00:00:12 Speaker 1: I guess I grew up on a row. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. I am Ben O'Brien. We're at one sixty eight episodes of this year program, and for almost all of them, or at least half of them, I have had Phil the Engineer at my side. Phil, how are you, sir? Hey, how are you Ben? I'm great, I'm a little I'm not just gonna get into We've got a good conversation today with with Pat Durkin. And if you don't know Patrick Drk, and you should Patrick Dirk and outdoors dot com and the media dot Com holds his writing. He's one of the best writers in our space. He's one of the more thoughtful dudes that you'll ever meet. And he is a native of Wisconsin and has been writing on the outdoors and outdoor issues in Wisconsin for many, many, many years, probably longer than he'd like to admit. But he is a man you want to go to if you want to get a good long look at the Wisconsin wolf hunt. Had happened earlier in February, and uh, it's quite the sacer field. You know much about this wolf thought and how it went down. Have you been seeing it around since you're now like in the community. I just I just on the peripherals. I don't really know much about it. Yeah, well it's it's an interesting tale. It certainly has intrigue. It's got politics, it's got uh, courtroom issues, it's got social and political aspects, it's got cultural aspects. It's got wildlife manages, it's got ecosystems, It's got almost everything that you'd want to have from any story. It's almost like it could be like a Netflix documentary. So hopefully me and me and Pat did a good job of putting it out there for you. But there's it's more than meets the eye in terms of of this wiconsin will fund. We'll talk a little bit before we get there. We'll set that up for you so you don't see you hit your ground running when Pat and I get into it. But um, it really is a good way to pick up on where we left off last week talking about animal rights and animal welfare and all the things that go into that ideology, because it does come up with within the opposition to wolf hunting altogether, and it does come up in this particular Wisconsin case that we we'll discuss. So I'm excited for you to hear that. We'll keep this intro brief just so you guys can get to that conversation because it's um Pat does a wonderful job a lot of really good ways to contextualize wolf hunting itself. Uh, the kind of like the politics of Wisconsin and how everything came to be what it was over there. So hopefully, Phil, you feel you're excited for it. Now you're intrigued, you're gonna stick around for it. Oh yeah, for sure. Unfortunately you give me no choice, but yeah, you have to stick around for it. So I'm not going to apologize for that, all right, So Phil, Phil, listen man, we gotta talk about something. We got a really important Like what we're talking about today is very important to the hunting community. It's very important to the overall future of what we do in the viability of of the North American model of conservation. So I don't want to downplay that, but there may be a bigger issue at hand here. UM th HC is moving like the regional chapter movement of the th C call is gaining steam, and I think it's a little bit out of our control right now. Uh, by my account, there are already half a dozen Facebook pages that exist as th C regional chapters, and we have an we don't know what it is yet. We don't know what a TAC regional chapter even is. But um, they're they're being formed. What do we phil? What do we do as as my Sage Council on all things life and podcasting? Have we gotten? We're gotting ahead of ourselves, haven't we been? This is this is bad, this is really bad. I don't know. I don't know what else to say. I would just like to throw out now that whatever is happening on these Facebook groups, it does not represent me at all. Um that being said, you can use my face for merchandise. Um, you know, I'd like, yeah, if I get like a ten percent cut or something, you know, you can put me on a T shirt or like a pin something like that. I don't know what do you think? I mean? Listen, I think we're sitting on sitting on the most unintentional conservation organization ever created. When they look back in the annals of time, they're gonna be like, how did the th HC cult really get its start? And people will say I'm pretty sure it was by accident. Uh. They started calling it a call it as a joke, and then eventually people caught on. There were membership cards, and then there were regional chapters. All of those things were jokes, but then they became real and the next thing, you know, the world has changed and indelibly forever. Um. That's kind of where I'm at with this, and so I'm not sure to whether it to be excited about that, Phil, to be hesitant to can move forward? I just need I wanted to have this conversation in public, so people could, you know, listen to us will work through what I think is a crucial issue in the history of th HC, the Grand Old history. Uh. They call us the GOP, the Grand Old Podcast in a lot of circles. Um, Phil, if stop laughing, it's serious, Phil, What are we gonna do? Ben, I I don't know. I mean, do you think you should get involved? Yeah? Listen. I spent all last night reading everybody's emails. So thank you to everybody the road into th HC, at the media dot com not to you know, some of you wrote to discuss the very important topics of racing the outdoors and animal welfare versus animal rights. Uh, and even this topic we're talking about today, wolves and how to manage them, what to do? Some of you wrote in about that, but most of you wrote it in about starting your own chapter or wanting to join a chapter. Um. And so I guess I will start by saying Phil very seriously that, Uh, it's heartwarming. It's it's something that I didn't never expect for so many people to be out there to want to kind of join together. Um, but it's something we definitely recognize. So, um, we gotta think on our feet here though. We don't want to get any are we? Do you think we're getting some legal trouble here? Like where are we at? We need to apply to be a five and one seed three? Uh? Yeah, I mean you know, if this merchandise idea takes off them, probably I think for now you're fine though, I think you're fine now. A right, Well, listen, here's what I want to do. And um, as if you can't tell out there and listening, and I am shooting from the old hip here and so Phil, as always is my confidant, and he'll tell me live on the air whether you think this is a good or bad idea? UM, because we do do we do this live every week. If you didn't know, UM, here's what I want to do right now. As it stands, we have at least fourteen proposed regional chapters of the Hunting Collective. We have Blue Ridge, which is our founding chapter by the great Eric Hall, Colorado, Wisconsin, Southwest Michigan, New York, Illinois, Oregon, Alaska, Missouri, Maryland, Florida. So that's a good smattering across the country of people that are willing to take on the great, great responsibility of being a THHD regional chapter leader creator. How does that make you feel? Phil, I mean tell you like, this is yours too, You've done this, Uh really sits at your feet and in all honesty, I mean it's it's it's it's really cool. You know these people who like clearly have similar interests because they enjoyed the same podcasts. Um. They can get together in these groups and they you want to grab a beer at this place, or you know, go shed hunting here, go hunting here, like whatever. I think you know, yeah's it's I think it's a it's it's great. It has nothing to do with me. I think most people who listen to the show are like, why is the why is the non hunter talking again? I don't think so, Phil, Only a smattering of our audience absolutely hates you. But everybody else that's a smaller than I thought. So that's great. Yeah, it's a smattering. I think we're gonna call the Blue Ridge Chapter the Phil Taylor Inaugural THHD Blue Ridge Chapter of the Hunting Collective Cult. It would be hard to We'll have to make an out uh an acronym for that. But in all serious this's just's what I want to do. Gape. So Eric Call reached out and he said he had already created a page on Facebook. Other people have done this as well, already created their own pages, multiple of you. I don't know how many have already been created. I lost counted about I don't know how many, six or eight of them. Um, here's what I want to do. I want to take a step back from this, because we were a little bit surpris eyes that this was even a thing. I take a step back from this, and UM, we're gonna do the first thing we're gonna do. And again I want to state like we're actually doing this, why the hell not is my philosophy. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna come up with two things. One leaders of the cult, right, we gotta get leaders going, Phil, Do you have any people in mind that you would like to nominate for these leadership positions within the Hunting Collective? Oh? I don't know. I mean we've we've got some some frequent writers in some frequent contest entry. Um, you know people you know, people like A. A. B. Rich Maybe would he be interesting? I don't even heard from him. Um, yeah, we should reach out to him. I hope he's okay. I'm gonna heard people like Luke Reeves. Oh that's a good one. I don't even think about him. Sure, Nebraska chapter. But he's married now, he's not gonna have time. Yeah, I ever told him to give it? Whoever told that guy to get get married? Idiot? And you know, if if it happened on a podcast, I would go as far to say that podcast is bad. Yeah, that podcast is actually responsible for whatever happened in his life. Um. But I do have a list here that I've made, and I'll say that like everybody that wrote in for each chapter, I've logged your emails and a little spreadsheet on my computer. And I'm not kidding. It was the most I've wrought Like this is the most satirical, ironic thing for me to spend last night for like an hour making a spreadsheet of regional chapter leaders for some damn podcast. It was the most hilarious. It was like I was on an episode of that What's that Larry David show. Uh, It's like I was. I was writing my own episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm last night as I was doing this. But anyway, we're doing it. So screw you, Larry David. Don't try to satirize my life. Um So right now I wanna. I want to pick some leaders of this whole thing. And obviously, Phil, I mean there's there's gonna be no surprise to you that air Hall is amongst the original leaders. No surprise to you. Also, Ben Upton wrote in to express his excitement about this. He obviously we know him from his many contributions to the show. He connected with another, He's had a Colorado connected with another member of our our little call here earlier in the year, to give us a nice moment um. We have lots. Ryan subpoena and Mike Peterson. Mike Peterson didn't ask for this, but I'm gonna give it to him anyway because I like him, and uh, I feel like you do a good job. He's formerly in the military, so he might do a good job. So we're gonna pick a few of you guys and email you about this um and then others have have emailed and we're gonna ask you to nominate yourselves and join us in doing this. But here's what we're looking for, people who want to help us establish these Facebook pages and help us establish a set of guidelines and community standards and value systems that we're gonna put on these pages. We're to create a Facebook page that phil and I are part of for just the leaders of each one of these chapters, and then we're gonna let those leaders go out in the world create cool Facebook pages, and I hang out with people around them that like to do what they do. So pretty simple, try not to make it too self important. But hey, I'm me, so that's uh. There's only so far we can go in that game. So Philip, you can feel confident about this plan, particularly yes I do. I think yeah, as I I think these groups will stay kind of close knit and compact. I think, uh, I think they'll be good little communities for people to get together and it's great. Yeah. I mean right now, the Colorado chapter has already has four people in it, the Blue Ridge chapter already has seventeen, so I think, and Oregon we're up to two. So yeah, yeah, so in your face, Washington, Um, yeah, I mean, I think it'll be something fun for us all to do. They're not gonna be you know, there's not millions of us out there. There's only a small number of us trying to do this for real. Um. And and you know, listen, the best things in life started off as a joke, So why not why not fall fully into Uh well, we're up to here so that this is what I need from you guys. All, if I mentioned your name as part of a leadership, email me and we're gonna set up a little call to start talking about this. Phil will join us, right, Phil, Yes, we're gonna start talking about this. See I may I forced him to say yes because we're recording. Um. And we'll start talking about how we want to do this, make a little kind of community guidelines thing, and then we'll start and from there, it's just about anybody who wants to Anybody who's a new hunter who needs a mentor, who is a mentor that needs a new hunter. Any of you that want to join shared links, shared advice, meet up, go hunting together. Um, there's a place for pretty much anybody who wants to get in and and do this. So, like I said right now, Um, we got offers from a lot of people will to do this already. So if you're in Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Illinois, Oregon, Alaska, Missouri, Colorado, if you're in the Blue Ridge Mountains, like I said earlier, you have a Perspective chapter near you. I think so. Um, alright, Phil, we did it as much as I as buch of my personality only wants to make fun of this. It's also a big deal, man, because it just it's I know that we're in the pandemic. I understand that it's hard to find somebody that shares your values to do something as serious as hunting, and it's it's sometimes you need