significant killer deer fons. And he'd be like, but I was told that black bears do it now, never mind knowing no ship. Well, you know, because like he hated the idea that you would have to sort of stay tuned all the time as new things came in. And then when new things came in, it wasn't that we were dismissing the body of knowledges. Were engaged in this activity that is not perfect and changes over time, but just trying to maintain an understanding of the world that we live in. Yeah, this friend of mine, Hybridline, has a great saying about research and the whole idea of trying to improve our knowledge, improve our understanding things. He makes this comment that he said, all all research is either trivial or wrong. Either it proves what we already know, which is trivial, or it proves what will never believe you know. And and I can think in deer hunting it's constant. I mean, but you're talking this research earlier about oh yeah, the article you would write through is the article that would piss everybody off, right, And all you gotta do in many cases with a certain crowd is go back and dig up the final results of some recent research which everyone was clamoring for when it was like this. There was a great study that was done by the Wisconsin Digging are from about two thousand through about two thousand thirteen looked at fawn survival, looked at over winter survival, and two different areas went up northwestern Wisconsin, went on north eastern Wisconsin, just north of me. And what was really interesting in the in the farm country of eastern Wisconsin right above me, the number one killer of of the fawns was, uh, we're being killed by winter starvation, you know. And no one thought they were starving at starvation. And in those days, I mean in just recent times, you just thought it wasn't happening. And you look at, um, what else is killing him? All road kills are but getting up four or five percent of them sometimes and and but then all these things were done. All it's really good information. It was all released. People like me wrote about it, people like and then I got people right into me saying this, this is all bullshit. You know, this is just the d n R spinning their fast because the thing they didn't like was because in northwestern Wisconsin, where there's wolves, wolves were not found to be much of a productor at all for falls. Yeah, they this was a cover up. So so they have this research, they didn't like the way it turned out, so they disregarded. They did the same thing with them they did us. Did I really intense sociological research into public attitudes to our wolves. All the people who don't like don't like wolves, which is a lot of them. We're convinced that when they do this research, we're not find out that Wisconsin I really don't like wolves, even the especially the ones. Um they knew the people down in still in Wisconsin who don't deal with wolves will like them. Those are as people like them the most right and New Jersey can't. Ladies, and the person like the least likely that like you know, and that's that's very true. That I'll get to that though. But you know that the thing they found though is even in wolf country, the majority of people still overall supportive wolves, but define defined like wolves. Well that's that's that's a good question. That's a good good point, you know. And it basically it's the fact that I don't dislike I don't dislike wolves. I love them. I think, I think I like Oh, I like all wildlife, including and I have a special place in my heart for the wolf. Does it mean you like him or like? What does that mean? Well, if I like them, there and I like them to be managed by the state, and I have and I believe, based on consteadable bit of research that we have a sustainable population in the northern Great Lakes that can be managed as a renewable resource. Does that put me in liking or not liking? Put you in the liking like? Like, I've been a liking camp too, because I actually drew a wolf tag in two thousand and twelve and they first issued him, and I found out real quickly I don't know the wolf funding to be very effective at it, but I still be kind as a liker. Oh yeah, definitely. But but I should say that I think I think the way they they worded it in this in this research was basically one of the one of the things was do you want more walls right now? As the wolf wolf numbers we have right now? Is that adequate? Is that inadequate? Is that too many? Too few? And most people, like I think it's like in a six range, things are okay the way they are. They didn't have a problem with with the wolf numbers, whereas a lot of the hunters don't want that many wolves. You know, the hunters would say, you know, the d n R says there's seven d wall as well, there's more like two thousand. So I always asked him, well, where do you get your number? I can tell you how the how the DINR got there in number. I can try the survey, showy that that that field work that was done to get that number. So where do you get this two thousand number? You know? But but hold on a minute. I know we're getting distracted a lot. But they had a we had a guest um right on this year podcast, Frank mcmahnon, right, who runs the U s GS Grizzly Bear program in the Greater Yellstone ecosystem. You ask him how many are there? He'll give you a number and you'll say, but probably more, yeah, yeah, or there's sixty two, but probably more, And like, why did you tell me six two, because that's the model we use, but we know that that model has changed. We have an updated the model. There's almost certainly more. But I said, but if I put a gun to your head and said how many are there, what would you say? Sixty two? But probably more to a to a wide margin more. Well, that's the thing. I'd say, Well what's this wide margin? Because it depends on how you're modeling them, And sometimes you might have a model like like in this case. I hate to go way back, but here's what happened in this case. When they modeled out how many they had, it was based on it was based on the home range of females. Okay, knowing that females had some fidelity to their home range and we're generally intolerant of other breeding age females near them. And that model was drawn up at a time before that model was drawn up at a time when they hadn't really dispersed across suitable habitat. So what they found over time is that they're more comfortable living closer together. They don't quite know how much, though, So when they model it out, they come up with a number. But all the experts like, but they're much more comfortable living closer together. Now we haven't adjusted the model, so I know there are more, but the ants we have to have because this is the model that we put forth tells us this, even though we all know it's probably wrong. So I think that it is like you can go out and do like if you go out and just do account, Okay, you can go out. Let let's see you go out and do a survey where you're flying trans sex out of a helicopter. Count wolves and you can be I can damn sure tell you that there are seven hundred, probably a lot that we missed. I can damn sure tell you their seven hundred. Now you're gonna have two things. The non likers of wolves are gonna pay a lot of attention to the probably more the likers in the case in this way you're sketching on. The lakers are gonna pay a lot of attention to that minimal known number, and that's very important to them because they want to present it as not as numerous, because their goal is to keep them listed. Yeah, and the other people's goal, their tendency is the de list. So they're gonna like that bigger number you find that all the time in this kind of Yeah. And the thing that where I get sick of that this whole discussion is that no one really knows for certain You can't, you can't. Like The point I think we should always make is that you look at our country. We can't even agree how to count people in this country. We have real, honest to God important fights over a census for people. So if you can't count noses on humans, we know, we know our addresses, they pretty much can go into our homes and figure out what we got. Even then you're still arguing about But um, that's the point that it's in the real famous wolf bitlogists make. Whether it's val guys. He's not specifically a wolf biologist, but yeah, he knows his stuff. Though there's a guy I forget his name is over in Italy. He's a Europe's most famous wolf researcher. The point this Italian guy makes, and I think the vale point he says, instead of worrying about individual numbers of wolves, be looking at something that matters. And what matters is how what kind of damage they're doing. Let's let's quantify what's what's the damage. We can quantify that that's much easier to get a handle on than how many wolves are out there now if they're not they're out there and they're not killing livestock, they're not killing uncle its or not, they're not doing this. Who cures me numbers are out there? Do you really need to need to have that number that really Manselow's wolves or do anything? And no, you don't. You know the speech price I think Americans and this is one thing that rest of the wildlife ballance around the world really marvelous. The way we hang up on numbers where there's deer numbers that seems like it's deer and wolves especially that people really worry about, you know what, what's our what's our number? And that in Wisconsins we fight about numbers all the time and we don't know what we're talking about. I mean, it's just And then then you get in the arguments wall as a deer for square mile of habitat and who judges the habitat quality? And you end up these crazy you know where people get mad type of discussions because there's nothing anyone can all agree on. It's like trying to define trophy hunting. You know, they're asking people you're like trophy hunting. Well, you don't even define what that means. But what Doug was giving me a number the r day for here, Okay, fifty deer per square mile of suitable habitat. Oh yeah, and that you can't even believe that. But but then again and then then then that, then that moves around to you know, if you do these aerial surveys they do in the winter, double check it. Typically what they find is that those aerial surveys miss a lot too, even with snow covering the ground, and they still miss a lot of deers. So it's all it's why something to argue about. And there're thing that was interesting though about getting back to wolves, and you talked about all of the people in New Jersey love wolves not constant. The one thing that there's a really cool but munch of research done about fifteen years ago about wolves and people public attitudes trey wolves. And what they found is that the pop larity of wolves really ok that's zenas back in the mid nineteen hundreds when they really weren't many wolves