00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien and in this episode, I'm joined by a man that I've wanted to have on this podcast since I picked up a microphone to start the thing. And that made is Jim Posewitz and Jim pozzwits against to me and to many others, a conservation legend. If you don't know who he is, shame on you, your bastards. Listen up. He is a legend in Montana. He had a thirty two year career at the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks and then doing so, helped create the Ecological Services Division and help protect his adopted home state of Montana at the Rocky Mountain Front, the Yellowstone River and some groundbreaking tactics to protect these places from development of all shapes and sizes. He has a lifelong passion for writing, and as you're hearing this podcast, pend a book called Beyond Fair Chase East that was a national bestseller sold over seven hundred thousand copies, and just wrote his autobiography called My Best Shop. And he's a man that his living the conservation ethic and some of the stories he tells in this podcast some of the ways he shapes the foundational elements of hunting in our pursuits are seminal to what we do. And it's very special to me to be able to sit in his home and listen to him speak about these issues. I loved it. And to help out with this conversation, I brought along Sam Longern. He's a mediator. He's part of the Mediator editorial crew here in Bozeman and is a devotee and follower of Mr pos Wits and has talked to him many times before and and I believe it would help out with the conversation. So without further ado, please enjoy Jim posits. Jim, how are you, sir? I have fine, Sam. How about yourself? I'm doing quite well. We're all doing well. Good, we're all doing well well. Thanks for having us in your home. That's good to good to be in Helena. UM, it's good to meet you. Well, my pleasure. Yeah, I would like to see the young guard coming to the front. We're trying to do what we're trying to do our best generationally. UM. I always like to to begin some of these things with a description of of where we are since people can't see where we are, okay, so I imagine from sitting in this room that there are and already from chatting prior to hitting record, that there are a lot of artifacts of your life in this room, many of them, um, including a giant mule deer in the corner. Um. So give us a quick description of the rumor sitting in and where we are. People. The room we're sitting in was built around UM nineteen o nine, and I happened to come across it later in life meeting of a organization called the Forever Wild Endowment, and the Forever Wild Endowment was having meetings in this room and uh, this building the this is an add on to the building original building, but at the time it was owned by Donna Metcalfe Lee Metcalf's widow, and so I told her she ever wanted to sell it, I could use uh Downtown Helena office space. And so that's how I came to own the building. Was I bought it from the widow of Lee Metcalf and he is, of course one of the inaugural inductees into Montana Outdoor Hall of Fame. As you are also a member, I'm also a member and and uh, that's a growing cadree of cool dudes. I got to write that down. Let go over to the podcast early on. Um, there's a lot of things in here. You were talking earlier, of course about your giant yel deer that you killed. So give us a quick rundown on this this giant I'm gonna take a picture of it. Everybody can see how big this thing is. But what year did you kill it and where did you stumble across it? Well, I meticulously hunted it in nifty five. I was twenty years old at the time. It was my third year in Montana, third hunting season in Montana, and may have been just after January in fifty six of an extended season at the extension of the fifty five hunting season. But it was on a tributary to the Madison River called Wolf Creek and what it was. In fact, in my book Beyond Fair Chase, I have a little section on the two bucks of Wolf Creek, pointing out that I was a novice hunter. I had excellent hunting conditions on this particular day. Uh, real cold, late season, lots of snow. We struggled just to get to the base of the hill, and of course up on the hillside at first light, we saw a number of deer that end. That deer was in the group, and I had to get above them to hunt them. And in the process of getting to the ridgeline above these deer so I could approach them from the top down and have better cover and that kind of thing, I sorted my way through twenty some big horn sheep that were also up on that slope and trying to do it without alarming them, and uh, we're able to succeed successfully do that. I eventually get above these deer and uh begin to begin the star talk and shoot that buck. And he was about halfway up a wide open slope and uh there was quite a slide when he went down, and that slide was visible from the road between Ennis and West Yellowstone. I know that road. And uh, the game warden saw that slide, and he when his name was Todd. He was a very vigilant game warden, a good guy. So he goes and uh waits for us to come out. And it's cold, cold, and I dragged the deer down to the to the jeep and we take the jeep out and of course. En route, we almost ran into the game warden coming in, and he was convinced that I had poached a sheep, because that's he knew the sheep were there. He saw the slide coming off the hillside, and uh, I had everything tagged and punched correctly. And so, with some reluctancy, finally gave into the fact that, Okay, I guess these guys, these kids really Yeah, and uh, that's kind of the story and this footnote to the to that one. Uh, the next season, I shot one in the same drainage, almost as big. And those are the two biggest deer I've shot and sixty some years of hunting. Yeah, this is a giant buck. To look at it now, the mass it had holes on his main beans really all it's times. It's unbelievable. And I take great pride in the fact that I never measured it, because I do not want to reduce that value of that experience. Yeah, to a mathematical number. To me, it wouldn't didn't make any sense. It's a tribute to the longevity that was available because of the wild country that was in what is now the Lead Metcalf Wilderness. And we're sitting in a building that was once the Metcalf guesthouse. Imagine your life has all kind of through lines like that with various amazing. It's amazing how how that happens. Uh, I can give you another satellite story, and I guess you can. We're here for him, keep it coming, okay. UM. When I was writing the book Uh right for ore on the twenty nine twelve election of Theodore Roosevelt, and I was working with an illustrator who were in ran the framing shop and the framing and there's quite a bit of Theodore Roosevelt, both in Rifle in Hand plus the Taking a Bullet. Uh. Both books focused on theater Roosevelt, and I write about Theodore Roosevelt shooting his first buffalo in eight three on Little cannon Ball Creek and far eastern Montana tributary to the Little Missouri. The guy at the framing shop says, Uh, you know, there's a guy who comes in here from time to time and he has me frame memorabilia