00:00:08 Speaker 1: The Hunting Collective is presented by Element. I guess I grew up on an all day. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode A one hundred and forty of The Hunting Collective. I'm Ben O'Brien. Say hello, Philip, Hello, ben Jamin Big show today, Phil Big show too. That's what they tell me. That's what they tell it. Phil's nervous. You're nervously. I mean, I'm not really nervous. Yeah, we didn't. We didn't. We didn't pre record our conversation with Barry. So that's all gonna be. It's all gonna be live. That's true. We have not done this yet. Yeah, so we're gonna call Dr Barry Kay Gilbert. Um, if you haven't listened to, we'll give you a moment here. If you haven't listened to a contentious interview of episode eighty two of the show, believe it's at two from last year. Go back now and listen, and we're back. I hope you had fun with that. UM. Safe to say, as I said at the end of last week's episode, that conversation is the most talked about conversation we've had here on the show. It has spawned hashtags, memes, uh, cocktails that has spawned a lot of things in the in the TCHC world. So what better to do than to to have Barry Dr Barry K. Gilbert on to talk about to reflect on it, to talk about, you know, what he really thinks about hunting and predators, and just briefly chat with him and try to, you know, essentially bury the hatchet in a way that'll makes all feel good about that last interaction. So I figure, why not fill the floor? Is yours too to comment here, bud Well, I mean I kind of mentioned it last week. I'm just I have mixed feelings about reconnecting with Barry because I just feel like, um coming to to a to a middle ground place of understanding didn't seem like a possibility after the last show, And I it's it's become kind of an infamous incident on th HC. And uh, I think it may it might be, I don't know. For for for my own selfish reasons, I think just leaving it as is, you prefer it like a legendary thing that happened a long time ago. It's just it's it's it's more fun than revisiting it. Yeah, I just I feel that I think about Barry so much, and that we talked about him so much that we should give him a chance, at least a chance come back on and talk for a brief time at least about what happened and all the things that have occurred since. And so that's what we're gonna do. Um and we're all we filled our filver cup with a beautiful orange element salt recharge, and we're gonna work our way through this together. And so we will call Barry. We're gonna give Barry call in just a moment. But before we do that, I believe this episode six, season two not so sharp moments, play the jingo phill not so sharp home, and you don't have to hop, so you don't have to be all right. Here we are. I like seeing that jingle and asleep Worksharps announce for sure a moment episode six, Here we go. PJ writes in he said, since you're not gonna get my name right, I'll go ahead and do the thing you like. P J is pronounced p J. Weader hold. If my name and owned is not enough to get on the podcast, I have two stories to share that happened in the same week. So here we go, Philip PJ. Weiterer hold. We've since moved, but this takes place in rural Pike County, Ohio. Living there came with some things I liked and some things I was less fond of. One of those things I was less fond of was rats. There's no fear of them, just a general dislike for their droppings being everywhere. It would seem they have the same aversion to pooping outside as philled does. They would poop anywhere the livestock feed was not to mention they'd eat the feed too needlessly to say they needed to go. After trying traps unsuccessfully, we moved to bait stations, which worked wonderfully. The only problem was they would get some of the poison and then wandered deliriously around the barn. Even though they were rats, I still felt the need to end their suffering. Long story short, This leads me to getting Grandpaul's twenty two pistol and patrolling the barn any chance. I got one warm, dark July night, well after the dew had set in, the bedtime stories read and the kiddos were nestled under their blankets. I loaded the old six shooter donned ahead lamp and made my way to the barn. As this was not my first trip, and occasionally I had happened a surprise and unsuspecting rat. This was a shoes off situation. As Remy Warren puts a nice reference, I approach light off quiet as a mouse slipping through the wet yard, as if a white tail was bedded just out of sight. I could hear them rummaging around the walls, but spotted none, even though I searched diligently. Moments passed as I stood motionallely searching for a silhouette to no avail, feeling defeat, slinking closer and closer. By the second. I decided to get more proactive. Switching headlamp on brought more certainty that I was going to head in without seeing a single rat. It seemed as though they were taunting me with their menacing squeaks and ominous scratches behind the kickboards. That's when I decided enough was enough. I decided I had moved the feed barrel, allowing me to crouch down near the wall, laying my face against the cool condensating metal, straining to peer down the narrow gap between the boards. What do you think this is going, Phil, I have no idea. Please continue. I was thinking like a rat attack. I mean, he's definitely setting it up with a lot of attention here. There's a lot of good storytelling. Well well done, PJ. To my amazement, there were sixteen beaty little eyes glowing in the light, busily milling about their business. I had made my mind up, headed to the house for ion ear protection, and swapped the long rifle out for a rat shot. I was walking with a purpose and a confidence that should have been a red flag. Having thoroughly soaked my feet in the dewy grass, I neared the barn once again, contorting carefully to a position that would allow me to hopefully get more than one rat with one shot. I slowly, gently and quietly placed my bearded cheek on the cold, damp metal wall. That's when it struck me, that exact moment, in my confidence, at certainty, I had missed the steady tick tick tick of the electric fence controller. There it is. It was borrowed from my late grandfather and had enclosed sixty years before, powering my little two acre pasture. At the time, having touched both the ground and line side. The electric fence controller delivered quite a solid, jolting shock. Everything went black for what felt like half of a second. Presumably the impact of my knee hitting the dusty ground jolted me awake. It truly confused intosorient me like never before, left me kneeling there pondering what had happened, slowly coming to my senses, my ear muff laying on the ground, the single six still griped tightly in my hand. The feeling that I had been kicked by my horse in the shoulder all seemed to pale to the strong metallic taste in my mouth, the electric fence controller laughing at me from my dreamy certainty tick tick. After gathering myself and making it to my house, my suspicion was confirmed by two red marks on my shoulder and experience I planned to avoid the rest of my life. P J. Phil play the jingle word not so sharp moment, So you don't have all right? P J. Your son of a b you're you're not so sure? Mom is gonna get you a field sharpener from our friends at work. Sharp. If you get some time, go over their YouTube page. They got some kick ass sharpening tips for you over there. So thanks to work sharp, Thanks to you, p J. Phil commentary ranks top ten. Not even close. Good storytelling. I mean we I don't think we've we've had an electricity story yet. That's new. That's new. Not giving a lot of credit there, PJ. I felt like that was some of the best build storytelling. Oh yeah, the payoff wasn't there. He didn't get attacked, but like I was hoping he would get it as sensational as a as shifting your pants. No, no, but it's still not sharp, but not very good but all PJ and very good writing. So for that, you're gonna win that prize and hopefully if you ever do back to Plake County, there's less rats. All right now, ready, Phil, let's do it. We're gonna come up, Barrycake, Gilbert. Here we go, Berry. How are you, sir? Doing okay? Enjoying summer isolated pair on an island, which is kind of nice. I'm doing a lot of swimming and sailing. So you tell me, people, tell us how the pandemic has been, how the last few months has been for you and your family up there? Oh? Pretty good. Actually, we're at the low end of the of the pandemic. Everybody's going around with masks on and including going on our ferry or island. But I don't know anybody that's been positive how things are. I noticed Montana's in pretty good shape and going down to Yeah, it's been good. Were We were in the office for a while and then I got shuffled out because things are on the rise. But now it seems like things are leveling out. So, um, yeah, we feel good in Montana, Phil, you feel pretty good. We got fill our engineer here. Say hi, Say hi to Barry hey Berry. As it going, Yeah, I m hi. I Yeah, it's definitely. It's good to see a lot of people out out in masks around here. And um, it's a little less anxious than it used to be, which I think is good. People are just just moving moving on with their lives like they have to. So yeah, the border dam closed to stopped all chances of me going to Montana. I like to get down the Yellowstone, you know. I got a lot of friends hound that way. But well we can fly and if I want to go to Ottawa and fly to Bozeman, I can do that. But I'm I'm not sure, I'll get back into Canada. Yeah, we've had a few people come down from Canada, but it's a sketchy experience, one that you really want to have to come to Montana for. So we all, we definitely understand that. Well, we're glad we got you, man um. As as I was saying over email, we there. There's there's not been a conversation that we've had on this show, and we've had hundreds, I mean hundreds of conversations over time that got as much commentary, as much conversation going as what we called a contentious interview with you back last year, and we talked about you all the time, you know, we it's it's such a the thing that we talked about, predation and bears is such an important thing. We've been talking to a lot of individuals about it. Um But also I think just how you know, what was said, how it was said, how everything ended up, everybody had a reaction to it, and so time has past, time has passed, and I all I wanted to do is have you on and chat about you know, what had happened. And yeah, I guess my first question is what was after you came in and we did the interview. What happened in your world after we aired that thing? Uh not, not a whole lot. I had a couple of trolls that went on Amazon and duck shit on my book without you know, having seen it at all. They clearly were offended by me. One of the guys said, you know, I was old man that didn't get enough attention and I wanted more attention. And he said, you can believe this, he said, so we get it. You had a bad day, well, ship, I had a bad life after that bear nailed me and I had two months in the hospital on my back, so it was a little more in the bad day. But you know, I can see why people get cranked up. My My knowledge is limited to, you know, observing bears. I've had thousands of hours of doing it, and I challenge anybody that wants to take me on, say they've done more watching of theirs. But I'm kind of like an anthropologist watching a culture do its thing. So when it comes to you know, their attacks and on an expert when it comes to population biology and modeling and how many bears there are, Uh, I only know what I read and and what's in the press. You know, I try to follow the Grizzly Bear Advisory Committee that your governor put up, but apparently it hasn't come out with any recommendationship. But