really people really around the world, And this is they went back and they looked at all these different sociological studies on at two story walls from all of the world, you know, Europe, Russia, um, even down into the Middle Eastern countries that you know in the mountains areas, and they looked at the North American continent and they fallen that. Yeah, that peaked around in the night night at Yeah, and as soon I started calm back every place that they looked was the more you dealt with the wolves of less popular they became. Yeah, that's my feeling about the bald eagle. If bald eagles were smart, they would stop reproducing so effectively. Because they had they were extraordinarily popular, and they're still pretty popular, but they're getting so numerous. I feel that they're gonna feel their popularity WANs not that they're a problem animal to anyone, but you know, I mean, but I still read people like, holy, an eagle, you know, but he'd be like, well, the oh, there's they're they're everywhere. Now. It's like it's it's gonna come a time when people are gonna see an eagle. They're gonna think about it like they think when they see a robin. Yeah, because they got so popular in their absence. Well, I mean, it's funny about the bald eagle is that people a lot of people who romanticize them, they're bummed out, they're disappointed when they see a bald eagle feeding out a carcass, even though they're a scavenger. Yeah, I mean it hurts something that that's blue there. It's like finding out your your mother was cheating on your dad or something, you know. You know, when when it was put out that the idea that the bald egil be the national and animal, Franklin criticized it. Ben Franklin, he's he's also mistakenly credited with putting forth the turkey, which he did not do. But they said, okay, the eagle be the national animal or national bird, and Ben Franklin thought, like, why would you have like a carrion eater, lowly garbage eater, And he says, kind of people think he argues, its facetious that I've read what he wrote, and you know, they had a different style, so you can't like read between the lines quite as effectively as you could read between the lines of a contemporary writer and thinker. But he had said, like you might as well do it with the damn turkey, because least he's vain, right, he's silly in vain and he made the point in there I think too about um, he's got he's got guts basically because he'll attack that that red corded British guy if he shows up in your garden. You know, that kind of thing. And so, yeah, he didn't like that you didn't want some garbage eating like well, even question that eagles courage because because the little birds attack it and can drive it away from you know. Yeah. Yeah, So so there's always neat little things that you find about Franklin. He was a ladies man. Oh yeah, definitely was. I don't want to get into that. But so you still haven't answered my question. I'm sorry if you want if you were going to write, okay, the article that was going to be most insulting to Wisconsin deer hunters, like like Doug here, Okay, what would the article be right now in the current climate, I guess if I wanted to, and I actually kind of have written. I just don't want. You know, one thing I try to do people, Um no, I some people will accuse me of obsessing on an issue. Yeah, and well, in this case, the thing I recommended a few years ago, people arise bashed on me about, um, well you don't like what the din I was doing on how they're managing c w ds. What would you do if you were the king? And I said, well, the first thing I do is have just to earn a bucket, have a double ear in a book. You don't shoot a buck until you shoot at least two antless deer. Okay, And that dog thinks that you shouldn't be able to shoot any bucks. Well, I don't think that that's not true. I don't think that doesn't really think that. I was trying to make good point at the County Advisory Committee meeting and because people just don't like to be forced to do something, and I think that's the biggest not go yeah, And that's really just part of our character. We just don't like being told what to do. We want until there are none left. So so that that that thing does that. Every time I write about, um, those kind of things where we should mandate something and make people, they get mad. And even the people who are more reasonable get mad at that. They don't. They don't they don't want to be told what to do. But why why was it that you guys and This isn't This is the opposite. This is not mandating, This is unmandating. This is instead of instead of restricting people's choices, you were expanding people's choices, giving them more opportunity for the exercising of free will. Do you guys want to make it that you could wear pink instead that passed? Do you guys really feel that there were women who were like goad Man, I want to hunt so bad, but I am not going into the woods with that blaze orange. I think it's it's it's a it's a color that, um, some women like and some women don't like it. They always you're patronizing them by saying that women want pink. But um, a friend of mine who's in the garment hunt hunting garment industry, he said, when they start making mixing pink hot pink into their um into the hunting clothing for Wisconsin, you know it's basically a Wisconsin market. Now. I don't know if any other state has that has passed blaze pink as an acceptable color, but in Wisconsin it sells. Apparently it was a special session of kind like that went to law like faster than any other. Well, it was because it was. It's an easy lot of pass It's like like I was talking to the Honest's father today about um a careent proposal. I think it's telling you about to about the guy wanting to make the wild turkey or state game bird. And Janice's father read a waste as well. That's kind of law politicians life because it doesn't doesn't cause me angst. It's easily passed, goes through usually in one session, and it makes him feel good and like. And Wisconsin is famous for these kind of things, designating this thing and that thing as a state. You know, we have a state rock. I don't know what it is, but we have one in Michigan. Okay, thank you, and and uh and then yeah, I think we have a state muffin. You know. I think it's like, yeah, you tell me that I was not I probably was. And and I remember getting back into the state if I always remember um. Charles Curralt, he turned around Wisconsin one time and on his little TV show that he had a great program. He after around Wisconsin one time he noticed that every little town b Wiscont, like where I live, iola bull hunting Capital of the World. Fremont, Wisconsin, while capital of the world. Yeah, and you find Charles kraw when are all these little cities that got their Capital of the world type things, And he said, I decide that Wisconsin is a capital of the capital of the world. And I think Wisconsin, getting back even to your Patrick question, there's something Wisconsins are just very schulvinistic about their state. Yeah, but the Wisconsin Knights. And this has coming from the guy that grew up in Michigan. So I grew up in Michigan. When we went down to the beach, we're looking across at you guys. Uh, Wisconsin Knights on average are higher caliber human than Michigan Nights standard. I'll tell you why. I think that's the case. I think that if you went around Michigan and and and pulled people, but you know what, let's limit us. Okay, you go around Michigan pulling people that hold either a hunting or a fishing license. So you limit your survey to those people, and you ask those people what watershed do you live in? I think Wisconsin Nights would beat them three to one. There is a greater environmental in landscape awareness in Wisconsin. Then Michigan buy a huge margin and it haunts me. I can't figure out why it's true. I mean people Wisconsin. People Wisconsin can usually tell you, like if they were to take a leak on the ground, what river that piss would wind up and how it would make its way, and like just little things like that, Or you'll be talking like a random collection of Wisconsin dudes. More of them would know how to go find a morale than a random collection. I don't know what it is. I think it's the people that you talked to in Wisconsin. You think so, yeah, because they all know, because they all know each and they all like the outdoors a lot. Yeah, I don't know, man, I'd like to do it. I'd like to do it. I'm gonna do that. The researchers would call that what they call that street lamp science, where you look underneath the street lamp at night and whenever was going on there, you can see it, so you make your you can try these conclusions about what's going on underneath that street lamp. Well, outside of the street last much bigger world, and so what you're seeing underneath that street lamp might not be anything close to what's going on around it. And I don't know but I like to think that you're right. I like to think of Wisconsin nates have you know, I think they have an enhanced landscape awareness because and I think that the state pride, I think more like, yeah, I don't know, I could be wrong, probably pisting off a lot of guys my home state. I think they're like a more robust um well state patriotism, so to speak. Like a guy used to know in the hunting industry, he would look at that though, and say, Wisconsin stuffers from a whopping inferiority complex. So maybe you guys have a ship state, But but you make up for it by thinking it's a good state and knowing what creeks or what Maybe you make up for it by knowing what creeks flow into what creeks that flow into what rivers. You look at like, totally incredulous, Doug, you're not buying it. You damn sure know what creeks you're in. Well yeah, and and uh, well you probably have a wider experience of folks in Wisconsin than I do, because you know, I don't. I spent a lot of time the folks that I know. I know those kinds of things, no doubt Uh, but you're saying the hunters and fishers so, and I have no idea in Michigan. What people thinking. I've been all around both places. Yeah, I don't want to dwell on. I want to get back to stuff to pass stuff that I read a Pats. Where was I reading the article that you wrote. That's the one thing I like about knowing you is I stumble into your articles because you're write for all kinds but not I don't stumble into your columns. I stumble into your articles you write in magazines and and I believe at least I've been attributing it to you. Did you write a thing? Were you recovering some research about what bucks do during rut? Do they where? Do they actually? Like? Do they travel? Because I keep saying he wrote this, I've written hold on the editor of Deer and Deer Hunting Bucks during your rut? Probably not no, no, recently recently Yeah, And it was about uh GPS data on do