from the original Bull Moose party in nineteen twelve. And I said, oh, what's his name? And he said, well, it's uh Doug Ferris. Well, Theodore Roosevelt's hunting guide for the three hunt was Joe Ferris. And I come home and I tell my wife Gail, I've got to find Doug Ferris. And she said, well, let me make some calls. Not kind of surprised me, but I said, fine, you know, you have some help. We call around. We find Doug fair Us living in a rest home about two or three blocks from our state capital. I go and we go and have a meeting with him, and it turns out to be Joe Ferris's grandson. Gail wanted to make the phone call because he had been her next door neighbor for ten years and never made it. The story never, you know, was exchanged, and so she had lived next to the grand son and Theodore Roosevelt's original hunting guy, and there she was married to a man writing books on the right. And we find them three blocks from the state capital and the rest home. And uh. One of the other things Theodore Roosevelt did locally was he threw the put the Elkhorn Mountains into the forest system. And when the nineteen o five it was the hundredth anniversary of Theodore Roosevelt, who put the four service together. Basically in the nineteen o five and during his presidency there, and so we had a little celebration over here in the myrnal Looid which you can see out this window, and we brought uh the Forest Service and my organization at the time, which was Oryan, the Hunter's Institute. We put together an evening program on the accomplishments of Theodore Roosevelt creating the national forest system and how we're surrounded by national forests here. And we invited Doug Ferris to come. And so here's this. He's on a walker by this time and he's getting quite aged, but with Gayle's help, we get him into the meeting room, put him in the front row, stand him up with the help of his walker, and I tell the story of Theodore Roosevelt and his hunting guy, Joe, and then introduced the grandson of Joe Ferris, Doug Ferres, and he gets a standing ovation. That must have been a powerful moment. It was a moment, you know, it's a golden moment, Like I said, from in your life that you know, the great life that you've led. There's there's so many things that you've achieved and done, but some of these stories are just the connection that the community that we're in, you know, is the satellite story. And now the main event is pretty interesting too. But when you have these intersections and trail crossings and things like that, yeah, no one that shared these shared experiences, the shared passion. You have these people that you just and total strangers. Yeah. Absolutely, And and that's part of the the beauty of the North American model of wildlife relationship we call it, you know, the fact that in a democracy, any seeing, any person that wants to can participate in anything and including the hunt. And that wasn't assured. I mean, you look at our founding documents and fish and wildlife is not mentioned. It's all about human rights, human liberties and opportunity and all that. But none of the founding documents address who's going to own and be responsible for the fish and wildlife and who gets to be the hunter. That has to be decided by the courts. The court system starts arguing about that in eighteen forty two over New Jersey oyster fishing in the New Jersey Meadowlands, and they say because of the Declaration of Independence. The Court of Supreme co US Supreme Court says this because of the Declaration of Independence, the people are the sovereign, and those rights and privileges of sovereignty belonged to the people. And if the fish and wildlife resources to be managed as a public trust for their benefit, huge decision. That decision was made sixteen years before Theodore Roosevelt was born, sixteen years after Theodore Roosevelt dies I was born. That's the whole show. Here we are of people in a democracy finding a way to live with, appreciate, enjoy, and take care of these products of nature. Are you Are you proud of um hunters? Are you proud of you know, as you sit here today, are you proud of what hunters have done? Oh? Absolutely, If you look at the record of achievement. I mean we haven't always been you know, this dance was not done in ballerina slippers, was clogs and cloths and hobnails and other things. But you look at the end product, something you can actually go out and measure, something that is real, and you look at a wildlife resource that was marvelously restored. When Theodore Roosevelt shoots this buffalo in three on Little Cannonball Creek, Montana, he was so excited to get one of the last. North Dakota had their last commercial slaughter in August of eighty three. T R showed up in September, huntred for nine days before he and Joe find this lone wandering bull. Never inside Jake my start in a journey of a thousand miles across Montana from the eastern border to within sight of the Rock Mountain front and back. Yeah, and we're the bone yard of a continent. And does that define in that period of time? Because he's as you, you know, the definition of what a hunter is has changed many times. There were millions of years of course, as our human existence has changed and shifted. Do you feel like the modern hunter was defined in that perilous time? You know, through we always we have the people we know that defined it. But you do do you really feel like it was codified in that in those moments? Well, it was codified that it was up to the people. I mean, this was a public resource to be managed as a public trust. And then, like so many other things in a democracy, government often stumbles and fails and and doesn't persist or whatever reason, and then the people in a democracy filled the gaps. I mean, I've worked with spent twenty five years working with the Cinembar Foundation and that as an environmental granting group. In our first year we passed out three grants. This year. In modern times, there are over a hundred and forty or fifty applicants a year just in Montana looking for grants to advance a conservation or environmental restoration agenda. So that's the proliferation of the NGOs. And if you look back at the history of the idea of wildlife restoration, introduction of the Sporting Code and conservation, well you're back in seven. It's like four years after tr shoots that first Wandering Loan Last Bull, he forms the Boone and Crockett Club along with the Pin Show and George Bird Grennell and others for the restoration of big game and for the introduction of the Sporting Code. No, I mean, I think Roosevelt at that time was maybe in there's still late twenties. He lives to be sixty one, but he lives in a time when it was the dramatic destruction of the America's wildlife was most I guess most dramatic. Yeah, I mean never there's nothing but bones out there under press like that it seemed like in that time for this content, at least you have a a group of people come over to escape and aristocracy in the European aristocracy, hunting was very different, right, Um, I thought it was very different. It was the very elitist activity, and that you know, the hunting ethic, what you might call hunting ethic. In