00:00:08 Speaker 1: The Hunting Collective is presented by Element. I guess I grew up on an old row. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. We're an episode Philip, of course, of Benjamin Patrick O'Brien. Phil say hello to everybody. Hello Benjamin Patrick O'Brien. How's it going, buddy, It's going pretty good. Yeah, I'm gonna break some news here. We have a new podcast engineer. Oh boy, he's an associate. Um, oh boy. So, I mean it's up to you. He might pop up on the show eventually. We'll see, well, uh should we, like, how do we audition him? Since you have is he a hunter? Does he already have his Hunter's Safety course complete? He actually is? Yeah, he's a he's a b J member. Um moved in from Pennsylvania. He he's already ahead of me. I can. I can already feel him filling the filling the spot in your heart that was once occupied by me. I'm being gonna be kicked out. How do you feel about it? You're probably like encouraged by this development. You get a little little lag time, You don't have to really hang around me all that much, and you at least have a little pressure release about the new guests. Exactly, I don't. I don't have to be the the the the engineer hunter anymore. We've got someone to do that. I fear change, especially in this regard I've become. You've become quite the safety blanket for me here on the show. And and I fear this gentleman Will is going to try to move in, and I will, I will, I will reject his affection if he tries to. Um, yeah, I will reject him. That makes me feel really nice. Yeah, I hope he's listening to this. It doesn't even matter. I was to say, what's his name? But doesn't really matter what his name. You're not. You're never going to learn it anyway, don't. I would have come up with another name that's not even the real one, and just see how he takes to it. Um. I actually might call him Phil, just to see. I might ask him questions like, hey, how's the mango doing, and see if he'll he'll play along. If he does, he might, he might be good. If not, well, we might have to let him, let him go. Well, people don't know that I have absolutely zero to do with that. Hiring and firing in fact, i'd probably be going for for this new guy. So, uh, nothing there, but I Phil, I'm way under the weather man. I'm I'm feeling pretty pretty low right now. I'm sorry, I can hear it. I wasn't gonna say anything, but I'll go ahead and sat. Yeah. Well, you know, uh what it did do for me is remind me how much of people care. Because we didn't launch this podcast on Tuesday morning as regular and and a bunch of people reached out like where's my THHC, what's going on. I didn't know anybody really cared that much. I thought, whatever, it's fine, but people are really, uh really really yearning for a little me and you, so just pump your ego up in a little bit. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna even even after all of the ship stories and drawings of me. You thought nobody listened to this show. I don't. I try to, Like, I made that up my head. So I so because if I thought it was that important to people, I'd probably screw it up. So if I if I end up screwing this up, yeah yeah, alright, Well we got a lot to get to. I'm a little under the weather, so if I don't quite get that the words out right. Please excuse me. We'll do our best. We have Robbie Kroger coming up. Robbie. If you don't know Robbie, Uh, he's from a little a little uh content brand. I guess you could call it called blood origins. But Robbie I think you should probably know him a little bit better from his Instagram page. He's recently, like during the pandemic and during the last probably six to eight months, he's had some some killer commentaries on some of the hardest issues in hunting in the outdoors. So he's become kind of a touch point for you know, I, I would say, a open opinion on some of the toughest uh subjects, just like we try to cover here, so I do. I've admired him for a long time, but he really has stood out. He's talked about things like trophy hunting, hunting in Africa, wolves on the ballot in in Colorado and other places, and he's really I thought, hit some good notes. But I'm also ready to challenge him on some things UM as well, and try to poke at some of the dogmas that he addresses UM and try to challenge some of the hunting industry lore out there the way we dress some of these tough issues. So coming up real soon, we got Robbie Kroeger. But before we get to that field, there's a lot going on real Briefly, Uh, Philip Weeder, hold, I'll give you another reason to stick around with us and feel good about what we've created here, the th HC Cult. Are we sticking with that? At the TC cult? We can't stick with something we never established in the first place. So I'm gonna say no, true, true. So are we just gonna what are we gonna call this? Because if people, you know, we have to be good marketers, we have to call our listeners who they are. I think we all know you love a good contest. So why don't we have the listeners email in and suggest what we call the th HC Hive. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's just hi T H A C. I've all right, I feel you anyway, UM, let me think about that, because I gotta we gotta some other contests from the summer. We still gotta fill the prizes. Um, We've been slacking on our prize filment. But once we get that time, we can get a new prize out there for everybody, So keep thinking about that. But anyway, Philip Weeder hold rights and he said, I just caught up on the podcasts and I heard where you finished your Hunter's Safety. Phil As a THHC listener, I speak for myself, but perhaps a number of the listeners, I feel confident in saying we're proud of you and happy to have you as part of the hunting community. Philip um a commentary that was very Philip. Yeah, I was gonna say, from one Philip to another, Philip depends how many els he has in his name. I only have one. It's very important. But no, that that's this was important to people for some reason. I don't I don't know why, but it it is very welcoming and I'm not I'm not being sarcastic at this moment. It's very uh you know, it's it's a it's a really warm and strong community. And I've you know, I've been getting a lot of Instagram messages and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I appreciate it. All right, there's phil there's and that was Philip be and sincere on the new second with the podcast where phili is secere from about two or three minutes. Thanks Philip, Philip Weeder hole two ls, double L. Is that a problem? It might be? M now, well screw you know, sorry Phil, Philip two l's. UM get it together, all right, we got a lot of other things to cover. Um, I'll tell you what. Let's let's first get to what I think is a pretty good not so sharp moment. Play the jingle Phil word not so sharp moment, So you don't have to me, all right, I will say, Phil, since we have laid down the law, since we have told everybody out there that we are not gonna stand any more ship stories. Um, they have listened. They have listened very well. And I haven't received but one maybe ship story in the last couple of weeks. So I think everybody, uh, everybody understands the way that you feel. Well. I I laid down to the law, and um, people could tell I was very serious. So yeah, Sheriff Shriff Phil, Dr Clawa Day or whatever the hell you were, Doliday Clawiday, laying down the law. Alright, alright, Dr Phil Let's see what we got here. This one is from Keaton Quinn. He says, longtime listener, first time emailer, now This story is not so much as singular not so sharp moment it but rather a series of not so sharp moments that happened on opening weekend up Meal Deer. Back in October, my girlfriend and I had about four weekends straight scouting the perfect high mountain mule deer spot in the back country. We had everything dialed in and knew we could see some big bucks. On the opening weekend, we drug our buddy out to come with us, and we hiked up a steep three thousand foot elevation gain to our remote hunting spot. That is a hike, a real hike three thousand feet. We set up this seek outside TEPS and stove and to keep us warm during the cold nights. Now, Phil, are you familiar with the TPU, the seek outside t P and stove. I've heard you talk about it, but I have not seen it in action. So if you want to maybe describe it quickly, it's it's a tarp like outer shell that just literally just stakes into the ground in a tepee form. There's no floor, and then there's a nice little packable portable stove that goes up uh and there's a little chimney that goes out the top of that TP. It's one of the fact was then one this last weekend, and it's one of those things that um, a lot of hunters in the back country are beginning to love and Kevin Angie Timm, the owners of Seak Outside or badass individuals as well big time bach A members the New Field would probably like him. So she had out to New Phil, You're not welcome here at the show. Okay, we set up the seek outside t P and stowed to keep us warm during those cold nights. Now, the first not so sharp moment occurred. During that night, I slept closest to the stove so I could feed it while we were sleeping, and during the middle of the night, I must have rolled a little too close to the stove. I brushed up against it in my down sleeping bag, and all of a sudden we woke up to the smell of burnt goose feathers, a bunch of smoke, and down feathers floating everywhere. In a panic, I tried to shove the down back into my sleeping bag, and I used some gorilla tape that I had left on my trucking poles to quickly patch up my burnt sleeping bag. Now I thought this was getting our bad luck out of the way early, but I was sadly mistaken. We woke up in the morning, spotted some box right away and started the chase. Around the time I spotted a big three by four buck bedded down and I dropped him in one shot. I wanted to take a picture of all three of us and my with my buck to have sense it was such a great day. However, it's a pain in the ask to try and get a picture of you and your buddies when no one is there to take a picture for you. Uh he says. I set the timer, and moments later I start to see my phone slipping. It fell a good three ft down and directly onto a sharp rock. I go grab my phone and the screen is shattered. I was so stoked on my buck, though I didn't even care that much about my screen. I slid it in the top of my bino harness, not even thinking that maybe I should put it into my pack. We started breaking down the buck quickly, and since it looked like bad weather was coming in, it wasn't very long that the rain and snow piled up and started to dump We got our pack, float it up, and started hiking back to the top of the mountain. By the time we got to the top, it was raining snowing so hard that water was running off my hat, down my shirt, down my ass crack, and into my boots. It was the worst feeling in the world. We tied the game bags to a tree, leaving them for tomorrow's trip back to the truck. At this point I noticed that my phone was exposed to the rain and snow this entire time, since it had been strapped on the top of my bino hardness. All the rain and snow seeped into my crack screen, and my once working phone with just a shattered screen, was completely destroyed. Now you could say I was pretty bummed, especially now I couldn't use my on X to make sure we picked the right finger ridge to get back to our camp in the snowstorm was close to zero visibility. Luckily, we dropped down the correct finger ridge to our camp, which was a thousand feet down. As we dropped elevation, the snow turned into icy rain, and that continued to dress us from head to toe. Our clothes were completely soaked and for a weekend trip We didn't pack extra clothes since we wanted to pack one of our packs to be as light as possible. At this point, my girlfriend was less than impressed at the situation. Yes I could, I can see I can see her opinion of you probably not so great at this moment. You gotta do something to save it, there, Keaton. We got back to camp and her and my buddy crawled into the tent sopping wet, to try and get the fire started. Our water source it was a quarter mile straight down the steep finger ridge, so I volunteered to refill all our waters while Jen and Miller got the fire started. I gave them my pro putties so they could get the fire started quickly in the warm tent. It took me about five minutes to come back, and all I could think was how excited I was to see my backcountry tent stove cranking smoke out of the chimney so I could come back to a toasty, warm tent. However, that was not the case. I crested the ridge and there was no smoke coming out of the chimney. Great. I get to the tent. See what the problem is. It had rained so much that the water pulled up inside the stove, so it was like trying to start a fire and a swimming pool. At this point, I'm a trench through my clothes. There's still water running down the crack of my ass. So I just waited outside the tent until they could get the fire started. Jen told me that we were low one wood, so I started trying to gather what I could. All of what I could find was soaked, so once they started a fire, they placed the wet wood on top the stove to start drying them off. Eventually they got the