00:00:01 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to episode number seventeen of The Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien. I'm joined today by Cody Rich Tody Rich of the Rich Outdoors podcast and all the other media associated with his brand and all the other things he does as an entrepreneur in the hunting world. Cody is an interesting guy. He's a free thinker. He's somebody that has a different approach on talking about hunting, thinking about hunting, and he's as hardcore as they come. He spends a ton of time in the back country, just about as much time as he spends thinking about why he does what he does and how to make it better for all of us. So I had a great conversation with Cody in Bozeman, Montana. I'd like to thank him and his lovely fiance for having me over for dinner, a good bit of whiskey and a great podcast. Who went deep on a lot of conversations from the history of hunting to how we got here to where we're going and so well, Thank Cody one more time. I hope you enjoy episode number seventeen. Cody, Who's podcast is this? Have we discussed who Who's posting? It. Yeah, you know what's funny? Um until a lot of podcasts with other people, and that's always like a conversation. I mean, this is both I guess, don't they do where you like you can share, you can both post the same podcast. Yeah, I don't like that. Really, we have to know. I don't like I want to I'm selfish. I wanted okay, you go first. Should we shoot for it like Rochambau for it? Or it could be a rock paper scissors game. Yeah. At the end, a lot of people vote, A lot of people vote, and see, uh I did one with go Wild. Oh yeah, you didn't want the other with Brad? Yeah, Brad's good dude. Yeah we did. Uh we did one. It was like three hours long. It was funny. I was like, where did time go? I still got a post it on mine? I told him I would after that just means you're good at what you do. Like if you're good, I'm good at bullshitting bullshit. And if if you found yourself in a position where you just bullshit as a profession or semi professional bullshit, or you're doing good, which is strange because I would not if you would have looked back before I started podcast, no one that knows me it would have been like, yeah, I hope be a podcast host, or it was probably before that was even things would be like a radio host, like I was not a talkative. I'm not a talkative person. I don't go out of my way to talk about myself or about anything. Super quiet, superserved. I freaking hunt by myself, so like and most I don't know. I guess I'm an extroverted introvert. Yeah, and that's why your thing doesn't come off like hi and welcome to the uh. Probably for that reason. But yeah, I don't know if I was that way. My mom used to say, I know always that like late night. I when I was a kid, it was like late night with Benny, Like I'd come out and I had my act for dinner. You know, I had my deal, my act polished, my jokes lined up for dinner. So maybe that was like a precursor to having a podcast. But I feel still don't feel that way. It's not conversational when telling jokes to the at the dinner table. But yeah, I used to be a bit of a performer in my younger years. When you're a kid, Like what was like the Dreamoa, we're gonna be I was gonna be a sports writer. I was gonna be like, uh, I don't even know. At the time, was the person I looked up to the most, I don't know, guys like Ken Rosenthal and people like that, you know, which now I look at it like that is not a very glamorous you know. I didn't want to be John Glenn. I would have land on the moon, and I'm like, I'd like to write about people hitting the ball. That would be great, and and for sure got to that pretty quickly, got to the to do that as a profession, and pretty quickly realized it was terrible. And so hey, kids, if you're out there and you have a dream tested out early, if you can get it, If you get that thing in early and realize maybe it sucks, that'll save you a lot of time later on. I always tell people look at someone who is there, like, look at someone who's doing what you think you want to do, and evaluate how happy they are, like not like, oh hey this my recruiter told me he's this happy, Like truly, how happy is that person? Well that's a great, great example, because when I got I was like twenty one years old and I got to be I was an intern out of sports magazine called press Box in Baltimore, Maryland, and we and they got rid of a lot of their editorial staff and like one big swath and I was an intern, and the main publisher came to me and said, would you like to be beat writer for the Baltimore Orioles and the Ravens during the time where we're switching over our staff. And I was like, that is like my dream job, Like, oh my gosh, I'm twenty one. So I think the first time I realized that exact thing, I was sitting in the press box and I kind of looked to my left, to my right, and there's just a bunch of like disheveled, old, just miserable looking guys that can't clap anymore. If if somebody has a home run, they can't have it, like like it's it's the job of the sports journalist to be muted. So you can't celebrate any good things. You can't be You just have to sit there and write your article and be gone. And then you know it would be like an extra endings baseball game and the sports risers be over there like, oh my god. Another couple of endings, like bemoaning the fact that they had to sit in the press box longer. And I'm looking around at that and I'm like, this is a beautiful thing. To me. Sports is like this very exciting. It creates energy in a place, Like you get in a stadium full of four people and you feel this like incredible energy. And there's the dudes that are running about just white faced and like never see the sun, and you know, and I remember looking around and thinking, well, this isn't what I thought it was gonna be, you know. And then you have like the TV personalities who are super dressed up, but still the same misery, you know, still the same Like they get all the things that the baseball players get. On the negative side, they get all the travel, they get, all the long nights they get, you know, all the things that were out of baseball player. But if you don't get any of the glory, you don't get any of it. You know, you don't get the money, you don't get the glory, you don't get the women. You just get to travel, that's all. And so was there a moment where you're like, wait a minute for sure, yeah, there was a guy by then I want to say the guy, well, he ain't gonna ever listen to this, but there's a guy named Aubrey Huff's baseball player for the Oils at the time, and he I had to write a feature on him. And it's weird because in the sports world, you're you're kind of like the ass are like like cattle. You get into a room, the locker room has their lockers, right, and these are people that are literally at their jobs. They're like changing their texting there, eating their showering that they're just doing their job. They're living their life. And you're in this like cordoned off area in the middle and you're pressed. You're there to cover these guys and you're only allowed to approach them at certain times, and you gotta kinda like sidle up to them while they're it looks like they're not so busy. He'd be like, hey, Aubrey, can we talk for a minute, And he'd be like, well, I'm I'm skyping with my kids. Back off your little shit, like move away. And so it's this incredibly awkward scenario where you have to have a good relationship with this person to make it work. Well, I was twenty one years old. Nobody want to talk to me, like nobody and Aubrey Um bless Aubrey soul he Um didn't want to talk to me. And I had to come to him like the last day before my deadline. Be like, Aubrey, I've interviewed your family, your coaches, manager, your teammates, I've interviewed the janitor, I've interviewed the guy that sells peanuts out in the outfield. But I have not been able to get you to say anything about this story. And it was a kind of a glowing review of his career and he had it was having a good season that year, and he basically just came out of the shower after the game and he said, man, I'll have time for this. I said, I just need like two sentences. He's coming out of the shower and just a towel and he dropped his towel and he said, let's go. Oh, like, let's do the interview. And I'm twenty one years old. So I just got my quarter out, turned it on and did a you know, naked interview with and uh. That was the time when I was an intern still and so I didn't even really tell anybody at the that that the paper. I just went back and wrote my article and for my feature article and did my thing and just was happy to still be there. But at some point I realized, this is not this is not the dream. In fact, if I keep doing us, I will never appreciate sports again. I will hate them with all kinds of fervor. And so I need to just chill out and and figure something else. And then, luckily for me, I was in a bar and a friend of a friend was talking about his great job work for a hunting magazine and he was leaving that job, and and I was like, look into that, and I did, and off I went. But at the time I didn't realize you could be a hunting journalist in any way. I just taught you hunting was just something you did. So luckily that, luckily for me that happened. It was early on, early enough in my career. I didn't chase a dream for ten years and realized way later on. So this is me hijacking your podcast. And I like it that we we've established it's my podcast notorious for this that when you when you look back and like thinking about careers and this is like always his fascinating fascinating me because I remember being a a very young person, a kid, and having this like dead set dream on what I want to do. And I remember there was a teacher that walked in the room and said, I don't remember what the stat was, but like eight percent of people go to college and they never become what they go to college for. And I was dead set, like no, this is the thing, Like this is what I'm gonna do, Like you're so wrong, weird. It turned out that I didn't become that. But going back, like, okay, you go a sports writer? What does dream job these days look like for me right now? Because if I'm twenty and the reason I asked this questions because if I'm one, I look at someone who is just a little bit ahead of me, and I say, Okay, what's their dream? And how do I pull from that more than what I think my dream is? Yeah, what we were talking about this on a recent podcast with Casey Butler about you know, how do you get successful in the thing, Like what I think it's more about how you define success, you know, because a dream is something that you conjured, you know, a reality is like what you're talking about, like a tangible thing you can look at and be like, I'd like to have that. By its own definition, to dream is something that you've conjured in your own mind. It's just your form of happiness. Um, that's your form of I don't currently have happiness. I'd like it, and this is what I think it looks like. That's what a dream is really and the fun part is chasing that very intangible, always changing dream as you perceive the world in different ways, like you, you