that scenario, as folks journey to the New World, we lost, I would I would say, and I hope you would agree that we've lost for a time what hunters really worked society as we landed here and manifest destiny took over and we started pushing west, and you know, the first step of survival you gotta eat. In that same time period, in England, poaching was the number one rural crime. Punishment was often death. One English code said it was ah if a person was convicted of taking so much as a hair, they shall have their eyes gouged out. In that same period, in Merry Old England, the rocks, the board, the beaver, the uh wolf, and the reign there when extinct. They were poached to extinction. At the same time period that the colonies were being formed, and of course when the king was granting colonial lands to his buddies. They often included the fishings, hawkings, huntings, and foulings, and so they were trying to take that European model and dump it. That gets changed by the oysterman. Sixteen years later, Theodore Roosevelt is born, and we are stripping the continent of all the game because of their commercial value. Market hunting and other uh theories about our relationship with the native people's here are probably likewise is valid, but there was no conservation ethic evident except in various individuals at the local level. I mean James and Granville Steward right in here. Eighteen sixty, eighteen fifty seven, that was one year before tr was born. They become territorial legislators in eighteen sixty four, and as territorial legislators in sixty four they put through a bill restricting fishing to a hook and line. And I thought, wow, that was good because Montana is being settled by miners, and all miners have dynamite. Thanks. The truth of the matter was that was before dynamite was invented. They were doing other means of getting the fish out with scenes and changing, just turning the stream course away and drying up the channel and picking up the fish. And so our territorial legislators in eighteen sixty four went in restricted angling to taking a fish to a hook and line. That was twelve years before Custer died at the at the Little Big Horn. In the seventy two they began trying to set close seasons to start protecting the vanishing remnants of wildlife here. So the conservation ethic is in the people and in the democracy. It's a form of government in which that expression can live and get nurtured, and uh gets spread and adopted. And well, where do you believe that? Looking back at Teddy Roosevelt, where you believe do you think there's a seminal moment or a point in his life where the seed was planted in him? Yeah? He has. There's two writings you need to look at. I couldn't quite can't quote him from memory here. But in eighty three he shoots that first buffalo and he does this war dance around the fallen bull. He gives his guy Joe Ferris, a hundred dollars in eighteen eighty three. That's a small fortune house. Oh, for sure. He shoots the second buffalo in eighteen eighty nine, somewhere on the southern border with Montana, Idaho, probably not too far from Yellowstone, and his observations then are totally different. He talks about this soon to be vanished, this remnant of a vanishing race, and and of course that, uh that was eighty nine. By seven he had formed the Boone and Crockett helped form Boone and Crockett Club for the introducing the Sporting code and the restoration a big game. Yeah, and uh so his conservation epiphany occurred in Montana. I think because there was no fatalism in his writings then. It wasn't like we're doomed forever. No. No. And the fact that all these guys went back to New York State and he gathered for a Christmas dinner or something of that nature and decided to take action. And then in seven we dedicated to theater Roosevelt Memorial Ranch up us to Deployer as a hundred recognition of the hundredth anniversary of Roosevelt's conservation. Uh, you know, epiphany and all the marvelous things he did. You know, you set aside a hundred and twenty million acres for conservation purposes when he was in the White House. Do you believe do you believe you know obviously that that feeling is in the people, right, the value for the animals, It is instilled in us. Yeah, it's these are things that are instilled in us. They may have been a race for a time as we battled with natives and if as we you know, treated our manifest destiny as it as it was a value. Well, I think you know in those days, the fact that you have this conservation ethic sort of latent in the human culture and a lack of direct action or leadership from the top end, you almost see the repetition of that in current events. As you think about this, I don't want to get it. I don't want to fast forward in time too much as you as you're talking about this, I'm like that that's that's kind of still happening. I'll sure they're still trying to get rid of public lands, you know, or getting oil well drilled in him and coal mined under him. And and you know when Roosevelt was putting this public of state aside, he was adding uh, national forests and things in Congress past a the law they made it. It was an attachment to an agg appropriations bill. Again, that kind of shenani seems similar to today identical, but to prohibit him from setting aside any national force in Washington, Oregon, Montana, UH, Colorado, and Wyoming in one other states six or six states anyhow in this western bloc, and forbid him from setting aside any more national forests. Because it was a writer on agg appropriations bill, they had the votes to override a veto. He has seven days to sign or veto the legislation. In those seven days, he creates twenty two national forests at sixteen million acres to the forest the state signed for executive orders doing that and then signing the bill from forbidding him from ever doing it again. And then after that he started using national monuments to accomplish similar game refuges and bison refuge and things and so. And he wrote in his autobiography, my opponents hand springs, in their wrath and dire, were their threats, which only attest to the efficiency of our action. Still appropriate to the moment. Well, and you fast forward to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Uh the first ever national Uh was it North American Wildife? Come North American Wildlife Conference. I was one year old. Yes, I didn't go. I was saying I was there. I'll tell you what happened. What happened. So that's another you know, because because it's enough to have the ethic right, it's enough to say that that we believe that these things should be taken care of, but it's it's nothing another thing to develop how we would pay for that, how we would care those things. So take folks through, um, what happens at that gathering and kind of what what it becomes. Well gathering produced the National Wildlife Federation a citizen and geo because they government needed help. And uh, one of the first things they did was to work on producing and introducing the Pittman Robertson Act, which would tax firearms and ammunition. And the beauty of that moment was the gun manufacturers were lined up with the sportsmen in pursuit of