a variable place to gather around. So if it's not a conservation group, why not this year program? So we're gonna give it a try, um, and the worst worst thing we could do is fail. Yeah, I'd say here, here's here's Ernest Fell again. Here we go, ready, three two one. I think by branding at a cult as a joke earlier, it kind of makes me want to laugh about this even more. But I think we should just set the cult joke thing aside for a set gonna be like this is pretty cool. So I'm gonna go ahead and do that right now and say this is pretty cool. Yeah, Because being phil like, I thought we might have this conversation in private and then and then seem like we're really buttoned up when we came on the air today. But then I thought, I, what the hell, Let people listen to what our own thought process is about this and our introspection about this. So anyway, that's that's what we're gonna do th h C at the media dot Com. If you're in a state that I named or I didn't name, and you would like to lead a chapter of this th h C cult, then let us know. Let us know quickly, put your hand up and I will call on you and we'll see what we can do in terms of getting all fifty states um to at least have one person out there who's willing to have the conversation and willing to line up hunts with someone. Like I said, two people meeting up VI this podcast was cool for me. Let's see if we can and challenge ourselves to really create community in a time where community is absolutely void and a lot of our lives. So that I all about that. I will push to the ends of the earth and Phil and I will fight for you out there right Phil here here, I'm serious, serious, Yeah, I'll fight for you. See there it is. Yeah, all right, Now onto the matter of hand wolves in Wisconsin. I said earlier that that this really, this story about the Wisconsin's wolf hunt that happened in February really does have a lot of threads that we've talked about prior. It has a lot of It has obviously anti hunting sentiment. It has the politics of polarization involved. Um it has legislation. How how legislatures state legislature specifically in this case, work within conservation and can impact it positively and negatively. UM it really is a story that encapsulates, much like the bear story in California encapsulates much of what we've talked about over the weeks, uh last many months here that we've been been covering all those myriad of topics kind of this this kind of condenses them and gives them a real way to see why all these kind of ancillary topics within hunting, like animal rights or animal welfare, or when we have talked about the taiebi paradox with Miles Nulty, like when we start to roll all that together into to one package, you can see that reflected the importance of each one of those little pieces reflected in these very uh you know, high stakes political social um games around hunting bears, hunting wolves, whatever it might be. All of that becomes apparent in his laid Bear in these situations. I don't want to give any of the details out about this story. If you don't know anything about it, you're gonna be interested. Pat Dick is gonna take us through it, Um and Phil as always, I want to give you a chance to just talk about what you think about wolf hunting, because we do talk about a lot of a lot about the non hunter perspective in this But do you, um, you would never want to hunt a wolf? Would you? Like? Am I? Am? I? Correct? In saying that, yeah, I don't have any urge to whatsoever I mean, but you know that that that could change after a while, after I go hunting one time, probably for turkeys. Should probably do that first before I have any opinions on on hunting wolves. But yeah, well but that's it. Man Like non hunters are going to be the ones that sway this and and are and are very involved and obviously, um this story in and of itself, so I know, and I'm giving you guys a lot of like little hints of what what this entails, but it is, um it is an interesting, interesting story. Let me before we get into Pat Dirk and Pat Durk and his Wisconsin guy and another very famous Wisconsin guys out of Leopold and he had a lot of famous quotes about a lot of things, but he did talk about wolves in one of his most it was quote. So I'll read it to you just to give you a little perspective because I think we all have, you know, kind of special relationships with wolves. We all, you know, we have dogs. A lot of us have dogs. I don't, but a lot of people have dogs. Phil has mango, and so people have very special relationships with their canines, and I think a lot of times that that bleeds into what we think of. But there's also just a great, great misunderstanding of our own emotional connection to wolves and where that comes from. So this quote is from Aldo Leopold. So we reached the old Wolf and time to watch a fierce screen fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes, something known only to her into the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger it. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more dear, that no wolves means hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf Northern Mountain agreed with such a view. I right, get chills up your spine that I did, because I've read that quote so many times. Phil, Do you feel it feeling out the emotion of of the moment, Yeah, of course it was mainly because of the narrator just did a stellar job. I'm just trying to do as good as Steve Ennell. So let's let's find what you'll hear. All right, So here comes Pat Dirk. All right, Pat Derek, and we've just been talking for twenty minutes. We forgot to hit record, and so we're gonna have to recreate some of the good stories that were telling. Because with all the serious things in the world, uh, just talking about fatherhood is uh is one of the things, one of the things that allows us to laugh at ourselves the most, I think is as what we do and don't do in the in the realms of fatherhood. You were you're just telling me that that you look on the young fathers like me with with some I don't know, why would you describe with confusion or like self reflection. Yeah, amusement, but also respect where I've been there, I had my chance, and I like to think my daughters are all doing well despite me. And so it's fun to see now how you guys handle things and how my daughters handled their kids. Noah, Yeah, now right, it's a it's interesting even you know, talking to my dad about it too, and thinking about you know, the things that you do that you think are normal you kind of in your own head as a parent. Um. Anyway, it's it's it's fun to look back and laugh. But I was telling you that I I'm not sure that I'm too strict or not strict enough on my kids. Sometimes it's hard to gauge, you know, were you vary? Were you strict when your kids growing up? Maybe too strict you think, or not you're not enough. I um, I like to think I struck a good balance. You know, I was strict, But I really have no doubt in my mind that my daughters knew I loved them. You know, there was never that dull were because I remember as a child growing up in the sixties. I think parents um were a little more detached back then, and definitely a lot more disciplinarians, and you did questions sometimes where you stood were I don't my daughters ever adulted that I think they knew how that I might be a real real prick sometimes, but that it might make them do things a mother wouldn't make them do. But I really have faith that they knew I loved him. Yeah. Yeah. And I even look back at my own child and and I think, well, I guess I turned out pretty good. And I love my parents with all with all that I am, And I don't you know, I was pretty laid back kid, I think, so maybe I had a little smoother experience than others, But I certainly, like I told you, my mom called me doing something I should in one time, and uh back then she chased me down the street pretty far. I feel like she chased me like a half of my I don't know, it's a long way she chased me, And so I certainly had those uh those moments where I was rebelling and doing my different things. But you know, you just wonder, is it is it how your kids were predisposition, you know, high strung, laid back? You know, do you handle each one differently? Around my house? But pretty I like to think we're pretty strict, although like you were telling me, like, I think a lot of millennial parents are probably pretty more laid back than than you were. Maybe even your parents were for sure, mhm, Like I am, I do ensure the fact that you know, I don't. I should say first, I really do not like it when people um unless I know them really well. I really don't like when people bad molt their parents because I think, well, you know, maybe your parents weren't great, but they did the best they could, at least mine did, and so I never questioned um the the end results, I think, well, dad might have been um, not the kind of dad I tried to be. But I look at he produced and where we all ended up, and I think that's a pretty nice success rate he had. So he could have been doing everything wrong. And I I find self quoting him a lot as I gotten older, because I realized the dumbsun of a bitch knew something, and he knew people really well, and he could really size people people up quickly, and I really came to respect that. In these days as a parent, I um, my daughters make it sound like I was a real ogre, but then I just tell them, well, I must have been doing something right because you're all, all three of you're doing very well. You show his good husbands and I can't complain, So yeah, it's it's um. I think the human spirit is such though that it can overcome a lot if you if you're willing to devote yourself, you know, to it and take responsibility for your own life at some point. Yeah, yeah, I would be honest to as a young father having to adjust to that commitment to be to really be good at at it, you know, because it isn't there isn't just one way to do it. You have to know your children and try to adjust to them and adjust to the environment that they're in and and really give them a chance to be who they are, you know, um, while also sending some pretty serious rules sometimes for for for these little people. I was just telling you, like, I look like I look like I just got in a fight with Mike Tyson, because both my kids have been recently like jumping on me, sponging me and scratching and stuff. So I look like I've been through it. Yeah, and yeah, I'm sure to you appreciate the fact that this won't continue. That at some point they'll get too strong to do that, too big to do that, and they can't knock down around anymore because the actually will hurt you. And I tell myself that, and I put the kids in my back and hold upstairs at night to put them to bed. That he won't be able to write in my back, um a whole lot longer once they get to a certain size, at least not very far. So you appreciate why you come, Yeah, exactly, And like you're saying that, it becomes it's an it's all an iteration of the thing that happened before, right, It's like it's all time repeats itself, you know, And that's what I'm sure you know. You as a grandfather, you get to see that now and you get to see time. And I think my dad does that quite a lot with me, where it's like, you know, we he sees kind of the iteration we were talking about. I took my kid out to Nature Sanctuary over the weekend. We did. We were trying to find twelve different bird species and we were going around and it was fun. And my dad is the type of person who knows every bird in the woods and spend a lot of time as a young person hiking around in the winter and just looking at birds, you know, just looking around and and finding uh himself in nature. So I think that's something that I want to follow. And I'm sure he could probably see me trying to instill that of my kids. You know, even if I didn't understand, I don't think I understand it until I had kids. I didn't look at my dad and say, like, how amazing it is to have being an encyclopedia of the outdoors what he is until I had my own kids, and I'm like, I better, I better give that to them. I better make sure they have what he has, you know. So yeah, it's just it's just like a shifting baseline and it's fun. It's fun too to think back. I can I can remember, as I pray a four or five year old, being amazed to hear that as you're driving passes lake, my dad say that that lake is deeper than than he can stand tall. And I remember being just shocked to think that something could be bigger than my dad, something deeper than my dad. And then you get to be a little bit older and you realize no, lakes typically are the most guys. That was that was That was a learning experience for me at the time. Yeah. Well, I've recently taken to writing down my son's at the wise stage of life. Everything's why this, why this, why that? And so every night I put him to bed and I at him ask me some questions. Recently, I've had the limit. I've had to limit it. I'd like you, I'll give you seven because they could go could go along to the night. Uh. And I give him questions and then I write them down when I go back to my desk and write them down when we're done. And so I have, you know, a hundred and fifty questions in this notebook, and it's fun to to just look back at his progression, even over a short period of time, of the questions he's asking and how he's learning taking in the world. You know, it's it's a it's a special time because you know, eventually he's not gonna want to ask me anything. He's gonna be telling me stuff eventually. So it's those little idiosyncrasies. Yeah, eventually though, it does come back for you once you know, UM, I always have this um in my mind. I have a where I divide men from boys. It's about age twenty five. We're um about sitting around age twenty five to get their head out of your ass and start thinking like an adult. And so I just told my daughter's two things basically is, um, don't get married. Don't marry a guy until he's at least twenty five, because that's when he gets his head out of his