fire going and stoves hot. However, the inside of its tent is filled with smoke from the wet wood drying off. I'm sure we inhaled so much smoke that's smoking. A pack or two of cigarettes would have been a healthier choice. I started getting ready to get into the tent, drenched unhappy like a wet cat, and I heard my girlfriend cursing, great, this can't be good. During the chaos of trying to organize the tent, Bettor she got my sleeping pad too close to the stove and burned a hole in it. I crawled into the tent and at this point the inside looked like more like a landfill than a tent. It was filled with all of our ship, our food, our clothes everywhere, burnt goose down feathers still floating around from the night before, smells like sweat and burnt plastic from the melted sleeping pad. All of our wet clothes are shoved it in the corner, and we are in our underwear and long drawn's trying to warm up. At this point, it's about five PM, so we had a long night ahead of us. We end up basically pulling an all night or trying to feed the stove and dry clothes off to add icing to this very shitty cake, another snow storm came through that night and we had to knock the snow off of the tent. That way, we didn't wake up to collapse TP. We woke up to a slightly Sunday morning, which lifts in our spirits. My pants were still soaked and slightly frozen, so I had to hike the long trek back down the mountain to the truck in my underwear, which was quite a sight to see. Keaton Quinn play the jingle Phil not so Sharp you don't have what do you think they're Philip, that was just really embarrassing. Um, you're a very very brave person for sharing that story. Yeah yeah, UM, I will tell you what I feel like. Keaton and I are kindred spirits right now. I didn't have my weekend wasn't quite as not so sharp as Keaton, but there are some things happening and I want to I wanted to tell you that story. But before I do, I want to say thanks to Keaton for letting us know about his uh soaking wet pants less hike back to the truck. For that, We're gonna get you a work sharp field sharpener from our friends at Work Sharp. Please hit him up on their YouTube page where you can get all kinds of cool things to do with sharpening. Again, our friends at work Sharp support them so we can keep this show going. And thanks again to Keaton for doing it now. Phil Um, I think maybe part of the reason I'm sick it is because I had an interesting weekend myself. UM, I like you can maybe great, how not so sharp my weekend was. If I tell you, I'm gonna tell you the story here. You're ready to go, okay, okay? Um, So I was hunting mule deer Phil up in the Missouri Breaks this weekend with a few folks that you will know, and we um had a great first couple of days. It was like sixty five seventy degrees. And if you ever been in the Missouri Breaks, it's some pretty rough country. The place we were it was about fifty minutes from the nearest town and that town had about a hundred people in it, and so it's a pretty remote hunt and the roads can get pretty crappy out there, and uh, in the Missouri Breaks, so if you see any moisture coming, it's probably best usually just to get out rather than get stuck way back in there. And now we prepare for that stuff when we go out on hunts like this. But that being said, I always lean on the cautious side. I'd much rather get a deer and be safe rather than and you know, try to be hardcore and gets stuck back there. So long story short, fill Uh. This weekend we had two great days of nice, warm, beautiful hunting. Didn't see a shooter bucks I'll about eighty or ninety deer. And then Saturday night we had this decision. We looked at the weather. Local weather said about three to six inches of snow coming that next day. It was supposed to be windy, visibility wasn't gonna be great, and it looked like we were gonna be in rough shape for the next couple of days, honey. Although after that weather moved in it with cool things off and the rut would probably kick in because it was about the time you would start to think that pre rutt meal deer action would be happening. So so that went down. So we had a decision to make do we get out of there, spend our sundays with our families. It's about a four and a half hour drive back to Bozeman, or do we stick out the storm that we thought was a light storm but not the huge, not the huge thing that would keep us stuck there for every weren't too scared of it, um, So we ultimately just thought, well, let's get out of here, let's go home and spend Sundays with our family and will come back later next week when the ruts on, the weather is cool and there's not a chance to get dumped on in terms of snow. So we packed all our stuff up really quickly. On Saturday night, about six thirty and we start making the four and a half hour drive back home. Well, phil, Um, then something bad happened. Do you want to hear it? Oh? Please? Now? Is this? Is this working for you? Is this I don't normally do like big monologue stories like this, Is this working for you? I think this is great and I think the listeners are probably enjoying it as well. Beautiful, beautiful. I'm very self aware. Uh. So we decided to get out of there. We're like, hey, you know. I was also knew that I was fairly low on gas. I brought an extra five gallon tank with me, Um, but just neglected to stop in town before we we headed out to the middle of nowhere. So I had a little bit of an issue with gas mileage. I had about a hundred and forty some miles on my tank and it was about that that much to the nearest town. Um, And so I thought, well, we're probably gonna make it no big deal. But I forgot to add in the fact that there was so much hunting gear in my truck. It was so heavy, giant yetti coolers, tubs full of tents, everything you can possibly think of for a couple of dudes. Hunting and my UM and my gas mileage and turn out to be out to be very good. So we started driving back, and that that little mileage number on my dask starts going down, down, down, down, And suddenly we're about forty miles from where I know to there to be a gas station and we're out of gas. It says, please refill the sum bitch quickly, and we don't. I don't know what to do. So we start, we pull over, we start Google, and we find the town of roy Montana. Have you ever been to roy Montana Field? I have not heard of roy Montana. Not surprised because it's only got a hundred nineteen people. One of those it's one of those towns that has like an American legion, a gas station with a non digital pump from like and a couple of hay barns and some trailers. That's pretty much the town of roy Montana. Well, this is our only hope at this point. I'm thinking trying to get in front of the storm. That that wasn't really in our minds at this point, but we want to get some We gotta get some gas because we're gonna be stuck out here. So we drive around the little town of roy Montana. We find an American Legion that's open. We go in there and we go to the bartender. She's a nice holder lady, and we say, hey, uh, we have no gas. Is there anybody in town that can get us a little bit of gas to get us to the next spot. She says, yeah, sure there is. Um. Her name is Joe Lene, and she will introduce herself to you as a crazy psycho bitch. I said, huh. She said yeah, she introduces herself as a crazy psycho bitch. But she has a gas station right down the street here. She'll fill you up. And I just said, oh cool, Um, what kind of beer does she drink that? She said, oh, Miller Lights. So we got a couple of Miller Lights and then we decided we had to make it over there and meet Jolene. I was a little bit nervous. When somebody pretty much labels himself a crazy psycho bitch right off in in a town like roy Montana, you know it must be true, because there's not that's not a place where rumors can really spread it all that much. So here we are counting on Joe Lie, the crazy psycho bitch. So we go over there. We go to this little it's a tiny little gas station. It's full of like all kinds of ranching parts and tracts or supplies and stuff like that. There's a little gas pump out there. Like I said, literally, it's not digital. It's literally, guys, like the number, the numbers that turn on the dial. She has to activate it. She shows up and immediately starts to tell us a story about her life. Now, I think I could write a song. I think John Priyant could write a song about this Joelene way better then the song you guys all know called Joe Lene. She was a psycho bitch, she was. She also described herself as a She had a sex muffin and grandfather that she was getting it on with. He was seventy five years of age, and she was he was her sex muffin. Um. She her son, she said, wasn't. We asked about how her family wasn't. She said her son was an entrepreneur. But and I said, well, like what kind of stuff. She says that he does some things around the way here, which I thought, well, I'm not gonna ask what those things are. I'd say in northern Montana that could go several directions. Yeah, you'll like this part. She had a cat named Mittens and Mittens Yeah, Mittens had apparently gone fifteen miles north to the Missouri breaks to another person's house, and found her way back to the gas station twice in the last you know, year or so, to Jolene's gas station. So we we said she was a gas station angel. She's racking torour, she's sex mother, mother, It's really just one of a kind. So she gave us her whole pretty much our whole life story. I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the things that I felt like we were there for hours, like we were in some kind of time work with Jeo Line. But Jolene really just gave us the gas. We're there for maybe five minutes. We we learned her about her entire life. She told us about all the elk that we might be able to hunt around there. So we got a little dope from Joe Lene for elk and we were on our way. But we're like, oh man, Jolene, thank you so much. She was great. I got a couple of hugs from her. She wasn't really a psycho bitch at all. Although when we first saw her inside the glass window of her gas station, we held the beers up to the window. She looked at us like she was gonna kill us. So I just like said, do you like Miller Lite? And she said yes, Um and all. He said, we got cash and she said, I figured. So the relationship blossom from there. Phil. So that was Joe Lene. So we pushed forward into the night. After we met Jolene, we were talking about on the way that we would write a song called Jolene about this wonderful it's wonderful town of roy Montana and her their psycho bitch queen Joe Lene. As we as we were driving, we got a call from our buddy Joe Joe Ferronado Jamie formerly of this program. He was behind us. He said, hey man, Um, he had decided to stay in camp while we left. He said, hey man, I'm right behind you. So what's going on? He said, Well, we got a call from our buddies. Dad. You said there is a straight up blizzard coming and it's coming right now. And he told us get the hell out of camp, get to somewhere safe. It's a bad one. And they had also gotten. He had also gotten pulled over by a cop who told him get off the road. There's a bad blizzard coming. At this point, we didn't know anything about that. We figured we're just driving home. We're beating a storm. The storm is not that bad, no big deal, three to six inches, nothing for that part of the world. When we get going as sure as ship does, the blizzard get awful. Like we're going down a little spot called Judith, pass through a town called Jude Gap, and the snow starts blowing so damn thick phil that we cannot see shit. Like I We're literally going three miles an hour. I've stick on my head out the window like a like a labrador a tree, or like manga might do. And I'm looking. I'm I'm looking at the rumble strip in the middle of the road to see if we're actually on a road, because I can't tell. I can't see in front of my the hood of my truck, and I can't tell where the roads arts and everything else hands is just a white out, full white out. Anyway, felt I'd like to make a long story short. I feel like this is a long story, but to make it shorter, we got stranded, dude. We got stuck in the middle of nowhere at eleven thirty two hours from home, three miles from the nearest town. We got stuck. We couldn't do anything, We couldn't see anything to move, We couldn't drive in any direction because I couldn't tell what was the road and what wasn't. So we had to literally just park in the middle of the road and sit there and get pounded by the wind for hours. And we weren't sleeping because it's so damned loud outside. We were just basically stuck in maroon there. Felt like we were like lost at sea or something. And so a couple of hours went by, luckily for us to snow plow comes eching past us and we're able to kind of sneak out behind it and follow it back to the town of Jude. Grab sleep all night in the with the truck run in the gas station parking lot, which is incredibly uncomfortable, and uh, we made it. We made it. And but the next morning we stayed in our trucks still. About eight am, finally the snow cleared enough for us to like get out. There was an eight foot snow drift behind my truck. We had to wait for somebody to come plow us out, and then we were able to slowly