the conservation as ethic that would restore big game across the entire continent. That went from introduction to the President's signature in ninety days for lat and Uh, it was Yeah, that was it seems to me like a huge difference. Yeah, I mean, it seems if something like that were to happen today, if two thousand conservationists were to come together and decide on the future of of the model, well we tried that, you know. In a period there uh in the late eighties and early nineties, we had to think called the Governor's Symposium on the North American Hunting Heritage. There were seven of them held. First one was in Montana, called by Governor Stan Stevens, and the idea was to examine what was wrong with hunting because we were taking a horrible whipping the hunting community was because we were shooting every buffalo that set foot out of the Yellowstone National Park. And I had been a national conference in Washington, d c. Meeting of some kind, listened to public radio, and they were bashing hunting mercilessly because of that action. That action was required by the Montana state legislature at the time. And I came back, had a new dirt governor and a new director of the Fishing Game, and that one of his first staff meetings. I got up and I said, is there anybody in this room that things were doing the right thing? And not a soul stood up? And that was the entire you know, leadership of the Fishing Game Department, and the new director took note of that, and the new governor called the Governor Symposium series and then uh legislator from Zoula, Bob Reem, introduced a bill to get that off the books, and he was successful, and that was kind of a turning point for the Buffalo for sure. Well, I mean going back to because I want to take you know, your entrance into the in the fray here in the hunting space and the conservation space. But you move on from you know, I feel like the North American model not named that yet until until started to really you know, really being concreted in, you know, after that conference and after we knew how we were going to pay for the Pitman Robertson Act, and knew how we were going to pay for things, I think, things really you could say accelerated or normalized um and the modern hunter kind of sprung from there. What didn't happen was that we approached various components of the outdoor industry at as these conferences were rotating. Nobody was willing to step up like the firearms and ammunition guys did in thirty seven. And they still aren't and they still aren't very much. Still part of the conversation. People to act like the backpack taxes, this brand new idea. But yeah, it's just retreading a grid idea. Well that well, yeah, I mean we went from the bone yard of a continent. Here. You can see deer tracks in our street outside downtown, uh held on the capital and you would you would agree that there are more people now than there were and yeah the turn of the century. But we have deer in our cities, bears in our orchards, and goose poop when every golf shoe in Montana goose poop. But I don't golf, but that's what they tell me, well exactly, um, And that you know that the tax that was imposed during that the passing of that that act was an existing exercise tax right of eleven that was applied and it's still eleven percent today, right, And the states have to match it. And if in the states cannot divert their hunting license dollar into other funding, other parts of state government. You know, they have two years to spend those dollars on what they're appropriated for. They lose them. It's it's a it's it's not many are lost, and it's you know, only to look and see how efficient this is and how useful it is for our society, for our wildlife. To see how long it's lasted. Yeah, it's how long it's lasted and well, and to go out on the landscape and like walk. The Southern River Game Range is a classic example of the Pittman Robertson act standing they're ready. And this was before the Landing Water Conservation Fund and an absolute critical moment in fact that that's a great story from a variety of reasons. Because the as the elks started to recover in the wild lands to the west of the Rocky Mountain Front, they started getting out on private ground. There was a landowner named Rathbone who advertised in the New York paper for machine gunners to come out and shoot the elk. Wait this. Uh, this was probably in the forties, and the source of this is a little book written by a guy named Tom Selt, who was this Great Falls area sportsman and books shop owner. And uh, they formed the fishing game, formed a Sun River Conservation Council to address this conflict on the front. The landowner Rathbone, he shoots one cow elk. The game Warden's bust him, so the thing goes into the court. Montana Supreme Court says, when you buy land in Montana, now you buy it with full knowledge of the presence of wildlife for which there is no recourse. And that says, okay, boys, live with it. You don't own the critters on it. That's right. That was a critical stage. But then to get relief, the Sun River Conservation Council forms. Thomas Selt was its chair. Another rancher from Shotto was on it named Carl Malone. The decide they got to buy winter range outside the wilderness areas where the elk have to come and heavy snow and uh. This one landowner puts up his place for sale. H and his name slips my mind at the moment, but fishing fishing game proceeds to try and buy it, but to hit a deadline where they have to make a ten thousand dollar down payment by five o'clock on a particular day, and even then if nobody can move that fast in government, because there was a lot of money, had a competitive buyer there. Thomas Selt and Karl Malone, the book owner and the rancher put up five grand out of their own pockets to hold that little fishing game could go through and buy it. And that starts the progression of these jewels along the Rocky Mountain Front, which now include Ear Mountain, Black Leaf, Pine Beot Theater, Roosevelt Memorial Ranch. And Uh, it's paradise. It is paradise, and it's windy. It's quite windy on the drop. Oh my god, on the drive up here to I was gonna get blown off the road. Well here you come now into the into the fray. Uh when do you first remember? Now we talked about you're shooting that big giant buck over there, and then then when you were twenty years old, But when do you professionally, when do you remember first having the urge to take take action and and you know, join a game agency or join a conservation agency and then and then how did it happen for you? I wouldn't go just a couple of years back before that. Having interviewed Jim before, I want to I want to hear how you came to Montana. Then get into this question because it's a god's good story. That's why I brought Sam for an other reason. He's handsome, man, but that doesn't help much on the podcast. Then you have to take my word for people. Yes, you're coming to Montana, but let's hear that one. Okay. Um first, a humorous anecdote. And when I was going to high school, they would use career testing kind of things, and your big counselors to tell you, you know what your aptitude tests, I think they called them. And