ass. And even then, make sure you've done something where you have your own career. So you know, I's basically tell anyone in your life, f you, I'm out of here and not be not be tied down. So I am. I like to think my daughters took that advice. So we'll see. Though there's still they're like your age, so I guess some time ahead of them, they're doing pretty well though by all accounts, wells, yeah, I mean I did you feel like the outdoors? Did your daughters do a lot with you in the outdoors growing up? The oldest one did. Yeah, My oldest one, Um, she you could tell at a young age she she was into it. I mean she could. She understood about listening for geese off in the distance, listening for turkeys. And I tried the same approach with all three of them, taking them out an early age hunting of fishing, especially for like the so you can just put him in a corner field and you know, hunker down and wait him out and listen for stuff and watch for stuff. But um, the oldest one took to that, and the youngest ones didn't. To my two younger daughters. But then as now as young adults there, um it's it's funny like the one I was telling you earlier about going ice fishing yesterday with my some of my grandkids and the youngest boy falling into the hole and that kind of ruined ruined his day. But it's fun not to see all three of my daughter is understanding the importance of hunting and fishing and seeing singing in a bigger picture and getting there. And you can tell them now they really want me to take their kids along as soon as possible. Yeah, that's like I said, that's coming very clearly into my life right now, seeing what I want my kids to be and then looking at the other people in my life and be a man I never appreciated, you know this about my mom or this about my dad, or this about my best friend. And I want my kids to have that part of them, even if I can't give it to them. You know, it's important to know your own limitations as a father. I feel like because I can't. There's just I'm not real handy like and I can come into my house and be like, hey, could you fix my pipes? I'd be like, I can try what's wrong with your pipes? Let's have a discussion. I'm not you know, I didn't get I didn't pick that up. But there's other people in my life that are um and so you kind of like you kind of carve up those things that you know that that you need to you know, push your kids towards and then and once you have your kids, you see that I think a little bit more more clearly and precisely. Um. It helps you appreciate the people around you for who they are, you know, definitely, yeah, I'm sure sure too. As a father you see a different interests and talents at a young age of your two boys. I mean I definitely saw it my girls as they were at very small ages, the things that caught their interestings that didn't. It's fun to watch my definite plan. And I think this goes for a lot of people are listening to this show, particularly because a lot of emergent hunters, new hunters out there that are just coming to it at a at a you know, middle age and a lot of cases early thirties, late twenties, and a lot of cases where people are coming to it because they see a value of it and they have either have kids or themselves want to you know, find those pathways into that value set. And it's interesting to see people enter it that way. And for me, I kind of want to rewind my clock a little bit and see that perspective. Like I said, just take my kid. We sat, We went and sat in a bird blind that was on this nature sanctuary and we just sat there and we will and there's bird feeders. These birds started to come in, you know, black cat, black cap, chickadee comes in. We get you a western tanager. They'll come in. And it's like and I'm sitting there thinking this is practice for the turkey blind. You know, that's in my mind. He has no idea what but in my mind, I'm like, be quiet, don't scare the birds away. And and for me, I'm like looking at my watch to see how long can we sit here? How long does he is he interested in the little things about what's going on around him, and he was, he very much was. So to me, it's just for a wine and that clock a little bit, not diving fully into hunting, but taking like the little micro moments within hunting that that are important and and presenting them to him in another way, you know, trying to get him to just go walk around in the woods, just go look at some birds, Just go you know, listen for al hoots in the morning, just you know, just just so he has that appreciation first where it's not like, you know, like I am like running the head first into every turkey. I see, let's see what I can do with them. Yeah, it's a special it's a special time. And I think that, you know, like you were saying, girls and boys for sure, we have these conversations now about how how do we make sure hunting is a little more accessible to all genders and anybody that one's in you know, when it's just kind of breaking some of those barriers down. But it'd be interesting, as I said, my wife wants to have a third little one, and I'm hoping for a girl, just so I can get that perspective, you know, so I can see both sides of raising a kiddo and then also just seeing how they go through the outdoors, what they're interested in, each each one of them. So it's it's ah, you learn about a lot of like I said, you learn about a lot about yourself, You learn a lot about the people around you, ah, as you try to do this damn hard thing. But I always felt their their aspect of my life growing up that I never really thought about it at all when I was young, was that my dad's fought. My dad's mother lived with us I was growing up, and she was more she was much more um aware of the outdoors that my dad was a dad knew had a hunting fish, just enough to get me going. Because as far as overall knowledge of the outdoor is the different birds, different songs that birds sing, the trees, um, how to judge, how to identify tree trees, brother bark. I learn that from my grandmother. And it wasn't like she sat me down and taught me stuff, just that you hung around her outside when she was working, and she show show me stuff, you know, and I remember she learned to that I was easily entertained. She gave me a hatchet when I was about five years old and just kind of turned me loose with it, and I was chopping down everything that she told me to chop down. But by by learning that way, she could tell me, um that basically black black locust trees were fair game. Any black looks that want to chopped down, have at it, just regrow anyway, and you know, all these kind of little things, you know, she taught me that. Years later I realized, God, you know, granny knew quite a bit of this stuff. Yeah, yeah, and you just don't know, like there's a lot of that in my life that if I could rewind the clock, I'd back and be more interested in and take those opportunities because you just, man, I don't know how you foster that in a little person, but I I definitely missed some things along the way. Now that I have a child, I'm like, man, if I would have followed, you know, a little bit closer into the examples I had, um Man, I would have been would have been a whole lot better. I've been running a whole lot faster by now, a lot better at hunting. Even I'm guessing you made up for it. I try to do my best. Well, I'm glad we could talk about fathers and sons and daughters and maybe warm some hearts before we get into the next topic, because because I guess, I mean, how we break into you know, there there's the macro issue of wolves, right you. Wolves are yes, incredibly charismatic, incredibly important and also incredibly imperiled species on any landscape, you know, really around the world, but especially in North America. They found themselves a special place and hearts of of everyone in this country really and some in some way, shape or form, whether that's more of a you know, animal rights perspective, or or you know, our perspective is conservation, it's and hunters and how we see things. But there's no one that doesn't have an opinion on this, I think, um, educated or not. So that's where you know, this Wisconsin wolf funk comes in. You know. The reason I want to talk to you is obviously you're you're tuned into it. But one of the first things I want to kind of dig into is what you know. The Wisconsin hunting culture, I feel like is fairly unique. Um. And you know, I don't know if you would term it as insular or how you would describe it, but what is the Wisconsin hunting culture defined? And then how did how do people there look upon wolves? It's truly um, I think it's fair to say that, as we always do fall too. It runs a gamut. Um. I can I can call a number of people I know and and know that they individually do not represent the overall Wisconsin experience, the overall um image we might have of Wisconsin hunters. UM. I know the wolf especially, I can think, Um, you get what was in. But I found one of the things I found interesting about this this particular hunt we had, you know, was two weeks ago already was that. Um, you saw a real divide between trappers, fur trappers and and the hound hunters versus also the guys who are I'm gonna be calling wolves or else putting out like sitting over a carcass. Every might be out in the woods and waiting for him. And so there was some real friction between especially the trappers and the hound hunters. We have a really strong hound hunting subculture in Wisconsin. You know, the guys that hunt bears. They there's guys that hunt over bait, and there's guys that hunt with hounds. And we've always had regulate the bear season separately. Basically were one year reopened the hound hunting first, and when next year reopened, the bait sitters next first, so and then go back and forth and the wolf the wolf season wolf hunting tradition in our state is so short, so I'm young. We really haven't gotten everything figured out yet. And so this this thing the way, the way it blew up on fairly short notice without real in depth planning, Um, it was almost yeah, it was almost predictable, Like I were about one of my columns that's something like this would happen we're just got things did not go off well, we're not regularly right, and now we have a black eye. Yeah, and you'd like to think I want to kind of maybe start in the beginning here and give people the full the full perspective, but you know, maybe starting at the end you end up with the arguments or reasoning we quite often use for predator hunting in our space that I think you and I would agree on. You know, hunting is a management tool at the Behasta State Game agencies and biologists and people that we have entrusted v our model of conservation to do the work necessary to understand how to manage these populations correctly. This is a bit of a black eye on that system. Uh, it's a bit you know. Would you agree that this doesn't look great in in terms of the way it was managed, Well, I definitely agree. I am. I wish it weren't so. I wish I could act like this is something that we can just um learn from and live from, learning experience, move on. But I I don't think it's gonna be that easy. I think we're gonna have this thrown back at us a lot. Even though I've written, you know, I went back this morning before you and I talked. And I've been writing a newspaper column in Wisconsin since and I'll always brag about the fact in that time, I've never missed a week yet I've I've produced a column every week. Just in the past twenty years, I've written at least thirty five columns weekly columns on wolves, wolf regulations, wolf coming in and on and on again, off again with the endangered species listing. And so we have all this history with wolves yet hunting them as really we're still learning it, we're still developing it. And this last one we can get in all the details. But you know, the last one we had, it came on pretty quickly. We um the d n R set of quota of two hundred. But then um, they have we have to share that in Wisconsin by treaty regulations. You know, these are a court ordered the Federal Court decisions that we cannot just um managed wolves or deer or bears up north however you want. We gotta do it basically in collaboration with our Jibwe nation, the Chippewa people. And so they basically took that quote to them of two hundred and gave the Chippewa eighty nine of that based on UM the wolf population off the reservation areas. So it's kind of complicated, but basically came down to I think it was a nine wolves for the for the Chippewa people and then the rest for US hundred nineteen for UM for UM for eighty one for the Chippewa for the non tribal people, and went from there. Well, as it turns out, re shot, you know, two hundred. I think that the final was too sixteen wolves, so way over our our quota of nineteen. And you can't just act like that doesn't matter that we can just take a Chippawa didn't use because they don't use theirs that they use theirs to protect the wolf because in their culture in Wisconsin, it's considered UM the wolves considered their brother among our tribal people, whereas UM, I think it's I think it's a navajole out west where they don't have the wolf. They don't hold the wolf in that kind of regard. You know, they were more of UM. I think shepherds and had sheeps. They weren't hurting. I guess they had heard of something they took care of and the wolves would prey on them. So they had a different perspective. But Wisconsin, this is what we have and we we overshot that. And now, um, what I find frustrating is that the first three years we had this season, back in two thousand twelve, two thousand thirteen, and two thousand and four teen, we did a really good job as staying within our QUOTEA. We only we're off by I think two point one percent. Overall, we went over a little bit, really shut things down quickly controlled it didn't have these problems with this time. Um, it's a different situation and the politics were different and it ended up were Now we have this black guy we have to deal with on illegal front. I