bucks? It was like it was like, do bucks really travel all over Holy Hell during the I've written a couple on that. So, now that I've told people what I think you said, what did you say in that? What? What were you reporting on. Yeah. One thing that I liked about some of this recent research they've been doing with with bucks during the rut and where they go is not using GPS, and can I actually really get a pretty good hand line where they are at numerous times a day. And you know, in the old days, thirty years ago, they do it with radio telemetry years ago, and they don't get a reading every every couple of days or something whenever they happened to go out and put their and it was very difficult, but was what was interesting was that, um, it's this research from the nineties that was done with the old fashioned way. They found even back then that these bucks are really individuals that when you say bucks always do this during the rut, they go they really go ranging all the place. While some do but most of them don't, you know. But but there's still always these exceptions that will some buck will go off and who knows where. But yeah, like did it elk in like the elk or a lion born in South Dakota gets hit car in Connecticut? Yeah, yeah, do they all go to Connecticut because it will be in South Dakota? Right, And and what's um fastening about? A lot of research. What they start kind of ore figuring out what's going on. Is that, um, if a buck early in life scores close to home, all the system works, so he stays close to home for the most part as long as he's alive. You know, you always stum if there's enough dose in the area, and he hangs around and he's a plugger, and he keeps moving around until he gets one that the system works, so he keeps doing it. Well, if a buck not our buckets, let's say, for whatever reason, gets chased out of that little area and can't can't you know, he's just got the hormones going. He can't stop himself. It starts wandering and counter at the doll while that system works for him. So next year he's doing that again. So that it's really individual. It's probably little things that I think it's private. Ray somewhe to just how our guns season works around here some years if you're setting on the same theyvor stand every single year and some guy comes in from a different way one day and a buck runs by you, and you think, well, the systems working pretty good, you know, but you didn't know that's just a flute that this guy chased a buck passed you. And but you know, but the other thing too that's cool of us in this research is that I look at and think, well, you know, based on those GPS data, what val guys was saying about mule there thirty forty years ago holds up, you know, because he well, like Geist and John Ozolga who did whitetailed research up in the up of Michigan, they followed us in these really beautiful bucks. The biggest bucks were what I think I think guys called them shirkers. They would come out and they didn't want to get their ass kicked. So if there was a buck working the doll, rather than engage and try to drive that buck off, you'd shrink back. Now, maybe what happened early in his life was that he got in the middle, He got between a buck and a doll, and the bull buck gored him, beat the crop out of him. He thought, I don't want to go with that again, and so he his system was to say, in a safer area, looked for the one to drop into his lap, and and and now her and live longer. And then but then when that big gut buckets shot or just disappears, from landscape. All of a sudden, you got man gave him out again. He's back out there. He's now he's doing a little bit different behavior. And what was really cool about some of the stuff that was Alla ended up mission that the shirkers sugar Yeah, he called up no shirk you know the shirt that shirt short your Duties s h I r K shirt. I don't use that term, that term, honest, I don't know, but you know the work. Yeah, but I think guys called him shirkers. And um Zoga had a very similar conclusion that there's there's bucks that don't really engage much. And he was he checked some of these bucks and his study pun up in the US like a mile square pen. And when I think he found and there was this buck that was not engaging and not taking part. He he um, they I think they must have they must have had a way to trap them and check their blood. Because he did a blood check on this buck. What turns out this buck had a high level of progesterone, a female the female hormone. Yeah. And then but when that buck got his chance from the other, the bigger buck that was dominating him, you know, that scaring him when that buck disappear from you know, I think he died and they just moved himlet of the pen or something. I think he probably died. Well. As soon as that big buck that not stress inducer was was removed, his progesterone levels dropped. And you think this is cool stuff they're doing back in days before GPS, you know, believes Johannest believes that. I think it's the Honest believes that there are bucks who will go up and hide. This is the same stuff that he's talking about. The guy sort yeah, but I just don't. I've read a fair bit of battle guys. Let's leave it to leave it to Pat. Honest believes, based on a thing that he believes originated with vlarious guys, that there are bucks who will play the very long game, and they'll go up and hide up in some hidi hell hole their whole life until they're just giants. Then one day they'll think to themselves, you know, I'm about as big as I'm gonna get, and then they'll come down. Then they'll walk down and get them all. I have a very difficult time with that. I guess I said with you, because am I saying it right? Well, no, I mean I think you're you're making the exaggerated Steve version of the of the shirker of the shirker that he just explained. Oh yeah, we're just like in times of like when like times are hard and it's like there might be like like you're not feeling that well, there's like a rough winner, you didn't have a great summer. You pull a lot of fat, like they decide to instead of go in and engage and just go crazy. They're like, I'll shirk this year, maybe a couple of years the system is working for me, and then re enter. That's the thin thing is that I would never say that wouldn't happen, because I just gave some examples where what kind of happens and the thing that I'm geist will talk about and deer farmer say the same thing that the bucks that aren't being stressed take real big antlers because they can put so much their energy into those, into their growth. You know these animals that are stressed, they're nervous, they're always looking at their shoulder. Yeah, definitely, definitely stressed stress is a big influence on on antler development. So dudes that are shed hunting and needy snow are making next year's shed is not as big. Well, you can probably the argument. But you know, if you see that makes people man because it comes down to your telling someone he can't do something he wants to do. You're trying to get me a ready calm about that, now, huh? What's just there's a thing because we had like a pretty bad winter in some areas and people started bringing up and shed hunting is more and more. It used to be gone the woods hate sentences beginning. It used to be when I was a boy. When I was a boy, like you went on what you found a dear and like I was dear handler. Right, it wasn't like a thing that like was like it just wasn't as much of a thing to find sheds, Like you didn't have many people who really like self identified as shed hunters who do special trips to go hunting sheds. Right. So, now as it's becoming more and more popular and people are more and more gung hoo to get after him the second they dropped to the point where they watch yarded up deer in deep snow calm, you know, march whatever wherever deer in your area drop that they're watching them yard it up in the minute they start dropping, or that they're chasing them to get them to drop, like a deer will drop one and not the other and then they chase after it to try to get it to jostle free the other antlewers so they can get a matching pair. So some people have pointed out this might be something we need to get out ahead of the same way we got out ahead of. You can't hunt year round as much as you want, and there's seasons for that. They put forward this idea that we would regulate this morning that Pisces people you can't find them more stressful time, probably for now that time of year. So Yanni always says winter weekends, spring kills. Yeah. Well, on that warden that we chatted with in November in Colorado, he was saying the number one uh, you know, impact onto deer populations now he believes is well maybe it was like even now with have a that but the summer recreation that it's just you know, and it's just like there's more people that haven't been in the woods, you know, in the past years, and now there's just hikers and bikers and you know, they've been looking they've been doing a lot of work looking at methods of conveyance and what it tends to do with dispersal away from trails. And there's like some counterintuitive ship oh yeah about what freaks them out and what doesn't freak him out. Yeah. Well, actually go into a lot of these game farms, like a deer farm, especially because deer are really a skittish animal that doesn't do well in confinement. That's why they have all those you'll see um like black drape type material around defenses because if deer see something else outside defense that makes them nervous that you know, they start going nut. So they start running around circles very stress Yeah, and they try to keep them relaxed as much as they can and keep them, you know, isolated from all that kind of all those stressors. And but you know, like it's I always find it interesting that the elk farmers will see some of the elk out in the wild in northern Wisconsin and up in the clam Laker, which isn't very good elk habitat, and there a lot more spindle rack type type bowls that aren't anything real impressed. They aren't like you see out in Arizona or something, and then they'll show some elk they have thing. Well, yeah, but you're controlling the environment in that in that pat and you got all they have their food right, their form, they have everything, all the environments controlled. They're not out there running around chasing running away from wolves or ring about wolves and and all. Anything that's staying constantly alert that takes that takes its toll, you know, on their on their energy and their their overall well being. So I think most people can relate to that. Just when you want to add, Doug, Well, when we're you're talking about different books and you know, and and how they acted on it, it just sounded to me like you're talking about guys you know that. Well, I know guys that are more