I took my aptitude tests and one day the counselor called me in and she said, you know, I reviewed your aptitude here. But since there's no curriculum for hermits, why don't you go into fishing game that's made up? But it wasn't not in high school, you know. Well, I was actually even before that when mother would say outside and play. And I lived in a midsize community on the west shore of Lake Michigan, and we could walk beyond the city limits to little wood lots that we just called them the woods, and that's where we would go play when mother said go outside and play. And we had an interest in nature, you know, we'd collect little things we'd find in the woods and put them in our rooms and stuff of that of that kind. And uh, then I got into the Boy Scouts because they had a camp. And that was kind of a funny story there because my older brother he went and he got homesick the first week he was home. Gone campus only a week long. I went two years later, and I begged my parents to leave me there all summer's wanted to do. And then I in time became a counselor or junior counselor, and my dad run a gas station and sold Christmas trees and yeah, take a break here, the diuretics drying me out. So you were a counselor at the Boy Scout cancer decided that was that was the way. My my dad went to northern Wisconsin just to get trees to sell on this Christmas tree Christmas tree lot. And one of those trips, one of his buddies bought a deer from an Indian and I got a foot. It's about a deer to eat, yeah, And so at summer camp, I would take that deer foot and I would mark the woods because there were no deer living there, and then we'd have nature hikes and we'd show the Scouts the deer print and then night it looks fresh. Yeah, well, one night a week we'd have a night hike. One of the councilors would take the old mounted deer head out of the mess hall sitting in the swamp with it, we followed the tracks down through the trail to the swamp and then shine that deer and they all went home thinking they've seen their first deer. Took some imagination. Then, yeah, well that was early exposure, I guess, uh playfully. Um. Then there were a couple of famous grouse biologists working in Wisconsin, the Fred and fran Hammerstrom, working on the prairie prairie chickens. One of the other councilors at the camp, who was several years senior to a few years senior to me, he became a conservation aid at their at their study area, and so I would go over and sit in the blinds watching the prairie chickens dance, and I could see no other profession for myself. And then was it just just the Can you describe what captivated you in that time? Like what you know what? Watching watching these grouse dance, you know, and looking at talking to the people who were doing They were both PhDs and beyond, but they were studying the American the prairie chickens, and uh, we got to participate. You know. We had the spotting scopes and buyn ox and we would try to read the band numbers that were visible and things of that nature to try to make a contribution and try to help. Uh. I don't think probably at that time I had actually hunted and killed anything yet. Yeah, but that that certainly was an interest. And then when you live on the shore Lake Michigan, you get kind of an aquatic bend and you take an interest in maybe fishing wildlife. And one day after basketball practice, I was sitting in the bleachers watching some other level of our high school team play or practice, and the head basketball coach sat down next to me asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and I said conservation, you know, because at the time it was Wisconsin Conservation Department that was the fishing wildlife management agency. And he said, oh, well, he said, maybe I have a contact for you. And of course, the guy who was the Bobcat coach in the early fifties had been a coach at one of the Wisconsin teachers college and so he knew the whole teacher network, you know, of of athletic coaches in the state of Wisconsin, and so my high school basketball coach put me in contact with uh Tony Storty, who was the head Bobcat coach, and they were trying to become competitive because they hadn't beat the Grizzlies in Missoula since nineteen o two. That was that was within Theodore Roosevelt was president. So that led to recruitment to Montana, which has got a whole bunch of other stories that have nothing to do with hunting and fishing. But you know, I imagine i'd like those two making the team and everything. And then in nineteen fifty six, that's season, we beat the Grizzlies in Missoula for the first time since nineteen o two. So, uh, they got their money's worth. But they had gone, you know, through the recruiting net to the industrial heart land and so to speak, where all the thugs were hanging out playing, playing the game. But I grew up, you know, hour's drive from Packer Stadium. What else are you gonna do? Look at this? Yeah, we have a photo right here of you doing your best like football stance. That's my freshman year at Bozeman's and what years that that was fifty three. You're looking pretty good there. He looked like you might have been like, what are you running back? No? I was a tight end and linebackers, and I got my recruitment reputation because I made All Conference middle line backer and the Fox River Valley Conference, which is Green Bay Manna to walk FONDI like, uh so it was kind of a competitive high school environment. That's corn fed football country right there. Yeah. And then you those are sixty minute days you played both ways? Yeah, yeah, and now and then and then I imagine you were playing football in Montana and started looking around and he saw, well these mountains, this is well I had an imagination. I mean, when I met with the coach and then got to talking to Montana, I had to run to the encyclopedia to see where that it was. You know, but there's all kinds of stories buried there. We'll try to keep to the hunting ones if you can. Yeah, it's easy to go off on tangents. I like, ta um, So you're in Montana and can you you know, and you're still here right now any years later, can you tell us kind of what you know, what how it sank? In for you, like, this is the place for me, this is you know, this is the life I want to lead. Go outside and appreciate this. When you read about it before coming out, you know, you realize this is a mountain of rocky mountains and all that happy stuff, and you have something in your imagination that that's pretty vivid. And of course when you come to Montana riding on the train at that time, we woke up somewhere just west of Glen Dive and started looking for the mountains. You know. But eventually when you uh leave Billings, you can pick up the bare tooths and before you get to Livingston you can spot the crazy and then you go over Bozeman Pass and then you're right in the middle of it. And uh, I have no idea you know, where to get started, but that's how you get there. And you got there, did you feel um almost immediately drawn to those mountains? And you know, did that starts to define what you They were what I was looking for, And uh, it wasn't a disappointment for certain and it was all imagine