know, you have different experiences you like me, I had an experience that changed the dream I was chasing, but I was still chasing this level of like I want to be passionate about something and I want to inject those passions into my mind of high my daily life. And if I can do that, if those two things can somehow be married in a way that makes sense, then it's the dream. It's the same damn dream. It's just shifted as I've experienced things. And luckily for me, once I experienced the hunting community, like the hunting industry, I knew my dream was to be is impactful in that industry? Is that could possibly be? And then once I figured that out. I like, man, it doesn't matter what I'm doing, It really doesn't. I mean, it would be nice to have money, it would be nice to you know, for people to respect me, and all those types of things. But like, at the end of the day, if I'm in the community, I truly feel like I'm passionate about that thing, and I'm helping it and I'm making a good living doing it, and all those things are in this weird gumbo of you know, reality. Maybe that is the dream. It's imperfect, it's not really the dream that you might have seen in your head, but it's it's still that's the dream. It's like, however you get there doesn't matter because you're gonna every time something happens to you, your perspective will change and your dream will change with it has to. And I think that's so important for I don't to say kids, because it's it's everyone. You could be fifty years old and be like, you know, screw my nine to five job. I want to do what I love, and so like in that capacity, it's it's understanding that this dream is ever changing, and like what you're trying to accomplish, maybe tomorrow looks a little bit different and being okay with that for sure, like Okay, this is the direction, but not necessarily the exact thing. Yeah, because if you're chasing one exact thing, you're gonna get way off track focusing on that one thing, and you're gonna miss a lot along the way that would have benefited your life and your passion. Like if I would have been completely closed to marketing, I was a journalism major, I thought marking was the enemy. In fact, I still think it is. I hate it. Um. If I would have been completely closed off to taking a job as a marketing guyt to cooler company because I thought it was the enemy and my dream was to be this like this j nalist above all journalists, that I would have missed the opportunity that I had there, And in fact I struggle with that early on that decision making process, Like don't marketing is the enemy? Dude? What are you doing? Like you want to be somebody who puts information out, not doctors at up so to make you know, sell plastic boxes, Like that's not what you do. But when Ben O'Brien comes to a fork in the road such as that marketing and journalism like those are those are two big directions, right, Like that's a fork in the road that pretty much is a t intersection. So I mean, I guess I can't say that it's a winer section to what you're marketing and what you're marketing for, Like it's debatable, but like you come to a fork in the road, how do you think about decisions? That's a good question. Um yeah, well I'll think about that. We'll make a decision on my why on the road. How I'm gonna talk about decisions and wise in the road? Um Man, I just think I always go back to like energies. I don't know in marketing. What I've learned in being a marketer is that advertising his interruption and marketing is about you're not to talk about this earlier at dinner. Marketing is about like this collection of energy, you know, like you're attaching yourself to the current energy, like the most important, the most influential energy that's out there, like and that speech, and that's ideas, and that's innovation. That's a lot of things that energy gets wrapped up into too, you know, consumer products or a personality or you know, an influencer what however, you want to you want to attach that thing. When I try to make a decision like that, I look at the singular, like the tangible decision, not the indangible, because if it was me making the intangible decision between journalism and marketing, I would always pick journalism. And that's what I was just talking about. That would close me off from this other opportunity, which at its face seems like not something I wouldn't want to do. But then when I went experience Yettie, experienced the energy there and understood what it was at a base level, and like, this energy is more important than the conceptualized version of what I think marketing is, Like this is I would rather attach myself to what this feeling. Then you know, not accept this reality because because it's marketing, because it's labeled like that, um and ended up being whole lot of journalism in my marketing gig, thankfully, which like this is what I say. It's kind of a why more than a t because essentially you get to the right company with the right vibe, marketing can be journalism and like and that's being open minded and that's taking Probably a lot of that has to do with your background and what you bring to the other thing. But yeah, and I mean I hate to sound really you know, out there when I'm saying energies, I'm not We're not gonna talk about chakras at all. After then, I don't. I don't mean it like that. I mean it like a group of people are an idea or something that you literally energize as you and I I felt the same way about deciding to do a podcast, because when I sat down, like when we did a podcast before I had one, or when I had been on others, like, there's this this legitimate energy that I get from the conversation, Like it's always at some level like a drug, like you get you have a super like a passionate conversation. Nobody's interrupting you, hopefully, And that's a rarity in this world. You have that conversation, you come off like, man, that was awesome. And that's why it sometimes when when the audio is bad or when you know you lose the card on the way of the truck or something, it feels like you lost something, not because you can't because you could have the same conversation again. What you can't replace is the energy that you felt in that room at that time with that person. And I don't like how many times in your daily life you don't have an hour long conversation with the Starbucks barista. But if you did, it might be cool as ship, but you might really learn something and you might come out of that like this is a cool coffee. But I just think how many like conversations we do that aren't recorded. Yeah, that's crazy and there yeah, and then then like how you and I? The podcasting to me has become this thing that like if I don't do it once or twice a week, I get to be feeling like I gotta do it again. Man, When knees starts shaking, I'm like, let's let's let's let's get in there again and get in that arena again where I can exchange ideas. And so I I think i've I've I've gone to that more now than ever, just to try to find these things that feel energetic like this, that have a certain vibration to them, and um, if you feel it, you know it and that's the way to go. You just got check And at that, well, you're just I mean, you really are trying to gauge at the people and the idea and the direction and if you say if you say, like, man, you know my dreams journalism, I'm not doing marketing, and then then you're never gonna get to where you want to go, you know all those wise in the roads, You're just gonna go left. You're gonna be a NASCAR well, and then the reality is is like, look how much you've learned from your experiences and like stepping out and you want to like talk about this goes back to say you want to master your craft of whatever it may be. Like, you want to master your craft. You can't be a one track pony or a one track pony. You have to be able to diversify. And for you to be a great journalist a k podcast, you have to understand the marketing side. Yeah you do. That's a great point. I mean you really do have to understand the motivation of the commodity and the motivation of the consumer to understand how you marry that all together. Because people expect some consumerism in their content anymore. That's what it is. It's like, who are you sponsored by? Buddy? You're hawking this week? Like I'm not sure, let me check the list, like and so that you know I always have. I've had big time trouble with that too, um big time trouble with like mixing, like really wanting content to be honest and true and like, but understanding that there's not a whole lot of people creating content not to make money at some level. Dude, it's so hard because like on a certain level, you have to for the content to continue, it has to have funding, right, can't just go on forever. And as soon as funding comes in all this you know, it's not that the the transaction is wrong, it's that as soon as money comes in, there's outside influence and there's no way to stop that. If even if even if every listener to this podcast started paying me ten bucks a month, their influences now a part of the game, and so you can't there's nothing you can do, And so you just kind of have to like the only way to create content in this world and understand how you're gonna get to where you want to go is like how am I going to play the game? Is a setup because you're really gonna have to have a lot of extra money laying around if you want to just do a podcast for the honesty of just exchanging ideas and getting that out to people and not trying to get anything out of it, and there's no expectation in the in the market to do that. The expectation is like, you have a great podcast, what's are you gonna make? You know how many sponsors you're gonna get, how many ads you're gonna get. And then I think it's it starts to play against itself, like, well, he's got seventeen sponsors, he is good at podcasting. Should like wait a minute, man, maybe that's the opposite. It's true. No, dude, that's true. That's such a dilemma. I don't know if anybody cares about that, but well I said that I was one of the last parts I was talking about that You're just gonna have to listen to this. Maybe you don't care about it, but like I'm kind of a media geek, and um, I think these things are interesting because it goes back to how we communicated about hunting, like why we do it? And now I'm on this thing all the time saying like I care about you know, the hunters, how hunters are perceived, and I care about this and that. But part of that is also I need to make a living off how hunters are perceived. So am I being completely honest and saying that I don't know. No, it's dude, it's so true. And it goes back. It's as far, not as far as hunting goes back, but to the extent of the current world, Like it has a poll on it, whether you think it does it or not, you know what I mean, it's all you know, they're my buddy all Remarcus, who runs on it. Let's say that all the time. It's like it's a game. She's just names drops. I did my buddy too. I like that was pretty damn it got that. Let's seconds in the cup and she name drop. You know. Last time I was on a yacht, we were eating caviar and we're talking about now. He always says he talks about the game, and it's like this is a game, man, Like the society is a game that we choose to play, and you choose how you want to play it, and then like what parts of it you want to play. And I feel like that about the hunting industries, like we're all, you know, communicating in some way about hunting and then at the same time virtue signaling about why we're doing it and why how we should be doing it. And I feel conflicted about that a lot, but I see the need for us to talk about why we hunt and how we're perceived and those things like that. So I think a lot of people that don't live within the industry if you hear this a lot. Yeah, we talked about it a lot, like what's the perception, what's what's the image that we're portraying. But at the same time, in the world, in the world still has no freaking clue and just thinks we kill stuff for fun, that's right, So we kind of do have to beat the dead horse. Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, no, And then you know, to say, I feel conflicted about that, as I say, like there's some small part of me that understands the hypocrisy of it, but it's still more important than my own hypocrisy, than my problems with that, Like it's more important than that. And and because it goes back so long, because the idea is such, is so core to who we are, is important and we need to keep talking about it. But again, just like that why in the road thing, like we need to make sure as a community that we don't get too set on one destination. We need to make sure we don't miss any really good things that we're not thinking about right now, because we're all headed towards one way. One of the conversations you and had this is probably a couple of years ago, but it had to do with we all have we all have our own way of saying it, and we all have our own way of portraying it. What we do, what we are, who we are, all these things, and like the way you tell it is different the way I tell it, the way the cal tells it, the way Steve tells it. Like everyone has their own way, which is good because there's people there's different ways of interpreting it. So different people always interpret things different ways. And so someone maybe latch onto what you say, what I say, or like and and because they're like my damn, Cody Rachels from Oregon, from Washington State, we're the same person. If I see now you're just giving what people from Washington lady an accent. I don't know why they talk like that. I was thinking maybe they would be like you pers. I don't know why they I don't know why my like default, my default accent is all is like that Dann ju is the best NASCAR driver ever or well, it's like that, but I've talked about that in the best too. It's like we have chosen or it has chosen us. What however we came into hunting. We have chosen this complex and complicated thing that almost every single person or every single region or every single you know, place where hunting happens, it's like it's a different thing. Like we you and I grew up hunting, but we didn't grow up doing the same things. Yeah, because you grew up in Maryland, like literally a country partly everybody were you were talking like this, hey man, Uh but in Maryland, I don't know that, but everywhere. Uh. But that's you know, I think that's it. I think we we have stummeorn across this thing that is very much malleable. It's very much like the idea of hunting is pursuit. Pursuer has always been the same, that's always will remain the same. The deer and the human will remain the deer and the human, but the deer will change, certainly over time on a lot based on conditioning, and we will change and perceive the deer based on how where we live and how many of them there are we are we've already done that a history of hunting. We've already had not a lot of deer and change our perception of what deer are. And then now we got a ship ton of them, and now we're starting we're changing our perception of what deer are now, which is funny because I'll go back and I'll just to play Devil's advocate and I agree with you, but for podcast sake, we'll play Devil's advocate. The pot hunting has changed in certain capacities from the start to the beginning, and I don't know, no one really knows what the start was, Like that's a pretty undefined Well there's one like a couple of million years. Yeah, we could go to twelve thousand years or I don't know whatever it is uh to killing mammoths with spear years and whatever we did we need Steve one officially, Like there's a butcher site and like one four million years. Okay, let's just let's just rump all that into substance subsistence hunting, like we're hunting for me, right, and then we got so good at it and or popular or whatever it was that we're sport hunting, so like it changes, but now that whole you went from subsistance to sport, to market to almost extinction reset. Now we went early nineteen or twentieth century assistance again to sport. Horse will never go market again. But like history kind of repeats itself through the nineteen hunds because you have a little bit of like people only did it for me, and then people did it for sport, and then in the nineteen hundreds, after like almost a distinction, people did it for me. Because you go back to like twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, was people's hunted for meat. That was about it. Well, they started to have technology they didn't have before and they could like, oh, refrigeration ship, we could bring them back, but had technology that a rifle amazing. Absolutely No, I think I don't know if you agree with this or not, in like in that spectrum, I think the modern idea of conservation is the one thing that changed because we now had the wherewithal to consider what we couldn't consider before, because before the deer was the thing that we had to kill to eat, and then a deer, a deer was just a part of the landscape that that we took just like we plowed a field or we were just manifestesting the entire damn thing. We're just like, we'll just plow the whole fucking thing. Well, the deer there will kill him and we'll take parts of him. And it was fine. But then when conservation we came and thinking it was like this this massive course carre action and those ideas where now we can look at the animal with a truly a different value system for the first time. And so I think that's the seed change and what you're talking about, because it does repeat itself and it is sicklical. But the seed change was was in the conservation and turn of century and in in the thirties we started to think about, like, we have to have a value system for this animal or set of animals, population of animals to make sure that they stay around, because before we were just killing them to eat, or we were just killing them because they were there and we could profit off of it. But now there's this thing that we this ideal that has to go forward throughout the history of time to keep them there. So I got a question for you, and I have a but I'm gonna ask you what your theory? Okay, I like where we're just batting this ball back, and so subsistence sport market hunters just label, isn't it? Three times? Who do you think the idea for conservation the good one? Subsistence sports market hunters because we originally were subsistence hunters did it for me. Sport hunters came along from Europe, and then market hunters with this whole growth of America. So then we had market hunting who had the idea and who, Like it's not even like who specifically, but just like, well, if stem is the question I think you're looking at, I think it. I think it was kind of It's kind of embedded in each one of those things, like the idea of So take subsistence hunters, for example, if you kill them all, there's none left, right, so you they were practicing conservation, but we're neighbors were never able to define it and set it. I mean, like this is the value system because I'm sure I've never been a subsistence hunters, not alive in the eighteen hunters, but I'm fairly sure that somebody along the way we're like, look, let's only kill a few of these fuckers so there's more around. And that was that is an idea, like a feast this week is great, but if we could eat next week that because you're just thinking, like there was one kman was like that's just hit him all over the head. And then like another game was like, hey man, listen, if you hit him all over the head, we're not gonna have any left for tomorrow. So like that idea is isn't that conservation in and up? And the same with market counters, like if we can't profit all these things, that we kill every single one of them in the same in the modern spore hunts the same way we can't have fun collecting the trophies if there's no trophies left. And so I think the idea was always there and in the way that you always had to have animals to have the thing that you wanted, whether it was life or fun or can please just don't even label it. Just that's your role now. And like this is me shooting from the head, like I know, academic, don't catch it, just throw it out there. So the one thing we'll go back to podcasting and money. When money is involved, things change and I think one of the problems that we had with driving populations to near extinction was not trophy hunters a k. Sport hunters, was actually market hunters, because the theory that someone is gonna get paid for this, whether I do it or not, gets justified. And you see the same thing throughout culture today. You see it all over like you see like, oh, well someone's gonna do this, I might as well get my chunk of the pie. And I think that's truly what drove populations to extaction. It wasn't sport or trophy hunting. Yeah exactly. People came from Russia. It's not like they killed two thousand buffalo. The market hunters were like, man, someone's getting paid to take this to Fort Sesson. Such well also also to like in at at the turn of the century, there was a growing urban populations that needed fed um and and you read a lot of books about buffalo hunters and how they he thought about that and also unchecked populations of large unglits running the hell all over the place. Oh yeah, they're yeah, destroying habitat. I was. I was in Yellowstone a couple of days ago, and I was thinking, well, no, wonder they wanted to kill some of these things. If you had a thousand buffalo in one valley, everything would be mush the ship, it would just be like oatmeal, like there would be nothing left. It would be your first having in yellow Stone. Yeah, when you saw your first bullflore like, oh my god, a buffalo. But I also know, like the buffalo, like I know the story. Oh no, buffalo, the first buffalo. I saw this. This is a great you know, we'll get back to defining the history of humanity in a minute, but uh, at first buffalo I saw, which I felt like it was symbolic of the buffalo and Yellowstone is um his buffalo was You could see this buffalo's ribs like he was. It looked like an old male and it looked like just like the oldest male out of the herd. He was just like stumbling around in the stage, just like trying to figure out what the fund to do by himself. And I was glassing him from the hard road there and he just his ribs were shown and he was and he was he was looking for and I was like, I just remember thinking, that's about