active or more interested in I've known guys my whole life from we're act of more interested in women, not interested in when you got your shirkers too, Yeah, you got your shirkers. My experience, guys like he's gonna go out to the bar, He's gonna, you know, pounded at the bar. He's gonna put in a long night, Thursday, long night, Friday, long night, Saturday, spend all of his money drinking at the bar, right. Yeah, Well that's what I'm just dying to meet someone. And then you got some shirkar. He's at home, he's yeah, he's got roommates. He's just gonna hang. See what comes snipping around two in the morning. Yeah. My experience with with deer in a very limited area, you know this this farm is the older the deer gets, the less it moves. That's the way it seems to me. I like that. We saw something this year that we've already talked about a bunch of times, but we saw a group of mule deer, a shipload of dolls in a very nice buck in an aspen patch, and Yanni is looking through his knockers and he says, oh, some kyotes are coming down to the asthen patch. Okay, kyles come down, and all these freaking doughs just come out of there, like just spraying out of this aspen patch. Okay. That buck stands there and these are his like he's got him collected up. He's working these doughs. He stands up, assesses the situation, what's going on, looks watches the coyotes. All his doughs are gone, and you see him like running that ship in his head. I swear it looked like and he's like, you know what, I'm just gonna lay back down. I'm not gonna go running out out of this asthma patch getting shot at by some asshole. He's like, I just gonna lay down and this this low sort of it'll sort itself out later. He lays back down, and then over the course of the day all those dolls can trick them back in that asthen patch and think about the calories that he saved by not going on that run. And he's like, you all can run around getting all worked up. I ain't. The thing to do is the whole type. So that's one of the reasons that I try to have a place on the farm that we don't go into and let him have a place that that's the dearest place you know that they can go in there and and and you know that's their saying. It might be too um. Sanctuaries or sanctuaries do they work based on your based on what you hear from some of the guys that relay serious about they believe in it. Because I'm not disrespecting man, I thought I was trying to do your favorite No, no, no, no, no. I think it's I think it's pretty much a lot of folks that follow the quality quality deer management type ideas and sitting up their land and a lot I really believe in the sanctuaries. You know, there's certain areas they'll put off guarden. It's it's reached scholarly consensus. Well, I'm not sure if it's. I don't know off has done that. I really don't. I don't. I haven't. I can't say I have seen anything on that. There might be, but I haven't seen it. You know, I don't else have not mean, I don't mean literally scholarly, but it's reached like professional consensus, right, I mean, I know a number of guys who are deadly serious but keeping a sanctuary intact? Do I time to go in there is to retrieve a dead deer basically, and they really don't violate their own sanctus, right that I have a hard time believe that. You like, right, you got this farm and all you're really doing is, you know, you got all your responsibles, but you want to kill a big deer. You like to grow a big deer, and you want to kill a big deer, and and season is going on, and you know those big giants around and you look in there and you see them all the time in there, and seasons winding down. You got a day left, all the cousins and should have gone home. In the areas in the sanctuary, you're looking in there at him. Well, you're telling me that there are guys out there who would be like, no, I can't do it, won't, I won't do it, sanctuary like that. Well, but and their defense, Steve. What they're saying probably is that my odds are killing that buck are better by waiting out here in this trail that's leading down to felf A Field or whatever. Might be looking at him in the sanctuary, Well I don't they can see and they're probably back in there. And that's the company the sancs where I'm thinking about. There's a little pocket you can look into, the one I'm the one I'm imagining, and he's in that little pocket. No one, no one. Well, if you can see him, no i'ctuary could find But you're walking too close to the things. If you can see him that he's like, I don't want to know what's going on. This is your fantasy um sanctuary that I'm putting out a hypothetical, but I understand, but I would. I would like to think I would. I bet you that you will find it. Most, if not all, sanctuaries get violated by the sanctuary owner. Maybe that is buddies, but I think sanctuaries are made to be unsanctuaried by their owner. It's a way him to say, let's take it easy, see how things play out. There's nothing you cousins and whatnot could do to get in there. I'm gonna wait and see. Yeah. But the thing I think I'm struggling with in all sincerity is you know how hard there's as an individual hunter to go in any patch of cover and get a crack at any of her that's in there. And so why would it gu I intentionally violated his own sanctuary with a very low odds. I've ever seen that bucket that goes creeping in there and puts a stain in there? Yeah, I don't want to dwell. Yeah, Okay, now let me ask you about this, gohead. Well, I want to circle back to Yanni story real quickly. Another possible explanation for why he didn't run out there is that there are cases where they've they've they've documented this, you know, actually photographed it, where a buck will stand down on a couity or stand stand off a wolf just by bracing up, taking it on and looking at basically stirring the animal. Dahna saying you want some of this, come try. Well, you know what's funny about that, Now that you want to dig deep around this, I'll point out that those those coyotes that absolutely no interest in those dear it's not what they're doing. But a couple of days later, another big buck they want up shooting this buck he's with, I don't know seven or eight does a couple of coyotes come through and he's the one that runs away. So they all spill off the back of the hill and then over the next minutes they all trickle back into where they were. He never comes back. He spilled off the back of the hill across the gully and we later found him betted up. So it might have been like he's like, yeah, I was kind of think about going to have a nap. Anyways, it's getting late in the day. It's like I don't like to be out this time of day because I've learned in my general bucknus that it's like you get your morning business taking care of and you go hide. So maybe just like I was gonna leave now anyways, now I'm just gonna leave trying trying to figure out why an animal does something. God you know, good luck individual animal does sometimes. Yeah, And I just I just glassed up a skunk working Doug's hill the middle to day. What was he doing? Doug thinks he smells after birth from the cab. Well, here's what I want to ask about, similar thing. And I've i've I think I've I've talked about my I've talked about what I think he wrote about. What is the latest, what's the what's the the thinking on what that lunar phases? Okay, a fact, dear like people like I'm not even gonna bother hunting full moon, I'm sure that discussion has been going on as lost people have been hunting. One of my one of my guys that I look up to the most as a hunter, Remy Warren Remy. He is a firm believer to the point where he'll book even for Bears spring spot Stock Spring Bears, he'll book his clients around lunar cycles the bless his heart. Yeah. To me, the one one thing I really do believe in is that if you have that kind of confidence and something, chances aren't works. Yeah. But I I but don't don't do the like what works for you. I understand all that. Okay, Okay, I won't, but um, like, because then you're just saying that you're open up. Like like if I if I say, oh, I like h you know blue, like I like to this rappola, and I'd be like, all right, dude, if you've got confidence in it and it works for you. But that's a different conversation than like what works. You're humoring someone when you say that maybe. But um. The research I've seenato is that when they have tried to tie in lunar activity to all these different movements, whether it's UM for breeding purposes, for like um, Charlie Alsheimer has had an interesting theory on on on what triggers. It's a second, it's a harvest moon that kind of sets things in motion. Well, when the researchers go in and actually look at this stuff and back back date, you know, when fawns drop because they I backed it stuff pretty accurately and when yeah, they have a known gestation right exactly, so that they go back and they look at that stuff and they do it year after year, and they they basically always beat up Charlie's um theories on that and they beat up in an inn our theory you see on on lunar cycles. And because what triggers the rud is ten things that you can't untangle them all, Yeah, like photo period, all kinds and see like that wouldn't I would never try to take on a guy like in my generation, the guy that we all looked up to is John Wooters, the old deer Here's the deer expert for Peterson's Hunting magazine back in the seventies, eighties and nineties. And John really belied in the moon he um, Yeah, he really followed the lunar phases and he always talked about I think his his belief was that the full moon was a terrible time to be out there hunt in the daylight. And the thinking is least it's always articulated to me by people who really abide by lunar cycles, is the thinking is that it's extra light out m and deer are getting all their business taken care of at night because deer are like a crepuscular animal, their peak activity is low light, so dawn dusk. But here they're having like a crepuscular like atmosphere all through the night, dark but not dark. Did they get all their business taking care of and then they're all tired out and they just go to bed when it gets daylight up. That's like, that's your understanding, now, Uh, just to throw just throw, uh, you know, just to mix it up a little bit. Down South America where they hunt nocturnal, where they hunt like nocturnal animal. They don't like to hunt at night during a full moon because some nocturnal animals have such fidelity to the darkness that they won't come out on the moon lit night because they're there their defense mechanisms like dark. They won't hunt the way till the moon sets and then go hunt. Certain nocturnal animals like that thing. If it's at all light, that's something bitch does not come out. I'm pretty sure they found the same thing with protul their studies in North