that the you know, in the imagination of seventeen eighteen year old kid, eighteen year old football player yeah, never been west of the Mississippi, never been east of the west shore of like Michigan. But I've been to Green Bay and and and my dad was athlete. In fact, he played in the first season there was an NBA. Really yeah, and what year was that? I have to keep as I'll have I'll look it up for you before you leave. You'll look it up. We will look it up. Is there? Um, we haven't. We haven't got to your first hunting experiences yet. Um, tell us about those, tell us about how it how it hooked you. Well, I had to wait six months. Well, I started trying to be an archery hunter in Wisconsin, but there were there no deer in the county where I was living. But north of us there was a place called Point Beach State Park that you could hunt in and and that's where I probably saw my first deer in the wild. And I'm up there with a bow and arrow, and I have, you know, not a prayer. You're thinking, I hope this isn't the Taxi Germany deer. Somebody's playing a truck on pretty close, I mean, And I saw one deer and I shot an arrow in its direction, and I knew it was out of range and beyond the range of the arrow, but I wanted to go home and tell my buddies I got a shot, and that yeah, that ends up. It all spins back into you know, I'm sure in that area of the world, I'm not hunted it myself. But today and that are of the world, there are many many deer. Yeah. All my brothers, sons, uh shoot deer and they never leave the county. So I just shows you the restoration of Pittman Robertson there. You know that was passed when I was one year old, and now you know you shot at one deer. But now you go there and that's it's a tradition, that's part of that landscape, white tail deer hunting. And then when I got to Montana, why I had to wait six months, and so I got into that right now. I got through got there in August of UH fifty three for preseason camp, and then in January I hit the six months mark and they had an extended deer season in the Bridger Mountains. I borrowed a gun, drove out there and no hunter education or anything, and shot a doe deer. I'm gonna up in the in the men's dorm and left the windows open, and it was a vacant room, and all my buddies and I had a hot plate and we just cut off a chunk of bringing dead deer in the dorm room. Jim Well, it was a vacant dorm and in a dilapidated dormitory. It was called the Hudson House. It was a former military barracks converted to a college dorm and it was and the coach had promised us free rooms, so it puts ten of us in an recreation room in this old, dilapidated dorm, and of course ten jocks living in a room got kind of rowdy. Yeah, handful of them were g I Bill guys, so they've been around a little bit and they were that's where they were recruited from. And uh, one night we had the super Bash party made horrible, No, it's fine, you're fine, you're here now, horrible on a racket and things. And the very first thing in the morning, the Marines in our room, the ex Marines that were part of our group. They get us all up. We scrubbed that place down until it shone sparkled and then it had one table in the middle of the room, and we sat there with our books opened in front of us. When the DNA men must through, you're all looking like, did you guys tie sweaters around your shoulders. We'll never forget his expression, I mean his jaw flat hit the floor, Hello sir and describing me like, can you remember you know that first, dear, like you remember having some emotions around that or thinking that this is an important action or was it just in your youth? Well, I borrowed the gun. We had a peep site. I never even shot it, you know, went out on the hillside above ranchers building that the rancher was a butcher and a booster, and so, yuh, I see this deer, it's close. I put the sight on it. I pulled the trigger and the deer is gone. And I will walk up to where the deer was standing and she's down and I hit her right in the head. I didn't when my one of my Marine Corps buddies saw it, he said, well that was a good shot, right in the head. And I said, well that's all I could see at the time. When you bet John Wayne, yeah, part right exactly times you gotta shoot him. The head. Yeah, that was deer number one. And of course the landowner who gave us access there, it was actually the town butcher, and so he took care of cut it up for us and everything that was pretty fancy. And then you're eating the dorm room. Yeah, well that was a different dear. Okay, um moving forward, like you you get out of college, you survived. You didn't have any you know, any two crazy stories for he didn't get kicked out. Uh went into the third Infantry Division for a couple of years, which was customary at the time. I got to go to Bomberg, Germany, and uh so, in the fall of fifty eight, the Bumberg Riders won the U. S. Army europe Football Championship. So we had a tradition going there. And I was living off base because I was on temporary duty to the football team, and and uh so during the season you lived anyway he wanted to between practices, and it was called temporary duty. And I was freshly married and living in a little cold water apartment to block away from the military base, which was pretty cushy. And the punch line here is that's called temporary duty t d Y and the coaches pep talk before every game was do or die for t D Y Y. Yeah. But I also took time to join the local base rod and gun club and tried to get qualified to be a hunter in Germany and doing the studying and all that stuff, and became quite familiar with the European methodology are a component of that, and it's a very respectful relationship between the hunter and the animal, but it's not for everybody. And had I been qualified, then I'd have to wait for an invitation to go hunt bay some with the hunter, the Jagermeister, the hunt master, and they had arrangements were that could be accomplished. But I wasn't there long enough to actually have a hunt in Germany. And you're to study the flora and the fauna. Yeah, and you know, one of the part of their rituals was called the last bissing, and that is when you shoot an animal, you take whatever is uh I been feeding him and give it a branch and put it into his mouth as the last night. So, I mean, there's a lot of respect and it's it's a kind of an honorable thing to become the hunter. And in fact, we were sitting in a cafe one night, my wife and I and somebody comes into the door and busting into the door. There's been a crash on accident out on the roadway, and he said, is there are a hunter in the room because they learned first aid and patching stuff. And uh, I never quite forgot that because that's what the just citizen was looking for, somebody that had training. Yeah, I mean, I we've talked about it on this podcast before. The way the European tradition was held in the way, you know, the way it is the modern European tradition has kind of been twisted a bit, but I'm sure in those years, you know, the hunter was still the center point that sometimes of the community. UM. We had a fellow on that grew up in Czechoslovakia and it talked about the idea of a hunter. UM. The