they've got eighteen people on there. I imagine they got twenty two opinions. That's well, That's the beautiful thing about what we talked about is that it it does bring in so many different opinions. We went recently and visited Yellowstone Park National Park and we tracked some mountain lions with a predator biologist by the name of Dr Daniel Staylor. His perspective was was a beautiful one to very tangible one. We just had Dr Vilarious Guist on last episode talked to him about his perspective. So we've been just trying to mind as many of these perspectives as we can, and they're just I think it all shows that this is a complex issue. There's a lot going on, and it really gets people's tackles up. And we've also I'll tell you, Barry had a neurologist on neuroscientist on and talked about kind of you know, our brains are the psychology of why some people really love predators or love grizzly berries particularly, and why some people have of such a negative reaction to them. And so it's been interesting to learn over time how these things come about. So it's it's good to do that. Do you do you feel like the sociology of people's values and whether they're going to change? You know, I try pretty much. I've read enough to stay away from that because I don't have any illusions about our delusions about changing people's mo lines. I just had my experience, and that's what my book was about, my thirty five or forty years experience with theirs. And at the end I try to take on some of politics and management because I'm offended that the conservation of theirs gets a dollar sign on it and the bears generally lose. But that's uh, that's just something that I learned from experience in a national park. We all think that national parks are total protection for bears, but they're not protected from fast vehicles or trains in Northern and Montana and a whole bunch of things. In fact, if you look at national parks, I looked at them and Jasper in Canada at one time, and and Yellowstone and the death of bears from humans is equivalent to a hunting season. I mean, it's not like they're totally put tect it. And the same goes for wolves in UH in Denali Park. And mentioned this in my book that one of the research bile is just there back in the guess was in the seventies told me every wolf pack in Denali Park UH is subjected to trapping because they reigned so widely, you know, and when they go outside the park, of course they get nailed. So so much for conservational wolves. Yeah, we were talking to Dr Geiss last week. We talked a little. He his his ideas, Like the two competing ideas he presented were this idea of protectionism and you know that was connected to environmentalism, and then this idea of intelligent intervention on the wildlife management side, which which meant hunting other tools for managing predator populations. Be interested to hear you, you know what you think about that as we because I, like I said, we've don four or five shows or I've tried to present as many varying opinions. We have Chris Derriman later who also who tends to be on your side of things when it comes to bears. But can you do you have any thoughts about this protectionism versus intelligent intervention. Oh? Yeah. One of the one of the conundrums I think about is why we went some endangered status to desire to have a hunting season in the three three states around Yellowstone. It just seems to me a transition. Once you've got to the number small as it is, say seven D eight hundred, six hundred bears, all of a sudden you have a hunting season on them. I mean, my impression from the media was that people couldn't wait to kill them, whether it's by hunting or let the ranchers nail them or shoot them from helicopters. So I I don't have much truck with trophy hunting. It isn't a bear, isn't something to eat. Although British column they had tried to have a season in which you could kill a grizzly bear if you took the meat home, and to me, that's a back door approach to conservation. I just think there's so much interest. You know, Yellowstone is the only place that people go to observed. There's photographs and all those sort of things, you know, Teeton Park and then you go up the coast of British Columbia. There are thirty businesses on the coast alone that emphasize they're viewing as part of their trips, whether whale watching or you know, narine mammals in general. So I could see going to uh they're viewing. Now it's trickier and rockies. You have to find a you know, a burn with a big berry patch where theres are concentrating. If you're trying to run a business taking people to see grizzly there's uh, it's tough to go and say South June, we're gonna go and look at grizzly bears. Even in Yellowstone. That doesn't work. Yeah, that's the that's the problem with a wild viewing in general. They don't they necessarily know they're being viewed or that somebody wants to view them. Can I ask you? Um? Another thing that happened from the last show is people want to jump to the conclusion that you're fully anti hunting, that all hunting in your mind doesn't work. And you kind of describe your your thoughts on maybe unglet hunting, hunting of deer and elk, and then hunting of a grizzly bear, Like what you just kind of throw that out there for everybody. Oh, I'm not anti hunting at all. Uh. I taught wildlife management. I wouldn't have the job if I was andy hunting. I think half my students had rifles in their half tons. And one guy asked me we were going to Yellowstone in the winter. He says, is okay, if I bring my thirty thirty and my half tongue, I might see a deer on the way. I said, I don't think that's going to work. But uh no, I think hunting is important to help. Dear you name the caraboo moose. That that gets a lot of people, uh interested in wildlife management. It's what how our country started. You know. Lewis and Clark shot just just under over a thousand antelope crossing a crossing the country, so they couldn't have made it without granted that isn't permitted hunting, but they lived off the land. And there's still people in Alaska that basically they're only protein is what they shoot or trapped or whatever. So I'm not I think hunting um pray ungulus um is uh absolutely traditional and I have nothing against it. When it comes to carnivores, I sometimes wonder h people with high powered rifles that sit in trees over salmon streams and shoot there called hundred yards. My daughter read something in my book and she says that it sounds like a search and destroying mission because the hunter isn't risking anything by sitting in a tree with a guide and some of them. If the hunters jumping, the guide will shoot the there. So I just don't see shooting grizzly there or either the telt or skull if you can keep the skull. And my impression is both people don't have much use for learning about the bears, that is following and photographing them and spending time observing them they want to and the coast of DC, you know, they flying in an aircraft. The guide out that takes them up for the halftime on a logging road, takes him up to the stand and if they're lucky, they can shoot it there and he can be back watching potball and drinking there in the afternoon. Now that's hardly a wilderness trip. Hunting there is just the a matter of going out for two weeks and doing a lot of trumping up and down mountains or up and down streams, whatever it is. So yeah, here where I'm going, it's the technology that it takes a bit out of the Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's what we and we talked about that those ethics a lot here, fair chase, fair kill, different ideas I think, you know, especially in that last numb you too, people take umbrage to this idea that yeah, we would generalize hunters or use a straw man of Yeah, maybe there there are plenty of asshole hunters out there. I'm sure plenty of people that do it. Umah. And you know, I've run into some people that in hunting camp where I I wasn't necessarily didn't necessarily feel like they had the same value system as I do. And you know, so there's no one here that's gonna say that it's a completely pure thing. But at the same time, those examples I feel are you know, rare and extreme, but they do happen, and so that's that's the balance. I think people that listen to the podcast would like to hear like, hey, look, conservation is complicated. Um let's talk about what what are the examples of this where this hunt works from a conservation element, and then you can boil down kind of like the personal motivation, because that's so varied and so impossible to nail down. Yeah, well the gold standard is fair chase. Right, you put out some effort, you take some risk yourself, uh to what you're hunting. Uh. Now, there isn't too much risk to a person at you're hunting h antilope on the prairies, wrong aren't, but there's still you have to know a lot about the animal to get up on a prong born and even if you're shoot her in the distance, it takes a whole lot of stocking to get within range. And you know, the nonfair chase. So they are the jerks that go out and see a herd of elk and start, uh you know, flock hunting or herd hunting. They just fire lead into the middle of a bunch of alk and hope that something clicks. To me, that's uh, you know, that's a matter of ethics and morality. Yeah, I mean, that's not something we except or promote here and and again I always people say those things to me. I've had other I had a vegan my friend, a vegan philosopher by the name of Robert C. Jones and he said, well, you're pretty thoughtful hunter. You feel like that's a rarity or the exception. I said, there's no way for for me to know. But I assume if I was a hardcore camper and somebody said, well, campers litter, I'd be like, yeah, those are not my campers. Those are you know, if there's somebody who's doing something to egal or extremely unethical, um, you know, no hunter or no hunting organization would would promote or accept that. So it's a that's a tough thing. I think that's a tough thing for listeners of this show to here because we all know that that's that's just not a great thing reaction to received. Was that on your blog or was that just people calling you and you didn't record it. I had a look at the number of your blog sites and went on meat Eater, and I couldn't find any commentary about Well, the post interview. I want to go over that a little bit. But the post on the instagram has hundred three or four hundred comments. Um, not that we need to revisit that right now. The post had a bunch of comments, and we get emails all the time um about you know, emails of the place where I like to get most of my commentary because it seems to be the most rational, the most less free thumbing it as it would be a commentary online. But it was one of like that converse Asian. I think it was because of the contentious nature of it, because you know, there was upset moments in it. I think that's what drew people in. But like I said, the reason number one you said in this show, I don't know if you remember this, you said that you didn't get a hat. Remember that you didn't get it. You didn't get a hat for him. So I'm gonna send you. Me and Phil are gonna Me and Phil are going to sign a hat and send you a hat because we're burying the damn hatchet. Burry Gilbert and send me the recipe for the SALTI Gilbert, Yes, and we're gonna send you that of that. But I should have cooled my jets earlier on. I think what happened with me is I I liked your set up there. I talked to the gals going in the front door, and I thought this wn't be really neat to talk about my book and some of the issues in my book, and somehow we got off the rail in fact, hit the third rail, it seems, and I just got tissed and I apologized for that. But there we hatch is buried. No need to apologize it. I think it in the