inch home once the roads were open. But that was my adventure. Phil. I just hear story after story on the show about people having just awful hunting experiences. Even if I have like a bad hunting experience, it'll feel good compared to all these stories that yeah, I've heard. Yeah, you know, you know, every once a while you gotta take a step back and see what the direction in your head. And we had, you know, a whole thing about wounding game every every week's and not a short moment I'm telling this story. Maybe maybe we should throw a few positive notes in there for you, Phil, for everything that would be great. I would appreciate that. Well, I hate to tell you, I gotta get there's another story that a few that many, actually I would say a few of many people sent me. Maybe it's because we're Montana based program, but I think also this is one of those things that seems like it should be illegal, but it is actually just an unethical hunt and a few citations were issued. But let me tell you a little story about at a white soft for springs um. This is it's I'll tell you it's. Um. It's something we should discuss and we should highlight only because it's one of those things that a community of people were outraged and a lot of hunters messed up big time, big, big time. It's as I'm reading off of k r T k R TV news out of great Falls. They say an incident occurred on October twenty five, involving about one hundred hunters. Let me repeat that, one hundred hunters. Phil, Do you even know one hundred people that you would go hunting with? Nope. I can't imagine like getting together with your group of one hundred friends to go hunting. Um, that seems patently ridiculous. I don't know how you would something like that. Yeah, it seems not only unsafe, but incredibly ineffective. Yeah, And I don't really understand. And so they said they these a hundred hunters were shooting and an heard of elk in Meager County. According to Montana Fish Wildlife in Parks, several citations were issued, but many people are more upset about the incident itself rather than the legal aspect. Montana hunting community is not only shocked, but angry. To learn fellow hunters surrounded a herd of elk, shooting consistently, killing fifty of them. Fwpces the incident occurred near White so Softa Springs in a block management area, and FTBP says it was legal but perhaps not ethical. Now, a block management area, if you're not aware, fill is an area that's private land, but that the as an arrangement with the state to allow hunting based on some restriction. A lot of them have signed in boxes where you can sign in, a lot of them have restrictions on what roads you can use, whatever. But it's a it's a really cool thing that the state of Montana does to allow hunters access to private land, and certain situations are Buddy Greg Lemon, there's an FWC spokespersons, but on the show before he said, this is really one of those places where the line between doing what's legal and doing what's ethical is really troubling. It's one of the main commandments of hunter education. Phil will know this is to know your target what's beyond it before you fire. When you're shooting out a herd of elk, that's hardly ever possible. The other one of the other commandments of hunter ed is to take good ethical shots. A lot of times when you have heard of elk running back and forth, hunters are going to be shooting. They have to be shooting at moving animals, which isn't frequently a high percentage shot and results in wounding. So while it might be legal, it's truly not ethical. He added on ethical actions by hunters, and a circumstance like this gives hunting as an activity a real black eye. Lemon told the news station here that the online rumors that surface shortly after claiming that thirty thirty to forty elk into waste we're not true. Lemon said only one elk went unclaimed and two were compisicated due to hunting violations. All three of those elk were went to a food bank. Lemon also noted that the majority of the response that he's seen to the event was similar to the FWP observation of the situation, meaning that a lot of hunters were real piste off about this. A lot of people vented their frustrations, private landowners um and everything. And fifty elk were killed here and one, like we said, one was unclaimed, two were confiscated. Those three elk that weren't taken, were donated to a food bank. UM. And that this is, this says jeopardized in that area of the state and probably possibly other areas of our state. UH. Landowners like the Gult brothers who owned the famous Gult ranch are reviewing whether they should keep their block management areas where they should keep their deal with the state to allow hunters onto their land. UM. And so in this case, you know these uh, we'll call them dumbasses. We have jeopardized the standing of of the hunting public with the private landowners who have block management in our state. So UM, it's it's it's hard to imagine a hundred people with rifles surrounding a herd of elk and just firing away until fifty of them were laying on the ground. I can't imagine. I just can't imagine being a part of that and not just being sickened by this, by the site, by the action. UM. But apparently there were a hundred people somehow that we're willing to take part in this. There was a few violations, but the citations were where nothing very serious. UM. Shooting from a road was one of them. Failed to properly validate a license, which probably meant that he didn't sign it and then using the license from another district. But these are only three of the fifty elks. So the other forty seven were taken legally. So here's the thing where when I say, or somebody on this show or this company says, do what's legal, that it doesn't always. Uh, it doesn't always track. It's not always something that we can count on. Um, this was a legal situation, and forty seven legal elk are dead and probably gonna be eaten by well who knows. Well, guess maybe they're gonna eat a couple of these elk. Who knows what the point of this whole thing was. But here's an issue where ethics comes into play, as we often talk about on this program, and um, something that folks should be aware of. I certainly that there's no it's not surprising people here that I would condemn something like this. I mean, obviously, uh, it's borderline sick. And I'm not sure what the motivation was. Um, I'd like to talk to these hunters and see what the hell is going on. But what's your what's your perspective as a as a soon to be hunter when you hear something like this film, I don't know. I mean you summed it up pretty well. Yeah, it's it's something that the non hunting or even anti hunting community you will latch onto and you know, spread and it's it's uh, it really does affect the public perception of all hunters. Um, when something like this happens, it's really selfish. And I mean even putting the motivation aside, which you know, like like you said before, like even you thinking about yourself in the situation makes you sick. Like just putting that aside because it was legal. Um, it's just a large scale event like this is not good for the community. Yeah, it's it's it's tough. You know, we always arrived the line of nobody wants to be holier on now tell people what to do not to do. But in this case, you know, it's really really easy to understand, um, why this isn't right or good and why we have to push back on this as a hunting community. You know, whether somebody takes a certain type of photo or whether somebody looks a certain way on on social media is more of a preference thing, I think, um, and more of a taste thing. But this. This is a actively unethical act, and I just wanted to highlight it because the gray area between those folks who said I've seen a lot of people say this, and a couple of people emailed into to to ask this question. Hey, UM, if we say just do what's legal, aren't we opening a can of worms that looks just about like this one? Um? And what you know, what do I do if I'm around somebody who does something legal that I think it is unethical? I don't think I have an answer for that particular question, but I will tell you that something disagree just wouldn't go unnoticed that I was around. And so, um, it's it's a shame, it's just and it's shameful. So we'll keep keep you updated. Well, maybe shoot a note to Grade Lemon and have him answer some of the questions and some of the emails that wrote in about this situation. And I appreciate everybody hanging in there for a local story that I think has implications for hunting ethics across the board. And so now we're going to go to our good friend Robbie Kroger from Blood Origins. We're gonna talk about this and many other things he really wants to be and I think it's becoming the voice for hunters um and why we do what we do, much like this program tries to achieve. So I love to have him in the landscape. You're gonna enjoy, Robbie Krueger, Robbie, how's it going? Man? Better than I deserve? Better than friend? So you are you are enjoying. And by being in a little whiskey here on a on a Tuesday night, Huh yep, we restocked this weekend. We're fully out of whiskey. I was down to some some crazy bourbon moonshine that my doctor gave me. Since I live in Mississippi, we get given those kinds of things. And uh, but no, I've got some some good whiskey back in the house and it's just easy way to finish out the day. You know. Yeah, well, I was just telling you. Then everybody that's listening already knows. I've been under the weather after it's getting stuck in a blizzard and I came back and I have been pretty much. I had an ivy connected with hot toddies going on, so I can't really complain about being out of the weather when it's Netflix and Hot Toddies. You know, I wonder how much nowadays people kids. I don't remember as I don't even know how young I was that moment. Dad would give us a whiskey with honey and lemon heat it up. We must have been thirteen fourteen when we felt bad, you know. Yeah, Yeah, that's the hot Toddy man. Yeah, whiskey, honey, lemon juice. Put a cinnamon stick in there if you're getting a real fancy which I do not. We do not have fancy cinnamon sticks in Africa. We didn't. We didn't have it in Maryland either, but oh I guess, uh, downtown Bosman might be doing that nowadays. Well, it's good to have you drink a little whiskey. We're gonna we're just gonna beat beat around the hunting industry and everything that you've done. You've done a lot of amazing things. Yeah, And I want to start by saying, um, you know the stuff you've been doing on Instagram, particularly the videos where you have kind of taken on, um, initially the why of hunting with your Blood Origin series, but I think more recently, especially I believe just kind of during the pandemic but you can correct me if I'm wrong. Even You've had a lot of videos where you just kind of set the camera up and you're talking about these these super complicated, really important topics, And I gotta tell you, almost every time I watch it, I feel like you hit the nail directly on the head. And yeah, and I know there's a there's a comedian. I don't know if you're familiar with the comedian Andrew Schultz. Uh yeah, look him up. It's a very it feels very parallel. He kind of He started doing a much at social commentary comedy during the pandemic on his Instagram channel. It became hugely popular, millions and millions of views, and it kind of set the tone for the time, like what are we saying? Who? Who's talking about what issues? And I feel similar to what you've done on your Instagram over their blood origins. So so good on you for for wading into these topics. Man, Well, I appreciate it. You know, it's as I sit you over Instagram. Yeah, I may be the talking head that gets up there on a Sunday now and talks about a current event, but really this isn't Robbie Kroeger saying, hey, this is Robbie Kroeger, right, this is Robbie Kroeger just being the the spearhead essentially to what we're trying to do with the origins, which is really just exposed and convey the truth around hunting. And there's a lot of things happening on a weekly basis that are just not truthful. And I was just like, man, this is ridiculous, and I thought, well, why don't we just do a simple, very simple talking head, do a little bit of editing on it, and speak from your heart, show that you're authentic, show that it's not scripted, and just tackle these really complicated topics and try and break them down into their simplest components so that people can understand it. And really, the talking head is for anyone listening to it to really take those kernels of information, those seeds, and plant them in their brains so that when the topic of conversation comes up through their social media feeds, through bar conversations, through the coffee shop grapevine, that they're like, oh, I know a little bit about that topic, and they can eloquently put a point of view across that is a little bit informative. But also it doesn't and I think, what again, the stance that we took with those talking heads purposefully, is your not this brow beating, chest beating hunter. That's like we are the greatest. It's like, hey, this is what we see. You know. Sometimes we don't agree with what heart