America. There's certain um, certain small mammals that won't come out bright moon because they know the owls can see them easy. Yeah, there be killed and and I guess I'm always somewhat skeptical of the all night activity thing. And I think, well, deer have their patterns. They're gonna be up in their feet all night long. And even that's seen deer at night a lot of times. But I find beds out in my back little woods where I live that I know there's no deer in there in the daylight, because that's a little open woods. There's never deer in there in the daylight. They might move through a dawn or dust, but they don't. They don't spend daylight and there's just too small little spot. But where you go back there in the winter, there was always fresh deer beds from overnight, you know, so they're not on their feet all night. I never I never buy that that there's you know, there's on their feet, Like ohm, sweet, I can get everything I was gonna get taken care of, taken care of. They ever have sex with all the deer I was gonna have sex with, eat all the food I was gonna eat up, get all that taken care of. And I don't need to be running around like some more on come Come daybreak another handle deer to also have incredible night vision, that their eyes really are are built for that night time activity. So I don't like they're walking around stumb link to the dark on moonless nights. Yeah, I just but I really don't argue that a hold off a guy has the data and it works for him. The thing I would say, though, to a lot of these guys that say, well, my observations on my trail cameras, I never see any kind of good activity during certain hours on certain days the moon, I think as that realized up the scientific rigors though, you know, I really you have a guy that's a scientifically modeling guy that can put all his data together and really cross check that stuff. As I stood that kind of scientific rigor, I doubt it because most of us aren't sing. You're doubt And so if God came down and put a gun to your head instead, do lunar phases matter or not? And you had to say it has yes or no, I'd say no, I just I just go hunting. I just go hunting and putting them I because well, the thing I have to I have to tell you this is one of Pat's favorite subjects, what phase of the rut we're in? It's inside joke with him and I free here because we have some mutual well a friend of his acquaintance of mine who just I can't get on the same page with these deer and what what phases of the ruddy was? So in the fall I'll contact Pat every once in a while and just ask him what phase of the rut do you think we're in? So moving to moving to anecdotal, what's your take on? What's your take on lunar phases? Dog? Just like rob person observations, don't you ignore what what you like, if anything you read just because you like to pay attention to dear and who's shooting to your wind and what and how? And you know, I really don't even have an opinion about it because I feel the same way I see, Dear, look at me, do a little shining and the fall we'll see. I'll see dear lying in fields you know when when you can shine, you know, before ten o'clock at night. Um, I always think your activities based way more on what the weather. I was just wanna say the same thing. I mean, I know you asked me yes or no? A gun to your head. Question, but God, God with a gun, Well, God would't need a gun. Gotta just be he has it, so you know he's serious. My My big thing comes to the rut is the daytime temperature of the daytime templtures abo above forty five degrees. That's when I get bummed out, Like God, the dear probably be moving as much this this for him to get the heavy quote on. I just think that, well, there's more of a bigger pets. You're you're an air tip man, much more, much more than nooner. Yeah. Now let me ask you one last one. Does cameo matter? And I'm not talking yeah, just like I just want you to give me sort of from because because you stay up on the on the research. Okay, so not not personal experience, but just like from your assessment of the research. Uh, what are dear seeing? Does camel matter? Like? What's kind of like the current fashionable feeling the thing I wrote this recently about camel basically and colors, you know, like if you' getting the whole color vision, what can deer seeing colors? And the biggest thing by far is movement. It doesn't matter what you're if you move make any kind of sudden jerky movement. Deer are just so tuned in to movement and they half but I think it's like a three year and ten degree area they can see that they don't see real right above them, which we most of us know. But that's why, dear, they get bow hunted a lot, walk around looking at what they do. Yeah, but but but because I remember growing up and being like, how's that somebody's going around looking up in the trees. Yeah, but um, what what we do know about camel is that if you're not choose a camel that what I've been reading on this is that dear, dear can see shades of gray, and so the lighter shades are gray and the letters tans. They think they shouldn't be able to ascertn those lot better than can the darker hues. So that the camel that has a lot of a lot of light tanned light grays, I'd avoid those. So that like the cou camel that's meant to look like you're laying on a gravel bar, that's a lot of light grays. Yeah, I guess like where I hunt, I'd probably go with the darker stuff, is what I'm saying, but now there's environments for I would still say if I wasn't giving anybody advice trying to match for we are in a common sense, you know, yeah, you know, and you think that you think that the research bears that out, well, what the research has show, but they're not on some whole other trip seeing some whole other because you know, there's this stuff that came out about birds, like birds have a lot of iridescence in their feathers, and like people start to think that when the birds sees a bird's iridescence, it's on this whole other level that you can't even begin to think about what a turkey looks like to a turkey, or what what a I think this stuff had to do with green parrots or something. Some of the research it's like what he sees when he sees that thing, he's not he doesn't see anything like what you see. It's a completely different experience for him to see that. But see, I remember when they first come up to something really good color vision research back about I think it was the first thing that Dr Carl Miller from the University of Georgia put on the screen. What's a picture of a buck dressed up to the hunter he had. He had a little orange hat on, had some classes on. And the point teammate to start off his talk about what deer see says, until we can somehow tap into that animal's brain and actually see what information is passing through the eye into the brain and how he's perceiving that, we'll never know for certain exactly what they're seeing, because you know, their capabilities are so much different from ours. You know, like you read about a deer's nose for example, being like the human nose. I guess they think we have about five million cent receptors in our nose. That deer has like three million million cent receptors. So sent to us compared to a deers is irrelevant. You imagine when you know that we can't begin to comprehend what that deer's picking off all the error. So and I think there's probably things with their vision to that from what from what we know You get back to your question about what does the research show about the camel, Well, the research can't. I don't think anyone's like going in the research as far as trying to match up how how different cameras work in different environments, because how would you do that? You know, the best they can do is the that's this researcher again at the University of Georgia where they have this this test set up to um show the deer colors on on lighted colors over feed bins. If they choose the wrong color, the feed bin won't feed feed bill, feedbin shuts well. Over time they get these dear train when they can start identifying colors, which which colors they can identify to know that well, ask for the food will be and what they've fallen there was that these lighter, lighter shades of gray and white, those kind of you know, lighter colors, they gets into bility discern lest pretty well. And you're saying, like if there's like blue and purple next to each other, then they can't sign up. But but but deer to there, they're they're blue. Ability to see blue again blows ours out of the water. We can't begin to comprehend how well they see. That's never heard, like I've read two our guys are saying like, like it seems that one thing is certain. Don't wear blue, yeah, yeah, and and but you know again, like banks, what you're saying earlier though, and this is just this is just anecdotal, but it's based off a ton of like a lot of personal experience. Okay, like I said, like Jackass on TV guy Ship, but a lot of first experience that I have had things come up, like when you're not moving, come up and they just can't they just can't comprehend you, or they're looking this is the probably trip me. Now they're looking, they're not putting it together. It's a threat, but they're curious about what they're looking at. So they're like, not that I see it, dear, I just see something I don't or not that I see a person or a threat. I just see something I don't understand. And they're looking at you, but not no fear. There's like they see something they haven't seen well, And then I think they're like seeing it's gotta be they're seeing like a collection of colors or a collection of shapes that's unfamiliar, because even coming toward it, ears perked forward coming at you, just being like hell is that more curious? The same way deer go up to trail games, it's like, yeah, what the hell's that thing? Those four and they go up to it to be like, what is it? You know? And I've seen um. I used to hunt um northwestern Ontario for deer quite often back in the in the nineties and in late nineties, early two thousand's, and it's my place I ever seen this. I the biggest, the buck I'm most proud of as a hunter that I killed was up in Ontario. And that buck I was looking at me for the longest time until I think he's looking at me for a long time before I actually saw him, because I was on this little precipice looking in this valley below me. There's a recent clear cut me a ten year old clear cut. And I looked up into the jackpines across from above yards away and I saw the haunch of a deer. I thought, that's gonna be a deer and I looked, there's only the third deer I saw it in seven days. I got my scope up because I knew it was a deer and it wasn't any thought about that, and I thought, that's a buck. I'm gonna be ready to shoot. I got sorry, yeah, on trigger hand, but I make a long story short, I got I got that scoope up a deer