end, like in the end for me as I thought about that, and I said, we we talked about you a lot on this show. We we talk about you know, those moments, and it's it's essential to learn from them, and it's essential to say, Okay, what happened there? Was it? Was it? The conversation? Was it? Kind of just did it happen randomly? How can we make sure that when we have a disagreement, a conversation where we have we know we're going to disagree, that we can work through and maybe we don't even find common ground, but maybe we still can can work through those you know, the feelings and emotions and try to get people to a point where some objective reasoning happened and people can walk away. No, and like there there can be a disagreement where people say we're just never going to agree on this, and we can move on from it and still learn something or other. Um well, and And the other point that I try to maake with people is that your conversation has to be as complex as the issue is. A lot of people want to simplify it, and uh, you know, speaking of all guys, he has a a straightforward, uh wildlife management model that he likes to work everything. And to me, that's a little too simple. Now. It works for vow because he's always been a a goat and sheep and elk hunter. He knows a lot about them, these written books on pronghorn and elk and MUI's But I just think I have a problem with that model being applied to all the carnivores. We if this isn't too harsh a statement, we have the war going on against carnivores and some people anyway you kill them, Like look at Alaska now there they've just decided that they want to get rid of more carnivores with the wrong notion that they're going to get more caribou and those hunting out of that, and that has both scientific basis whatsoever. I think, um that kind of thinking by the board of game. And these aren't trolls, you know, these are people that clearly they're political, but they're responding, I think to the majority of hunters who believe that if you have every berryer kill, you saved all of game that they're going to eat. And h we tried that with salmon at one time. The first Clonedia government in the fifties have people with high powered guns on government boats out shooting sea lions because they believe the sea lions were reducing the salmon. And of course it was over fishing and too many canaries and all that, and they decimated the salmon for a long time, but they decided to take it out on the carnivore. Yeah, I think I think it's like that's the key lines. I can remember the paper that I read decades ago, and they didn't have salmon and their guts at all or how that are a whole bunch of fish that had no commercial value. So that was almost hate the carnal bar or the flavor. Yeah, we definitely we talked. I talked about that with val guyst and some other things. And when we just this thing came up and I like what you said about like the conversation has to be as complex as a topic and that that just goes a show. I mean something that I've learned through talking to people on all sides of this issue is and you articulated, well, there there's some people that there's a protectionist idea, and then there's this idea that every for every wolf you kill, every bear you kill, you're saving x number of unglids or x number of deer and elk. And it's just not that simple on either side. Um. You know, there's there's cohabitation, there's population dynamics, there's so many things, and so you know, luckily we can have these these conversations that people can hear you know what essentially I think is your view on one side maybe vows on another, although both of your views I think have nuance to them. So that's what I wanted to make sure that people could hear from you again and we can laugh. Have a salty Gilbert. Salty Yilbert. By the way, Phil, you can attest, Phil can attest is delicious. I was skeptical and I was I was proven wrong. It is a very tell berry. What what it's what's all about? Well, it's it's it's got a it's got a packet of of element hydration electrolyte drink mix to keep it to keep you hydrated. Um, it's got some some hard seltzer water uh and and and vodka and it's uh, it's it's surprisingly balanced and smooth it is. But it is smooth and salty, salty like you were last year. Delight. So yes, we we hopefully we'll send you. We're gonna send you some packets of Element, which title sponsors this program, and uh, some Michael and stuff to celebrate in a hat. So we're gonna all you gotta do, Barry, We're gonna send all that stuff to you. All you have to do is send me a picture of you wearing the hat and drink in your salty Yielbert if you don't mind, Okay, I'll do that for sure, so we can consider you a copy. I don't have a copy here. No, you brought one, but I think you took it with you. You're mad at me. That was my day of condictiveness. I guess I'll nail you one. That's beautiful. I will. We'll trade you. I will. I'll get your address and we will mail you a THHD care package. Uh, and you mail me some books. Okay, all right, Barry. Getting back to grizzly bears. Uh. In the last couple of days on my thinking, Captain, I thought, you know, what do you want to talk about? Do you want to talk about their behavior with you? Dan and felt, let's ignore the trolls and their values. But what I came to think about was our relationship with theirs and the relationship of theirs to their foods. Like the behavior theirs on salmon streams is totally related to the surplus of food. And the bears they're like black bears. I mean, they're real pussycats. Uh. I almost stepped on a seven pounder one day. I was moving too fast through books camp and there jumps out and he looks at me and said, like as to say, I thought we had an agreement. You'd stay on your damn trails and you leave the woods to us. And the thing could have a black charge for me. It could have swatted at me. It just jumped away, and it was a dominant nail. And I thought, you know, there's gotta be a story there when grizzly bears are super hungry or their jaws are damaged and the real old like the one that killed Treadwell. Tim Treadwell Um, that's a real exception in that country because all of those bears and Tim spent thirteen years almost close enough the pet those coastal brown there, so are getting back the relationship. Our relationship to salmon bears um is a function of the bears surplus of food that's available, and they don't even challenge each other. That's like you and I with a room full of steaks. I'm not going to fight you for a steak when all I have to do is gobble arrest of them around the room. So the bears are the same way and um our relationship to them in Yellowstone, of course, it's very different there North food stressed, there likely to be food condition if we habituate them too much. Uh. Food conditioning is never a problem on salmon streams. I've had watch situations where a person illegally had food in attack and that they're got to it on the stream. It didn't bother with the food at all. Uh, they're not interested in our food if they've got a you know, natural food. But that isn't true of you know, send me started there and Glacier Park or Yellowstone or Teeton or anything like that there. If they're super hungry. You better watch out because they're going to come as close as they can to get bellyfall. You know, it's it's either you steal food or you die. It's a cohabitation thing to write garbage cans and rural areas where bears don't have a lot of food. You know, there's lots of examples even here in Montana of those type of things. Um. Well, and it's the same with raccoons. If you want a problem in some city, ease, just leave some good old fashioned garbage around. Perfect. Let me ask you, let me say this question is popped in my mind. Um and we gotta run here. Some make us our last last question because I tried to narrow narrow down where you know, where in the spectrum we are in terms of of grizzly bears and and if how the win they're killed, If if we ate grizzly bears, would that change I'm not saying this is a fully hypothetical, but if we ate grizzly bears after we hunted them, would that change your feelings at all? Well? Uh, you might convince me if the person needed the meat to feed his family or whatever. It gets back to basic motivations. Why do you why do you want to shoot an animal like that? And if somebody says to me, well, there's nothing else in my area, and if I'm gonna put something in the freezer from my family, I'll take it there. And I'm sure a lot of Native Americans, Native Canadians have done this in the past, but by and large, UM, I would say it's unlikely that that's that's going to occur. Um. I guess I'm saying I don't. I don't agree with that because I don't think it's very likely. I'm not objecting because people don't eat them there. That's what I was asking. I was asking in the backwards way. But yeah, I think that's what If we can understand again, understand each other's objections to the activity, then we can start to suss out ways where maybe we could find common ground. And I imagine you would agree that conservation and wildlife management is finding this common ground because there are these divergent views that aren't going to go away, and finding some way to come in the middle is, you know, is one of the you know, I look there and know theirs and I think of them as a big dog they're closely related to dogs, and we don't yet shoot dogs to eat them. Now they do in Asian countries. Dog is a delicacy, and God knows, Lewis and Clark ate a few dogs on their way to and horses. Uh but uh, I just I know so much about bears and their culture that I don't think of them as a target. I just think there's so much that we haven't learned. Now. I'm not trying to say that, you know, I'm the advanced thought process on this, but there we come to realize that that killer whales are variable and have cultures around the world, that they've tracked their vocalizations, and there are numbers a species. Of course, chimpanzee's with Jane Goodall is a good example too. We used to shoot mountain gorillas as a sport, and so once we uh, you know, George Shower studied mountain girls and found it a lot about them, and all of a sudden, nobody wants to kill him anymore, except you know, starving vocals. Well, Barry, we're gonna leave. We're gonna leave it right there. We can talk about this for hours and hours, as I know we could, but I'm over. Moreover, I'm glad that we have buried the hatchet. You're gonna get a hat a salty Gilbert recipe mix from us, and we hope, we hope you guys stay well up there. I'm very impressed that you contacted me again, and I'm glad we did this. So let's do it again in a couple of months. Hell yeah, let's do it again. And m hey, you stay well and best your family and your wife up there, and and we'll talk little soon. Look for that package in the mail. Thanks a lot, all right, thank you? All right, Phil, that was Barry Gilbert. That was cool man, Yeah it was you feel better now, yes, yeah, I think it was worth it. Catharsis yeah. And and Barry still, you know, hopefully listen to this. I say, Barry still has some pretty extreme views, and he still has kind of the hunting straw man in his mind that goes out and wacks big animals for pleasure and those types of things. Um, that's that's kind of that's the angle that he comes at it with. And that's something that even in my previous years I probably wouldn't wanted to hear. But I feel like we got to hear those things. We got to hear the way that people see us, and that you can either get mad at Barry or you can say, I'm gonna I'm gonna do my best to be as ethical as possible and and share those ethics and share that conversation with everybody that I can. Yeah, prove them wrong, prove them wrong. Another guy, Chris DARRENMNT. You're about to listen to Chris. It's it's