and it may be going in disagreement to a hunter per se, but we explain why we're in disagreement, and we do it amicably, and we do it with respect, and we do it with a little bit of reverence. And it seems to be as you said, it seems to be resonating. Yeah, it's where it's working too. And I know it takes it takes some level of bravery to just to jump right into Man, I've been there. There's been some pocket factor on some of those videos. I'll tell you what, man, Any any video that I do with about wolves, Oh my gosh, I'm just like I tell my wife, I'm like, hey, I'm about to a wolf video, and I'm like, there's a bunch of crazies out there that if they just get ahold of the video, we may be in for a world of hurt. But again, we try to put it in such a way that you know, you're not really offending anyone either on the left or the right. You're just essentially pointing out the truth that sits in the middle. Yeah, have you have you found yourself? You know, I certainly have done this. I don't know instinctually or I'm not sure how I've came to this, but I start to think about kind of the dogma of the hunting industry and kind of some of the worthodoxy that that lives within our world. I like to push on that a little bit, and I have in some ways, and I know you are. Um, have you gotten pushedback from inside the hunting space for taking some of these stances? Um, what do you feel like, you know, generally the reaction from your peers within within hunting or or the audience of Blood Origins. You know, it's it's a super interesting question because I would have expected a lot more. And the reason why I don't think we've had more of it is that, again, I'm not expressing. Blood Origins is not a personal page for Robbie Kroeger. That's not the point of Blood Origins. The point of Blood Origins is to convey the truth around hunting. For everyone, for us, for our community, and as such, when I put forth a a piece of information, a piece of content that I may happen to be talking about, it's not my opinion. It's really this thing that i've I don't know if it's my opinion, it's my perspective on this topic. And I come at it very neutrally. And what I've found is because I've come at it mutually, of the comments are respectful, comments are in favor and positive. However, the one percent that does seem to get up a little of their hackles and push back on me. I think what's what has been what is becoming the norm in our social media space, especially in the hunting space, is that when somebody someone says something that's a against the grain of what the piece of content is saying, people automatically jump on the comment instead of saying, man, I appreciate that point of view, I appreciate the perspective. Let me push a little bit on your perspective. I want to know a little bit more about your perspective. And then they get to push back on you at the same time. And what you're creating is this intellectual dialogue that is amicable and respectful. Then I cannot tell you I probably count on my hands the times that that's happened, maybe half a dozen times, maybe a dozen times, every single time that person has slid into my d M S and said, Hey, I don't mean to be an arshole. I love your stuff. I'm not trying to be an arshole, and I say you're not. I appreciate you pushing a little bit. I appreciate you thinking a little bit, because that's what's missing is people. People don't sit back and think anymore. They just accept we'll just stop for a second and think on a specific topic or a specific viewpoint and try to understand it a little bit more. That's why that's where I think we're winning, and we're winning across the board. We you know, we pride ourselves on you know, we're not in it for the r o I. We're not in it for the engagement. We're not in it for the followers, not in it for the likes, and so we don't when people say, well, what's your engagement? Myself? Right, I don't care. But the way that I measure how how good we're doing is when you start a empty hunting stream of consciousness on your Facebook page where they're starting off calling you an MF for this, m F for that, And at the end of the time of the guy wants to d M you because he's never had someone intellectually debate you the way that we intellectually debated him. And then he slides into the d M saying, Hey, I'm doing a PhD in Africa. Can I can I throw some questions your way to help me figure out a problem that I'm having. Yeah, that's that's real change, man. You know that that I I We've had so many conversations on this program where we tend to bang on social media pretty heavily and for good reason many times. But what you're saying, I think just to note that there are real changes that can occur, and I would agree with you. My experience is that when you really engage someone respectfully, even if they don't respect you in the initial commentary, most of the time they'll admit to just wanting to get your attention. Um and and I think then you can it'll it'll grow into something a bit more than that. So I appreciate the positive generally, the positive outlook there. And and again I mean you know, someone has to do it. And when I say bravery, I mean it because you know to to to walk out, to walk into the issue of wolves. You know, at at the moment that you did here last week on your social media where people you know, the vote just went down and people it's you know, it's kind of hat it's heightened sense. Um, everybody has their hackles up as you say, Um, so you want to I want to talk about what Blood Origins is and go through that. But I think just because it's it's on the tip of my tongue, your video and folks can go to at Blood Origins and see it. But the video your commentary about um, the ballot initiative on wolves. Can you just give us a rundown of what you presented there. Yeah, so, you know, we want to we're trying to be we're trying to be current with our talking heads. So this Sunday I was like, you know, I was getting pushed, well, you should do something around the elections, and I was like, we don't touch politics with the ten football and because and the way and people like you have to Robbie, this is for the it's for the the good of the country. I said, no, I don't, because hunters are blue and red, hunters of purple as well, So I'm gonna as everyone were four hunters, um, so one one four got voted on in Colorado. And that should already be sort of giving you sirens or ringing any bells in your brains, because no wildlife management decision should ever be left up to the public perception. It could never, should never be left up for the public ballot. But that's what happened with wolves, and that they don't know the actual legal mechanisms and how much it took. But obviously a petition went around. They had to get a certain number of signatures in that petition, and by getting that they were allowed to put this decision on the ballot. And the decision really came down to whether or not the folks of Colorado would vote the Commission of Parks and Wildlife to put a plan in place to reintroduce and manage wolves. And it's not just a plan, and in reading it it may look like that, but when you go down into the details, it's actually a plan and a carrying out of that plan by December thirty one three, So in three years time, I have to do a bunch of things. They have to address that the public which is where the key points of hunters and hunting and ranching are going to have to be seen, and they're going to have to be heard, and they're gonna have to be addressed. That's part of the plan. They have to address public comment. They also have to address the economic impacts of the reintroduction on the state of Colorado. Um the other very interesting thing that they have to do is they have to evaluate the economic impacts of it of no introduction, So they have to do both economic analyses. Interestingly enough, and I did not put this in my talking head and I should have, is obviously Colorado has voted to have legal marijuana and that is a huge windfall for funding in the state of Colorado. So one of the arguments that US as hunters and hunting community will make is that wolves will have a significant detrimental economic impact on the state of Colorado in terms of conservation, the licenses and all the stuff that we know goes along with it. But the state of Colorado more than likely has enough money now two backfill that lack of funding because of a lack of hunting. So I don't think that there's not going to be money available. I think there would be because obviously Colorado is in a very unique position then most other states. And so the ballot passed thirty votes, so it goes forward. Yeah, and that's I think a lot of us. You know, when I looked at that, I really did think, well, it seems like this is going to pass. And again this gets into a lot of the population dynamics, and as you said, with the hunting community, even UM and outdoor recreationists and the outdoor economy, it's it's very red some places, very blue in some places, and and many times, like many ballot initiatives or many elections, UM, places like Denver, you know, dominate the conversation, dominate the ballot initiative. UM for sure in ballot box. UH. Biology is something that just goes against, as you well know, our North American model wildlife conservation. This is not how we managed. So do you you know when you think of the future of this UM, where does it where does it go? In your opinion, do you feel like we're we're headed down UM, We're obviously in my opinion, headed down the wrong road with this. But is there something to be done within the public comment period and then the three year plan. But three years, I'll had to make that plan, Um that that will be good for wolves and for these ecosystems and trophic cascade and all these other parts of the puzzle with wolves. So I think I'll hit a couple of things that I think are a detrimental. One is the precedence that has been set, the precedents that wildlife management can go to the to the ballot, to the vote. I think that that precedence is dangerous. I think that other states, and and and and and other anti hunting organizations are probably the same. Anti hunting organizations are going to see that as a windfall, and I'm going to push that in other states. So that precedence is very dangerous, if not already causing, gonna have to it's gonna since they create some very sticky situations in other states. Yeah. One fourteen, in fact, is the is the first time voters have made this call to reintroduce an animal ever history of our country. Um, that's definitely Colorado, And I was just looking it up. I just looked it up just to check, um, And you know, the vote was split between those big urban areas we talked about Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, those were the votes that pushed this over the edge, um to reintroduce. So it's this is this is a tough thing, and this I think if we continue to see this, we're in trouble. Um. You know, wildlife management is in trouble. We have a system in place that is sound, that has been sound, that has worked. Um. Not saying that, I'm not saying that the reintroduction of wolves in any case should always be argued against. I think there's some dogma within the hunting industry that needs to be challenged there. But um, we we've definitely looked at it on this show, where you know that it's a complicated issue no matter where it happens, especially out the back door of my house here Yellowstone. We've seen it. And so it's tough ballot box biology. If if that is what we're going to see, and as you said, if the precedent stands, we are in trouble. Well, it's it's sad. All you know, your land grund institutes of this country, the ones that have the wildlife fisheries departments that have are essentially the backbone of wildlife science for their their respective states. The graduate students, the undergraduates that are coming out of those departments wanting to become the resource managers that the biologists for the state. That would you know, when I was a professor at Mississippi State, I used to tell my kids, I said, the reason I take this job so seriously and I want you guys to learn is because you guys will be managing my resources for me and my kids and my grandkids one day. Well, that job, that idea of being in charge of resources has essentially been stripped from them and has been turned over to people who wouldn't ever interact essentially in that landscape. You talked about the urban populace driving home the vote, Well, that's not where the wolves are gonna go. They're going to go west of the continental divide um. You know, maybe a vote limited to the west of the Continental divide would have shown a much different scenario in terms of it's populoust, it's popular opinion on whether a vote a vote four wolves or against wolves, was it was even necessary? Yeah, that's that's will continue to happen. I think this is this dynamic both politically and just like you said within the population, and most of these states, pretty much every state I've lived in save Montana, has been has been primarily read throughout the rural areas, but controlled politically and in elections and these initiatives by this the urban centers. And I think that's we