term that used for hunter also meant thinker, like one who thinks, someone who was able to look at a group of animals and pick out the one that is best taken in that scenario. And so the respect for the animal was was um was put at the feet of the hunter. It was included and in their trained and what they expected of the hunter and the hunter, you know, had to be exalted because they had to make these very serious decisions about which animals to take, which to which to leave, and how to manage, you know, the entire ecosystem really and what they were doing. True. True, So we're getting so he spent two years there, you told us, right, and then you come back to back to Montana, right, And coming back to Montana, Um, what's next for you? Well, graduate school and I did a fishery study out of out of Bozeman, uh got a master's degree in April of sixty one. Then I went up to Great Grade Falls as a phish biologist, and after a year and a half of that, they moved me to Glasgow as a fish manager. And after four or five years up there, they moved me into Helena is the head of the water resource development section. And then in nineteen six nine, Anaconda wanted to open an open pit mine at the head of the Blackfoot River. So that became one of my projects to build a baseline study at the fishing wildlife up there. And the land board was confronted by a room full of Missoula College students the day they had to make the decision on whether or not to give the state lease to the Anaconda Company for a dam on Alice Creek to supply water for this mine, Hittleston Mine, And then the students packed the place totally out of the blue kind of although it couldn't have been, but where did they come from? And the landboard hung up to the two so they couldn't issue the easement, and the governor forced Anderson turned to the director of the fishing game and leave the profanity out. But he said, you caused this problem, now you solve it. The director came back, gave me the project and said, we're going to turn water resource development into ecological services division. And so that's where we started. And then we charged Anaconda company for half the baseline study that we told him, Look, we've got to have some help, some financial helped put some people in the field to get this data. And uh, that sort of started it where we started the pattern of making the applicant pay for whatever it was that we needed to do in the field. And while all this is going on, Alvador Aliendi seizes Anaconda's hold Eggs and Chile. The company collapsed. Yeah, so my book I write, so when the salmon fly rises to when the trout takes your salmon fly off the surface of the big Blackfoot River. Thanks Salvador, we'd had a Berkeley pit, that they could have had a Berkeley pit at the head of the Blackfoot River. As you speak about these things, it just it's amazing to me how similar it is today, the debates that are happening today, the battles that are happening today, and how the two sides um are very similar to even today. I mean when even going back into the time of Teddy Roosevelt and railroad ticoons and and and timber baron, timber barons fighting fighting against formation of the National forests. Well, that's the ultimate beauty of the dema oocracy of the wild, because anybody can step up and take a shot at it. And that's what's happened. You know, at one point they were New York City patricians that they had a philosophy that because they were rich, that those two who much has given much as expected, and they actually lived by that code of their own and that's why they these philanthropic actions of guys like Roosevelt. He didn't need to work you know different Pincho didn't need a job, but they took on the mantle of the leadership and reformation. And yeah, well to your point, I think if they hadn't, someone else would have hopefully, you know. But it seems like it's just innate in our in our in this continent, and in the people that landed here and formed this this country specifically, it was innate in them to value the resource. Um, that's why I believe in an englistening you talk, I believe that that I'm glad that those you know, the forefathers of conservation did what they did and had the balls of a moose. That's mostly Theodore Roosevelt. Yeah, I mean yours. When I saw the hundredth anniversary of his presidency coming, I told my sons, I said anything by or about tr For Christmas. I had to go buy the bookcase. But well, that's one Christmas is supply. And it's amazing because you get into it and then you talk about the trail crossings and intersections and the fact that's amazing. Theodore Roosevelt and Grandville Stewart were both members of the Montana Stockgrowers and they met at the ock Roars meeting in Miles City, and at that meeting, one of the authors that wrote about it said that Roosevelt backed Stewart on every issue that was raised on the overstocking of the range, and then Stewart from that from that stock Roarers meeting was going north in pursuit of some horse thieves that were hiding out in the Missouri Breaks. Roosevelt tried to sign up himself and the Marquis de Morris to join the posse. Stewart said, no way, you guys are way too high profile. We're not right. You're not riding with us on this particular adventure. Man with balls, then there are going to go saddle up and go to hang some guy in the brakes. He went to DC and it's hanging. Well. Then I read another book about James Willard Schultz going down the Missouri River on the hundredth anniversary of Lewis and Clark, and Schultz describes his trip down to Missouri and there's no Damn or Fort Peck or anything, but he gets in one part of his book he tells the story about visiting with some branchers down in the breaks, and they tell the story about Stewart coming down and hanging the wrong guy. Have a research that connection yet, Well you spent he spent forty years at that Fish and Wildlife. Two. We'll round up, round it up for you. Um, before you retired, I flunked out of retirement. And then, uh, as we were talking about before, I think to fast forward to what what I think everyone really needs to hear from you and what I really want I think a lot of hunters want to explore his hunting ethics? Right? And after your tenure UM with Montana, you went to went about penning a book called Beyond fair Chase, right, and we said we we double checked before starting the podcast. It was published in nineteen correct, correct, Um, take us through why ethics for you? Why, after all this time spending the hunting community, consolation community, why ethics was important to you while why fair Chase was something that um was a pillar in your life and why you felt the need to address it at that point. Okay, I'm leaving fishing game in the in the eighties, lady, eighties, I'm wrapping things up kind of. That's when I had gone back to Washington, d C. That's when we were killing every buffalo that set foot outside of Yellowstone National Park. And that's when hunting was being vilified, UH, coast to coast, And this is kind of like the pinnacle of the hunting participation at some level when it was really and I guess I was aware of the conservation side of what the