an interesting here is we kind of go through the different viewpoints as I were talking to Barry. It's interesting. Chris is an inner disciplinary conservation scientists and he's done a lot of things. Um, and he applies he takes scientific tools and applies it to natural and social elements within conservation. And he has he was part of a really cool paper about why people hunt, what the purposes? He kind of lined it up his achievement. But then he also has some views, some interesting views on grizzly bears and hunting them and hunting predators, just like our friend Dr Barry Gilbert, and so I wanted to pair those two things together. Let you listen to him. Um, he's from Canada, and so hey, another polite Canadian to disagree with Enjoy Chris, Dear mont Chris, how are you, sir? And well Ben, how are you doing? Oh? I'm doing just fine out here in Montana. We've got a little we've had a little smoke rolling from a local fire. But how's it up your way? It's actually rainy, foggy, kind of west host fall weather, which is actually nice. They'll break from from the sun for a bit. Yeah, we'll take it. We'll take it all day. Well, we have a only about an hour ago, so we'll jump right into what we want to talk about and um what what what we've connected on previously. I think before we do anything, we just gotta tell people a little bit about what you do and how you're producing some of the papers will talk about and some of the work that is impactful for thinking about hunting and its motivations. Sure, yeah, so hit us up with with what you do and what it all means. Because I described, you know, your job title, but I don't think that does does it quite justice? Sure? Yeah, yeah, Well, I describe myself as uh interdisciplinary conservation scientists. That is to say, you know, even though I'm trained as a as a biologist and specifically as an evolutionary ecologist, I draw on other disciplines like geography, UH, philosophy, computer so science, some mathematics, um, you name it. Whatever the tools are required, my students and I tend to use and uh. We do a lot of applied work, although some of what we do is is kind of interest and to test important theory and ecology or revolution. Uh. And we often, but not always, work in the wildlife systems. UM. And we recognize that that it's hard to to learn about a wildlife system without understanding that people involved in that system. And you know that people could be you know, hunters, as will probably talk about today, no doubt or uh. And by that I mean kind of hunters, maybe like you and I, you know, European descent in North America. UM. But often our work involves indigenous people as as partners and people that have been you know, hunting and fishing the animals we care about for you know millennia. So um, jack of all trades, probably master of none. Um. But my students and I tend to do some pretty interesting work that's mostly a pot Yeah. When you talk about apply, can you just kind of describe We'll talk about a paper that kind of connected me to you. But then I've learned a lot more. I've had even had listeners right in about you before before the I think it was the first time we had listeners right in about you before we aired thing. Um, how did I think I made? I made a comment on Instagram that people are saying, let's have some varied views on this is after we talked last week. As I was just telling you to dr religious guys, and we had some listeners writing in like let's have some various views. I said, well, next week we're gonna have Chris darmont On and and um, I got got a couple of emails with people that knew your work and we're interested in this. Um both agree, both agreed and disagreed with you, which I think makes this is why we're here. So what makes this interesting? Um? When I first I just read online hunting forums identify achievement as prominent among multiple satisfactions. As a paper that I that I came across the line. And how do you create a paper like this? What is the process that goes into uh this work? And how would you describe you know, the overall output? Sure, yeah, well that you know I do a few. Uh, I've done a few papers with students, mostly undergrads actually, these wonderful young honor students in this domain. And uh, where this work started was for me kind of lurking on on hunting forums, mostly for my own interests because you know, as you know, you can get a lot of good information about hunting, uh, and you know associated you know, strategies and and you know contexts and stories. And I became pretty pretty hooked on it, uh maybe about ten years ago, kind of especially learning about our black tail deer here, which are as you probably know, kind of ghosts of the rainforest and a real hard hunt. And so I was creeping on those those online forums, and as I did it, I became really fascinated in what hunters had to offer in terms of, you know, explaining not only their hunt, but you know, why they hunt, expressing what we referred to as satisfactions from which we can infer motivation and so on and so forth. And I thought, dang, there's some good stuff here. And I was familiar with some of the what we call human dimensions literature, uh, you know, understanding you know, the social side of of hunting, and I thought yeah, not many people have used this data source UM to ask questions like this, So, uh maybe first papers about ten years ago, eight years ago maybe, and we dove in it. It's been it's been pretty fun, right, And do you find that there's it's the CD underbelly of passage boards, or that there's or that there's a mixed bag of individuals and perspectives there. Well, yeah, I mean it's hard to fully assess how representative UM the participants on online hunting forums are compared to the broader hunting community. I mean, that's that's a that's a kind of a prickly one statistically, and not a lot of work has been done there, so there's probably you know, a relatively modest bias in terms of who posts there and what sort of material they post and what they may express. So for what I mean by that is, you might, for example, UM, fine, on average people that are slightly more interested in expressing their opinions or knowledge or you know, uh, interested in social media. Let's just leave it at that. And then furthermore, knowing that they have a broad audience, they may say things that that they may not say another UM contexts you know, Uh so there's clearly some biases to the data source, but when you compare it to the other major and kind of more orthodox way to understand hunting motivations, and that is the hunter interview or hunter survey, which may be more randomly distributed, but there may be a bias in terms of who responds. And there may also be an important bias many people have thought about, and that is, you know, what people choose to say to those who are interviewing them for fear of being judged um, and some of those inhibitions may fall away online as well, as you know, online things happen. So so it was a new data new data source, maybe not a perfect one, but a real in trusting one, and uh, it's been a fertile ground to to learn a little more about about um, the satisfactions hunters seek and the motivations underline them. And I often linked them to a separate body literature and a separate kind of a domain in which my students and I work, and that's an evolutionary anthropology or evolutionary ecology understanding the kind of deeper context of hunting well. And this is this kind of the purpose of the show. I mean, we we do a lot of things. We have we we explore a lot of topics and we'll talk about some other things that other work that you've done that I think is interesting and worth discussion. But that is kind of is what we do here. We want to look at individual as many individual wise as we can. Why are you out there, what's your motivation? And also seek to learn a little bit about you know, what our motivations are, what our ethics are. Well, we've even been we've even been discussing kind of the neurology of predatory behavior and ans and humans there recently, So that's something that we like, There's many angles to look at. As I'm sure you're well known now. But when we talk about um, what your paper talks about and and something we've talked about in previous episodes this this idea of achievement, this idea that there is this achievement felt by hunters, and all the hunters that are listening to this show have felt some sort of achievement. They've felt some sorts as as you describe satisfaction from from many money elements of hunting. UM, would you say that that when you guys looked at this you looked at UM every every moment in the hunting spectrum, from you know, being a family and friends to UM to the athletic part of it to the actual killing and the eating. Or was there something that tended to be to stand out or just like a full spectrum of the hunting experience. Yeah, you mentioned some important other uh context are you said being with family and friends? So, so the the satisfactions literature that's about as old as I am, you know, and it's it's fifth decade, they're forty five years old or something identified the kind of three buckets that hunters look for, one of which is achievement, and a lot of the early work thought you know, clearly this is mostly about achievement, but as the literature progressed, we begin began to understand that other things are important, and affiliation, So they're all going to start with a So achievement, affiliation being being with your buddies or your your year old man or your kids, for example. Um is is the second one, and the third one is an appreciation. You know what we feel, you know, own are out there and and you know the sun comes up and and it's gorgeous. Uh, And we appreciate nature or appreciate the animal. We have some sort of appreciation. So those three a's that achievement, affiliation, appreciation. So in the work that we're referring to one of these papers here, we went online to these three hunting forms. One was kind of a North America wide one, one was from Texas, and one was from from here in BC. And we looked at um satisfactions expressed by posters of stories. You know, someone writes a story that says, you know, whatever, my my, my biggest blacktail yet, and it's the story as you know, you know, the seen here, and then there's replies to it. Anyways, we just looked at the at the posts and we use what's called qualitative analysis to um categorize different phrases into their different buckets if they were relevant achievement, affiliation, appreciation and uh. And that's kind of the background of how we did our work. There's several hundred stories I forget um how many, and we looked across a variety of of prey um and usually this work had been done on dear. I mean, I mean that's being actually most of the human dimensions work has been on dear. We wanted to broaden it to look at not only dear but but but other you know, large herbivores and and the carnivores to um and in a nutshell, what we found is that achievement is prominent, um no matter what context. Those who are posting about their hunts are are using language and phrases that refer to achievement, you know, like felt great to get the biggest buck of my life or a phrase like that in different domains, and it could have been about their athletic performance too, So you know, I had to scramble up some incredible scree to get this sheep or goat or whatever, and that's also an achievement thing, um um. But we did find that, you know, other satisfactions being with your buddies, affiliation and appreciating things. You know. The context was also important, but at a far lower rate. We we tend to to have read or you know it detected those phrases quite a bit less, uh. And then we looked at are the difference between the stories of people