is looking right at me. It looked like the way he was looking at me is like he's probably watched me for a while, curious, curious, like what the hell is that over there? Because I often to see many humans in that particular area. And I killed him, and I bought two years later, similar thing happened to my buddy and I just guy named Bruce Ranta losing in Canora, Ontario. We're moving along this this old granite face looked across these big openings up in top right right. Not just like he rolls out of the ground, which he literally did, this book stands up and this looks at us. Didn't run off to like a typical deer around here would do. Just there looked at us. And I had time where I didn't. It wasn't like I took my time, but I hit the ground and got my rifle up and shut him off the prone position and nailed him and he went down. And so I thought, that's twice I've had bucks in these areas that are hunted very often just looked me over out of curiosity. You know, they don't do They're never curious about what they smell exactly. Yeah, they never questioned their nose. That's I think that you can take that one to the bank. Ye, I don't need no outdoor columns and tell me that, well, can you throw out the stories? I want to know why you're most proud of that, because because because just because that sty conditions. No. Yeah, it was a really tough hunt. It was. I had eight days to hunt it, and I was I was bound, determined not to leave till I put in my full time, and going into that seventh day, I've only seen one deer distance where s Norton and I had one little buck I passed up the first day, which I was not gonna go all the way down Tarry and shoot a four corn, you know, so I let it go. But I got down to where I knew I was done in my final afternoon, I want more and more in the goal. And I another reason I was proud of it, because I remember was a big old fatty. It was a big book. He wied to forty dressed out. I said, a beautiful cathedral type ract. It's a real tight thirteen and a half being spread. Beautiful deer and what was what I was really one of the things I was proud of too, not only the fact I persevered through that kind of tough hunt and I got up on the spot and it's like two o'clock in the afternoon. There's actually one fifty one fifteen the afternoon. Because I looked my watchupter I killed him, and I was looking around, and I thought, this is a cool spot I might come back through tomorrow morning. And I had when these old GPS units, from the original GPS units that Lawrence made it that this tall, and they had these in a big cargo pocket and marred locking that spot in. And then as I snapped a little button number in that little snap, and I thought, God, that was loud. And I thought, and it was a quiet deal like today, I thought, before I budge a bear, look around real carefully before I budget, I thought, I looked around and see that haunch and I killed him. I thought, uh, you know so often you do that kind of thing, you get you down. Couldn't have got it done without my lower ants, yeah, I think. And then and now that's from the beauties. One of the beautiful things about hunting. It's those kind of little odd twist like that. For all I know, just because I stopped long enough what I'm thinking you happened when I'm back, I backtracked that buck in the snow. It it looks like came down off this hill. I betchered about the time I was playing around that GPS unit came up in a little spot, and I think what stopped him was that that snap. Yeah, I snapped, and then he looked across and saw me, and I meanwhile, I'm looking down here scanning the hillside, and there he is. I shoot him. So but I always think, oh, there's little things that we always write off as you know, hunters skills. I think a lot of times just you were you, you got him because you stayed alert, but you also got because a fluke, you know, snapping the button. And I was going to say that hadn't seen a You were speculating that he hadn't seen a human before, and you were on this press spiss that might have been a spot that he was familiar with, and he goes, that doesn't belong there. And so since he didn't feel you were a threat, he's just standing there and I wasn't moving. It's like Steve said, Yeah, I've definitely been like fortunate to hang out in areas where you can safely assume they have never encountered a human and it's just it's a different experience, is they You know, the way that high pressure animals react to humans is a learned behavior. You know, there are a thing that goes into this too. As far as um why it might have been looking at me that long with dom seeing, I think came on headed to a hot pink the um well, because at that this tense that I was probably twenty five yards away and from from the best guests the researchers can make on deer vision, they figured the dearest vision is probably bought the equivalent of our vision. That we don't know what that means if you's like visions, you know, perfect good vision, really good human vision. They figured that there is about twenty one hundred that what we see clear a hundred they see. How's that work? Um, basically I can't. I'm not going to explain this stuff. But it's worse, far worse than ours, And so they probably see kind of a blurry image at that range in a hundred yards, they probably can make it out, but it's not really sharp like our I got out. I was really sharp vision like me wearing glasses at a hundred yards, I can see I can make things out prefine detail, and that the best research they've done now recently. Then, you know, like Carl Miller will say, if I get down to chemo patterns, you could probably do really well as it's a blurry pattern, you know, not not you don't need all these fine details because deer can't see us find details anyway. Alright, anything you want to add, i'd something I want to end there was we were going to talk at possibly about the U League, the movement to league lies sail dear me. Yeah, yeah, because I think I feel like you wrote a thing I didn't. You wrote a thing kind of like, oh yeah, you know, it could be cool. Maybe not. What I did is I might be a little bit pissed at you when I read that. I remember you telling me that, yeah, because Steve, Steve, I remember I was somewhere, I was like out of town somewhere, and I read that and I was like, damn, pant Dirk. And I remember you writing me and said just like just saying no, I totally disagreed with that, and I which I which I don't want to be on that path. But I really, I really like that. I don't mind people disagree with me. I was figuring out, which this is the mode you probably wrote it in the big Hey day when everyone thought that across the country that we're just gonna have more and more and more and more, dear well, which is like like turkeys, So we got a lot of turkeys, let's start shooting hands and killing them year around. And my interest in it was, um, what what triggered my interest in it in all seriousness was I was I was visiting my daughter who was stationed then at the Navy Hospital in Naples, Italy, and we went to we spent UM some time out in Florence. So this is two thousand thirteen. We went into this really neat restaurant in Florence and they're in the menu it says for um is for venison and for pork that these meats during the hunting season are fresh fresh from that day, and the rest of the season they're frozen. I thought, that's kind of cool. You can actually get you know, you know, hunter killed that UM. It's called the European model. Of it's called the European model. And so do I need to I don't need to tell you about all about American history. But well that it got me thinking, know that I just come from Sweden. I've been up in Stockholm and up up in Stockholm in Sweden. Um people up there, it's the thing that they do is they they don't If I want to sell Yanni some meat from last year's dear, I could do that in Stockholm in Sweden, and and but a lot of them don't. I mean they can legally do it, but a lot of them still don't do it. They but a lot of them they'll take meat and just give it to them as a gift, like like we kind of like what we do. But but but I guess my point in that article, the thing I got talking about by interviewing some of the Swedish hunters and some of the different people who have worked in both systems, is that you know, we're we could we could probably do this. But I take a whole lot of rethinking of the American model and how we do things in America. But there are there are certain circumstances which I think was what maybe what piste you off was that there are areas in this country where we really have hard time knocking deer numbers down, and so if you could give guys financial incentive to knock them down in some these suburban areas, whatever it might be, may not be a way to deal with this. And I just think in some cases, well it might be cases where are thinking might have to evolve in that. And I don't know if it's not happened anytime soon, I'll doubt would happen anytime soon. But I guess I'm one thing I liked about that that UM, the work I did in that from my workings UM talking to people on Sweden. One interesting nugget I found was that seventy of Swedes have eaten or eat wild meat every year, seventy percent of them. And I've looked around and I found some information for our country and the best data I can find in our countries about of Americans in a typical year will eat some kind of wild animals. So that than that. Yeah, and so again these all research is perfect. You know, It's like we talked about earlier, with populations, you never know how accurate all that stuff is about falling interesting, how much more those Swedes? And plus for you buy if you buy um hunter killed meat and Sweden, you're paying a real premium price for it. So what that does in their mind is that man, you want wild game, you're gonna pay You're not pay a price for it. And but then then but then they put a value on it, and that's really valuable to them. So when they can get it free, they think, oh, man, I have scored. And so they really have this higher appreciation of wild game that I'm not sure a lot of people in our country share, and which which worries me. And I don't know if I'm tracking I'm tracking you there, and I agree that that is the issue. So so that's the upside some things that when I wrote you that I don't agree with it, it was a couple of things. Um No, you're not like a real vocal advocate of this, you were just exploring the idea exactly. Um One, I think that like places, I mean, if you just look historically, places that now think they have this permanent problem with high deer numbers probably will not prove to have a permanent problem with high deer numbers. These things fluctuate wildly. So to go and like rewrite uh sort of the the to rewrite the underpinnings of our wildlife conservation success, which was the de