think I'm sure that Chippewa are going to just let let us go by. They'll they'll find they'll have to find some way to get their their compensation for it. Yeah. Yeah, it's It's one of those I think with with a lot of these situations, A grizzly bear in the Greater Yale so ecosystem it had. It is complex. I mean, it's not as simple as um, we have what is it, a thousand wolves and this is how many we need to take off the landscape. You know, we have our population um thresholds and we know they are just not that sense, not just a numbers game. There's so many other things that are involved. Do you I mean, honestly, quite honestly, when you start looking at this, you have to and you just said this, you have to understand that, like we we the numbers that are being given by the state game agencies are so important to hit because this is again it's prescriptive. It's not just they didn't just come up with this number. It's a prescription for how to maintain a healthy ecosystem and a healthy wolf population, unglip populations, predator prey dynamic, all the things that are important for any and cohabitation, all things are important for that ecosystem function are baked into that number. And when you miss it, it's a huge You can't understate how big of a deal it is to miss it and miss it by that and much um has that felt locally? I mean, is it you feel like? Uh? For whatever bars people can go into, are a lot of people talking about this and hunting camps and and discussing it. I'm sure it's part of the buzz there. It's been a NonStop discussion last last two weeks. And again it very it really varies by which group you're talking to. But um, I have been really um disappointed by how many people just think the quota was because you said the clue it was two hundred. They think that while it was only sixteen over that quota. But that's not the reality of it. The way this will break down in our court rulings, the way it will break down in the in the I the public opinion, that's not gonna fly people. You know, I guess the way I look at Ben, I know we're on under a really hot issue where people are mad. When I get emails and text messages from my non hunting sisters in law one of what the hell has happened here? You have to go back and explain that, well, yeah, in terms of wildlife management, wolf management, this did not hurt that this did not deliver a significant low to the wolf population in this state. But that's not really what it's all about. It's a lot, a lot bigger than that, you know, and I I really have a hard time when it fits our it fits our narrative to act like while we stay within this biological goal. I think, well, that's not how it's gonna be determined going going forward. Yeah, the social and political dynamics are part of the conservation game at this point. Can't discount them. It's not just the numbers game. You have to look at were we not only were we able to manage the population via that overall number, but were we able to manage the social and political dynamics that go along with this particular species. Because you can't just you can't decouple those things. You can't take them apart, can you. I mean, there's no way, no, no, I agree, I um, I find it fastening. How in some circles this became a political argument too, you know, we're you know, and some of that are that you see they keep saying things like, um, while we wanted to get the season, and now, because the Biden administration might walk it back and pull this thing off the endangered species put it back on the endangered species list. And my the thing I pointed out my column is that you go back in time, Ben and when this thing was first brought up, when we first tried to get wolf de listed in Wisconsin, it was a Clinton administration pushing the people run in the Fishing Walife Service, that the Secretary of the Interior, of the Secretary of the Fishing Walife Service, they were the ones trying to push early on to get it off the endangered species list once you met the goals in the Great Lakes, and we met the goals in the Great Lakes about over twenty years ago, but still it wasn't until the Bush administration got it off the endangered species list in this region. But then um went back on during court fights, and then the An administration put it put it back out there again, removed the listing. So we had these hunts in two thousand and twelve, thirteen four king that was during the Obama years. So now so when I hear people's act now like this is a liberal versus conservative, Republican versus Democrat, I think you don't. You're not being fair of the history of this that the rule you know, at a federal level of a hard time believing that whether it was Clinton, George Bush, Obama or Trump, that they really had a whole big investment politically and moving that thing on or off the endangered species list. Yeah, maybe that speaks to the de evolution of our politics, you know, or the polar like the extreme polarization of where we are. Because if you take this back, you know, in the absence of just like boiling it down to this situation. You know, if you take this back, you go back to October of last year, when then Interior Secretar Air Secretary the Interior David Bernhard announced that UM the federal government would remove gray wolves from from the e es A Endangered Species Act in the lower forty eight and he said at the time, after more than fort or five years as a listed species, the gray wolf has exceeded exceed all conservation goals for recovery. Today's announcement simply reflects that the determination that this species is neither a threatened nor endangered species based on specific factors Congress has laid out in the law uh AS specifically, like we I guess what I think about this is wolves, you know, they belong in the landscape, and if they're they're sustainable numbers. It's not debatable that we should have them in our system of hunting, air, system of wildlife conservation. To me, it's just not a debatable point. But when it gets tossed into I guess we should start. Let's let's just kind of start there and tell everybody the story from you know, the Trump administration and Secretary Bernhard remove the wolves from the listing. A lot of people say it was a campaign initiative to rouse the Republican base to move on this. Can you take us, you know, from that point, how we get to what do we five six months of you know after that? Now we're we're rushing through a wolf hunt and looking at the ramifications. But can you take us a little bit through the history after after that happened? From what I understand, Benum, the Trumpet Inmistry and the Fisher Walize Service did move this a little bit faster than normal, probably because it was an election year. They wanted to get it get it alter right before the election that they were removing it. So it probably didn't make some people happy. I guess. I do argue most people that were really had had an interest in this, probably had their minds minds me of anyway, and where they stood on that issue. But so so they removed it. But they probably removed it it weren't an election year. They probably we're still within a couple of months of doing it. It wasn't like, I don't think the Trump administration was going to reverse something that the Obama administration it supported, that Clinton supported that basically a whole list of administrations that really did want want this thing often endangered species list because it met the requirements we'd set over twenty years ago in this region. But UM, once it was removed, that was like late October the announcement came out, and then I think it was November three. Is actually put us on a timetable by things. December six, Wisconsin d and ARE came out with a notice that in their opinion, we should hold off and not hold our first season until the following November, the first Saria November, which would have been nothing November six this fall. UM. Meanwhile, we should also point out that this this population of walls in the Great Lakes, it's basically across the northern tier, northern parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula Michigan. There's no as far as then there's no wolves downe in the Lord Penninsula. Michigan's all up in the an Upper Grade Lakes region. But meanwhile, Minnesota showed no move to UM stood a season this year in Michigan did not either. They both we're kind of holding back, and when we're still in Wisconsin now, they're gonna hold one in November. I think outside of Wisconsin would looked as kind of a fairly aggressive announcement that we're gonna have our first wolf season within a year of it being de listed. And I think, um, based on this my knowledge of how we've conducted wolf huntson Wisconsin and past and how we let up to it, I thought it was a prudent move to let's say, we gotta we gotta get public hearings, get get getting from the public, discuss this thing biologically and socially, get the tribes and fallolved, reconvene our wolf committees, we have the citizen involvement. It really make sure we think this through carefully and see what's changed, you know, in the last seven or eight years since we last had a wolf season. Because the one thing we know of something like wolves and then something coming off the endangered species list, I would just think it'd be real prudent to proceed carefully. There's Noah rush um let This thing, as I always keep saying, played a long game. There's you know it won't be our last chance. That if you do it right, this won't be our last chance. Let's just take your time with this. But that didn't happen. The politics got involved, and one of the really I think um interesting nuances of Wisconsin situation is when wolves would do list it back around I think around two thousand and nine, two thousand eleven, so I his court battles. Well, when they came off the list in two thousand eleven, one of our lawmakers quickly passed a law with the number three or four months to put the all season and make it part of the state statute. And you know, we don't have We don't set our turkey season, our rabbit season, squirrel season, waterfall seasons by statute. We sell them, but we set up by ministrative rule where the Wildlife agency dictates the rules. The legislature takes a final look at it. But overall the Wisconsin dne our works for citizens groups to kind of come up with the framework and the laws that will will govern it by and then then we proceed from there. Well, this one was put in the state statute, so technically when this thing was when wolves came off the endangered species less back in the fall. Well, um, some of the groups pushed quit, bring it back right, bring the hunt back right away. And we saw what happened when we did that, because I think things I think some of the things that happened in this season would not have happened, would not I've rolled out to what they did if we're taken a more calm, deliberate approach to it. Yeah, And that's I mean, when when this first came out, Um, when when that delisting occurred, Wisconsin dn R was was basically saying that from the beginning. There's a quote from from right when this d listing happened where they they suggest, well they would soon resume the honey seasons like they had in and the quote is the Wisconsin Department and Natural Resources welcomes the responsibility of again managing wolves in Wisconsin. The Department has successfully done so for decades and will continue to follow the science and laws that influence our management. All wolf management, including hunting, will be conducted in a transparent and deliberative key term deliberative process in which public and tribal participation will be encouraged. And so this is uh. Again, there's a lot of nuance here. This is a situation where you and I would probably agree on the hunt being conducted right. We're we're happy that for the D listing. We feel like that's the right thing to do here. But that you step to like, how do we implement this hunt? And that's where things fall apart. And are you familiar with this group Hunter Nation on what they did here until until they popped up in this lawsuit UM, which basically they filled a lawsuit to force the Dean are to open the season before the end of February and a judge in Jefferson County. I think it's from those little ironies you get wagg into the nuance. I think when the when the ironies of this whole thing with the lawsuit was at I think people like me UM have always said, we don't like it when outside groups sue to bring to to stop wolf's wolf hunto wolf management. We really don't like it when UM these different environmental groups sue to get to get these kind of protections on wolves and shut down any effort that for state management. We resent that. But yeah, here was a case where a group comes in from while they're based in Kansas, but one of their main people. I think their presidents based it lives in Wisconsin, but then they take it into court in southern Wisconsin, which is not wolf country, and get this lawsuit to say that you know, yeah, the judge says you, by law, Wisconsin has to hold a wolf hunt before the end of February because that's what's in your state law. And I think technically you're right, but you know, it's kind of a UM, I thought it was kind of when these I'm sure there was. I can't prove it, Ben, but I'm sure they charged their judge carefully. Would I would imagine so a Hunter Nation if folks don't know. And I don't want to get this wrong, but well, the specific guy that you're talking about here is the guy that runs Hunter Nation. And I'm gonna look this up while we're talking so I get this right. But this gentleman was formally formally um, let's look him up here. Luke hill Hilligman is the CEO of Hunter a shan Um, and prior to working there, he was the chief executive author of American Americans for Prosperity, which is basically a Coke Brothers pack and the and when you look at what Hunter Nation is really it's kind of a It seems like a right wing advocacy group within the hunting space. Um they have they do a lot of things