that were describing hunts of a large herbivore versus a large carnivore, And there was we see you and even far more pronounced frequency of achievement oriented um sentences, and a near absence of appreciation, whether it be for the animal itself or for um, you know, the scenery or whatever. Those were tended to be mostly about um achievements. So anyways, that that's those are the results in a nutshell, which was you know, a nice enough contribution to earn a spot in a in a good journal about this sort of stuff, because some of these questions haven't been asked before. So yeah, and I think and when when I when I first read it, and I'm I'm thinking about it, and I try to and we we definitely all have our biases when it comes to these things, and I've always tried to, you know, arraid, like, look at this from what it is. And I think it was four hundred fifty five stories if I go back and read that got in front of me here, um, And so that's no insignificant um number of people talking on these forums. So you know, you're looking at a certain type of communication. And in my you know, I've been in in the hunting industry for over well over a decade and and done and work for a lot of publications and thought about these things all the time like how do we how do we express um? And and traditionally we expressed it by killing big bucks, right. That was when I first came into the industry. I work for a hunting magazine, a prominent hunting magazine, and you had you had either had to have the wildlife picture or the grip and grind picture on the cover. And then that those things started to evolve. So as you looked at this, because I want to get to some other things, so I kind of want to maybe microwave this conversation a little bit. But as you look at this, UM, do you make any inferences to you know, the types of stereotypes that are out there for for hunters, turphy hunters, things like that, or or is there a different thing you take away? Well, I mean, I mean, yeah, we could take this in all sorts of directions, but you know, it reaffirms what what UM. You know, evolutionary anthropologists have written about and discussed for years that that there's a good reason why people are so concerned with achievement. I mean, you know, not just in hunting, and I'm specifically talking about men here. You know, you go to you go to uh, I don't know, a job site or weight room or whatever. And and and guys, we evolved behaviors that that tended to seek achievement and the display of that achievement to others. And that was really adaptive that that was very useful to uh compete with other males in a in an ancestral environment and to to win the ladies and so on and so forth. So of course achievement is going to be a prominent still is. You know, we're in a very different contemporary environment now, but you know, those those behaviors and tendencies still um are retained. And you know you still go to you know, you flip through the Tabella's catalog or hunting magazines and you know a lot of the ads that wants to sell your stuff, you know, focus on achievement. Um. You know, there's there's clearly some about you know a phil creation being with with your buds and and and some beautiful stuff with your family. Um. But clearly achievement is important. UM to your question about you know stereotypes, um, well, yeah, you know even within the hunting community that we you know, use use phrases like grip and grant. We we recognize that you know, we like to show this stuff off, um as this kind of who we are. UM, it can be judged by others, and it clearly is judged by others outside the hunting community. That's gotten uh. You know, hunters some flack and maybe rightly so. UM it kind of just is uh. And how hunters kind of choose to manage that, um is it may you know, either bring more flack or or or more understanding by the non hunting community. I mean, the parts a lot for the work, but I imagine this is where you want to go with this sort of stuff. Yeah, I mean I think that's that's It's interesting to me because I've over the years fallen in and out of some of these common tropes in the hunting world and these traditions that I felt like I needed to take part in, and um, some of the pressures of the community. UM. Sometimes too good results, sometimes maybe they're not so good result And so then I took a step back personally, just me personally, and said, what is the motivation here? Achievement as part of it, but what is the achievement that really is at the heart of of my passion for this? You know, what really is it? And so I landed on a bunch of things. Um, well, a couple of them. I think it would be interesting to talk about. One is the craft and the skill of everything, and and that this craft and skill has this three dimensional quality where if I'm really awful at bow hunting, um, I have the chance to maim, wound, otherwise injure another living creature. And so this craft and skill. While learning to play pool is great, it feels too dimensional. There's nothing at the other end of that pool ball except for your own satisfaction. And I hope, I hope you're not doing anything that So I understand that, understand that metaphor with pool, Uh that, Yeah, there's there's something coming back after that investment into your craftsmanship and your training and your discipline. And you know, I'm a you know, a martial artist and surfer understand these things, and a hunter, uh, far less crafty than you, I suspect, um, but um uh yeah, I can understand that's a part of you know, how you value the outputs of your achievement. Um. But I think I interrupted you. So there's the craftsmanship, and there's probably some more things, maybe that relate to food. I bet a yeah. I mean there's food for sure, but the food I think is also part of the craft um. And then the transformation of the animal from a living thing into and that I'm never then I never leave it. My proximity to it is is if I butcher my own animals, which I do, I never leave it from the time it becomes a steak and my child is smiling while he's eating it for the time it lived on the mountains. So that that certainly is a huge, huge passion and achiever in my life. But the one I think it would be interesting to hear you talk about having worked on and read four fiftive stories like this is do you think that hunters The core question I have is do you think that hunters realize the gamelike quality that they that draws them in here? You know, the push and pool of learning where an animal lives and going up against underpredictable foe um. And what do you think about that and all that you've kind of done with this paper and everything else you've you've looked at. Oh, of course, well, now I I you know, drawing my own experience as a hunter, drawing on our experiences and in reading stories like this that we even talked about in this paper. And by the way, this paper is read uh led by Elena Ebling. Should the undergrad honor students who kind of crushed it did a great job? Um, But clearly that's a part of it. Yeah, I mean it's it may culminate and many men, especially young men, and I want to return to that may may especially elevate uh the achievement of actually getting the animal and showing others that he has gotten that animal. Clearly, there's you know a whole process, uh you know, from planning your hunt. You know, you know the strategy about you know where am I going to be? Uh at you know an hour before the sun starts coming up to you know, how delicious is this backstrap going to taste after, you know, after you've bushered it and and feeding it to your family. And clearly all that is clearly important. Some of these other things may become more important as we age out as men. So you probably know and you probably I know you've got kids, as do I. Our testoferone goes down an awful lot, uh you know when we have kids, and our propensity to to feel like we want to signal our achievements to others, to you know, to compete with other dudes or or to win ladies when we when we have a woman in our life or a partner in our life and and have kids. Um evolution has shaped some really pronounced differences in how we behave that's that's moderated by or mediated rather by hormones and in particular testofserone so so, and people, you know, actually way back in the literature started noticing that that you know, achievement becomes less the actual achievement of getting the animal itself becomes less important as as we mature, you know, physiologically and and maybe even you know, mature as as hunters more broadly, recognizing that, you know, there's a pretty cool craft background to this and and you know, a foodie sort of orientation behind this too. Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned kind of the the life cycle of a hunter, because there's been many there's not many. There's some commentary on like what that looks like where you start and the kind of where you finish. And I have had a lot of experience with people I really respect. Wyman Menser is a friend of mine that listeners will know who who was a trapper and hunter um for profit in his young life and lived in a dugout and and got all paid for his college loans with with the pelts of coyotes and bobcats. And then, uh, you asked him now fifty sixty years later, and he abhors killing them um interesting and loves to photograph them. And he said, his name is Wyman Menzer, a famous photographer. And if you listen to the podcast we did, I would just happen to be listening to the podcast we did a couple of months ago, and he was explaining how he felt that the more the older he got, he explained it like life from a disease, Like the closer I get to Z, the more I appreciate my own life. And so it seems to me only natural to appreciate the life of animals where I didn't I didn't earlier. And so that's just something i'd heard recently that struck me. Yeah, No, that's that's a really cool, uh anecdote. And it kind of aligns with with theory and you know, you know, from like evolutionary theory to anthropopy anthropological theory to human dimension theory and data that that we see this, this progression within individual's pretty pretty commonly. That's it's pretty cool. Yeah, that's cool. And that's a couple other papers that I was, um looking at. I'm surely there in the same vein of working with your students and coming up with these theories and then working them out. Um, there's one called I'm in trophy hunt it's interesting you did that. I'm sure you remember that with Um, can you tell people a little bit? I know, I'm I'm probably throwing you just throwing that at you, but can tell people a little bit what that was about and how that came to be? Yeah, no problem. Yeah. So that was a collaboration with evolutionary anthropologists from University of of of Utah. And this was you know, at the Cecil kind of zen at the cecil frenzy, the lion who was trophy hunted, and and the you know, the fervor it it brought, you know, globally in and people, you know, a lot of sentiment you read is like why would a dude do this? You know why? And and you can get into sort of more approximate, more kind of ah, in my view, unsatisfactory answers like oh, he's you know, he's just looking to show off and and you know he's got a small pp or you know, like just stuff that's not very satisfying or or or likely correct or whatever. And so we wanted to examine the available theory to try to understand theory and data understand why do men do this? Um? You know, you you pay big bucks, you pay other costs, you know, opportunity costs of not hunting other things. Um, it's potentially dangerous um uh. And you know there's no real tangible benefits uh that that we tend to associate primarily with hunting, and that is, you know, something to eat at the end of the day. So why the hell what a guy invests so many costs are