right, that's about right. Like animals in this situation, even though it's even though it's essentially a wild buffalo. Like he's like I felt, I felt very much like that animal is sick from humanity. Like that animal has seen too many cars, He's been exposed to too many soccer moms taking his Like he's sick from that exposure. He has a Facebook account and he's like he's out school out, like he's just he's like he's ad too much exposure. He's just can't eat anymore. He's he's done with it all. He's the Kardashian Like we saw like we saw this bull elk and it was like right next to like right downtown and this bull. I know, everyone goes to Yellowstone and then this is like the only elk they've ever seen, and they think it's magical. And I've seen a lot of bulls, and it was just like the most depressing thing ever. It was like, this is not life, this is not real. Yeah, you can't. He's like I had my family with me, so I was seeing it through their eyes and and and that was okay, but I made point to describe like this is this is not you know, it's not normal, and it's way and my wife asked me at some point we were driving in a car on the Yellowstone Lake and there was elk better right by the road, and she goes, have you ever been that close to one before? I was like a shot one with a bow. How far do you think? How far away do you think? I was? Like, I just and I just remember her like and I know the concept of hunting is not foreign to her, and she knows what I do. But it's just this interaction with the animals, the dawling of that interaction is so depressing, so depressing to somebody who's who's had a very like sharpened you know, interaction that's natural. Like you standing behind a tree and a bull up that's Jason cow runs by you. He's not like feeding by you right by a road. I'm pretty sure he might kill you if if he knows like something's going he doesn't know you were there. He's never seen any humans around there, or very few. And he's so contradictory to like the people who see those things, like they go to Yellowstone like, oh my God saved the elk. I'm like, you don't even stand this is nine. This is a robot elk. Yeah, you don't understand, Like you're not aware of elkness, Like you're not aware of what it elk does behind closed doors when it's not attached to the hard road, Like you don't understand the being of an elk, like what it is, what it really is, and if you have to spend a lot of time I don't really Mamber even don't know that, but there has been a lot of time outside a round elk to understand what an elk truly is. What it you know, it's a giant forest horse. It's crazy, this animal. It's like it's like the difference between going on a date with a hot chick and renting a blow up doll. Yeah. I don't know if that's a safe assumption, but you still touch it. It's still there real that. I didn't know where you're going At first, I thought, ship, this is too early in the podcast. Have you're going this deep of analogy? Um, But no, I think it's like it's you can still touch it. It's still there. It looks real. It is real, but it's not the real thing. But I like, I did appreciate ellis one for the this like the endless splendor, like the endless all. Another canyon, another beautiful canyon. Well, there's the sunset. That's great. No, it is, it is. I do won't diminish all this time in that, but I do think the animals and that's why people get gored, and that's why there's interaction their signs everywhere. Don't pet the mountain lions like they're there, because that human animal interaction is is. So it's just to me, it's like it's this invalid thing that we've we've created as a way to say, oh, I've experienced a false reality. And it goes back to like what I was talking about, like of the population things, Oh, we drive around in trucks and bud lights and shoot stuff from the window. I value those in those natural interactional animals and natural as they can be in the situation so we create. I value like just seeing and elk feeding acrol like chasing a cow and feeding across the meadow and bedding in the shade and staying up and like I value those those insights as much as anything because it's important. But um, I was telling, you know, even telling my dad when we were there that it just felt, you know, it just felt dull and and it felt like people, Um maybe just didn't understand what they were what they were doing. So how do we, like, how do we show or how do we explain or how do we put things on the same level again, because I go back to but I was the other thing. I'll say, it's like there's somebody they were saying, like there's two or three deaths a year in Yellowstone. Everybody gets goreed by a buffalo or run over by a elk or something. I'm like, maybe that's nature's way of being, Like I'll let you play at this. I'll let you have your little playground that's fake, but I'm gonna take two of you. Okay, I'm gonna let a million of you in play like you're in nature, but I'm taking at least two or three of you out Like that's I'm gonna exact that pole. You can fake it, and I'll let you fake it. I'll even send the buffalo right to the road. But two of you are going down. That's the press. You get up, that's the tax. But I don't know that they're like I just think um. By the very first podcast I ever did, Ronelle and I talked about this and he said it's hopeless and I said, well, maybe there's ed that's a jaded men. There's got to be a way. I think they're me too. And I said to him, like, there's gotta be a way, and he was like, good luck with it. I hope. Let me know how what you find out, because there is such an incredible chasm between the reality of someone who goes outside and and does that not for a living, but as part of their livelihood and part of their life. It's part of their identity. You're wrapped up in in mountains. You feel a different way when you see him mountain like you. You feel absolutely different than the person who's never hunted and see's about. They're like, wow, that's beautiful. It's like a painting. And when I see a mountain, I'm I'm it's like this three dimensional thing that I can go up that which I go up that rid right there. Look at that flat right there, I bet el bet right there, and they go across that. It's like this three dimensional thing. It's like and other people are looking at like a painting, like they can't get in there, they can't touch it. I'm like, I've to I've touched it. I know what's in there, and so I feel like that's one hell of a chasm, and not everybody's wanting what was gonna want to go run off in the maunt with me? And you you know, not everybody's gonna want to do that, desire to do that, And I don't want anybody out there that doesn't desire to be there anyway. And so I'm not to this point. I'm not sure how you take somebody who doesn't desire to be there and put them there in the way that you and I appreciate. And I don't think they could ever take me to New York City and show me some of the value of New York City in a way, because when I look in New York City, I look at this like is an incredible aunt hill that I don't like that I don't understand. I don't really want to be part of. I don't really I don't like it. To me, it's like a painting. It's just like this thing that I see. I'm not often inside of it. I don't get the energy there. But if somebody lives in New York City, they're like, dude, have you ever been out in Brooklyn on the streets after this? And like you feel this energy and it's like this beehive of people and ideas and like, oh my god, it's great. I dude, that is annoying and loud, and I'm much ra would be it smells a lot like anxiety. Yeah, that smells like that, Like I can't see the horizon, dude, I don't want to be in there, and these people like I can see the horizon. Funk. That's that's you know. And so there's just there's such a difference there and just the way you think about things. Okay, left field coming out of left field here. Do you think I R A R will have any impact on that? Do you think we have the ability to show people? I mean, technology is getting crazy, man, Like it's gonna be to the point where you can experience on a certain level. The interpretation is the interesting part. But you could experience everything I've ever experienced, Yes, in a blake of an eye. The interpretation is the difference because you can put me in New York and your interpretation of New York well not yours, but someone who enjoys New York is going to have a different interpretation of that than me. I'm gonna have anxiety and like get me out. One time I stood in line for like an hour at Dunkin Donuts to go with bagel, and I had the most By the time I was eating that bagel, it was like a little piece of bread and anxiety. I was like the worst. Just get dude. I think this is terrible. But yeah, man, I don't know. I think um. I think what hunting has going for it particularly is that people in urban areas, people that have virtual reality, people that are experiencing this you know, unbelievable energy, and even with VR, experience anything they want, you know, life is a touch of a button. Like they can they can create their own realities. I think you'll never be able to escape the ultimate reality of going out and experiencing things that are that that can't be manufactured, that that are unpredictable, that are you know, beautiful in their violent nature, that you know that that is beautiful for his dangerous freaking them, and the things that that might make it inherently something you don't want to do. I think hunting has that going for it. I think as the more urban people get, the more they're going to have some an a desire to go and see what that is, and the more virtual reality they have, the more they're gonna want the reality. I think they're We've seen it with cell phones. I mean, we've seen it with all kinds of technology, and it's already happening with with cell phones. They haven't you know, smartphones have been around for that long and there's already screen time apps where people are trying to figure out how these things are negatively affecting their lives. I think hunting has that going for it. Escapism is it will help hunting in the future. I think I've seen it already. No, I think you're right, like the same way, like Instagram has created this I don't know, like false reality of what we do and don't do. But at the same time, it's also put people to go do things they want to spend their weekends, and maybe maybe for the wrong reasons, maybe they're trying to do it for the Instagram post, but at the same time, it's putting people out there, and I think the inverse of that is that it creates people who want to go out and do things because it just kind of puts you in that place and a place you wouldn't have gone before, and so you know, whether it's you know, virtual reality or augmented reality, that that interests you in doing something cool and exciting. You're like, oh, man, I want to check this out. What is this all about? Do it for real? Now? I think that we have that going for us in the future, and we really do. And I I've seen it and people already. I've taken out people that have never left the city and I've taken them out and just seeing a landscape, we're just shooting a rifle. Would just going on a weekend