that I agree with in fact, but they have a strong position on the EESA and it's and its reform. It says on their website Hunter Nations supports major Endangered Species Act reform. The s A has become the favorite tool of anti hunting groups to take wildlife and habitat restoration efforts away from the state and fish and game agencies to the significant detriment of hunters and sportsmen and hunting groups used. The Endangered Species Act has a weapon tying decision making up in the courts to the detriment of animals and habitat. It goes on and on. But you can pick up the drift here and then you get into this very a ironic happening in this case, and I guess. But before we get to that, I want to read to you there uh press release when they won this lawsuit in Wisconsin, they said this week Hunter Nation, along with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, won our lawsuit against By the way, I love the way these things are always named They're named in the most pandering way, wisconsinant Institute for Law and Liberty. It's just like the Wisconsin Institute for Kitties and ice Cream. Who could be against law and liberty? Uh. They won our lawsuit against the Wisconsin depart of Natural Resources for ignoring a state law requirement to schedule a wolf hunt this winner. A Jefferson County Circuit court found that the Wisconsin DNR violated state law by refusing to schedule a winner one gray wolf hunt when the wolf was delisted from the Endangered Species Act on January four one. This is a historic victory for Wisconsin hunters and are constitutionally protected right to hunt and manage our wildlife here in Wisconsin. The ruling finally provides clear direction to the administration in Wisconsin to move full speed ahead with our statutorily required wolf hunt. Um, and it go of course, it goes on. But let me just point out the irony here and see what you think. The irony here is that the anti hunter, according to Hunter Nation, is using the Endangered Speakies Act as a cudgel with which to beat the hunting and conservation world right there, using it as a way to stop hunting right, and this is widely documented with wolves and grizzly bears in the like. So what happens here is a pro hunting group that believes in this, this idea that the e s as being used by the people on the other side, rushes through a hunt to make sure that that the s A isn't turned over by the Biden administration. They rushed through this hunt, and now the hunt itself is a mess, and they have provided an even bigger cudgel for anti Hunderson now beat us with is that they have basically done the opposite of what they are attempting to do and what their mission states in terms of the Dangerous Species Act. I know that's a complicated web with which to weave, but that sound about right. I don't think it's a lot complicated. I think it's um this really. If you're designing a way to to um provide an argument in court that we cannot provide scientific management of our wolf population in Wisconsin, well we just we just did. We just created a huge talking point. And but I can I can also argue that if this had had been left up just a biologists and wildlife managers and our hunter groups that are Actually we have a hunter hunter organization Wisconsin called the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, which is basically five guys, five people elected by publicly elected to represent hunting interest in each counting the state. If we've been left it up to that group, which is our traditional way of handling things, this wouldn't have happened. UM. So now we have the situation though where every time I read about UM, I'd say a nationally articles, nationally written article, for like when the national media of those New York Times or the ganet chain that has Milwaukee Journal in it, various associated press, they read those articles and they always almost always now have UH spokesman from the Human Society United States, various anti hunting groups UM. These UM well, like the basically I called this the Earth first type groups all bashing away at this UM hunting season the way it was carried out. So now we have that where this was not scientifically designed, the way this thing was was was enacted to get into this in the nuance of Wisconsin politics. And we have a seven citizen Natural Resources Board that sets policy for our wildlife agency, the Department Natural Resources. Well during the run up to the season, when it was dictated by course that we hold a season. One of the one of the boards members basically set um the directive to issue twenty times the quota for permits hunting permits, and that was doubling the standard. Before we're in the first three seasons, Wisconsin issued ten times the quota to get that harvest. Well, this time he went for twenty times, and I ran the numbers on basically when you get down how many permits were sold for each wolf season we've had all four wolf seasons. In the first three when I actually came time to buy buy hunting permits, we sold about seven permits for each wolf in the quota. This time we sold over thirteen permits for each wolf in that in that quota. So we effectively doubled the hunting pressure compared to the first three seasons. And there are a thing that that changed a lot from seven or eight years ago. Is that seven or eight years ago in Wisconsin? I think I don't think. Yeah. We did not start registering dear for example, by by phone or computer until two thousand and fifteen, and so like when we last had a wolf hunt, it was still um showing up somewhere getting it registered and doing it that way. Well, now this season we could do it by by phone and computer, but yet we stuck with the old twenty four hour timetable for registering the wolf. So as a result, we ended up um almost extending the day a full day of hunting and trapping for wolves during this past season two weeks ago, and we did the first three years. So it was there's so much nuanced in this that given the UM, the way things were laid off this year, at the delisting, the hold run up to this fall, you really have a hard time looking at this and saying this was a scientifically driven model that we need to be followed. Yeah, and that's that's it. I mean Wisconsin was unable to whether you know this was forced by this this judge and this Hunter Nation lawsuit or not really unable to manage this UM. And that is that that is I can't you can't overstate the like how big a black eye this is for the argument against the anti hunting crowd. H you just can under underestimate. I mean, like you said, on on a on a smaller level, on a micro level, those two factors stand out, and you said this in your article, I think that that allotted like the DNR allotted a record percentage of kill permits, like you just mentioned. And then they gave light solars twenty four hours to register their kill by phone. Well, of course, like of course, um, you're not gonna be able to get a count. And this was what a three day ended up being a two or three day hunt? Three day hunt? Right, so you have a three day hunt. Well, let's say I'm a guy in uh righting for the New York Times, which I would never be, but let's say I was, and I don't know much about this. It is incredibly easy. The headline rights itself, right, Let's just say then I take it a little bit further. I'm I'm a pr person for Peter. The headline there rights itself even easier. Bloodthirsty hunters, you know, slaughter wolves in two day Uh you know, free for all. That's not managed. You know, it's it's not regulated. And and a lot of wolves died that didn't need to or weren't supposed to be based on the allotment in the science. And I mean that is I mean, like I said, we've handed them the bat with which to hit us with. Here, Um, you left out the part about trophy hunter. They really, Oh I forgot a about that. Yeah, must. Every time I saw anyone quota from let's just see across the aisle, they always um marked this as a trophy hunt. And that's just standard procedure. Now, when you want to you want to make see something bit of a hunting, you put it down as a trophy hunt. Yeah. And this would have worked though if we would you think if we were a wind time and the DNR would have gotten its away, they would have said, let's let's be transparent and deliberate, Let's make sure we bring in tribal leaders, Let's make sure we really think this through. Let's hold the hunt, say next winner or you know, at some time where it makes sense where obviously it doesn't compete with other hunting seasons, and we can do it in a transparent and very safe and you know scientific way. Um. And they would have done what they did in the past seasons, which was hit the number by three or four wolves. You know, they would have been two, three or four wolves over. This would have been a huge point of celebration for those of us that believe in our model of conservation. Yeah, you talk about a point swing. This this was it. We could have gone into the people just going ahead and laid out a real deliberative approach, set up a season in November, tweaked some of the things we knew we're going to change from from this year and seven years before then ruled the season out the way it had in the past, where you know, we we should we should probably talk about the fact that in past seasons, UM this season wolf season started with hunting, just hunting with calls, hunting over a carcass, you know, and some kind of wolf bait, girl's trapping. And so we had our first three years ran anywhere from like about um forty two days to maybe fifty eight days or something. It was really a long rollout, and we don't know, we do not allow hunting with hounds for wolves until to our gun deer season ends in late November. So the first first year we didn't have the opportunity to use hollands for hunting, and then the next two years, by time UM hounds were allowed, UM much of the season really closed down because the trappers had gotten the trappers dominated those first three years, and then this time around it was just the opposite we had of the harvest tuisco coming through on the use of hollands and only five percent from trapping, and that gets in the nuance to that um. Yeah. You know. One thing I wanted to say too about the whole way way media covers this is that we cannot expect non hunters, which is like our population, to understand the nuance of hunting regulations. It's just our hunting regulations tend to be pretty involved, um, so for them to understand the difference between hunting with with halls, trapping with um like foothold traps, and hunting wolves of the hounds, these are such different practices that hunters are pretty well aware of them. But even then it's um. Holl And hunting is not something a lot of a lot of hunters have any direct experience with. There's so much nuance here that can be so easily distorted and used in the wrong way against us that it was just I keep thinking, just what a wasted opportunity this was by letting this go forward, where now give us some block guys to the the great um example of what we could have achieved. Yeah, really, I mean, if you, if you and going back to what you said. There was an article on March three in the New York Times. Um, it's not by me, that's weird, Maria, Maria Kramer or Cramer. And it just starts out by stating the facts, but then, as you said, quickly moves into doesn't take a whole lot of time to move right into that humane society United States quote. So I'll read you a little bit of it said, Hunters in Wisconsin killed more than two hundred wolves this last week, far exceeding the state's limit as they scrambled to take advantage of trump ara wildlife rules that they worry maybe tightened by the Biden administration. So start start out by the lead, as we call it in the business, like the lead of this article. The thesis of this article already begins in this kind of political muck. It begins with this this, It connects, it does, it does, takes no time in connecting hunters to the Trump era and hunters to right wing politics, and it quickly moves into the left wing opposition. At least two sixteen wolves were killed in less than sixty hours, exceeding the quota of a hundred nineteen and prompting Wisconsin to end what was meant to be a one week hunt four days early. Now it doesn't go anywhere in this into the nuance of the actual number of one nineteen or anything like that. Again, it's too easy for somebody for Maria to start out this way. She does get into the details later on, but it's it's I mean, people stop reading, so it says environment Environmentalists who fought unsuccessfully in state court to stop the hunt said the killings that occurred during breeding season, when gray wolves are especially vulnerable. They said the large number of wolves killed in such a short time underscored the need for President Biden to put the gray wolf back on the list of the animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. So for everyone that was trying to um tout delisting of wolves is a good thing. You have now given uh the h s u S an opportunity to say you were wrong, and in this case, um, they're not all that far off. They said. These animals were killed using packs of dogs, snares, and leghold traps. Kitty Block, chief executive the Humane Society of the United States, said on Tuesday it was a race to kill these animals in the most cruel ways. Yeah there. And meanwhile, you know, one of the things that I found in Trusted by by Coinstance, I had UM interviewed a woman UM at February six and she's a she's a huge trapper, really gifted trapper. And she had said back in February six, this is like two and a half weeks before the season unfolded, that if this season goes forward, she says, I'll be lucky if I can check my traps in two days, because for two days that the season probably over with him two days because she just knew that. Um. You know, when you get when you get um hounds out there hunting. But if you have good tracking snow we have really good We have a good number of people states who enjoy hunting