you know, except so many costs to do something that seemingly has no benefit. Um. But when you start poking around in the literature from hunter gatherer societies that are still out there and our ancestral past, you start to understand that those costs that hunters are willing to accept, as as trophy hunters in particular that that don't eat their food, um, are really important and understanding why the hell they do this. So the idea is this it's referred to as costly signaling, and the idea is you want to behave in costly ways because that allows you to signal to others that you have what it takes, you know, the intellectual or these days financial or physical abilities to behave in costly ways. It's not much different than a peacock investing an incredible amount of energy food energy into producing this tail in the case of males, to signal to other that's sort of the more biological UM, you know, wildlife analog system that that you either invest in the expense of morphologies or in this case, behaviors UM, the signal to competitors and potential mates that you've got it, you've got what it takes. You know, if you were, you know, a lesser man in terms of your brains or brawn, you couldn't afford to do this. So so it kind of reconciles resolves that that paradox I spoke of, like why would it do this? You can't even eat the lion, and he's ten huge bucks to do this, and he's not out hunting other things he could hunt. Um, So it provides a uh satisfactory explanation. UM underlying the sort of seemingly puzzling behavior of of trophy hunters. Yeah, I love. I love the way that you put that. I mean, I would like I've as a kid in coming up, I would always tend to disagree. I've really I wrote some things. Hopefully no one googles anything that I wrote in twenty ten, but I've I wrote some things in the beginning of my career, very much scoriating anyone attacking an African trophy hunter, and and looking at conservation based UM community management and the money that goes into these communities and all those things. I look at that and I understand that part. That's a very logical any for someoney as you say that it's successful, has wealth and understands the application of that wealth like it does make sense. The tangible makes sense, but the intangible, the motivation what you're talking about, the why would you do it um doesn't really compute for me, and the times that I found myself in those situations where I don't know exactly why I'm doing this or I don't know why I feel like I want to shoot that wolf or I want to go to Africa and shoot at Cape Buffalo for not gonna eat it or whatever. And then I find myself maybe I don't know why, but now I have to fall back on the common not excuses, but the explanations for the benefits to to the place I'm going or to the people in the communities in which I'm going. And so that creates this huge and be like very complex and interesting, I think dichotomy between what you're talking about, which is important, like why the hell would you do that? Why did you need to shoot that lion? What are you getting from that? You're not going over there just to pay the money, because if you just went over there just to pay the money, you just send the money totally. That that. I'm glad you said that, because you know, there are kind of two different arguments. So what you know and and and in some cases and the jury is still out on this, UH, there are some conservation economic reasons UH why trophy hunting can benefit wildlife in their habitats, particularly in Africa, although the data are clearly mixed and unresolved, you know, and there's no odd conclusions there. But but you're right, So one one of the explanations that one UH talks about the system in general, you know, should we have trophy hunting blah blah blah, And the other one, the other explanation that I've just gone through is like why would it do this? And those you know in general, why why new men behave this way? Uh? And so one explanation can't suffice for another. That is to say, we can't say, Okay, Palmer, Dr Walter Palmer did this to help further conservation. Um. You know that's his motivation, to help you know, lion and other wildlife habitat in Africa. That's not a satisfactory answer that that's what people use to justify the industry. Um. And but those are you know, to two really different things. Can I stop real quick? And because I think there's I think you're right, and I want to maybe return mabe. I didn't make my point well enough. I do think that as kind of you know, I've talked, I've talked to folks at the i U c N. I've talked to We're gonna in future episodes have folks like Dr Dillis Rowe and Rosie Cuney on. These are people that study these things and know that these communities are benefiting from from this activity. And these trophy hunts are resulting in constant they call them community based conservations, what they call it. Um, this is resulting in more animals. I've seen it, and like, this is this is this regulatory body that I understand and I you know, they know way more than I do, so I like to hear that from them. So I want to separate that aside knowing that this is the way I'll just describe this and people will not like this, but this is the way I think about it. This is this is is an unsustainable model. We would never allow a small number of international wealthy hunters to to fund conservation in America. That would never be allowed in North America. We would never allow ten thousand hunters to come to our continent or our country and pay money so that we could have more wildlife. That that that's not sustainable because what if those people decide they don't want to come anymore. UM. So you have that on a broader level, but on on the secondary levels that are probably more importantly. This is the only way it can work at this moment. So there's other socioeconomical, economical things that should probably be fixed before we go erasing this and replacing it with something else. So that's my I just want to say, that's my stance. Some people might not like the fact that I think it's kind of like holding it hostage for a moment and saying like, I'm the only way that this can work. It's working, it's working, probably better than most people think, but it's just not sustainable. And so that's my that's my little opinion or rant on that. So continue the other I appreciate that I know kind of enough about that whole thing to be dangerous. Uh. And you know, because but but like philosophically, I I totally hear what you're saying. I think that's that and and that you that you've brought up, you know, inverse what happens if you know North American wildlife conservation hinged, you know, narrowly on you know, a bunch of international wealthy people coming over and killing wildlife here, that would be pretty messed up. Um, that's a good point. Yeah. And and to to say that I think this system should stand until we can find a better one, but we should be working to find a better one. We shouldn't would be saying like, look how great this is. It's not great. It's just not no matter no matter what you know, no matter what group you're in, it just gets this is objective to me. Yeah no, I think I think that's a good point. We've written on the ethics of of this, you know, more generally, and almost arrived at the same conclusion in that we said, you know, should there be no other viable option, you know, especially when things are precarious, we should accept this, this one and only option, with you know, sort of commensurate um degree of somber understand and I forget the words we use, but but you know, it's not something we should perhaps trumpet as you know, an outstanding solution. We should we should be somewhat circumspect and and whatnot. Yeah no, I think that makes a lot of sense. Back to covering back off on the other side of this, which is the the motivation, because I think that's what while while hunters seem to want to kind of take the pragmatic approach, which I do appreciate. Um the community that I'm in, you want to take this pragmatic approach. Are there more animals? Yes, well, you know, we've we've had the comment that you know, Dr Larry Skys made the comment that he feels like the last African elephant will survive in Texas. Um and and this. These things are interesting to think about and will continue to think about them. But then you go back to what's the moment, you know, I think one the anti hunting world or the hunting world that doesn't early non hunting world that doesn't stand this is looking at what you were talking about, the motivation, not the tangible impact to the animals and the population in the ecosystem, but the motivation. And so I think that's why when I was reading this paper, I'm like, this is getting this is getting to the real opposition to this. It's motivation. And so I guess the question is do you think it's hard to I mean, every individual motivation is different. Um is it hard to collect all those motivations and make inferences or is this something you're comfortable, you know, given the work that you've done, Well, there there there are patterns that that's probably the best way to say it. That's that clearly there's tons of variation across the hunting population. We've talked about how age may have a you know clearly does have a pronounced influence on our motivation as we age out as hunters. There's geographic variation, there's variation as it may relates to what what you know, target we're currently after on a hunt and so on. So so no, I mean, you know, there's no absolute, definitely not an effect. In that paper, we we expressed that, you know, multiple satisfactions are are common, but you know, the commonest is his achievement by and large, uh, you know, getting into the kind of the non or anti hunting opposition, and people do, as you're well aware, some sort of you know, kind of moral calculus for lack of a better word, and they they they tend to ask themselves and I'm I'm I'm leaving alone, you know, the most kind of extreme you know, uh, anti hunters here, but most of the society that that doesn't hunt. You know, my feeling is and there's you know, some suggestion that this is the case. Do some basic moral calculus like okay, what does the hunter getting how to kill him this animal? Uh? And and does do those benefits justify the costs that the animal itself bears? Because we know, you know, we've seen animals suffer and die in front of us. That's kind of the ultimate cost any you know, sentient animal can pay. So so all of us hunters included, we think, Okay, what am I getting out of this to justify this sort of behavior? And and you know what the what the sociological data tell us anyways, especially from the United States, and you're probably you know, those big surveys by Responsive Management and manfred O work UM on on values and and and generally that tells us that by and large, the non hunting community um supports hunting for food, you know, to the tune of of people in the US. But when you ask, you know, do you support hunting for sport and trophy, that that support goes down into the twenties percent. Uh And then there's clearly some complexity when when some animals are you know, great trophy animals for those that are interested in trophies, but they're also incredibly delicious and clearly sought after for food. You know, I'm thinking, you know, elk or moose or you know something like that, in particular sheep for that matter. And uh so that's when it gets a little murky. But for me, the kind of way to understand at the most basic level of what the non or anti hunting society is thinking out there is is whether the benefits that are crue to hunters um justify the costs that are being imposed on you know, individual animals that you know, more and more people care about. I mean, as scientists and