saw that in our presidential election, and we see that um throughout. But you know, proper and fourteen does stipulate. I know that ranchers are going to be compensated for any livestock they lose. I've had experiences with wolves in my hunting spots here in Montana, killing livestock. And I've got to look at the aphis, trappers and the government and agencies that get involved here. And so I wonder how many people in Denver, in Bowler, in Colorado Springs understand the dynamics here, um, the elements of cohabitation, and as you said, I mean those you know, it seems almost traite in a way to say I want to give these ranchers, we're gonna compensate you. We're clearly gonna put uh you know, so wolves back on this landscape and they're clearly going to kill your cattle. But we're gonna we're gonna compensation, you don't worry. Um, that just can't be enough for those folks. There's gotta be more to it. So I do hope in the in the months and years ahead that that we can get some clarity and a plan can be built and and Colorado can even though the ballot box biology just can't stand. Um, maybe we we can get a good result here and use this as a way forward. Um. Because to be clear, do you know, do you feel like the dogma within hunting is anti wolf or is there more nuanced to it than than don't kill my elk, don't kill my cattle? You know? Where do you feel like we stand as a community there? Well, let me before I answer that question, I want to be sure that I wasn't too negative on the whole one one four, and that the positive aspect of it is that there's still a very much a rigorous public comment period, and there's very much a semblance of a viewpoint being heard and having to be reconciled with, which will be the ranches and the hunting community in Colorado. So that is one very positive point. The other very positive point is the fact that wolves are gonna you know, hopefully we'll be delisted. Uh, and so those those management strings will be lifted from the state of Colorado to be able to do the things that they that they need to do. I did see yesterday that two of the big anti hunting organizations are planning to sue the government on that day listing um. But I don't think that'll it'll work. I think that they've gone past the rule. But again I don't know much of the evil authorities there and how that actually works. Um to your question about the dogma, I think again, just like everything in this world right now, is that you are. You have a split camp people that hate wolves, and rightfully so right I've had so many people reach out to me and comment about I've seen what it's done in Montana. I've seen what it's done in Idaho. You don't want to go there, Like there is a significant I haven't seen the data, but there's in terms of perception, significant decrease in Elk and Meal Deal populations because of wolves being in those areas. That's the truth, right, That's that's you don't need science. You don't need data too. If someone's been hunting the same area for fifteen years and things have slowly gone down. Doesn't take much to understand what's going on. Um I will I will say that. UM, so go ahead, and sorry to interrupt you continue. No, I just wanted to say, but the other side of you know, hunters is being educated, you know, in terms of ecology and ecosystem management and realizing that there's a place for alpha predators just like a mountain lion and wolf. But I think that's where the big butt is and that's what I pointed on the video is that management is the key right, being able to manage h and being able to manage specific populations in specific areas for specific reasons. And so if it's going to be managed for elk, then there's going to be a larger harvest quota on wolves. If it's being managed for balance, then there's not so but that's whildlif management agency decision that is typically driven by the tax paying public of that said state. Yeah, then there's a lot of there's a lot of the stakeholders here. You got like as we mentioned ranchers, you have the Native American community h hunters. Of course, um and I just I agree with you this is these are real stakeholders. These are people that are really dealing with these issues and wrestling with him. And we've had I've had Dr Vlarious Geist on the show. And the first time he came on the show. The first time he came to the show, he was he's a rapidly anti wolf and talked about predator pits and having seen with his decades of study, I mean, he is almost replete with with knowledge on this subject that he felt that, um, and and and it's hard to argue with Dr hilarious case that wolves are a scourge to the landscape. And and I got a lot of a lot of commentary around that from conservationists and everyone the first time. Then he came back the second time and did and and clarified it a bit in terms of feeling like exactly what you just expressed, which was intelligent intervention. You know, wolves do belong in the landscape. I believe that our company here at Media to believes that, um, we do believe they belong in the landscape in some shape or form, but only if we're allowed to consider all the factors at play and and not treat them as if we we need to put them on the landscape and then leave them alone as as somehow nature will balance you know nature. You've probably heard or seeing wolves. Wolves do not. They don't have a governor when it comes to what they kill and how they kill. I've seen it. I know it, and and that is that's that's uh, something that might not be quite clear to the folks that are voting here. I was just looking, Uh it looked like the vote was one million, four hundred and twelve thousand, five hundred and seven to one million, four hundred thousand and four hundred thousand to eight to zero. So I mean it was close as close as it could possibly get, which to your earlier point, man, maybe that's just shows where we are as a country. We're pretty damn divided on almost everything. Yeah, that's so, it's it's crazy. But you know this, this reminds me too of another thing I you've talked about, and I know we mentioned anti hunters. We've had some some vegans and some animal rights activists on this program, and something that has struck me, you know, and I think it does transition well from the wolf topic is is there's just a lot of folks out there who who don't quite display what I believe objectively as an understanding of the natural world, and they might call themselves vegans or animal rights activists. I've tried to go out personally and and find some of the top folks in the animal rights space and try to, you know, suss out what they're really what the angle is. Is there something I can learn? I generally found that there isn't. Um. It's been tough, kind of funny sometimes, um, but compelling. On the last Dude, So you you've discussed this, You've thought about this. You know, blood origins is something that discusses the why of hunters through other people's perspectives. But also, like you said, you've you've turned to these other issues. Do you feel, um that the anti hunting movement itself is a it's not a monolith. But how would you describe anti hunting as as a thought process and something that you would address, you know, to to your followers or to anybody who would listen on Instagram. That's a that's a good question, um, and I'll answer it. The swift anti hunters are like hunters, very much a minority, but they don't sound like a minority. They sound very very loud. And the reason they sound sound loud is because they have a bunch of celebrity mouthpieces that somehow have hooked into the rhetoric. And my biggest, my biggest pet peeve in this world right now is that people can see hunting dying all over the world, and we have celebrities ourselves that hunt. And you will be surprised ben of the celebrities that hunt, the biggest names out there hunt. But are they willing to say something about it? No, because it's not cool. But how about, you know, we try and make it cool. How about they say something that's a little bit less, you know, I go out and kill something. Rather it's this is why I go do it, which is the whole point of that origins. We all of a sudden, then we can have our own army and our own cheerleading squad or celebrity mouthpieces. Anyway, I devolved from what you were saying, but it's the whiskey. I'll say this. This is what I say. If an anti hunting comes on and starts running rhetoric, we've we've we typically give them two strikes or three strikes. We'll we'll try and be even killed in the response. If they still don't understand the choose to understand it and choose to listen. We'll do it again, and we'll do it again. After that we're done, will delete the post or will bannd the person doesn't whatever it is, because at the end of the day, when it comes down to voting, when it comes down to the ballot boxes, there is a set of anti hunters on the left, there's a set of hunters on the right, and they's just call it. We know it's not that, but it could be. And there's a six block in the middle, and it's block in the middle that is keeping us in our lifestyle, in play, and that's pretty much general across the world, and that's who we speak with. That's who we need to talk with. That is the people that we need to convince. And here's the critical thing about the six that I believe is also true. Is willing to reason. The six has a little bit more intellect to them and is willing to listen. And they also have a very very very good bullshit me now. And they can tell when you're being authentic, when you're being genuine, or when you're just flat out you know, lying, And they help poke questions that you to test you. So that's our approach. That's our approach. It's worked thus far, it seems to be working in our social media spaces, um, and that's what we're gonna That's what we're gonna do. And I think again, the type of content that we created Blood Origins is it's very great content. It's very even killed content. It's very digestible content to specifically to that six because that's what we build Bood Origins for. We didn't build it for you and me as a hunter. Yes, hunters are getting something out of it. They're watching us. And again, that's the other thing that is blowing my mind is how many people are watching us. They don't necessarily follow us, but they watch us. I think you're one of them. You watch us, You see what we do. It comes across your feet and so places, and people watch how we interact with people. They watch our rhetoric, they watch our narrative. And I think that that is the most important thing that is coming across to people is that there's a new way to tackle issues, in a new way to speak, in a new way to portray things in a new storyline. And they it's again, it seems to resonate. Yeah, the reson is with me. Um. You know, I'm a fan of it. I think that you know, I'm proud to be a part of of what I would deem just a new space in the hunting world where we can do these things. And and I'm proud to have folks like you and modern huntsmen. And I mean I could go down the list of all the people that I think are really deliberate about this stuff and and are proud of it. And I think that is a huge part of it. And one thing we talk about here a lot, and I'd love to hear your take on this, because I know you'll have a good one, is that what do you think the question is if you talk about that six if you could oiled down the one question they have for us as hunters, what what would that question be? I know that's a that's probably a tough one to boil down. But is there something that you've a refrain you've heard from from agnostic individuals in this case, I think it's the standard one that anti hunters use, which is that hunters, you enjoy killing and that's why you hunt. Yeah, that's a stronger or that's a stronger piece of rhetoric, Like, there's no rhetoric that we have that's pro hunting that's as strong as as that is in the anti sense. I think we have several rhetorics that are equally as strong. I think the conservation rhetoric is strong. I think the benefit to communities is strong. I think the benefit to people's mental health is strong. Just those three things are as equal to that rhetoric. The problem is m and this is something we're starting to tackle, and it came out of COVID as well, is that people started saying to me on those specific three things. Okay, we use the word, we used the phrase hunting is conservation. You have used it right. What if somebody says, prove it, then prove it. Show me proof. Show me proof in Africa, show me proof in Argentina, show me proof in Spain, show me proof in Australia, show me proof of how someone's mental state changed. How about video recording? Someone UM that said, and I can use this because he's he's told me this. UM I wouldn't tell his name. But someone who comes up to me and says, Robbie, I had a pistol in my mouth. Three years ago, and if it wasn't for hunting, I wouldn't be here today. How do we captured that story front and center, full of emotion, full of passion, full of authenticity, and deliver it the way that we deliver it. That's proof right there. You can't argue with someone's heart. That's the proof. And we've unfortunately shied away from it. And our story has not been around this is going to get me into