bears, enjoy hunting podcats, and counties with the hounds. Personally, I have a real hard time criticizing houndsman, because I think if I were in the hounds, I'd be in the same thing. I love it. Yeah, I think I don't do it, but I love it. I think the sound of hounds baying, whether it's whether they're baying those beagles being on rabbits or or or hounds baying on raccoons. I think that I think it's exciting. As how I'm I cannot sit there and act like we shall be saying, well, it's okay to hunt raccoons, the hounds are so okay to hunt rabbits with beagles, but damn, we can't do this on bears and and and and wolves or bobcats. So I have a hard time with that one. I'm kind of rambling now a little bit. But um, I just found that when when this thing was being planned, a lot of trappers we're not planning to take part in February because they're trappers tend to be more much more tuned into the fur, the fur quality and everything I was hearing from the trappers in Wisconsin. The guys I know was there going to pass up the chance and just go ahead and by apply for um a preference point for the fall hunt and let the homes being have have their season to kind of just take a pass on this because they knew that basically that the for the for the fur quality for a wolf peaks in December and then so it's going downhill and by late February it is not a high quality pelt anymore it's getting matted, the under first kind of getting loose, all that kind of stuff. So they were kind of taking a pass anyway. But still when you when you saw the kind of numbers were talking about for how many permits to be pushed out there, how many hunters can be pushed out there, the people who are like tuned into this, we're predicting before the hunt started that this is not gonna go well, just gonna be a well cluster, you know, the cluster f And it sure was yeah, yeah, and it I mean, there's this is this thing. There's so much baked into this too. But you just, like I said, you just know what what it's gonna look like. Um And and look, I don't disagree. I mean, if you look at some of the language around some of the climate change legislation that President Biden had in the works, and and Hunter Nation points this out and I'm not saying I disagree with it, that that the worry was that the d n R was going to delay this and then anti hunting and animal race groups would get in and then canceled the hunt. Right so by the time the hunt would take place, they would just throw the political football back across the field and in the hunt would take place. But that I think just underscores the danger of making these decisions based on these political agendas, making wolf hunting in Wisconsin and political football to throw back and forth during a camp during a presidential campaign and then you know close following afterwards, UM, turning these things into not very deliberate and and and very thought out, um ecological and biological benefits to these populations as we as you know, Shane Mahoney was here. You might say it that way if it's eloquently than that, but UM, turning this into political football has led to where we are. You know, do you think there's any way to turn that off in any way to just try to find a way to manage wolves and other I would say, like controversial species on the landscape in a way. Sage grouse are also this way, It doesn't have to be a predator. Um. Is there a way to turn this off or at the very least guard against this type of manipulation of what should have been a very scientific conservation decision. Yeah, you know you would hope that UM this because this will you know, there's two core cases alter already before the before this even happened that they're fighting the the um the delisting, so you know it's gonna end up in court in front of a judge at some point. And I still think UM lawyers, a good smart lawyer with some good wildlife managers helping him out and designed the case, can still make a very strong argument that um, hey, look we know what we're doing. We've proven this in the past. This is not a good example of what we're capable of. And here's here's what we have done the past, and done it very well, not just Wisconsin, but also Minnesota in Michigan when they had their seasons. So we still have an overall strong, very strong record for controlling the wolf harvest and getting really basically rolling it out again the next time in a real responsible matter. But so this was really the outlier. This this season here was nothing like anything else we've seen before, and unfortunately the way it came out so fast that the people we were really counting on to bring some sanity to the process. In my column, I criticized to our our top breast and our our own department Natural Resources because I thought this was you should have spoken up why you could and once once this thing has passed. You can't just go back and rewrite things. You sat there mute while they were debating some of these questions like how many promised to put out there to not say a word, and that was that really, um will hurt our case when it comes to why didn't you speak up? And so to answer your question, Ben, I think we can still make a good argument, but we sure didn't make it easy. Now we really have to argue from behind. Yeah, you do. And this is such a critical point, and I mean, I don't know there's there's a point that this this will ever calm down, like the boiling point will be taken down. But this this is with a new administration, you know. And we've seen these We've seen these political footballs go back and forth before to the detriment of what we're talking about. And this happened with granted staircase Escalante and bears the years, to the detriment of the landscape and in this case a species and it's overall conservation efforts. Anytime these things become these political footballs, it's to the detriment to the people on the ground. It never works out for the people managing the landscapes or managing the wildlife. It just never does. And um, it's hard to understand, you know, connecting the macro and the micro um and it takes I think, good writing and good journalism as you've done to really make those connections. How is this now going to be harder going forward to the people that so enjoyed this hunt, you know, because it's okay to enjoy a wolf hunt. I don't have a problem with somebody showing the wolves that they killed on social media or talking about it. But again, everyone needs to understand that we're we're in a very political and very socially charged environment and everything we do has to be grounded in the things we say we're for. You know, that's a tough one. I don't think you and I've talked about, but I know I've. It's been part of my UM career basically going back in the early eighties that I've always been fascinated by the fact that you can show, um, a person holding a deer nice buck, um, or a person holding up a couple of geese, say shot whatever it might be. But why I remember in my newspaper days back in the mid eighties, the first time I showed a guy holding up a coyote or holding by red fox by its high and legs um for a winter predator hunt. God, people just called freaking nuts. And there's something about shooting a canaid that really does not sell with a lot of people. And that's not I don't think we can ever, um quote unquote educate people out of that. I think it's something that just in us as humans that um a lot of people really identify, um something that that resembles what runs around their house. I think that's why we have problems with moultinlined hunts, and why we have problems with with wolf hunts and and and coyote hunts. It's just always something that people just so many people are so connected to those those animals. So it's it's tough stuff when you get into the emotional side of of these arguments. Yeah, it's really like you said, it's it's an emotional topic for people, and and that's not something we can we can discount as hunters. We can't say, well, don't get emotional about this. You know facts, don't care about your feelings. You're never gonna get if you start talking like that, You're never gonna get anywhere. Um, you're just gonna create a wall between you and the person who you'd like to understand you. Um, and that's where and I think this, this situation is certainly put up a larger barrier. I mean, we certainly can stand behind that barrier and say how great it is that there's two hundred less wolves and that's going to help overall population dynamics, and that, uh, we're celebrating you know, traditional way methods to take like hound hunting and other things. We can say all those things, and we're probably right. But at the end of the day, Um, it only matters what people think about it, you know, and only really and as we've seen with this, it really only matters what society at large thinks is good or bad. And and that's if we get off that track, then you come you're just arguing with yourself or you're congratulating yourself and everybody else over there. New York Times Land and New York Times has been known to write about hipster hunters and the field of table movement. They've been known to write about you know, cou you putting sheet back on the mountain like that. It's not that they're completely against highlighting what's positive here, UM, but they'll certainly jump all over it when the negative like this perpetuate. And if and I can guarantee, if you UM, if I would, I shouldn't say guarantee, I'd be willing to bet that if if a New York Times reporter we're to show up and I could arrange them to go um hound hunting with some hounds machine in Wisconsin for Bobcat up north, but at the same time a year and actually be early in the winter, I'd be a pretty much a solitary hunt. We have one or two trucks involved with their hounds, and they probably come aways really impressed with how these guys operate because it's it's not a guarantee, it's a it's a tough can be a real tough slug out there staying after these hounds in um No, the Wisconsin's deep forest. So but you had this case, we're UM we had so many UM trucks out there with with houndsman and such. It was times we just saw like three or four trucks, five trucks in some cases, and some of these real forest roads. It really upsets some people who were, you know, kind of on defense about it. Another hand in hand, as are people driving by who deal with wolves. They live in a wolf country, they've had pets killed by wolves, livestock killed by wolves. They go by these same guys and give my thumbs up. And so you really get these interesting perspectives on the Wisconsin landscape. To go back to our earlier discussion about what's the average hunter, well, I would say there's a lot of hunters Wisconsin who probably really vocally condemning this hunt right now, and it's just jumping to conclusions about that was just that they're blaming the Holland hunters for everything. And then there's but there are some things I think we need to look at, and one of them is, um, how quickly the successful hunters registered their their wolves. I mean, by some appearances, by some reports. Talking to retired wardens, I know there were some pretty pretty um I think nothing like It's one of those cases where I'm not going to quote anybody because nobody would go on the record, But I really got the impression there was some stuff going on out there were either on social media or through the two way radios, encouraging each other not to register of the wolf until you had you know, basically right down to last minute. So you had this big delay and registration that almost was a full day delayed, that delayed the season, that ran the season, not a day beyond where it should have been. So there are some things that we gave ourselves a black eye on. It's not just all on the political front. Who is that our our own individual decisions to that could have been better. We could have been saying that I don't want to take a chance of something getting getting out of hand here being a part of that, and unfortunately a lot of guys did. Yeah, I heard. I've heard so many rumors and read so many things about this hunt that I like, I hesitate. I'll just tell you some of the more crazy ones. I heard that people were had frozen wolves and their freezer that they had shot years ago, and they were getting them out and checking them in, and you hear all kinds of crazy things. I have no idea if that's true. I wasn't there, I have you know, I haven't seen any proof of any kind of these crazy allegations about how the hunt went down. But I mean, I always say on this and we've we talked about wolves here before. Where I I when you start talking about wolves on the landscape, and we talked about this in the Colorado ballot box biology, um case, you know, some weeks back here. I I try to understand, like I can understand that ranchers, landowners, the people that are really affected by these wolves and rural like rural and suburban situations, even I think probably in Wisconsin, like there's two different parts of the state, as you mentioned, and one of them has wolves and and a lot of a lot of these parts don't even have them. Um. And so I do when we're talking about this and how to regulate and how to think about it, I do understand each side of the fence. You know, you understand the more urban side in Wisconsin where you might be thinking like why would you kill a wolf? And then you go talk to All you have to do is take that person and introduce them to a rancher or a far armor and says, this is why you kill a wolf. Look over here, I'll tell you they're killing my sheep. They're doing this, they're doing that, They're impacting my life negatively. Um. And so I always look at it both ways. I understand both. I side with the rancher. I want that rancher to have that tool to to manage those those that predation. I've seen it even here in Montana right close to my house where uh I have show camera footage of wolves taken down some guy's cattle, you know, and the the U. S D a Aphist trappers have to come in and kill the wolf