commodification of wildlife and getting rid of market hunting, which saved American wildlife. To to try to address like a temporary problem that, by some estimates isn't even really a problem um by radically altering how we perceive and manage wildlife in America just seems to me like like a a kind of an overshot right, like way too much? Gun go ahead, du So. I'm in the County Dear Advisory communitee here from Richland County, and one of the things that came up as we've been talking about reducing the dear population was, well, I only use one deer, and you want to give me four tags? What are we going to do with that? In? The donation system doesn't seem to be working that well. And I, you know, I have a handful of people that I give uh that I give venison too. I'll take it to the locker. I mean, I don't generally cut up here for other people. So I'll take it to the locker and they'll pay the fee and they'll go and pick it up. And so at the County Deer Advisory Committee, people were, you know, asking about well, how do you how do you have this list of people? And a young man in his late twenties, I guess, stands up and says, you know what I'll do. I'll put a spreadsheet together of people who are and we can advertise it on social media or whatever, and we'll address that problem by here hunters who or you can sign up and say I'd like to have some venison, but I'm not a hunter, and then we can make that connection rather than like you know, feed the hungry or you know those sort of things, but given to the food pantry or in addition to that. Um. Great, And so there's the answer, sorter to the temporary problem. Use. Yeah, I'm all for a little bit of philanthropy. Um. Another problem I see, whether it is it brings in the commodification. Okay, so the commodification of wildlife, and then you're gonna also further commodify access. So I usually try to look at things like I'll oftentimes ask myself what's better for hunters and fishermen and wildlife. Right, So when I'm looking at issues, and I could just see that of all of a sudden, um, these deer all right, we're going back to the eighteen seventies and eighties all over again, when we shut off all of our wildlife and sold it to Eastern markets, that all of a sudden, the deer on my place are real valuable. I'll be you know, there's no way that the neighbor kid that uh moss my lawn and all my cousins and ship are gonna come over here and hunt like the old days. I'm letting this go on a profit deal, and we're gonna make some money on these deal and it's just gonna be the same thing all over again. Man, So he shouldn't have written that damn article. The other thing I'd say too, that that might prevent what you're describing is that in our country we're really buttoned down, you know, our our way of doing things compared to the way Sweden does it. We're Sweden let people just walk over and sell something and let it go, and our country, chances are we'd probably say before we commercialize this, we gotta get an inspection system, we gotta get this, we gotta do that, and we can't just let people start selling walking up the kasbar up here and selling them vaness and burger, that kind of things. So we'd there'd probably be so many different things because like in Sweden, in Stockholm, from what I understand is they don't have some big inspection system coming in there and checking that guys um saying well, it's you know, a pound or whatever it might be in in Sweden compared to ground beef, which is you know, fifth of that or half of that. I don't think our country would um go along with that. I think they want that's our country likes to have everything so safe, everything is so perfect, to the point where it drives me efficient way anyway. Yeah, so I I just don't think it. I think we're a long ways from having that happened. But I really agree with you that. Um. I guess my worry as I look at deer these days, I think, well, in my lifetime, deer went from virtually low numbers. You know, when I started hunting back in the early seventies, the early weren't many deer in Wisconsin. That point, we need to add some many severe hunt severe winter is really tough hunting statewide. We had seventy one killed in nineteen seventy one. Well, we killed more of that with the bow and air on nowadays, and now we're at this time of super abundance and we have CWD croc waste disease moving through you know, this area we're sitting right now, I really worry about We're gonna be with the white tail deer in in in a couple more decades, you know. Uh. The great conservationist and writer Jim Pozwits says that, uh, you know, we used to have a lot of we used to have a lot of crimes that we would committ against wildlife based on its scarcity. Right. He says, Now we're entering into a new thing where we um we have crimes of abundance, meaning that that the greed comes back in, you know, the greed, the commodification, the restricting of access. You know. He says, these are all things that we're just learning, like as a culture, we're learning how to deal with how good we have it. And sometimes the response is, you know, to just put your arms around it, like mind, mind, mind. So yeah, that was got any anything else? No? That was good. I like that. That was a good conversation. Are you glad you brought that up? No? No, the whole the two hours we just had that, Doug. Um, I've got to sit and listen to you guys talk before. In fact, the first time that you and I met to me and dark and yeah, and the first time that Steve and I met. The first person I called when when Steve came out here was was Pat to say, Hey, had this guy coming writer? I think you guys would uh get along and and uh have some interesting conversations. And as I recall that that cold ass hunt that we had that that first time we did. And so it's uh gratifying for me to sit here and uh, I have the folks who follow the podcast and and and you're show and everything, UM get to be in on one of those conversations because I've been involved with several of these with you guys Spain way back. Yeah, well going back to two or something like that. Pat, you know you'd like to add, Yeah, Um, I think I told you in an email every day I listen to your podcast. I think I've listen to every podcast you guys have produced because I like them, and so I knew not to get caught caught off guard by um coming in with a half asked you know, concluding thought you came you came pre concluding, yeah, because you you always jump on guys who just say all, thanks Jeve for having me on and the thing I was But the thing I um hearkened back to with the time I've known you, is that I really like the fact how you are reaching out to the non hunters of this country. The way you operate just started straightforward. You don't apologize for being a hunter. You invite people into your world and show them what's why this matters and how this matters. You know that the idea that the example you gave me in an article I wrote about seven years ago, was that when you invite people into your home, most people come in and they don't know what to make of antlers, like what we have in this room right now, And I'm as beautiful as they are. Yeah, Like you and I can look around this room and we see the differences the nuances of these different antlers. Oh, my wife, even though she's in the hall, she doesn't really get into that stuff. But when they can start realizing that each one those deer up here has a story, Each one those deer up there has provided a meat that has been consumed the people in this room and outside in their families. They understand that that's hunting is not so bad then, because you come across the likable, normal, personal thinking, intelligent, caring person. And the story I'll always go back to that always was formative for my understanding of non hunters. Is back in the seventies when when it was still popular to hitchhike. Everyone hitchhike. When I was first driving mere picking up a college girl, I was May sixteen years old and I was driving driving a little beater when he picked her out, were you kind of thinking like, who knows? No, she was she's a college girl, so she's older than me. I knew, I didn't never didn't have a chance to wife. And I I was shy as hell as you know teenagers, so I never as I scared the girl's basically, but I remember, um I picked she was hit shaking down on the u W mass and campus. I picked her up, and I just come back from hunting out east of town, and I had two dead rabbits on the console between our bucket seats, and this old g t O. Yeah, and she looks these these two dead rabbits laying there, you know, between our seats, and she says, did you just shoot those? You know, because she she was obviously you know, she knew someone hunting us. And so yeah, I was out hunting up by some prairie and got these rabbits, and she's the first question she asked them was the second question was going to eat them? I said, oh, yeah, I love eating rabbits. She says, okay then, and that's really I think where most people are. If you make us to that animal you kill, they're they're all for it. And I always stuck with me that that um that woman's question, and then knowing I was being judged by how I answered it, luckily I answered it, you know, the way she was hoping i'd answered. I. I didn't kill his rabbits for joy, just for the excitement whatever might notate them our body. The historian Randall Williams um, I've had this conversation with a number of times where he says that, uh. He talks about how hunters have a persecution complex. He says, there are a small minority of Americans hunt, a smaller minority of Americans are vehemently opposed the hunting. The vast majority of Americans are just just in the middle. Yeah, they're not particularly bothered by it, they don't engage in it. That the first time in your head, but in the in your average hunter's head, it's like, yeah, yeah, and that's I'm the first time I've heard in the radio, I think was on Geane Farroca's show on and p Are Maybe is that you remember that? And I didn't know who you were, but my wife was listening one day says, as guy's gonna be talking at on hunting at five o'clock. And my expectation, honestly was that, you know, I've been around talking about hunting for as I putting my job for at that point, almost thirty years already, and I thought, oh god, some some guys that get on national public radio and talked about, well, if you don't hunt the deer they'll get they'll start starving, and they'll get diseases, balat population and all those kind of trite things that people have been saying for years. And I always would always dry me about that was that, But that's not why you hunt. You don't see yourself as a pest control officer. You don't see yourself as some guy who's doing the world of service by being out there. You hunt because it's fun and you're getting something out