hunters, we we probably prioritize, will clearly prioritize the health of and well being of populations. But you know a lot of us also understand that you know, there's individuals and those populations that you know have the same physiology as you or me, And I don't know, I've never been shot and I don't think you have, and you know it would hurt theory. Suffering and dying sucks, So we should we should think about some of this stuff as as other people are clearly doing. So for me, that kind of bolt boils down some of these these controversies. Yeah, I think that's a good way to express the opposition to this. And as I've said, I think that if you I always came at this like why I have to be pragmatic. You know, it's a numbers game, and it's a food game, and it's there's other things that seem more just logic based and less emotion based. And that's always what people throw back at at a progressive liberal non hunter, who who wants who? Who thinks the deer is cute? And I've started to peel my own biases about that away and then look at Okay, well, let's let's look at the death for a moment um it'sself the death itself for a moment. So we talked about the craft and skill portion of that. But also one of the things I think emotionally that I've started to appreciate is the fact that I have this what we've been calling tragic knowledge of death, Like I understand emotionally understand death doesn't make it any easier. Well, won't make death in my life any easier, but it does if you really dig into the natural world, death is a benefit. Um, you know, it's a benefit the population levels level. It ain't a benefit exactly. And so that's the thing that we have to You know, when a wolf kills neon Nate, there's benefits to the wolf. There certainly is no benefit to the young life of this elk or meal deer or whatever that's getting taken out. And so I think nature has the same struggle that I I'm having, and so I'm able to then relate to nature like, hey, I get it, man, I get that the death is good for me, but it's not good for the thing I just killed. And and that's that's at some level kind of the baseline of predatory behavior. I think this makes sense to you or this, Yeah, oh it totally does. Man. Uh yep. I I appreciate or maybe understand death more than than others that are non hunters. You know, watching you know, an animal blink out before you. It's it's it's it's heavy. It's real heavy, even probably to the coldest you know people among us as heavy as hell. So you know, it's something that that most of us take take real seriously. Yeah, do you ever feel like there'll be an understanding? I know, Um, you know one of my favorite quotes is hunting is so different from the inside that it is from the outside. That's my pollan and the worst dilemma. And I always thought about that. I wonder if um, kind of getting all the rails here, but who cares a podcast? Um? I wonder if you have thought about is there a way to make that connection for people that have never done this, that like, hey, this death is kind of a It's a thing we always think about, but man, it's so hard to imagine if you've never done it doing it. Yeah, No, I think it's it's for people. And you probably know this. There's lots of people that are Actually there's more people becoming increasingly distanced from the natural world and ignorant of it compared to those that are, you know, getting more in tune with it. So I think it's going to be real hard to for people to to you know, understand that. Um. You know that being said, and going back to kind of moral calculus stuff, you know, and conflicts and all this. I think you know, what's been clear from the sociological data for you know, decades and increasingly so, is that that the non hunting public are generally fine with us killing deer, an elk and all that stuff. Uh. And they're generally, but not always, you know, uh, generally not cool with us killing something for only a rug or you know, only to get it get the predator off the landscape. And if something like a wolf for a or a cat uh isn't eaten. Um. And I don't think that's going to go away because I think the kind of fundamentals of that calculus, it's pretty hard to convince the non hunting public that, you know, killing a wolf is justified. That's just not going to happen. And people can argue all day the night about you know, the values of it. But but generally the non hunting public I don't believe and that the data kind of support this, are ever going to accept that. UM. But that being said, there are ways for for hunters probably to to and I'm sure you've chatted about this with others on podcast. There's a way to kind of um hunters to to manage their behavior and think about the non hunting public a little more and in their outreach and and and whatnot. Yeah, we talked about that quite a lot. And I'm glad we're kind of bring up wolves and predators here because we've had UM I won't explain the whole tale that we've gone through, but we had a bar attack story come out of Alaska a couple of months ago, and the story around it was was insane, and it got me to thinking about predators, bear attacks, our appreciation for them, why we're so drawn to the bear attacks themselves, And then kind of kind of following this thought process, all the way to walking in Yellowstone with a predator biologist, and then having UM a neurologist who studied the central amygdala and the neuron pockets in there and how they work for pred story behavior, and then on to UM guys like Dr Barry K. Gilbert who's been on the show, who is is a staunch protectionist when it comes to hunting predators, and then UM Dr Larius Guist, who is in fact the opposite, who is arguing last week for intelligent intervention and that being the only way forward in terms of predators. And so I guess briefly say, I've learned that there are a lot of people who thought a lot about this, that have done scholarly the works, that believe all, you know, things that are completely opposite of each other when it comes to predators. And I know you've had your UM, your moments with the head up there, especially in British Columbia with with the grizzly bears. So you got to talk about your experience with this kind of I know you've had some. We were talking a week or so ago about some of the more controversial I guess you could say, quote unquote things that you've said or some of the things that have gone on British Columbia. Just give people your your story briefly. Sure, yeah, yeah, um yeah, I'm I'm much close are aligned to Dr Gilbert and Dr Geist in terms of of what it really comes down to his values. You know, do I do I think it's right to hunt a predator? And it's not. This isn't a question of of science, you know. He science tells us, you know, how ecosystems work or how they may respond to our management interventions. But they can never science can never really tell us that, you know, it's okay or right to kill a predator. That's kind of a value based decision. And and like you know, seventy of society and and interestingly, about the same percentage of hunters, I'm not supportive of of killing a predator. Uh. You know, if the intention is not to eat it, Uh, those those benefits that would accrue to me just don't justify the costs imposed on the animal. That's the way I feel. Uh. And and it's it's controversial because you know, there's lots of scientists in b C included that that think, you know, I shouldn't really be talking about values and this is a scientific in some sort of way. But but my view, and uh, I believe it's a more correct one, is that we're in the realm of values here and not science. As all science can never justify whether, you know, the grizzly bear hunt in BC, is is something we should be doing or not. That that's clearly a subject of values. And that's why, in fact that the BC government um turned off the hunt because it doesn't align with the values of most people, including hunters from BC. Yeah, and most of the most of the folks in the hunting community that I know up there, I'd say it's split. Probably if I had to just think about a number, I think it would be sixty forty. In my world of people that actually live in BC. Most of these guys are remote outfitters and people that I know. So even in that world, sixty six five, maybe seventy seven out of ten people want us to hunt grizzly bears. And then and again we go back to what we talked about earlier, Um, these are people that live out in these you know, the places where I've hunted before, Quesnel and Quesnel, in places that folks might know yeah for most yeah. Um. And so these people see it as economic, they see it as a livelihood. And I was I was gonna I was gonna challenge you gently on that that. Yeah, if you're talking about outfitters, of course, yeah, are going to be Yeah, because that that brought in good money and for for them and people they hire. And yeah, there's no there's no doubt about that. I would say that if I just people, I guess the reason why I will throw my opinion in here just because we've been exploring this, and the reason why we wanted to talk to folks like yourself that believe what you and Dr Gilbert and Dr geist Um and Dr Staylor as well, is just trying to get a myriad a picture of where this sits. Um. I think if I could speak for Dr geist he believes that we are best equipped to manage these these animals, and we are best equipped to make sure that we have a healthy balance of all all of these unlids plus you know, pray animals plus predators. Um. He feels very strongly about that. And as you will as you will know and I think you probably feel it is equally strongly about the idea that this is a value and it is not um as he would as I think he would say, and again I'm not real sure on this one. If I'm being honest, he would say that listen, this is um is this our duty, This is our duty as conservations and scientists. This is something that if we don't step in here, we have our our human brains and the ability to step in and provide balance where nature just won't. Yeah. Yeah, I believe that those who interview engines can be really useful, um, but best reserved for cases in which the uh and I hate this this phrase, but for simplicity the balance of nature is upset, for example, invasive UH animals. Um. Yes, definitely we need to intervene and and lethally because you know, invasive species is you know, it's one of the horsemen of the current environmental apocalypse here. And yeah, so I would absolutely align with geist on on in that sort of context. But in you know, managing multiple predator multiple prey systems that have managed themselves UM with and I will note with the participation of of people for for millennia. UM. You know, there's clearly way, clearly justification to know that you know, in those context, things generally manage themselves. And when we you know, tweet hunting to look very different than it has for millennia, you know, punching in roads to new areas, you know, being able to take um animals from a couple of kilometers away, um, increasing our ability to to target specific phenotypes or you know, specific forms within populations. The biggest curl you know, are the biggest racks or whatever, are the biggest fish, especially um that has caused all sorts of mayhem the ecological and evolutionary uh landscape out there. So so that's where where Dr Geist and I would would probably not see eye eye. Yeah, well, at some point I think what I've what I've realized through all of this, and I've had a couple of listeners right in and and say that, well, you there's a point where you have to push these people on both directions, people that want to push Dr Geist and people would want me to push you on these things, and I don't. I just want I want there too. And this is what I've found in reading things and looking around, that there are these