anyway, So it's a it's a complicated mix. And as you as you mentioned, um, it's delicate and we need to treat it as such. You know, we need to treat this as a delicate situation, not one to be rammed through. Um. So we feel good about getting what we wanted. Yeah, I I am remember in college, well back in my Navy days, I took a a psychology class and when these college classes you could take um um when your ships deployed, get college credit. I remember this professor saying that in almost all aspects of human behaviors, human attitudes about se us fall right in the middle. You can, we can listen to arguments and basically will always somewhere in that seventy in the middle and on a one fringe, on the other fringe, and no matter what you tell those folks, they're going to stay where they are. They're not going to budge. Well when it comes to wolves, I think, um, most of us, most of people I've dealt with in my in my career, when you explain some of the nuance to them that they have not really been part of before, most of them, I think, will start understanding that it's not as it's not maybe as easy as they once thought it was to break this down and figure it all out. But when you have something this happened, and you see headlines that say something like the headline I saw a number of times in Wisconsin was that hunters kill one fifth of the Wisconsin wolf population, I think, well, yeah, based on estimates, that's about right. But um, the bigger question as well, was anning harmed Biologically No? But then you go back to but biologically no harm, sociologically huge harm and so but for hunters by the same token to act like because there was no biological harm, therefore no harm, I think that's that's just not realistic. That's not how we operate in a free society where we debate these things. We have to um fight our way through lots of information lots of different perspectives to come to some kind of agreement, but you can't. My and my little things in life is that you can't force love, you can't force understanding. It has to come on its own. And this is one where I think this one was really forced down the throats of the non hunting public, even allowed the hunting public to the point where now we hire ourselves back from the corner we did not need to be in. Yeah, that's a beautiful sentiment. Man. You can't force understanding and can't force love. I mean, that's that's it. You can't, you know, And in this case it's it. It almost seems like, you know, on a political level. And I'll just go ahead and say it. I think Hunter Nation is clearly a like a Republican, a right wing group. I mean, I think they don't say it out right, but I mean if you look at who they are and what they do, that's what they that's what they are. UM. And that's okay. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. UM. I'm just saying it's a politically driven advocacy organization and that is is very dangerous um in and of itself. Within the hunting space, I feel, and again there's always to take it to the opposite. There's people that would charge UH groups like b h A for being a left wing, politically motivated organization. I know that not to be true, just based on my you know, my time working with them, But those ideas that we would we would allow those UM forces in our space to work this way to try to get wins for their side. UM is it's kind of the antithesis of what you just mentioned there because now we're not we're trying to get wins, and we're not talking about understanding, and then we're not talking about what we can do to win that sociological battle that's out there, because really the war is for people's attention, right The war is for people to like just pay attention to us for minutes so we can explain ourselves. That's all. That's the that's what the the overall battle is here, UM And the every point like this that's gonna get raised to a more popular culture level is another chance for us to get people's attention in a way that's positive. Yeah, I UM, I guess if I had my UM big wish right now and I had the same wish nine years ago was that when in two thousand and twelve, when a Republican lawmakering Wisconsin named suitor Um made this made the legislation that is now our law. We have a wolf hunt studying UM. Well, now it would start in early November and until UM we hit our quota or else hit late February. Well, typically we never made out of December. My my wish all along this this past year was that that's someone in our Republican party in Wisconsin, which controls the legislature, controls both houses of our legislature, our Senate and our Assembly, that some Republican would step for step forward and say this is not good president to have a wolf hunting season set by state statute. This should be in the administrative rules process. That's that guarantees a lot more discussion publicly among all the different advocacy groups and then come to us with your final seasoned proposals and we'll weigh in then. But we're not going to write this for you. You gotta do it yourself. And so we had this law put it back out there where it's part becomes part of the Wildlife Agency's responsibility to make sure we have a good solid to hearing on this and not not making this for you where you go to go to one judge and get this thing enacted like this. Yeah, and we've seen that all over the country. We did a little bad bill round up was not a bad bill, but a bill round up here of new state legislature bills that are being passed um all over the country and here in Montana, I think we had some kind of fifty eight I don't I have number in front of you, but over fifty bills and legislature in since the beginning of the legislative session here. So you elect a new body um that's dominated by one party or the other, and they're all immediately enacting their agenda. And again they're elected for a reason, they know you campaign them on agenda. So I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it is what it is. I think is the time to have this heightened sensibility as to what's right and what's wrong right and and in this case we kind of fell flat in it, um. But it's it's I I do think you know that this is how the political process works. But as hunters and anglers, this is you know, we need to start getting back on this understanding that these are the times when things can go wrong when we have, you know, the political process plays out in this very aggressive way, and then we're settling into the new world and we're starting to pass we want to pass fifty new bills to to reshape the way, you know, and in Montana like elk tags are allotted and nonresident tags are a lotted, and how public land access is used and block management and all of this starts to change and you start to see the size kind of crystallize. This is just if you have a vested interests, this is time to be aggressive and be calling, um, your state legislature, calling your representatives and just telling them, I get I mean, you guys are voted in you doing your job. We understand that. But this is the belief that we have, you know. And that's where bh A comes in. That's where all these groups come in. That you can jump on the t r C, p R M e F in this case, probably not for Wisconsin, but there's the Prior Wild Chief Foundation either, um, but you can get on this. You can get on the track where you can be involved in something like this and you can't understand like when are the heightened times that the conversation needs to be you know, pushed forward and maybe this will happen next time. Well yeah, one of the I think, um, one thing I've been really proud of in Wisconsin for many years was that back in the thirties and forties, Um, you know, we had we had all the Leopold here in our state, and we people should always realize that even although Leopold did not always prevail in his thinking, he fought a lot of political battles that he lost in Wisconsin, especially on dear management. But um, through that process us in the forties, our legislature must have had some very smart people because they they finally got sick of our deer wars. Back in nearly forties, we were always fighting about deer management, and Leopold was leading these these Um basically bus trips uping in Wisconsin's deer yards is showing what happens when we have an overpopulated deer herd. I think eventually our our lawmakers realized, you know, this is way too much Menutia for us to handle. We're gonna turn this over to the to our conservation department. Let them fight with the hunters and the and the non hunters, let them come up with some solutions here, and then bring it back for our final review, and then we'll either either make them modified some more or we'll check off on it. And that system worked really well for close to sixty years. Where things weren't perfect, We still fought all the time. We still argue all the time, because as I always say, dear make people stupid, so we always fight about these things. And but then in the past twenty years, but especially the last ten twelve years, we really went down this terrible route where lawmakers, it makes they may they make a good argument for um limiting terms and also um limiting them time they can actually get together and past laws and make we should make them part time people again, because to have the time in their hands to go in there and mess with the wolf season like this and employs a wolf season that can be so easily then taken into court and and forced through in this process, it was it shows you we've swung too far away again, back into this idea what the legislature is doing everything. And I think I think we're showing that that system we have to go back and put this more in the in the scientific um management again. Yeah, and there's nothing. There's nothing i'dlike more, as you know, like I said a proponent of wolf hunting, than to have a conversation based on the science for somebody to come to me and be like, hey, us, we're not hunting wolves and here's why, here's the science. UM. I just got finished reading uh Shane Mahoney and Layers guys book. It's not really title very well. It's called the North American Model of Wilife Conservation. That's the book title. It's not very intriguing, but it's descriptive. It's the third time I've read it, because every time I read it, I kind of look at the lens of where we are right now, and and if you start to understand the failings of the model, our model of conservation, it's when, just like you said, it's when we we kind of stray away from whether it be by ballot box or by state legislature in this case, really looking at not not the different parties and different stakeholders involved, but starting with the science, like what's the stines of what Bogy say? Then once we get to where we really know, we want to be. Then we can let kind of the social and political factors come into play and maybe help us shape a little bit of how we deliver what the science is telling us to do, or how we manage what the science is telling us to do, not the other around. You can't do it based on political needs and then re engineer the science like in this case. Um, it's gonna seem disingenuous because it is disingenuous in a lot of ways. So it's um, I mean, it's it's I guess it's just part of what we do, Pats, just like part of being in this uh community, and like understanding that you're gonna win someone, you're gonna lose some and almost every every win and loss, it are complex and have a lot of rights and a lot of wrongs baked in because I think this situation there's plenty that was done right. Like you said, if you just if you're just putting a tally on the board, it's not the worst thing in the world. Um, it doesn't really impact wolf populations, but um, that's not where it ends. So you know, I imagine we'll continue to have these is right, And I I always say, Ben, I'm a Wisconsin Shovanist. I'm also all hunting and North American models over this. I really do believe we have good systems in place. We have smart people, We have smart people in our history, and I really believe, and I really believe overall that if you have um nice, respectful conversations, you might be arguing, but they're still respectful, and your in your marshaling information and deploying it in in a good strategic way that's providing people input from both sides. I think we can have really a great system here, But when it comes down to where we have to win the argument and dominate the argument and basically demonize people who don't see things the way we do and make this um right left, um liberal conservative argument, I really like to think that in the course of American history we've done better than that. You know, we found we can do better than this, And I really am. I am kind of surprised so so many times that people think we have to win, and I think, no, politics is not about at least it shouldn't be about winning. It should be all doing what's best for the for the American public, and our traditions are these kind of things that I hold dear, and you hold dear, and I think most Americans do. And but I don't like this idea of intimidating people and um making them basically conformed of what we think is right. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's so much of it there. I have. I don't want to say. I'm not gonna say I have a dream, but I do. I have a dream, and I like I wish. I think the best conversation I could have if we could take like a consumptive and a non consumptive user in this case, say a hunter or an angler and an animal rights activists or somebody believes in animal rights, have each of them put together a model of conservation. Of course, we could just be like, we got one already, why don't you put one together? So they and the Analyrights Committee puts together a model conservation as in depth um as as the one we currently have that was worked out by Mahoney and Geist back in the eighties and articulated back in the age, and then we could put them next to each other and have a good conversation. We could go tenant by tenant, issue by issue and try to apply they're one model versus the other, and maybe you get to some sort of like combined model that takes both of these insights and perspectives and ideologies into into account when we're building these things out, so we don't have to punch each other and beat each other over the head with with our victories and losses. And and so I'm gonna find I'm find a real smart animal rights person that can that can read the North American model wildlife conservation, understand its faults and where it's succeeded, and then say like, now here's a world where we're not killing them, and here's how we're gonna make this work, you know. And I'm I think I'd love to have that conversation and stop just saying you're wrong and I'm right, And here's why. I'd like to see it written down. So maybe maybe some animal rights person is listening to this, they start working on It might take him a while, but and That's what I'd love to see, because I finally we get after the heart of the matter. We would get to the heart of is your way better for wolves? Or is our way better for wolves? But but for now we're too far separated. Oh yeah, and like we um we We had a pel discussion a few years ago in Wisconsin, one of our our our outdoor communicators thing, and we invited in the Hollinsman. We invited in a wolf advocate and we had a real, really good, our hour and a half discussion, and we basically got the point where we um, we realized that no matter what we do as far as Holland hunting, that will never get them. The wolf advocate to agree that that's a good way to hunt bowls, but she she didn't want any kind of hunting trapping period. But but at least um she got to hear from an actual houndsman how they go about hunting wolves and and why isn't always this dog fighting that they're portraying. And I thought was I felt a healthy discussion. And I think when you get into the one of the points Steve Ronella makes quite often which holds up for the whole wolf argument, is that you know, Steep points out that if you not say that um wolves haven't recovered of the range, well then well then you gotta also point out that elk have I want to recovered about eleven of their range. So where do you draw this line? And and here in Wisconsin, it's pretty clear where um, the the lines being drawn we have Wherever we have big forest, we have a wolf, a wolf population. We have a central force in Wisconsin with a decent wolf population. Then they're also up north. But then once you get out of that area, you get these stragglers and these dispersers that don't really make it. This really is a good environment for them. But I think now in Wisconsin we've gone from back in the eighties, we're rethought. Back then, the best available science in the nineteen eighties was that we'd be lucky to get one hundred wolves re established in Wisconsin. And they started trickling back in here in the nineteen eighties and it was kind of fits and jerks, and eventually they thought, well, you probably hold a hundred wolves in the state. Then by the year two thousand, we were thinking the best available sciences that well, we'll probably cap off your out three fifty. Well now we are here in one and the best available in science is now showing well, actually, these wolves are more adaptable than we realized. We learned something. We can now have at least twelve hundred wolves here, and you know that, but it is but now we're seeing consistent problems with pets being killed, livestock being killed, and and so I think the average person could can understand that. Well, if you have a wolf hunt that's well regulated, chances are you knock off the wolves that are most likely to be close to people, hanging out in people's um, at the edge of people's barnyards and fields. Those will be a little more susceptible because they've gotten too close to humans, and so we'll probably get them. So, but you have these nuanced discussions, we really we are capable of doing that. And that's why I think in this case, I felt like, man, you guys are not giving the American people, the Wisconsin people enough credit here. You've got to realize we have unique situations. You can't compare um Wisconsin wolf hunting with Montana wolf hunting. Ian Wisconsin's forest is pretty well divided up, lots of trails and roads that you can get a truck down those vast areas of the West. You do not have that. You cannot put the number of hunters into some most western landscapes that you can hear in Wisconsin. So this is these are all tied together. And but also different. But but you're trying to tell me that the average New York Times reporter understands those that kind of nuance. No, and you can't expect them to if you're only covered that story once a year and not be pounding on that beat ye're in year out. Yeah and yeah, the first quote the story is going to be from h s U S right, And the hs US isn't gonna say, you know what, you know what? What's different? You know, ecological needs are different states to say. And you know, I was wading about the North American wild and wild of conservation. One of the key tenants is that science of biology manager on the state level is going to really get us to the populations that we need. That's not going to happen, and it's never gonna happen unless you push it. But I do think they're I think right, Um, we just have to we have to find a way to to learn from this particular one and move on. And UM, I don't like to get I'm not very argumentative anymore online, but I think on this one, I would be pretty argumentative if I saw somebody and I I'm not saying i've seen this. I don't spend whole lot of time in there anymore. But if I saw somebody online and I guess if you're listening to this podcast, I I hesitate. I hesitate, But I will encourage you to address this directly. If someone is celebrating this wolf hunt in a way is to say, like we won. You know, whether they're a Trump supporter or they're not, or you know they're Republican, don't matter. If they're um celebrating this wolf hunt in a way that we beat the anti hunters, it's time to have it. Like I would have a direct conversation with them to say, uh no. I mean it would start by saying yes and no, but here's the big no on this one, um. And I think that's important for our community to be able to be that honest and with ourselves and with other people around us, to say, let's talk, let's educate each other, and let's not uh, let's not do this. Let's not have this this celebratory mindset, um, because we got to kill some wolves in Wisconsin, and and quite honestly, most people that would be celebrating it, including Hunter Nation, they don't know the politics like you do. In the socio economic needs and and again I mean we might say, hey, you could either pay on a federal level aphis or pay on a state level or on a municipality level to control these problem wolves. Or you can have hunters do it as you mentioned, and they'll pay you for it. Uh, and a lot of hunters. I don't what what was the number of of tag sold? I mean, all of that is revenue for the state. And so you have this idea where where so many of the things that we value are working. Um, especially you know if you if you're just getting your checkbook out here and balancing it. This is a a very positive thing as as opposed to, you know, financially what would be a negative thing having state and federal governments have to manage this and and pay people to go and control predation. So, boy, it's it's a fun one. But I mean, I don't think there's anybody better to talk about the new pat. I appreciate, um, I appreciate your your stance on this, and I appreciate you You're talking about love and understanding in this case because as its trade as it may sound, it's a hundred percent right like it just really is. Yeah, I love it. So you can go read Pat uh Patrick DRK and outdoors dot com. If you go to his blog, he's got an article there all about this um Wisconsin's wolf Overharst was predictable and preventable. There's all kinds of other stuff. So you're posting there weekly, right Pat? Yeh and Um. As you know, Ben, you guys have been let me right for you now for almost three years and and we see it the other way around. You let us publish your material. So yeah, you're doing bi weekly on the Mediator dot com still these days. Yeah, so you can every other week. Pat's got a thing on the Mediator dot com. His last article was about the death of the deer camp. I love that once. So I can't wait. What's your next what's the next piece you're working on? The piece I'll be some name do to you guys today is UM. After you and I get off the phone, I'm wrapping up an article I wrote on on Davy Crockett. And I've been when his Davy Crockett fans since I was a little little boy, and I always love the fact that he was this big hunter. But also I was always fascinated by um the stories of his death at the Alimo, And that's kind of what I'm well, actually, when I'm writing about is he did Davy Crockett quote on swinging, And that's always this um interesting historical debate that will never that will never end and will never solve it. And yet we um we and away fighting about it. And you watched the hissy fits that have happened in our country the last oh especially basically since Disney's movie came out about Davy Crockett m a year before I was born. And that's what I'm writing about. That. That's one thing I have to say I really enjoy about writing with for Meat Eater and work with you guys bouncing ideas around, is that it isn't just how to hunting stuff. It's um, I think we get into the whole hunting culture or why people like Davy Crockett Daniel Boone resonate with us all these years later. Um. Well, my articles I really enjoyed writing for you guys was about Jeremiah Johnson, that the Jeremiah Johnson movie, and I just find um, those kind of stories resonate not just with hunters, but but I'm a much bigger audience and I figured if we can find ways to um not suck other people in, but just intrigued them to show them now hunting is a little more um deep and part of our culture, then I think sometimes we think about these days. I like the fact that me Eater lets me write about it because I can tell you, as a as a career door right now going on almost forty years, that many hunting markets, you know, those magazines or whatever it might be, UM don't touch that stuff. Whereas meat Eater does explore those topics and give you a little more freedom to explore topics that are people don't. Well, I'll tell I'll tell the guys. If you're a little bit late, if you're if you miss your deadline, you can blame it on me. Okay, Brian's Brian's fault. Well that's I guess that earlier. Man. It's it's we have very brief moments of attention for people that don't do what we do, and hopefully articles that you write and think in the work that you produce you work so hard on you know, people could see it, and those brief moments that we get their attention, they can be informed and kind of you know, take a small step forward and to understanding what we do. And I don't know if we'll ever get to really track how we're doing on that. I don't think they'll ever be data that. But it doesn't matter. It's a it's a it's work will continue to do even if we we can't see the trees or the forest through the trees, We're just gonna keep on going. So uh, we appreciate you, and people should. If you're not reading Pat Durkin, shame on you. Your bastards. Get to it. Pat, thank you so much. Thanks Ben, good talking to you. That's it. That's all another episode in the books. Thank you to Pat Durkin, one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite people. Ah, it's just it's good to catch up with the guys. It's funny in our in our space, we're so busy. That's something like Pat. I very rarely get to talk to him and catch up with him, and so podcasting with him is one of the only ways we could to spend time together. And I appreciate him so much. I find myself falling into those those conversations, just as somebody who likes to hear from somebody. He really respects and and hopes you can call a friend. So it's good to have Pat around always, and we'll certainly keep you guys updated on the Wisconsin wolf funt and kind of the the fissures in the landscape and some of the astershocks from the earthquake as it were. To see where this takes us. But it is um, it's an interesting story and it happened right under our noses, and um it took and took until it went uh it became even more controversial, or in my opinion, it went wrong for us to really focus on it. So next time would be a little more proactive in discussing it. Um. But again Pat did a great job in reporting on it. He has the experience that we needed to hear from and he cares about, you know, the fabric of the community around Wisconsin in places he lives and he knows the people. So it was important and good. I'm glad to have it with old Pat. Thank you, Pat. Uh So, just to reiterate before we go, UM, if you want to be a leader th C regional chapter, let me know th HD at the metator dot com. Let me know where you live, what's what's your interest, whether you would be a mentor or mentee, whether you get a lot of time to spend, whether you want to be a part of the group we put together. So just as a quick aside, Phil, Um, if you're out there, stop, don't create any more Facebook pages. We gotta walk that back. We don't want to have like a random so many random Facebook pages. But I appreciate all the effort that went into just creating those. In our our behalf. We gotta get our arms around this thing here, people, and uh figure out what we're gonna do. So we're committed to that. Phil especially is committed to that. And um, we're just about two months out Phil's first hunting experience. So maybe by the time he gets out in the woods for the first time, we'll have a robust group of chapters that can share in his adulation of his hunting success. Okay, Phil, sounds great. All right, say bye to the people. Goodbye people, you know, because I can't go a week without doing rong, oh without ranking