of it that's worthwhile to you personally. And I and I never feel like I have to explain to people why I hunt, because I think well ship trying to explain to people why I love my wife. That's hard, you know. And you soon started taking all the different things that you love about your wife before long song. It's almost trivial. Guys that just used the like the controlling over a bundt like I need to do it because they're over populated. I'm like if you went out to the farmer's place that you hunted on and said, hey, man, me and my buddies, we're here to help you out, Like I'm real concerned about your agricultural practice. Now, I understand you've got any number of problems out here. I'm here to help you most farmers. And I could be like, son, the thing I need most of you is to go out and hunt them bucks. No, they're gonna be like, grab a shovel. I got. I got just the thing for you, boys, if you're here to help me out. This was this one of those fun things of life that happened once a while, you know, so I listened to radio and and then I get your Your show is done, your interviews done, And I said to my wife, guy's pretty smart. I like that. And then I promptly forgot your name, and I you know, and then then about it couldn't have even been a couple months later, Doug lets me know that you're coming out here, and I I finally started to connect that's the guy I heard on the public radio show that one day. And then I go and I read your books, and I said to my wife, you gotta read this guy's books. So this you'll like this. And my wife, Penny, she's from New Jersey, she'd never she had never heard family Jewish people had never met a hunter in their life to like him into their life. And to your observation about people's attitudes, they didn't have an attitude toward hunters because they didn't they didn't know any hunters. There was a foreign concept of them. Why would they why would you even think about hunters and hunting? And so when they saw this guy coming into the into their world, and they see pictures of their pregnant daughter out in the garage, helped me cut up a deer. I think they thought that was kind of cool. Yeah, so I boring happens every day and then something some guy comes and cuts the deer up. Yeah, and and and and then the and the fun thing too is I think they could relate to it because um Penny's mother good Jewish name like Goldie. She was still in those days going in New York City, going to fish markets, bringing home a whole fish, like bigger than your blue gills out here today, gout gutting them and cleaning them and doing all the things that make them ready because they understood that, you know, this isn't all. Not all food in New York comes in in rappers. You know, you got to yourself. So I thought that was for me another eye opening experience where I got to meet people who didn't hunt, and they didn't If you go after those people and start acting against us, against them, well they're definitely turned off down, you know, I think, I think, what the hell's there at? Like I didn't realize that we were in a fight, but now they were making me aware that we are exactly But and you can't blame them if somebody comes after them, it makes them feel it inadequate for not caring about their particular activity and ever anything, what what kind of bullshit's that? That's a good concluder. Thank you, Um, thank you very much. Now. I often in my old age, I I tell people like, uh, if you like, like generally, if you'd like to read someone's work, you know you don't want to meet him because they're never gonna like you don't live up right. No one lives up to them selves on the page. And I've been fortunate to read to meet a lot of writers that I really admired and uh, and usually walk away from it wishing it hadn't happened. But I like knowing you and having known you as long as I did, because uh, it's fun to have the experience, which happens to me often to be did an article catch my eye? Okay? And um, and I'll be reading it, I'm like, oh, that's interesting. And I'll be reading it and I'm like, oh that's good, right, and I'd be like Funk's pet I love that love. Yeah, the deer selling thing. I didn't put it together right away because like you know, like most yeah, you just don't. Writers get pissed that people don't look at who wrote something. But like when you buy a movie, do you go like, oh, let's produced, what studio prot this movie out? It's like it's like, you know, most people like don't engage things that way. Novels are different, but like just reading when you're reading like a bunch of magazine articles in the magazine, so how oftentimes back check like I'll be impressed substance and execution, and they're like, who wrote this? Yeah, in the same way, I don't. I don't think a personally when something when someone like last week I was I do. I do some running articles too now for the Green Bay newspaper and like running around running down the road. Yeah, I don't know why, but late in life I've just discovered running. And I wrote this article last week about basically the importance of having a strong core, which basically is everything from your crotch up to your neck. You know, if you don't have a good wrong core gets strong. But all those kind of things you can't. You can't be much for a runner. You got get in shape first, be freaking become a decent runner. Well, I wrote this article, I thought it was pretty good, and I paying attention. Well then I but then I what was Doug suffered a sprinting injury yesterday ahead it was fun about those that I about A week goes by and I'm talking to a guy who's uh, I was actually getting my my my um my running stride analyzed by real role um analysis done, not because I was having injury problems about. I mean, I'm gonna and the stuff once for all and stopped being injured. I'm going to figure out what what I'm doing wrong and whatever. And this guy's told me it was great artically read their day. He really liked it important to the core. I said, why I wrote that, God, you're right that this is you you know, excuse my names, and puts the five pararticular, and yeah, it feels great, And I'd be lying, you know, imagine he said, like, you know, there's just so much misinformation out there, pat just a matter of fact, just here day I was reading sometim I've had that happen. So yeah, who late in life jogging jackets exactly goes killing all kinds of innocent deer, which I happen to know. And he's saying, yeah, yeah, so it's good. Yeah, that, more than any other reason is the reason why you should try to do good work. Yeah, m ship, that's that's one thing I always tell you know. I get get invited to speak to college classes once in a while, and my my um my daughters used to involunteer me for various class projects to come and talk to people. And the point I always made about writing, because it's a very visible craft, is that you never know who's reading you, So make everything you write your best effort, don't just do a half passed effort. But I think that applies anyone in any any job. You never know who's watching. And so to me, when I when I when actually right, I always figure at some point someone's gonna pick up that newspaper, pick up that mag zene and read it. And and a lot of times two people don't. You can't expect people to read by lines. There's they're going to straight into the article. If you don't catch him the first couple of paragraphs, they're out and they're on. They never looked to see who wrote it. And let's you see people like yourself and I did the same thing. I'll read the article if it's really good, all look at the name. A lot of times you won't recognize but not if you see that name two or three times, it starts thinking in and so so it has to be not only good one time, but good every time. And then sometimes topics don't interest people, they won't read it, and that's fine. Uh, my wife doesn't read everything I write either. Really well, the worst mistake made my writing career is about thirty years ago. I asked my wife one time what you thought about column I wrote? And her honest response, wash, you've written better. Yeah, and I've never I've never asked her since then what you thought of anything I've written. But you know, a lot of times you'll tell me I like that column today or whatever it might be. But yeah, but like I um that my news newspaper column appears in our local newspaper now, so she sees it, but it gets delivered to the door. Yeah, yeah, every Saturday morning she sees my smiling my smiling gap today. Yeah. Alright, well, Pat, thanks for coming on. Thank you. We'll have to have you back talk more about um. You know, what do you do when this moon when it's mooney out? Well, see if your opinions have changed. Well, I wasn't gonna tell you, though, Steve, I really met when I said about the way you're handling yourself, the final final thought on making that is that you know your final concluding twenty five years ago. I've including Colm twenty five years ago, and it's basically the whole idea that we don't we do not have any hunt results. They're talking on hunting's behalf, who are famous for being hunters, and I think I look around now and I see guys like you by Warren Brandy Newburgh, guys who are making their mark out there because they have gotten to a certain stage in life, stage in their careers were they're recognized as smart hunters who are doing something for not just hunting, but overall conservation efforts. And you guys meet people who can communicate to other people outside our little circles of of hunters. And I look at guys like Joe Rogan and I don't. I don't listen to Joe's podcast as carefully as a listening to yours this because they're so long and I'm I'm always, you know, running from one topic to the next. I think it's because of those kind of contacts you established and you network with and you enjoy they're smart people who can You reached an audience that we as I can't reach, and I think we should appreciate that and thank you guys for doing that. And I really say that with deep sincerity. So thank you man. It's very kind of you. Oh you bet. That's the best including thought. Take a pointer from that, Doug extending to do a concluding thought. Do you like my concluding thought? That's why would have to seriously thank you for coming on, man, thank you. We're gonna have you back to talk more about all this stuff. It's always fun, ladies and gentlemen. Pat dark and find his writing. Just look him up on the internet, right, Oh yeah, you're just having Pat Dirk and outdoors and you'll find a lot of stuff. Or open your eye. If you live in Wisconsin and the newspaper comes banging up against your screen door, open it up and see. Yeah, support local journalism. That's that's my my best witch for people. And if you live in Michigan, go figure out what watershed you live in. All right, take care