hunt killing a havelina like that could be a life changing experience. I think the the ultimate problem is how do you how do you get that person to repeat that experience because you need a guide, You need somebody to show you, give you access to places and show you what to do. So I think that's, you know, the ultimate hunter retention issue is that. But I think as far as like the acceptability of hunting and what you know, going outside and what that will look like, I think there's a there's a bright light there because that's always going to drive people to find what it is there. And then there's enough people just out there going like, man, I don't give a ship if you like killing animals or not. Like, if it makes you squeams to think about shooting an animal, I'm telling you that it enriched my life, and you'd be a fool not to not to give it a shot. You'd be a fool not to give it. And you may do do it once, not ever room killing animal and just decide that's not for you. I think you're foolish not to at least try to escape there once and see if that change your perspective in such a way that you'd want to need to do it. And there'll be plenty of people that want to. Ye. It goes back to like it goes to, it's not about trying to get everyone in the world or in the in our country to pick up hunting and like start hunting and doing crazy things, climbing mountains and all this crazy bullshit. But it's about the population accepting that it's okay, Yeah, that's it. Is it beneficial? Like the only question that needs answers. Is it beneficial to society? That's it? And if, like I said, our population says, yeah, sure, it's beneficial to all of us that somebody goes out there and kills that animal, that go cool, all right, let's keep doing it. And as soon as it as soon as that switches over becomes the other way, you almost I feel like you'll never get it back. Whatever goes that way, she going, even escapism like that might help. But once society has like let go of of of what hunting is, man, I don't know. I would like to think you'd get it back, but it's gonna do it would be tough. Really, I don't think I think if you get back. So hey, listen, everybody, let's hang on to this. Let's let's crawl this thing. Let's like keep it around. Yeah, because it's it's it's worrisome. But I truly think, like, if we continue to hammer away at the problem of like the chasm between the non hunter and the hunter and the way they think, who continue to try to, like, you know, put a thread in between the two of them, eventually you'll have a rope and eventual you'll have something to pull on. But right now, there's not It's really nothing. That was a strong analogy? Was that good? That was really good? All right? Put that in the highlights. I don't do highlights while starting. You should start with highlights because I was like, that's that's good, no oppretending the hashtag that we don't have a hashtag hashtag threads to ches um. But I truly do believe, like I feel like right now there's no thread. Maybe the meat is a thread, but it's weak as ship because it doesn't really stand up with a long argument. Because, like anybody who's a realist, I don't want to compare it to religion, but it's like there's a lot of people that have problems with certain pieces of things, like the actual like oh wait, that doesn't really make sense. So when you come to the meat thing, people are like, wait, why so why do you go to Nepal to get meat? Wouldn't it be closer to go to Like yeah, it's Texas. So that's the corner. Like you can't, that's what I mean. You can't just have the one thing. And now I'm sure you're like me, Like I meet people and you tell them you're a hunter, and they look at you like you're fucking crazy, and I'm like, dude, it's awesome, my life's way better for having done this, And they look at you like you are insane to have put that fought in your head. And then you and I meet people that are I never want to leave the city and I look at them like you're in a crazy you're crazy, and those those are the that is the idea that scares me a little bit, because yeah, there's people like just have to mention, like what do you do for a living? I'm in the hunting industry. Oh my god, you say that it's dangerous. I never say that. Now, I say outdoor industry. They push me. I'm like, I'm in the climb mountains like they what what do you do when you go up there? I'm like, well, you know, sometimes I'll bring a bow. Yeah, what do you do with that? Before I claim sum Sometimes I'll bring my bow and maybe an animal shows up there? Like okay, tell me more and I'm all right, I'm comfortable now, didn't Yeah. I find there to be like this. It's um and then it's see it in every other thing. Guns is another one. Some people they're like, do you own a R fifteen? I'm like, yeah, have two or three of them. They're like you are crazy, Like why am I crazy? What are you talking about? This whole world is like so enamored with what other people do. Just it makes it takes all kinds for the world to go around. I truly believe that, like if everyone was like me, it'd be a real boring world. I mean, we'd all be really cool. I'd start like a mustache comb company that there's a lot that many mustaches. Well, it wouldn't be creepy, so I wouldn't. I could go next to schools and things. But no, people don't know is because they people only see Cody on like Instagram and things his mustaches. C g I it's not even real. It's screen. He did a green screen, so just for the Internet. He wears the screen mustache around. It's sucked up. That's all Instagram. Well, yeah, you go back to the original topic of what we're talking about. Originally we're talking about the history of hunting and like conservation started. But I think, you know, conservation is one thing that I think is an idea that everybody gets. It's like a it's a shared value system. The unfortunate thing about conservation it is it is not hunting. And unless it's really hard to explain to those people, like if conservation like like the you know, some groups would would lead you to believe that they're one and the same, then it would be way easier. But conservation is an idea about like value systems of the animal and how you know, we think about that animal and what our what our role is and keeping it around. Hunting is not that at all, Like we have very smartly connected to through necessity, but really through you know, visionary people that were like, we gotta connect this idea with hunting in the modern sense, because sport hunting is you know, it's not conservation. It isn't And we got to connect those two ideas. And so now here we are in the modern world. This is why we go back. And it's easy to say, well, I do it for the meat or I do it for you know, this is I'm a conservationist. Yeah, and there's lots of holes in that theory, but at the same time, it doesn't explain it. It doesn't have the full effects, so to speak. Yeah, And I don't think anti hunter struggle with their ideologies like you and I are struggling right now, with which it is interesting, like we're too passionate hunters who spent a ton of time, who are very confident in our beliefs. Can I explain why I know it's a multi faceted question. Can an anti hunter explain why he's anti hunting? Which I had to spend money started podcast to work through this problem. It's like Therapy two are in thirty some episodes figuring out that's right, that's right now. And I think anti hunters are very like resolute in their animals are sentient beings. Don't kill them their sacred, you know, at some level. I'm sure there's varying degrees of that. Now. The people that truly believe that, like we truly believe in hunting, I don't think you're sitting around like, you know what. Maybe some animals, maybe like frogs, we could kill them, Mosquito maybe they Maybe I don't I've never really sat in a room with an Anton or other conversation or heard two of them having We should have, and I'd love to. I try to get a guy um uh named Jeffrey flocking on if you're listening to this, Jeffrey, which is definitely not Yeah, just have you just happen to be listening, Hey, jeff Hey, jeff um he's in the I think it's the International Animal Welfare or something like that. Let you say I really know a lot about Jeffrey, but he um, I try to have him when he's he's a staunch anti and he has a lot of good ideas, like he has you know, mostly about Africa or feeling and those things. But I would I wanted really to talk to him about his ideas around you know, our value system because he he pokes a lot of holes in and the hunting's like you know, armor, like the conservation thing and those ethics, and and he doesn't is what I feel like is a good job of sussing out some of the things that need to be talked about from from a completely different chasm. And he does it pretty you know, he does it in a smart way. But even then I think him and I would just you know, we probably never get anywhere. We probably wouldn't. It was because I imagine, I don't imagine that he questions his stuff the way I questioned my stuff. Obviously he's a vegan, I hope, so yeah, because if not, it's a little bit tough. But um, excuse me, I'm trinking taking a drink of whiskey. That's the best on my bike, right out of whiskey. It's gonna be a long podcast. I know, I'm just sipping. I mean, yeah, So I think I wonder, you know, because that anti hunter thing is so such an emotional deal. That's such a you know, when you're emotional not something you pretty damn said on what that thing is, then you're not the best way to go into any argument. And I would like, I would love to go about this with an anti hunter, say Jeffrey, for example, would be to go into the argument and it's not arguments, just just got discussion, and say what would make you think the opposite? Yeah, because if the answer is nothing, then I might as well argue with the chair next to me, you know what I mean. And I feel like that's where anti hunter's come from. So if someone are to come to me and say, hey, what would make you think the opposite? What would make you think that hunting was bad for me personally? It would calm down to like and obviously that timeline on this, because if you said, hey, listen, you have to stop hunting for ELK to survive. Absolutely, I mean, if you said, hey, you have to stop hunting for ten years, man, really like, I'm gonna try to help you come up with a better solution. Let's figure this out. Let's try to figure that out of five. But if you're really run this through like every algorithm you have, then I would do it. So I can't say I'm incapable of discussion, right, Like you could come discuss this with me, like if they're a way, like what is a what is the problem and what is what is your proposed solution? And if your problem is that there's not enough elk, well, let's arguable right now we have plenty of elk. But if your solution is not hunting, okay, let's let's work through that. And like that's what I'm just curious, like what would an anti hunter solution be? And or what is the problem? Love? Yeah, I mean what would if that you said, Hey, what's you know? What would get you to go hunting and kill that animal and find out to be beneficial for not only yourself but society and that bad animal in the natural