disparate ideas UM. And I wonder if you if you kind of in your in BC or even in any work you've done in the States or with your colleagues or people in your industry as it as it might be called. Um, that's really not an injured community, maybe scientific community. If you've kind of seen that there are sides, because I've I've seen, specially in the Greater Yelstone ecosystem here that it tends to be the game and fish department versus the environmental activists, activists for animal rights activists. It seems like that keeps happening. And no, you're right, it's highly polarized. There's definitely camps, you know, there's there, there's you know, clearly exceptions and some hybridization. I mean, I suspect, you know, I'm kind of one puzzling thing because on one hand, I'm I, you know, I'm against some forms of hunting based on my value systems and strongly and outspokenly so UM, but I'm also a hunter, so, you know, like a sort of a bear hugger on on one hand, and and I know and I like to chase moose on the other hand. So so, so it's hard for some people to resolve. UM. And I you know, I get a fair share of attacks. You know you're telling me that sucks, man Like I don't. You shouldn't get attack based on that. We should be able to We should be able to talk about this. We have to be Interestingly, a lot of the attacks come from other wildlife scientists that that that you know, in either sort of passive aggressive or what I refer to as sort of stealth advocacy ways try to trash me um or you know, the bolter among them a little more directly so, but you know, that's kind of the way it's always been, you know, in terms of camps and polarization. I see some some potential avenues for change. I think one of is the kind of new foodie movement and getting you know, people that may not have grown up as hunters into the bush um with the idea of getting you know, um, humanely sourced, especially in in comparison to industrial farming meat on their tables and and delicious, you know, hormone free stuff. So I think there's some nice bridges that are are being built and will continue to be built. Uh there, um, I see, you know, it's it's pretty modest in effects now, but I see it, you know, progressing, and that is people from the hunting community, saying, you know, I love hunting, and I love hunting so much that I don't want, um, the social license that that we depend on to be ruined by you know, the minority of us that want to shoot a wolf and and Griffin granted on Instagram. Uh so I see, I see, you know, some seeds of change being planted in in in those two and probably other kind of context for sure. And I think that I used to try to see this as camps like the old way in the new way. Um, I've fallen into that before, but now I don't think of it that way. I think of it as I want the individuals in the community that I'm around and people that I can talk to, in effect, just to be thoughtful and think about these things, because there's sometimes they're hard to sets out personally. Um. Sometimes you've shot a wolf and you and you have the wolf rug and you feel like you're saving some elk um, and it may take some time to to think about that and to understand what you've done personally, not what we should do, but what you have done. And UM, just those thoughts I think are in and of themselves a change to be able to say, you know, when I came up, you didn't. That wasn't a thing I talked about with my dad. But him and I do talk about it now because I think he is is very happy and he understands that me my generation, I think there's more, you know, more natural history, more anthropology, more zoology, and more all kinds of things that that we're interested in that help inform, you know, this thoughtful approach to what's a very serious thing. Killing a wolf is not a thing somebody should take lightly in any context or anything. So one one thing, I think, maybe the last thing I'd like to hear your thoughts on. We have a guy, um, a good friend here, real thoughtful guy, real smart individual named Clay nucom Um. He has a phrase called guard the Gate where he talks about and I've heard many folks talk about this. When he talks about it, it's compelling to me because he's articulate, but he says guards the Gate. He feels like, if you know, we let the value systems driven you know, by other parts of our country takeaway hunting with dogs or hunting with um over bait, or hunting you know, predators, that they'll just continue to come for they'll just kidd to find reasons, value based reasons to disagree. And so that's his guard the gate um. What do you think about that? What do you think as as somebody that is kind of practicing some of the value based judgments that you're you're doing. Do you feel like you're not going to take his stuff? Are you like, you know, I I hear, I hear the nature of his argument kind of like the slippery slope. You know, first they'll come, you know up here we hear it first, or come for the grizz takeaway grizzly hunt, and next are going to try to take away our moose. And for me, I understand those concerns and and insecurities, and I understand that that he rightly reckoned eyes is that the non hunting community can have enormous influence. That that much is fact. There's no question from you know, kind of the ballot measure stuff that happens in in in the States that impacts hunting and hunting uh policy uh to um, you know, just big government decisions like happens here in BC. The non hunting public does have huge influence on on wildlife. And and we can argue you know as to uh, they're there, um privilege of doing so, whether it's deserved or not. If you know they're all in the cities and don't even interact of wildlife, why should they dictate goes on with wild life? So we can get into that, but maybe it's not for that, um. But so this guy is right in understanding the enormous influence of of non hunters and the potential for change. I think, um, his concerns are probably um way overblown. There are probably clearly some you know, specific hunting contexts that are not going to sit well with with the majority of society. Hunting over bait maybe one of those, UM, hunting with dogs, I'm not sure. Hunting predators for trophy clearly doesn't fit well. But you know, most of what we do as hunters, most of those hunting days in the field, most of our efforts, most people involved, we're not interested in those more sort of fringy things. Were interested in, you know, bringing home food, uh, and that includes you know, our earlier discussions about achievement, but also bringing it home to our kids and filling our freezers with delicious food. And that's that stuff is rock solid. You're not going to get that taken away there? Could you imagine, Like, it's just kind of to me, kind of absurd to imagine a scenario where, you know, it almost sounds like some sort of quacky m conspiracy theory that you know, the lefties, that animal huggers are going to take away our right to kill deer and moose and stuff like that based on values. I mean, come on, it's you know, it's to me, it's just it's just so um inconceivable. But you know that being said, some of the more fringe e stuff that the moral calculus doesn't appeal to the non hunting community. Yeah, there's there's reasons to think that this is going to change. But you know, the bread and butter so to speak, the you know, bringing food home. Uh, I think that's that's pretty rock solid. You probably agree. I do agree. And as I hear you say, I'm glad to hear you think that they're never coming for that, because that is interesting. But there's so many elements to that for me and and come up in the hunting industry. I was always kind of told while hunting is on the down slope, and as you said, we every time I read over yeah, I read a responsive management study and to tellus eleven and ten it is. And so you're you're you're kind of told, oh, well, this is this is a thing that we have to promote. We gotta build, we gotta we gotta build a coalition. We have our three, we have all these these things that we have to do to grow this. And I think these conversations, whether you know, whether somebody like Clay would agree to descree with what you're saying, are are the thing the understandings that will help us, you know, fortify more than anything. And so completely agree a more and more thoughtful approach. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. Man. Well, Chris, I gotta run. We got other podcasters need to use the studio. Um, but man, this could go for another hour. I kind of wanted to. So maybe we'll have you back at some time. And and UM, you know, keep doing what you're doing. Like I said, I hopefully in our communities we can have these conversations where we might disagree or at least we're exploring things that, um, we have yet to consider. Um more people around us do not like. So I enjoy it and I appreciate your your openness to do it. Likewise, Ben, I appreciate the the your process and having this conversation. It's it's a real good thing and uh had a lot of fun, and yeah, happy to do it again. All right, Chris, appreciate it and we'll talk soon, you bet, Ben, take care. See that's it. That's all another episode in the books. Phil, you're feeling I'm just checking back in with you. What's your emotional state at this moment? Uh, pretty neutral. But I'll tell you what I am doing. I'm looking at the hunter hunter safety courses right now. I'm trying to figure it out. Yea he was when Yeah, he was here last episode. He challenged Phil and I like, what's the plan? What's the first hunt? And we both said we're kind of just drawing this out for the jokes. Uh So now the pressure. Maybe Phil's feeling a little social pressure. Yanni. Yanni has been he's been tough on me. Some tough love love. If you get your get your safety course done, get it together. He's he's wondering why I'm waiting, and I don't have a good answer, no good answer. So the first step is to get that hunter safety course going. You feel like you're gonna be you pass it. I'll help you. Should I help you, I probably shouldn't help you, though, I'm going to be a Mr. Independent. All right, Well, um man, we've we've talked a lot about predators since earlier in July. We're kind of inching towards actual hunting season here, we're getting we're pretty much there, and so um we're not going to leave the predator topic behind. Will continue to talk about it as much as as it pertains. But I feel like we've explored it, Phil, you feel like we've explored it. As we talked to Dr Staylor, we talked to Ivan di Rajo. Actually I talked to him later and got the right produnce station to that nailed that. We talked to val Geist, and now we talked to both Barry Kay Gilbert and Chris Dermont about those issues. So the idea here, amongst all the jokes and the poop stories and things like that, is too is to try to paint a picture of these very smart, very well studied individuals who all have, you know, very nuanced, complex opinions that have moving parts. And so that's I think that in and of itself paints a larger picture of the issue that we're dealing with, um with predators on our landscape. And so it's something that I hopefully if if you're looking for one answer, you're not gonna get it, but certainly you have hours of conversation to listen to from people that are very important, very well read, and very well studied on the subject, which hopefully that can lead you to be as well through maybe os Moses or through THC. So next week one, we're gonna get into Troy Landry, Jacob Landry, Louisiana. You're gonna love it. And after that it's gonna be Elk Talk, Remy Warren. We're gonna get into the mind of an Elk. We're getting the hunting season full boar, a lot of cool stuff coming THHC. Say bye, Phil, goodbye. Because I can't go a week without doing run without run Drank