trouble. But that's a story has not been about mental health, spiritual health, conservation, feeding kids, rural kids, you know, changing people's lives across the world. That has not been our rhetoric in the hunting industry. The Rhetorican hunting industry is how quickly can we kill something? With the industry marketing beast mentality, uh stuff. That's what we focused on in the last twenty five years. And there's this Why would you question where we've landed today when someone's rhetoric against us is hunting all about killing? Okay? I get it when I look at everything. I get when you say that didn't we Yeah, didn't we just fall right into that trap? You know? They would? Are we still falling into it? You know, it's it's a hard that's a hard thing to measure. But I can tell you when I am as a kid that that's what I saw, and that's what the media was, and that's what was presented to me as a young man was real tree, monster bucks. No offense to real tree, but kills and twenty five minutes or whatever they would do, you know, And that's it was all big bucks, all the time, and that's what would get you a claim. And that's so that's kind of that became a bedrock of the hunting culture. And so when the anti hunter said you're all about killing, it's all about ego, it's all about the game, like winning the game, like quality of hunting, you know, getting the high score in the video game of hunting. They weren't wrong about that, right, I mean from your perspective, you know, you grew up in an entirely different place. But but did you see that from a young age or did you know because I didn't grow up around hunting. I grew up in a city like Los Angeles. Johannes's Books of Africa eight and a half million people. So if you had asked me as a seventeen year old what hunting was. One I couldn't have told you because I wasn't exposed to it, which is almost the reason why I built that origins because of that non exposure. And Two, I didn't have a perspective on it. I was in that sixty percent brackets. Just like my wife here in America, if didn't have a perspective un hunting. She didn't care about hunting, but she did care when something came front and center about hunting, which sued her perspective on what hunters are and who and what they represent. Yeah, well I loved that we should we should hit on your story because I've seen some of the content you made about your own story. And and I'll tell you, man, when I remember when I first met you, I want to say, was that a trade show or something? So many of the trade shows during my YETTI years, and I could just feel I was like, I don't know who this guy is, but I can feel his passion. I don't know what he's gonna do with it, but it seems he's like he's infectious. I'm not sure where he's what direction he's going, but it's going to be something. Well, and I knew um I knew it for sure. Your your story, I think is emblematic of of your own content too, because growing up in a place where you weren't exposed to hunting, but now decades later, hunting is what you do. It is a huge part of your identity in your life and your business and your day to day. So give people kind of the you know, the transformative story of not having that and then today being so immersed in what we do. You know, I didn't grow up hunting. I didn't know what hunting was, but my my blood, my my blood origins essentially was steeped and hunting heritage. My grandfather was born in in Russia in nineteen twelve. As he said in one of his stories, he grew up in the two wildlife paradises that this world had to offer in the last century. One was northern China, sort of Mongolian stepe, Siberian tiger. He's the only person that I know. I'm not that well read, but he's the only person I know that's hunted pheasants white. He had pheasants in tibet Um. He hunted that in the thirties and forties and went through multiple revolutions and World Wars and whatnot, and then decided to move his entire family too um Portuguese East Africa at the time in the fifty four now Mozambique, and then lived the heyday of African hunting in the sixties and seventies until revolution hit there. My graham, my father, grew up as a sixteen year old, as a teenager, really in hunting camp with my grandfather. And then I guess you know what's interesting is everyone talks about you know, hunters are supposed to be the best story tellers in the world. And you would have thought sitting in Africa and a barbecue or brie we called it outside and father their grandfather there, he would have they would have regaled us some stories of them, you know, and their antics out of the bush. I honestly, we didn't get a single fireside story from my grandfather my father growing up. And I think the reason was is that they realized that that paradise that they experienced was gone. It was gone out of Mozambique, and obviously in South Africa it's very difficult to do because there's no public land essentially, and so I just didn't get exposed to it and there was nothing wrong with it. I didn't feel like I was missing out or anything. I had. I've got a trip, a treasure trope of stories written by my grandfather, and I've got trophies from my grandfather, and I've got a two seventies Saco that he used for planes game here in the States. Fast forward, I fell in love with swamps and wetlands as a sixteen year old and did a Bachelor of Science and environmental conservation biology, a Master of Science and wetland ecology. Came to the States to Mississippi actually to study aquatic by geochemistry as a PhD student from Johanna's Mississippi. Yeah, so it's really funny people. If I had a dollar every time someone said that, or at least I would have been able to didn't have to get like two or three jobs as a PhD student in Oxford. But yeah, if you had asked me, like where Mississippi was in the States, I couldn't have told you. I couldn't have told you it was a coastal state. I just knew New York was in the east, California's on the west, and Missippy was somewhere in the middle. But yeah, it was all divine intervention in terms of how I landed here and who I worked under. And um, I've got a PhD essentially, and as I said, acquatd by geochemistry, but it was mainly tied with water quality and agriculture and wetlands. Um that met my wife in Oxford. She was doing a PhD in eighteenth century Gothic literat just so she's way more intelligent than I am. And google's every day how she plans to kill me for a book obviously, Um, and yeah, he just and I just at that time, I had some friends, some some redneck friends and you know, typical Mississippi. How you want to go hunting? I was like, yeah, I'd love to go hunting. And I'm like, yeah, here's the gun. Here's a launcher cur under the tree. If something walks by, shoot it. I was like, okay, sounds good. And uh, I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the whole you know, camaraderie aspect of it. And there was some sort there was a certain bloodlust associated with it. Obviously in the young age, because I was, you know, twenty five years old experiencing what a twelve year old boy in America typically goes through and I fell in love with it and finished my PhD. You got a professorship at Mississippi State University. Move my family there had two boys, and then the BP the BP oil spill happened, and I was asked to be the chief scientist of that council that was born out of the BP oil spilled to stand up a restoration framework from Texas to Florida in terms of how essentially a billion dollars was going to be spent utilizing the best available science as well as marrying politics into the whole framework. Um. And so that's what lended me where I lived today. I living based in Lewis, Mississippi, and I work as the chief scientists for a small consulting company essentially doing that work for the state of Mississippi. And in that time I got more and more and more interested in hunting because as I was, as I was maturing, I had more resources, I got to know more people, and just the idea of hunting different things in different places started exciting me. And I also was raising two boys that I just ready is keen on its introducing them to what this this thing was that I missed out on. And I think that's the crux of the matter is that I was like, Okay, I want my boys to know what it means to hunt. I want my boys to really think deeply about this exercise of hunting, and they could have easily fallen into the trap. And not that it's a bad trap, but your narrative of what you train the next generation of hunters is based on who you are and what you think about hunting. And if you don't think about hunting too deeply and you just think of it as a a blood lust and you're still in that space, then that's what you're gonna, you know, teach your kids, and that's how your kids are going to be raised in Again, I'm not I'm not down in that. I can't down that because I was there and and that's just part of hunting um. And so at the time, I just started thinking more and more about it, and I was like, Okay, I need to figure out this for myself. So I started looking around the space of you know, where can I get this information? Where can I hear from other hunters about like why do they do this? And I couldn't find it, you know, Stephen Ronella was just he had just hammered on me either, I think at the times as five six years ago, and um Shocky had just I think started uncharted. Those the only two really pieces out there that I could I could really feel um and the other thing I was I had also come into my faith at the same time, and I was really exploring my my, my, my faith as a Christian. And there was this project. I don't know if you've heard of, this project called I Am Second, and I Am Second is just as beautifully filmed testimonial project around famous people, unknown people on their why essentially but a while being a Christian, and it just filmed beautifully and it's it's it's it's short, and it pulls you in and you just resonated with the story of The one story that I watched the first and I'd still recommend people go watch it today is Josh Hamilton's the Picture of the Texas Rangers, and I can still remember him in his interview saying he was obviously Josh Hamilton's story. Both his parents died in a car accident that he was in, and he became a druggie and an alcoholic, and he was lying in bed. He was living at his grandmother at the time. He was lying in bed and he was having this dream that he was fighting the devil and it was just fighting, and he kept getting knocked down, he kept fighting back, and he just knew that he was never going to win. And he woke up and he went and climbed into his grandmother's bed at twenty six years old, saying, and I sleep with you tonight. And it just was just And I watched that then, probably nine years ago, and I still remember it, that's how much it impacted me. And I was like, Man, I want that for Hunt. I want people to resonate with people's stories that they can see themselves in the story, they could feel that person's story, that could feel how authentic and genuine that story is. And so I decided to build it. I'm not a cinematographer. I'm just I have a vision for what I want, and as you figured it out, I'm a pretty determined individual. Yeah, And I can tell that for the first time I met you, man, I was like, Wow, um, this guy's gonna punch a hole for the through the industry wall here and see what happens. Because but it's inspiring to hear you talk about, you know, wanting to see that reflected in the hunting community and not and then not being there because I had a similar kind of I don't know what you would call it epiphany or a kind of experience. And I had been in the hunting industry for half a decade, six six seven years, and I had just never found myself, and I would I found myself kind of like molding into what the thing wanted me to be, you know, what the industry wanted me to be, the way they wanted me to talk, the way they wanted me to look what I had to wear, and I just at some point I thought, Man, this isn't you know, this isn't the way that I can move through this, and I've got to do it my own way. And it sounds like you you kind of had the same, you know, the same feeling. I like you. You said like he used the word feeling, because hunting until recently never had much feeling to it, you know, never had much emotion to it other than like I killed a big buck emotion. Well, those things that we're not supposed to be vulnerable, then we're not supposed to be emotional. We're not supposed to be passionate in that in that sense, um, all the things that aren't typically sexy, we're not supposed to be transparent, all the things that typically on sexy for the industry was what I wanted. It was the ninety nine percent that we had forgotten. And you know, honestly, it's it's again I think the Lord's fingerprints on anything. But those initially years of me when I met you at A T A and and all the others, and I was just like, I said, Okay, this is the way that I need to do. I need to meet all these people and I'm going to do the typical industry thing and I'm going to get all these sponsorships, and that's how it's going to work. And because we were so new, it was almost like, and you can, you can tell me if this is true or not, but I think