world? You know, I always wondered, like I would start with the value system. It's like, look, man, you love this animal like you love it like this is your like you you believe that that animal is as is important at some level as your life, Like it's and then you feel responsible for standing up for that life because you feel like it's equal to yours, Like that thing has rights, you have rights. You know, you're a good person for standing up for what you believe in in that way, like being an animal rights person doesn't mean you're a bad person. Now, people that manifest their animal rights activism and like death threats and ship we can talk about them later. But but guys that are just truly believe that this animal has the right to live and that that they cannot be the arbiter when it lives or dies because it has those rights and they wouldn't want those rights taken. You know, we call that murder and ore and that's why they're always like hunting is murder because they're equating that, you know, the choosing to take life as opposed to like the necessity of it. So I would just say, like we both like, let's strip away that and be like I care about that and I love that animal. I love it like I want them all to like live great lives and be they and they have rights in my eyes, And you think the same, Ship, like you think the same thing. I think. Let's okay, now, let's bring back. Let's bring back hunting and not hunting anti hunting into the conversation. Now, I were both starting from the same starting point, but we're walking opposite directions, like you're walking, yeah, I'm walking this way, and we're getting further apart all the time. Like, well, we started in the same place. All we have to do is turn around and walk towards each other. But we're what we're so now set in our direction to that we have to travel that we can't turn around, face each other and have a conversation. And that's a problem. And I would start there be like if if we can start with that value system and start having that conversation. I love the animal, You love the animal. I don't wish ill on it. You don't wish ill on it. I want them to be around forever. You want to be around forever. What the hell are we doing? Man? Yeah, we need to have we live in in the North American model of wildlife conservation is literally the most unique we can talk about Africa. And because they don't have that same value starting point now I do, and as Jeffrey, because the locals don't. They don't. Yeah, so that but but luckily here in America. We have that shared value system with everyone nine hunters, Like, there's not a whole lot of people like funking man, I wish it all the deer would just go away. They're so annoying. They're probably yeah, they're like guys that running botanical gardens, but yeah, So I think that there's very few people that I would just out and now and say, like I wish they would all go away, which means we all want them to be here. Here we are, We're on the same page. We're on the same page. Um, we're just unlucky enough to have like one person on one side wanted to kill it and eat its flesh and the other person wanted to pet it and send it to a park, Like if you had a wild ass. Guess how this turns out years from now. Hunting loses really hard, this scary time hard. I think we're just in the middle of itl we don't even know what we kind of know. We always everybody like even me, I'm always trying out to like a living point five millions down for fourteen four five million license holders. Like, we're in the middle of it, and I don't know that we really know what it's going to be in twenty years because we're like it's it's going to lose, it's going to I truly believe that. I don't know. I don't know what lou. I don't want to say like it's gonna end. They will be outlawed, but it they're definitely gonna it's going to be. I think that grizzly bearth thing and in British Columbia is is that the future? To me? Like, how could you not think that? Go back to the nineteen seventies and tell me you know what urbanization has done from nov Yeah, well did you think urbanization isn't isn't accelerating? Yeah? And so tell me in twenty years twenty years ago, you know, tell me twenty more years of urbanization what that's going to continue to do. That strange thing is like urbanization is going to crush the animals more than hunting ever thought of it, and then we're going to get blamed for it. Well that you talk about parks and you talk about you know how many you switch it back to Yellowstone or even that you go back to Africa, like if you want, if you don't want any trophy hunting in Africa, and you don't want that, and you want to take away that value in the animal. You want to try to value that same animal through photo safaris. You have to run so many more people, so such bigger footprint to impact that ecosystem, and a more dramatic way than a few hunters going over there to shoot one big critter. And so it's not that's not a simple equation at all. No, And it changes, and not to mention changes the whole dynamic of things, because you know, if you're talking about killing one out of first fifty people taking a picture of an olk, you get oak, like the Yellowstone who has lost their soul and turned into a blow up doll. Yeah, and that's what I mean, Like we're allowed, like we allow that, and we have to allow it. But I do think hunting I will always be around in some form, but I think public reception is going to start to eat it, eat in its core. It's gonna have to there's no you know, I I go, I say that, and I will say the thing about escapism. But I think escapism and those types of things will continue to allow it to be around for sure. Yeah, But we went from having Amazon be able to deliver the other like a couple of When Amazon Prime first came out, my wife we were having some friends. Ever, my wife got like a cake, some playing cards, and uh, like a tire iron delivered to our house she ordered online. It came two hours later. Like that concept did exist ten years ago. That was so out in left field ten years ago. Yeah, and so now Amazon's like taking over the country and and they're gonna be drone delivering things to your house, and we're gonna be more more more connected disconnected every generation going forward. So maybe twenty years is a little short short time because that's only a couple of humans from now, but maybe fifty years or seventy five years, it's gonna be hard to find a human that really thinks the way you and I do. And I don't think that means Honey will go away, but I think it means it's gonna be it's gonna play this incredibly small role in society. And I'd mean interested to see how Europe's hunting and like this is something I should know, but I would have to go back and like do some research and figure out how because because hunting in Europe became very much a privatized first person. It was always an aristocracy over there, and like that goes all the way back to India that you know, does it go that far bank, Well, let's just say Europe. I'm not know his storian either, so I want to act like I am. But the aristocracy was always you know, I've been in places like Bulgaria where the aristocracy, like the hunted. The only counting culture they know is the aristocracy high fence hunting preserves where the communist dictators would bring all their you know, dictator buddies, like that's the hunting cultures that they know, and that was here in the eight hundreds. Well that's here too. And then look at Texas, Texas is this is I lived there. It is the closest thing to an aristocracy for hunting that that you could find. I'm just curious if that's what we had being could be, if history repeats itself, could be, and that that that means, you know, one of the most I think one of the most important things about our current model and why it works is the wild life as a trust like it doesn't belong. It lives in the state, but it does not belong. It belongs to the people. It doesn't belong to anyone, but it's managed by a state. But it you know, it can come. And as soon as you start to privatize lands to the point that Texas has, and then you can put a fence up and then you can then you've privatized the wild life, it's no longer in trust um. And so that's like a nuclear no offense Texas. But there's like some nuclear ideas in in what Texas does right now. There's some pretty cool things they do, but mostly nuclear. If you would go down the tenants of the North North American Mile of Wilife Conservation, they don't follow any of like maybe one of them, two of them, and so be that's that's allowed. We're not going now with bulldozers and bulldozs and the fences down because it doesn't line up with our ideologies right now. And so I just think that that that's one reality, but I think that the other realities that hunting as hunting takes on less of an importance in society. We'll find ways around hunting's connection to conservation, will find raise around hunting's connection to meat. We'll find it, just find ways around it. No that's that's a legitimate fare, and I think that's probably a closer to whatever it would be. I mean in New Zealand they raised red deer like cattle. Yeah, there's a lot of pieces to that puzzle early on that dictated that. Same with Texas. I mean Texas had the ALBUMA, they never had public land. Yeah. And then Texas was when when we require Texas it was all state, yes, state private lynds. Anyway, there was never any they never part of this. There was no Louisiana purchase where they could just they would say we declare this and this, and then it was already privatized land. So which is early pieces of puzzle. And I'm not justifying what they're what they have done, or how it operates, say with the New Zealand like market creates that. Yeah, and true capitalism that's sometimes the problem. I'm very pro capitalism, but there are certain problems to that. So like with New Zealand, Oh look we make extra dollars when this stag is bigger, non repeats itself. So then it just gets out of control because people like to make dollars something. Yeah, it's it's man, it's a super complicated topic. And I'm sure I wish I and better perspectives on those other histories and to inform it, but I don't know that there is a I would love for somebody to really take me through an example of how wildlife management changed in an area, in a place, in a country, in a region, in a content. I'll give a ship what it is. But like if and maybe Africa is the one when they started forming concessions and they went from almost no wild life to a bunch of wildlife behind fences and started taking in money from troph hunters. Like that's a seed change in the way that they see animals, but a sea change from necessity. You know, we don't have a lot of necessity when it comes to wildlife in this country. You know, we have a lot of elk, we got a lot of deer. We gotta you know, wild game at least um. We got a lot of turkeys, We got plenty of sheep, you know, but no one's ever had the public ground that we have so ak, no one's ever had the public animals that we've ever had. So yeah, those are those concepts are all within hunting. But it's like I think it always goes back to public perception. None of that ship matters. If the public doesn't none of that ship matters. If the public doesn't understand the good, people think you're wrong. Guess what you're wrong. And in this case, like if the public doesn't understand the good and hunting, I feel like we're just kind of like floating through and we like don't really we aren't really in ownership of it. Be guys, man, I don't know what the numbers are, but I would assume that O don't agree with hunting right now. Like if we took a national poll to tomorrow and people like, hey, something good or bad? That's what I mean. That's what I mean by like in twenty years, it could be twenty years. I'm talking about tomorrow. That's what I mean. Do you think it passed? I think it half. I've seen poles where it has passed, but it's always it's it's changed, right because modern sport hunting has changed the way people think about Like they split hunting into two camps. Non hunter has turphy hunting and regular you know, ethical man hunting where he eats the meat, you know, but they split it into two camps. So you have already taken an activity and split it up like some of it's good someone it's bad. Now. Parts of that I agree with, But that's you know, for the eleven point five million hunters that buy licenses to be split into these two groups with good hunters and bad hunters, now you're eleven point five doesn't seem quite a strong. I don't know how many quote unquote trophy hunters there are out there that that are in the eleven point five million, but I would say that I would say that of that eleven point five million, the ones that are trophy hunters by definition that the not by the non hunters definition of the term are would would not pass public approval. If you ask, is trophy hunting okay to the entirety of the population in this country, you would you would get overwhelming getting out of how do you even like compete with the media? But trophy hunting, the trophy hunting term is there like to delineate the bad hunting, isn't it? Yeah? But I'm a treasure hunter, yea treasure treasure bucks hashtag treasure bucks. Yeah. I mean, I think I think that's the problem that we've corded off a bad portion and that's not necessarily always true. Troph hunting isn't necessarily always a bad thing, but but public perception was what we're just there, see the hunter whatever you wanna call it. Air quotes hunter definition of our hunter. Way to combat trophy hunting is to say we're meat hunters, which is b s. It's bullshit, and the conservation is the other one. We say those two, which there's holes in it, And so people probably get tired of me saying that's doesn't cover everything. I just say, like, hunting is the thing I love, and the experience and all the things. There's all things wrapped up in the experience, and people heard me say it's a million times. But by products, the byproducts of that experience is meat and conservation. Yeah, I'm always aware that it's there, but there's are not the reasons I'm doing the things I'm doing, like, they just aren't. I think the better answer is to go after the experience, to go after this embodiment of everything we do wrapped into one because well, let's try to name I bet you can name like twenty things that embody the experience. Time outside alone time and nature, time with time spent with close friends, and this the camaraderie, this super three dimensional experience that's like highs and lows. The challenge, the skills um that the the innate skills that you have to learn about, the unknown, dangerous, the unknown, the disconnection. But like there's ten right there. The thing I will say is that this adventure, it's society people and you can see this watching Instagram. People are interested in going on new adventures, going new places, experiencing new things. And when they understand that capacity, they understand like, man, I really love going adventuring, hiking, whatever may be right. When you're like, hey, this is if we can relate that to hunting, I mean it's the same thing, it's only better. Yeah, man, boy, there's some good there's like I said, there's some good threads in there, and we'll continue to try to connect them. And I think I think they can be connected because and I I'm unwilling to to to give up on it, even though I think it's it's looking at it with just clear vision and saying hey man, they ain't looking good. Then the public perception side, it's not look the public perception specifically what I'm talking about twenty years it ain't going the right way, escapism being what it is, you know, meat like the wild meat movement being what it is, the hunt fit movement being what it is. All those things combined that those forces are not strong enough to change public perception in the way that it needs to be changed. Now, maybe something comes up and happens later on that I'm not aware of currently. Um. I would even lump conservation into that because it's such an entangled mess of truths and half truths and things that we've talked about. So I think I think all those forces being positive are not enough to fight freaking urbanism, to fight urbanization it's growing at a crazy rate, to fight technology, to fight the way humans think and pursue the world. Like those things are changing way faster than the forces of positive forces of hunting can combat them. Yeah, and just because this is like your podcast, I will say, like my theory and I don't want to like downtrot the meat aspect of it, because I do. I do really truly believe that people get into this. They tell themselves like, oh man, I'm gonna do it for the meat, and that's awesome. That's great, I laugh, because you're gonna experience so much more. It's gonna change your life. And it's so cool that, like meat is what we tell ourselves. I see, so I see it all the time. People are like, yeah, I just I just really wanted to get out there and I want to harvest my own meat. And I laugh because I'm like, you're about to experience a life. It's so crazy and the experiences so rich. They'll just change your perception. I think it goes but like this goes way back to the very start of this conversation where we're talking about like how do you make a decision? How how do you And I'm saying, like, just don't get caught up on one destination, dude. If you if you're just out there for me, you miss so much ship that it's silly, like you just if you're out there just for the head of the animal, you miss so much stuff. If you're out there just like man, the carrying capacity of this land, I gotta I gotta kill seventy five deer over the next year, and you're out there just popping deer to get your seventy five number, which I don't know a lot of people do that, but that's conservation and like maybe it's a raws for him, but you know, if you're doing all that, you're just missing out on thinks. So I think I think most people that I've talked to on this podcast are are down with like the the idea that this experience is something that we all need to work on together, and that that there's no way to define it for all of us, but we all need to work on defining it somehow, Like let's all continue to to to kind of hammer away at it and see where we get how we can use that experiential story to to make it a little more relatable and going back, like I really do believe that the way I tell it, the way you tell it, the way Cal tells it, whoever, everyone's gonna have a little bit different story because it's like what's important to them, it's a little more important of it. And you know, maybe adventure and pushing yourself is more important to me, but to Callahan, it's like meat is number one. And that's fine because there's gonna be people regular that resonate with what Cal says, and there's people resonate what I say, and like this just there's a million ways to do it, to do it, but at the end of the day, like it's so important. Well, that's right, That's why I like your podcast and the things that you do are important to me because I want them to succeed because it's important. I think that there's a I've talked about this before and this is the other thing that I don't think it's quite powerful enough to get hunting in the future where it needs to be. But there's a group of like year old folks that are just now discovering hunting for the first time through people like you, through people like Callahands, people like Ronella, and they feel like they have a community of people that want to excites them and energize them, inspires them to go hunting, but also continues to be a part of their lot like potential to be a part of their lives and motivates them to do it. Gives them a feeling a community where there may not be a community for them, because there's a lot of people that live in suburban areas or that live in urban areas that go hunt, but they don't have a bunch of buddies that do when they need something. And I think your content and other people's content like yours will allow that demo to create a new generation of hunters just in there is big enough to really get us where we want to go. I don't know, I'm kind of you know, I'm back and forth skeptical even in this conversation, back and forth, what how how I think that's going to help us for sure, But I do think that's that's the ultimate solution. Should there be Should you have to list one thing? Yeah, it's uh two parts of that. One part is like people always give me a lot of flak for giving away secrets and all this, and I'm like, listen, I'm gonna get I'm gonna be successful whether I give everyone the answer or not. And the more people I can help be successful, the longer they do it. Because I've I've met people. I just this weekend we had it with some guys with the hushing and the born Ares guys and the guy you know, started hunting eight years ago. It's still not successful, never killed a big game animal. Like if he hadn't given up yet, like he's probably fine, but people would have given up by this point. And so you know, for me, it goes back to like, hey, helping people be successful because I truly believe if you find success, you will be hooked. And I think too many people come into this. I hate to use the word sport, but whatever you wanna call it, don't find success and give up. And you know, maybe they're not anti hunters, but they're definitely not promponents. I'm not driving the next person next to them. Yea, well not in the hunting culture. We're all a part of it. It is. It's more about success and it is about failure. Um just inherently. Um. I think that's natural and okay at some level. But also you know, I think we need to be cognizant of those people out there that are looking to connect with failure, like they're looking to be like man, that damn that fell on Instagram. So he's always turned up with the dead animal. He seems like once every couple of months turned up with his dead animal, and I never never see him sticking airs into the ground or anything like that. I think it's important just to tell that whole story too, because that that helps people. But there is man, just just I think, just by evidence of this conversation, it's such a twisted like twisted it yeah, man, And so it's good to start conversations for sure, and um, I hope people can can think about because even this. But what I say away from this conversation is like, there's