it is true. It was because we're so new, everyone was like, oh, that's a great idea, but we've heard a thousand of them, so it sounds great, go do and come back and that kind of stuff. I'm not I'm not a I'm not a you know, do your time dues kind of guy. If if it's a good idea jump on board kind of deal. But I understood now you know why the dudes and the time needed in terms of was just just needed to prove yourself and and and honestly it was for the best because the more that we've matured and large and it's the more that we've realized that blood origins doesn't belong to anyone. Blood origins belongs to us, belongs to you, belongs to your boy, belongs to the people of the hunters of Colorado, the non hunters. It doesn't belong to a yetti, it doesn't belong to a weather be it doesn't belong to a queue, it doesn't belong to any industry partner. And so we've purposely just stayed away from it. We haven't received any money from anyone. And what we do is we have this year, specifically, we have turned ourselves into a Fiber one C three, so we are in a federal nonprofit and now we can get the generous donations of you know, philanthropic individuals that see what we do and what we're doing and how we're doing it, and they said, we love what you're doing, Robbie. We want to support you. M. Yeah, what a beautiful way to look at things. And again too to just do it your own way, U to create a path and not have to And I I feel you man, having been in a position, having been in both positions. One to have this marketing budget that felt like more than a marketing budget. It felt like, you know, there's opportunities I could hand people, you know, and that responsibility. I don't know that I always had an eye on how much that meant um until it, you know, until I moved on from it. But you know, the same same way now is is I have this program and I work for a corporation and then you know, meat eat or ink and they have sponsors and and things that they want to do. They are so awesome to me and let me, you know, talk to you and say whatever the hell I want most times. Um. But but in today's media age, within hunting and without to have somebody like you who one has the expertise from a conservation level, from an ecologic level, to to have also the freedom of thought, the freedom to say what you want to say because you're passionate about what you're saying, not because it's gonna get you more money, not because you're gonna be rich and famous, not because it's gonna up your engagement, but because you know, and hopefully people can hear this, and as you describe this in your voice, I can like, this is what the world needs a whole ship ton more of in my opinion, Um, because everybody has a voice, but everybody's voice is sponsored by some other entity. And the influences on our speech are can are very profound, um and have a huge impact. And that that remains true for hunting. What we can and can't say is governed by how much we want to put ourselves out there to get beat up, because corporations don't like people that say whatever they want and get you know, have people cancel them on the internet and have people pissed at them, and they receive emails you know, oh my gosh, Ben O'Brien voted for this person and he said this, or Robbie said this, And so to see see the path that you've taken, Um, it's important man. And and for those that want to get in the industry like you should be willing, like Robbie, just explain take your lumps um, because it could it could lead to something really cool and really great. So you know, I guess I say all that to say kudos to you man for for sticking it out and continuing to do and what you're doing well, I appreciate it. And it's funny, you know. In in the reason We're five or one c three, my wife told me, I think two years into the process. We're only four years into the process. Um, two years and she was like, hey, Robbie, I appreciate if I could get a savings account back for the house. Um, and uh so I had to start looking for money. But again I didn't want to tire myself to two industries per se. And so I did start doing like some interview type work for people. And even then I belonged to someone, and so I would interview someone and I would come up with this like this is what it looks like and this is amazing, and I'd send it off and it would come back and go, it's too short. I'm like, what do you mean it's too short? It's like everything he said in the most succinct way, and it's so punching. Now we wanted at least four minutes. And even at those points, I'm just like that's not what I'm doing. This is, that's not why I do this. I don't you know, I just do what we do. And so anyway, I say that to say that I appreciate what you said. Um, we don't want to we don't want to belong to anyone. Cheers cheers to that. I'll take a drink of my whiskey too. I'm having a little templeton rye over here. I think I had nough creek. Um. Yeah, I mean, I think this is an important topic too, because I know that you'll get that. You get I'm sure you it's I guess I don't know, but I'm sure that you get this. And I get this quite often where um, whether it's somebody who's a youngster, or somebody who's up and coming, or somebody who's who's had another career, and once they get in the hunting industry, people ask you on what is the thing, what do I have to do? Um? What can I do? And I and I always just this is something I've I've developed Lately's like, man, I really appreciate people that don't try to fit a mold, that don't try to be what they think the world wants. Them to be as hard as that is. Sometimes sometimes it is hard to just say I believe this, I think this, I have faith in God. I like I believe in climate change, or I don't or this, like those some of those really tough issues. Uh, maybe I got a problem, but I think those are where we really, uh find interest and and so yeah, I think have you had conversation with folks or it's like, you don't have to fit into this model, you don't have to fit into what you see elsewhere. You can chart your own path. You know, it's interesting you say, I don't. Gosh, honestly, I don't think we've had anyone reach out to us to ask us that question. And I think the reason is this is that you've got to remember blood origins. Though I'm again and I've said this to you a couple of times already, and I know I texted it to you. I'm just the guy pushing the stone up the mountain. Then this project is not about Robbie Kroeger, and so I don't think that's I think that's the reason why we haven't had individuals come to me say how do I get into the industry, Because I don't think people see me as in the industry. Quote unquote, I don't see myself as in the industry. All I see myself is is a storyteller telling hunters stories, the proof around hunting, the truth around hunting. And I don't want to tell my story. That's not the point. My story was episode one, season one, that's the last time you saw Robbie Kroeger. From then on, it's being about us. So that's why I don't think we get the whole. How do I get in? What do I do? Kind of think because they see us as a they see us as an entity, right, they see us as this nebut this sort of cloud. I guess this organization, this, this platform that, And that's what we've done. And I think we're very we are very flexible, we are very nimble, and I think that's where Blood origins, is that it's best is that we are able to tackle subjects that come up very very quickly, like the task situation in New Zealand. We were able to. And this is what I pride myself in. I think I have I have an ability to connect with people, and I have an ability to create relationships with people without them even speaking to me over the phone. And so when the task situation occurred three days before the opera operational plan was to go into place, I've had three or four conversations with very high ranking individuals in the hunting industry in New Zealand about what the situation was and where it was going. I even got access to the draft operational plan that nobody in the United States could get their hands on. Now let me say that again, nobody. You've got a You've got a South African living in the coast of Mississippi that was able to get the draft operational plan of the Department of Conservation in New Zealand. Nobody else could get it. And that's the beauty about lad origins. As we're building this relationship community around the world, that all we're doing is creating an opportunity for their voices to be heard. And that's where we're going. It's just this, this platform is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And this week, for instance, this is this is the culmination of a lot of work this week. But this week we've on Monday wed up a we call them this is my wives, and which is I can't be everywhere and tell everyone's story the way that we like to tell the origins. I just can't. But everyone has cell phones, everyone has cameras all around the world. So once you just turn it on yourself and send me your video. And that's what we've done. And we've got very strict guidelines of what we do to make it look the way that we want. But Monday we dropped the girl from Finland. Today we dropped actually from New Zealand, who is a vegetarian that hunts. Tomorrow we're dropping a knife maker from Victoria, Australia. Thursday we're dropping a ferret from the United Kingdom, and Friday we're dropping a outstanding transplant Norwegian in the state of Wyoming. That's a that's a tapestry, man, that's a quilt. That is that's the tapestry of unting in Nobody thinks about it, nobody sees it, nobody feels it. Now all of a sudden, you're hearing these voices from around the world speaking your language. Somebody's sitting in Backwards, Idaho listening to Ashley from New Zealand speak about hunting the way that he or she speaks about hunting. Well, not speaks thinks about hunting. Have you listen a question that just strikes me. I didn't really think about asking you this, but I like it just strikes me and hearing you talk about this, I wonder have you thought about it? We we've we've broached the issue of gender and race and hunting on this podcast a few times. UM. It's been fraught, as you would imagine. UM. I always try to think of this as people want to see themselves reflected in hunting. And I think that's what you're describing here with your with with with that initiative, have you thought about, you know, female hunters, African American hunters. Have you thought about how it is we can we can move the football I guess the football down the field in this case the American football. UM, how we can kind of improve how we think about, you know, inclusivity and this diverse landscape of hunters. I think that there their voices have to be heard. UM. We purposely from the get go, I wanted diversity in blood origins. I wanted to show the diversity of ethnicity, UM, religion, race, nationality. UM. I think it just takes time to to to get that bubble out there. You know, the industry again, we backed ourselves into a corner. Not that it was maybe called itself imposed, but I don't think anybody was purposely making it Midwest and white male as the face and thought. And this is what hunting is supposed to look like. It just happened. But you know, we've got we've you know, we've had African Americans on the origins. We've got a phenomenal episode that's coming around Thanksgiving, which is an African American male out of Nashville, Tennessee hunting for the first time, and he talks about himself as Hey, I'm not supposed to do this. I'm an urban African American. I'm not supposed to hunt. That's for white folks. But that's what he wants to do. Um female hunters, the diversity of female hunters, not just pretty girls, but girls from all across you know, the entire spectrum. Um, you know, lesbians, gaze, they're all hunters. Democrats, Republicans are all hunters. And I'm not going to bias anything to me. That just makes our voice even stronger. And we've got a couple of people of all those demographics that are laid out to you, you know, lined up essentially ready to tell their stories, and it's just a matter of getting around to telling their stories. It's not an easy answer. I know that wasn't a great answer to your question. That was a great answer man. To me, it's just getting their voice out there, like you know, being able to see people of color on you know. I don't know if it will be TV because TVs, we all know, TV is probably dying very quickly. I don't know. But to us, all I can control is blood origins, and blood origins will continue to showcase the diversity. And I'll just say, of everything, of of of of everything. Yeah, I think it's you know, if hunting can become a mirror for people, you know, for people to see themselves, you know that that I think that's ultimately the best we can do. And to your point, I would completely agree. We we're in the position we're in. You know, we're mail on this program, white male. I think it is um that's not intentional, but we certainly can start by by acknowledging that and saying, hey, we we have to um move this forward. We can't sit we can't sit around and stew on what where we are currently, just like this this country has done throughout its history. We have to move forward with