so many hopeful things that you can talk about. But at the end of the day, and I've said this before, but at the end of the day, if hunting was a business, you would not buy stock right today. I don't think you would. Wow, I never thought about it like that. I don't think you would. I mean if you would say, like, well, you know, less people are doing it, more people don't understand it, and that is those both those trends are going in the wrong. And if you were an investor and hunting, you'd be figuring out how you'd be like to make it popularly, like yeah, you'd be figuring out how you'd also be like, well, I bought in in the eighties at eighteen five, I really thought, and I thought we'd be like thirty five by now and I could cash out and make my money. But we're down there at eleven five. So I gotta stick with this thing because I'm not gonna get out and lose all. And so I firmly believe that. But I and I believe we all need to know that, Like, these conversations only as good as the perspective that we have about what's going on. You know, that's a eye opening perspective because if you're an investor in hunting, and you should be, you should probably be doing your damnedest to fix that stock. Yeah, and that's why I think, you know, I work for a brand that feels that, Like, you know, that's why why I think it's a little more incumbent upon you know, all of us brands, media folks, you know, influencers, whoever is to continue to understand that like things not doing too good, it's not doing it. And there's I mean, there's articles in Forbes about the issue with conservation funding and the fact there's less hunters, you know, less people there to fund the fund state wildlife agencies. Like people are starting to take notice that, like this thing is from the street level. Do you think it is, though, because I feel like from the street level, I feel like, man, and maybe it's just because I'm engulfed in it a lot more than I used to be, But I feel like there's so many more people hunting, and I get you talk about West first East coast thing. That's hard. I can't quantify that number. I just really trust and whoever did that survey, I do not have time to do my own survey. Maybe they just crack down on the number of dudes buying what licenses for their wives, and like we just got that number in a half. Yeah, that could be. Yeah, I mean I hope they're right. Well I hope they're wrong. I hope those numbers are terribly wrong. But at some level there there are what they are. It's always been. We look at the trends it since the nineteen eighties and number has been kind of so we were celebrating re member like twenty eleven. Maybe we were celebrating like it didn't go down. There was a short time where some numbers came out and it went from you know, fourteen million to fourteen five or something over a very short period of time. I'm just kind of making that up in my head, but there was a period of time where hunting had had kind of flatlined and wasn't consistently going down, and that was like a celebration like wait did it why we're women game? And they're saying and then but then precipitously boom fell right off the cliff, and the next in the next five years. It's all that one in a million times. Yeah, I think that. I think that's. Um, that's why I like to have these conversations because it's it's it's it's as important to me as anything that I have outside of my family. And and that's why I'm unwilling to have just one idea about it, unwilling to be like hunting. It has to be this and will always be this, and this is the right way to do it. And if you don't do it this way, you're screwed. Like I'm always contradicting myself and I'll just never to get to pent if you only do it your way. Yeah, that's why I'm always rethinking things. I just said. Was that right? Right? I had solid reasoning around it, but maybe it wasn't even right. Dude. I get that way. When I'm like halfway through a sense, I'm like, wait a minute, where was it going. I don't know if that's right. Keep going with it, just run it, going with it well before we go, Um, I want you to try to, like, you know, we were talking about entre being an entrepreneur earlier, Um, and you you are one and uh successful one? Um, do you have any In an episode, I think fourteen talks to Casey Butler about kind of the same idea, like what is it that allows you to you know, make a jump and not have a nine five and really just take what like your own idea isn't turn them in that your livelihood? Like what is what would you tell people who have that question, because there's truly is a lot of them, which it's it's tough for me to answer that in the capacity that I've never actually had a ninety five. Um, so I don't know any other way. But one of my biggest motivators, and Kelsie will tell you this because like when I'm there's bad days. Everyone has bad days, especially entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs actually have twice as many bad days fun fact. Um. She's like, well, you can always go get a job. And to me that it's just like the number one thing that motivates me to push harder. It's like, I don't, man, I can't do it. I can't work for anyone else. But I think that stems from man, you only get one life, you like, you only get one life and it's so short. Do what you're gonna do. And like, I don't know why or how I ended up with that mentality. I'm just super thankful that I have it. But there's nothing like entrepreneurship is my oxygen, the same way hunting it is like, and I I think about this a lot. I was hunting this last weekend and I haven't got a chance to hunt a lot just because I've been busy grinding. But I was like, man, I love hunting. It was ringing, it was terrible. We didn't see a bear all weekend, and I loved it. And I was just laughing at myself, thinking like, man, this is my oxygen. This is what keeps me going through the hard times. And think the same capacity to flip side of that is that entrepreneurship to me is like the same thing. And then it doesn't necessarily have to be entrepreneurship. I think doing things you love that's what's important, whether that's for yourself or you know the company you work for. If you believe in the company your work when you're doing it, you know what you love, that's what's important, and that's all that's it. But the reality is just do what love, because it's not that hard to make a living doing what you truly enjoy. And that doesn't have to be for yourself. I think a lot of people struggle through life trying to work for themselves themselves. When you could work for a company you truly believe it, you know what I mean, Like you could sitting at the opposday, Well, I've I've never worked for myself. Um, but you've worked for awesome companies. You've done awesome things. Yeah, that's right. These companies is like you you're selling a little bit of yourself to them, Like you're selling that connection in the belief of what they do. And you don't have you don't have overall control of the thing, but you have to be proud to be part of it. And that's I think that's the difference. And if you're part of something really cool, then that's okay. To the point that you're part of something you don't really believe in and you're just nine to five and then but I'm sure you've been there as well as where you know, you had to take a leap of faith absolutely taking a marketing job and your journalist like, yeah, to take that leap of faith and it boils down to like, hey, it feels right, the vibes right, the energy is right, the chakras right. Yeah, you call it. But at the end of the day, you get one run, man, one run. Do what you want to do, because it's not like you're blessed to be in America where you can be like to damn a journalist, marketer. What is the name where market markets? Market is market? Um? Wait wait, I coined that too. We got a lot of stuff. We gotta say, you off this one. So many hashtags? So many? Do you think I should have a hashtag for this podcast? What is your hashtag? Don't have one? Cash Eggs died like two years. Yeah, posting them my Space that I know. I saw some some growth my mice, my my Space account when I used hashtags. So yeah, God, that was me. I was the one clicking. I was like, finally somebody else's face. I gotta know. Well, man, I apreciate um. You have me out to your house here in Bozeman. It's nice. Um, it seems like you've got a nice, nice gig here and it was terrible. You don't I would like I think Bozeman it's snowed. It's for the record, it's snowed last night. Yeah, it's June, June. It's snowed last night. It's great. And there's bears everywhere. Dude, it's terrible. I mean it's thirteen grizzly bears. My trash can it was. Yeah, I would never you know, you got Cody. There's like wearing a buffalo hide with a shotgun like it's it's real Western out. You don't stay in your homes, don't your kids, don't move to both your lives, don't come here please, um, thanks man and appreciate. Uh. We had a lovely dinner with your lovely fiance Fance like the word he's getting married like a short time, like a mom, mom. It's the way, my god and true Montana fashion in my backyard, backyard. I'll watch that for the bears. We I will say this to keep saying to end it, but we'll keep going. We're talking about and folks can tell us this will come out before the wedding. So if you guys think it's a good idea, let us know quickly. We were talking about whereas Yettie might sponsor the wedding and I will unabashedly make this happen and make Cody wear like a giant Yettie patch on the back of his wedding suit, or I will wear a Yeti onesie. And then we were talking about maybe, you know, not throw stone Glacier out there too heavy, but maybe Kelsey could be sponsored by Stone Glacier and be wearing a Stone Glacier pack just going down the first light dress. I'm like, baby, the shoes are really nice, but crispy. You can lower the lower the low topics. This goes back to, like the very beginning, we like talking about the selling your souls to the devil outward? Why not, like somebody's gotta pay for those pork shops, Like catering is expensive. So if everybody thinks it's a good idea for for Cody to get his wedding sponsored by various outdoor companies, let us know, because then we'll have to get a film. Crewe lets goes down. I'm okay with this, all right, check check back in July. We'll let you know. Alright, Thanks man, that's all. It's it episode number seventeen in the books. Thank you, Cody Rich grabbing me out to your beautiful home and Bozeman and for the great conversation and the whiskey. Next episode coming up. It's very exciting, not that Cody wasn't exciting. It's a great conversation. But the next episode is with none other and Cole Creamer. You may know Cold Cramer from codyak Alaska, may know Cold Cramer from our hunting trips to Nepal, which us poken about a lot on the podcast. Or you may know him as a sick athlete. But he is an interesting fellow. I'm glad to have him join me for episode number eighteen, so check us back next week. Until then, the Hunting clex dot com articles, videos, other podcasts. Guys like Steve Ronella, Brammy Warren, John Dudley, Shane Mahoney and many more check us out. We'll see you next ye

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