pride and move forward with conviction. We know, Um, I think your story personally shows people, and I think mine as well. It just shows people that hunting. There's something about hunting that that converts people to this full on passion for the worldview because it brings in so much right, it brings in so many other passions and so many other knowledge bases, and so great relationships with people. Um. And so that passion that you have and that I certainly have, that we share is in itself, I think an important thing to recognize. Like, you know, people love skiing, but do they love skiing as much as you and I love hunting. I'm not sure. I'd probably say no. I don't know, haven't met everybody that skis, But hunting just has a certain pull to it for me. I think to your question, one of the things and we've actually I haven't thought about the answer like you asked me too, but we have thought about how we do it. And one of the things that we've we've built implood origins is this mechanism about which we can implement one of the one of the reasons why we're going to stay very numble and very flexible that we can implement conservation We call them conservation projects, but really the documentaries there, resource specific projects there, you know, community as hunter enrichment projects. But one of the projects that we're putting on this late in and I'm working on fundraising for it, is I want to have a pool of money in which we because the social media space, especially on Instagram is such a dynamic space and the tentacles of who you interact with is outstanding. You know, you felt it, everyone's felt it. It's an amazing little community. And when you can harness the power of that community, wonderful things can happen. So we obviously have a lot of people that we interact with. Number one, we have a lot of outfitters and people that have private land and we interact with. So we want to have a pool of money by which when people get touched by a non hunter, whether it's a black guy, female, whatever it is, we want the people of our audience and our community and us year to know that immediately they reach out to us and say it's California and an urban guy out of all a has reached out to someone and has said I'm interested in hunting. I see that you hunt. Immediately they turned around to us and they say, hey, we've got someone. We obviously do the vetting, We do all the things that we need to make sure that this is legit, and we put in place the place a mentor. And I don't know if we're getting too the whole gear thing. I don't think we will. But if if gears needed, we'll go find it, yea. And what we do is we pay for that experience. And what I've just said is not new, Ben, that happens all the time, hear Mefore what I'm saying, I'm not. I'm not reinventing the wheel there. But what we do differently is that we purposely are going to story tell the hell out of it. Is that we're to build this beautiful piece of documentary footage around that individual and in their experience, we're going to purposely understand why they decided to go from a non hunter two a hunter and all of that, all of that content will then get pushed out into the space to show non hunters this is who we are, and it will be a diversity of people. So that's what we want in twenty one is just to have this ability to be super flexible and pick up someone in Maryland, or pick up someone in California, or pick up someone wherever it is, and to say, Okay, yeah, we've got the place, We've got the person, let's do it. We've got the production crew on the ground. Which is another thing we're not. We're not building a beast above origins. What we like is we like to hire the best cameraman out there, the best cinematographers out there, and let them go to work with them do what they do best, and we just we just we just mold them to you know what we are trying to translate out the end of the camera. And so for us, so good. So I think, you know, like I said earlier, passion for the sake of passion, you know, storytelling for the sake of storytelling is I would say, rare in this day and age. Um, and I that's a's some thing for me to say. It's been hard for me, you know, as in my career as a journalist. Thank God for this podcast. Um, It's tough for me in my career to find a place where I felt comfortable to tell stories and to take risks and to be passionate in my own way. UM it's been tough for me to find that place, and you have it. Man. Passion for the sake of passion is is a powerful thing. Um. Wherever it's applied, and and certainly in the hunting community, there's where's lots of space for it. UM. So I would anybody listening, I occourage you to go check out Blood Origins, go check out Robbie and all the things that he does. UM. I certainly think for something to grow organically like you have is a testament to the message and that people are looking for their why and looking to hear other people's perspective. UM. So, I really appreciate you coming on man and sharing what you have. And uh, hopefully your whiskey is just about done, because I just let me finished the last sip of the old my whiskey was fifteen minutes ago, so I was like, am I going to stop this recording and tell them I need to go get a refresher? That would have been Okay, that's absolutely a lot on this program, but an encouraged. I'm incredibly humbled grateful that you reached out, um, And I'll just you know, leave one point is that you know the folks that are listening or listened thus far, you know the two or three people that are still hanging on at the end here. Um, you know, get involved with us. We're here to represent you. We want to hear from you. Reach out to us. If you think you've got a thoughtful story about why you hunt, we want to hear it. This isn't you know. We don't just pick and choose. We tell everyone's why. And our desire is one day to have a YouTube playlist that has a thousand This is my wife. Just we just want to convey the heart of who we are as hunters and who we are that convey the truth really of what hunting does. So I just want to say thank you again Ben, oh no, thank you Robbie, and again there's so much room in our industry and in our world, in our community for what you do. And if we can add a little bit to that here, I'm happy and proud to do that because I think it's it's important work all the way around. So, um, thanks for hanging with us, and we'll catch up with you real soon, I mean all right, So yeah, so yeah, that's it. That is all another episode in the books. Thank you to Robbie, thank you to everybody that creates content from blood origins. And thanks of Philip t engineer, our favorite engineer to pick for him. Now that there's two, well that thanks, Thanks Ben. But let's not count your chickens here. I mean, I think there's a good possibility you'll warm up to this guy more than me. So I don't. I'm not seeing it. But we'll have him on. Well, well, never mind, I'm not gonna change. We're not gonna have him on. I'm not gonna be nice to this guy. I can't let him into my heart. I have no room, um for something like this, this new engineer, this person who comes in here to just do his job quote unquote. You know, um, I I understand what's going on. I know, so phil Before we go, we have to only because so many people wrote in, Only that so many people have been asking and talking about this um talk about the election very briefly. I would I would rather not even even discuss it. But so many people wrote in with lots of as as. I'm very proud to say about this program. So much thoughtful commentary and so so much so many questions about my choices, and the folks seem to care about what I who I voted for and all that good stuff. Um, which is great. I love it. I don't know if I love it. Yeah, that would probably be overstating it. Um, that's one of the things I just I don't know. It's kind of ab porran in the way that that we have to discuss politics. But I will say I'm very proud of the audience of this show. Who you guys come to the table with a really good commentary, really thoughtful questions, and when you beat us up, when you beat me up, you do it in a way that is productive and constructive. So thank you for that. Phil. You voted right, Yeah, man, I voted three weeks before the election, because Montana makes you in three weeks. It's very nice. Yeah, it was nice. I voted on the day of the election. Um, I felt I felt like I just wanted that to see what was going on. I wanted to see how it felt. I wanted to see what it was like. Um. There the tenor of the volunteers and some of the paid uh posters and things like that. Um, the people in line and everything, and I gotta tell you, man, if you were to you know, if you have an iPhone and you have a TV and you happen to watch cable TV news or any type of news, you might think that you have a good reason to be angry. You're scared UM around this election and my experience going and voting in person was everybody's super helpful, safe, friendly UM, answered questions, chatted with each other, where are you from? All this stuff? There was no animosity. I know this is one only my perspective from the where I was in Bozeman, but I was proud to be a part of that. I got off and started interviewing a lot of the folks that were there, taking my ballad and leading me to the right spots and asking where are you from? How long you've been doing this? You like doing this? Um? And all of them said they loved doing it. They felt it was important work, UM. And so I will say that part of it was incredibly cool, I would say even inspiring to me to see everybody engaged UM and in politics like that, and just in a real constructive cool way. I thought really hard about my decision, and I took it seriously, and I had a wonderful experience with all the people, um, the Polsters and Bozeman, and I felt really good about it after the fact, um, And I'm not I'm not too shy to say that I was, um, really proud to be part of all that and um ultimately not certainly prideful in the process and really even the aftermath, but feeling like on the ground, no matter what the news media tells you, you you don't have to be scared, you don't have to be angry. You can be proud um of the process, as I was. And so that's my story. I'm sticking to it. Phil. What do you think I really enjoyed hearing that, Ben, Thanks for sharing that. Um, this is this is philis sincere part two. Yeah, yeah, I was really moving. And I'd like to say also on the on the topic of poll workers, um, election workers, especially in this environment. You you pulled the word right out of my mouth, which is inspiring. I couldn't imagine doing doing work like that, um right now, especially in an election that's heated and contentious. UM. I mean we're days after weeks after the election right now, and it's still heated and contentious. So uh yeah, thank you to anybody who who worked at the polls this year. Yeah. Yeah, there's a reality of the world we live in where it is not what it seems on TV and our news media and social media, and all these people are are trying to get your attention. They need your emotions, they need you robbed up. You know, maybe some of it's true, most of it just isn't. And when you look on the ground level, and you look around yourself and talk to the people around you and and act pragmatically and show that you care about our nation and our democracy, it should be okay to vote for whomever you'd like. Um. And I'll tell you, when I said I was gonna vote for Trump publicly on my Instagram, so many people just couldn't understand how I could even possibly approach that that option. And all I would say to those people is, hey, look, man, seventy plus million people voted for that guy. They can't all be lunatics. Um. We need to come together and understand each other way better. Because if if seventy six million people can't understand the other seventy million, boy, even at some level, you don't have to agree with them, but just having some understanding of what why they voted the way they did, and not trying to demonize them, UM for for making that choice. Maybe you think they're wrong, and maybe you're right about that. Maybe you think I'm wrong for voting for Biden. That's fine. UM. I'm sure a lot of you will will tell me that, you'll call me names and things like that. That's fine, but those are my thoughts man, and we'll move on and hopefully UM, our country can calm down and come together and try to find ways to appreciate each other, UM on our day to day lives. And that's my that's hopefully. We'll leave you guys on a really good note. I'm going to go back to bed and have a hot toddy and hopefully I don't have the COVID. I'll let you guys know next week. Al alright, I really like this. I really like this new series you have going on, which is every month or two. Ben thinks he might have COVID, and then we the alital listeners are are on the edge of their seats to find out next week doesn COVID cod Ben's yeah, I'm right now in my underwear, sweating in the bedroom, quarantine for my children. You're gonna love it next week on The Hunting Collective. Al Right, Phil, you tell everybody bye. Be sincere goodbye everybody, because I can't go a week without doing right yular da

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