hunters were sponsoring, and that story was not being told by anybody. And so I came back and we started the Governor's Symposium series on the North American hunting heritage under when Stan Stevens's first term as governor, and we started talking about, you know, what's wrong with us and what's right about us as hunters? And we held seven national conferences UH in the process. And of course that when you got a started inviting speakers and become a speaker and stuff, you have to start doing some study in remember, Like it strikes me, though, do you remember when you say that you want to what's right with us and what's wrong with us? Like that's that's a pretty heavy statement for me. Do you do you remember back in time to why that you you wanted to explore explore those things like particularly what's wrong with us? Well, what's wrong with us? Was? I guess the consummate thing was how we were treating the buffalo coming out of Yellowstone Park. Everyone setting foot into Montana was to be shot. And that was so alien to the conservation ethic that had restored while abundance of wildlife um clear across the state of Montana that I stumbled into the middle of a dear recovery boom of the nineteen fifties. I was know a great hunter. I mean that were deer were everywhere. To start adding, when you know things up and and just why a person is even inclined to go out in pursuit of whether it was a jack or a cotton tail rabbit, or a pheasant or a rough grouse. I mean, that was my total bag of as a hunter before coming to Montana. Was a couple of cotton tail rabbits in an apple orchard because the orchard guidn't like a nipping on the basis of his trees. They're probably pretty good things and rabbits exactly, although my mother was quite puzzled what to do with it. Did you did you ever? Did you find yourself to be unique in the in the thoughts that you were having around um, the examining the y or the ethics, No, and uh here I tend to maybe make some stuff up because the competition for the hunter's attention had turned to you know, did you get your limit? How big was your buck? And it still persists. I'm glad I never measured any of my I am just won't do it because it's just degrading. And then you realize, well, there's more here to that. And I had a consummate experience, you know, I mean, after all, the stuff is twenty five years with the Sinebar Foundation funding conservation, environmental protection, wildlife restoration, and then fifteen years with o'rien and what that adds to the personal to experience becomes over overwhelming. And a couple of seasons ago, I'm stumbling up into We used to live eight miles south of town and just out the back door, did lots and lots of hunting. But I go to an little familiar place in the dark and I sit there because gals coming up the other side. Your wife, yeah, and she's liable to, you know, start some elkout. So I'm sitting in one of the passes where they sometimes go as the hunter, as the hunter is known to do. So I'm sitting there in a pre dawn and I'm looking down the trail. I came in what looks like a father and two sons come walking up the trail, and I'm just sitting there. Excuse me. The father sees me and he halts the boys. And they're like poster children out of Hunter Education magazine. I mean, they're control of their weapons, undivided attention, standing there quietly in the background. And the father tiptoes up to this old guy sitting in the woods, and the father says, we don't want to get ahead of you. He whispers it to me, and I look and I'm thinking, here, I'm sitting on the National Forest public lands in pursuit of a restored wildlife population that's available to anybody. And the first three guys I meet want to defer to me. And I said that, you know what I'm thinking of Theodore Roosevelt talking about the generations within the womb of time is what he called us. Well, there were three generations right there, this old guy, me, the father, and two sons what I took to be two sons. And I look at the situation and I say back to the father, I think I know what I see here. And I want you ahead of me. And then he says, the youngest boy can shoot a cow if he sees one, and I give him a smile and the thumbs up, and the kid's face lights up in the dark with excitement of that moment. And in his anticipation is the excitement. And just again I lean on Roosevelt. We do these things, uh, for the economic well being of the people, But there is more. They also add to the beauty of living and therefore the joy of life. And there I was looking at the joy of life shining in the dark, and I thought, holy mackerel, well and all you've experienced in your life. Yeah, and then they walked up, and then you know, they walked ahead. I sat there and I baled. It was so emotionally moved by how this all fits. And when you see just these are people didn't know any of this stuff, I don't think, but maybe they did, but probably not. But the two boys, I know, we got my book. Well, I think that your emotion there is built in what you've seen and what in some ways you've shepherded in your life experienced, you know, And uh, to say that Bucker is a big accomplishment it's not true. Yeah, I mean you're you're talking about a big part of and I think one thing that you've done in your career and that I hope to do and I'm sure Sam hopes as well, is to is to carry that torch and is too understand the history of what came for us and how miraculous the time that we've described in this podcast was for America, and how miraculous that it has lasted for these decades and throughout your life is even more miraculous that it's a it's amazing to have thought about, you know, the the you were one year old, when when you know, the concerts, the early Conservations were coming together to decide the future. And here we are in the future. And there was two boys there that learned something that they that they to them was likely an aid to their family and to the way of life, which wasn't always that way. Yeah, it wasn't the Royal Hunting Party. It was not as the real Americans. And it's democratic in nature. And what I think this spends well into I think ethics. I forgot that question. We'll get there. They got plenty of time. Have a drink um. Well, I'll have a drink in in um, elevating the conversation of ethics as you did UM there was UH and in your book there's the level of caring about To me what struck me, it was the level of caring about the community of people that you were involved in, but the level of caring about right and wrong for them and and that discussion. You know, and as you wrote that book, you know, what's your ultimate goal, Like, would you remember what's in your head? Is I'm going to achieve something from this writing or is it just the conversation that you had within it? Well, there's you know, there's things going on in a person's life. And in the context of this subject, I had been going to the shot show. Uh, we're getting ready to go to the shots, right, and here's the commercial extreme and they're just peddling their stuff and nothing matters, ah, other than to sell the commodity. And the fact that there is an animal involved. We're going to get shot out here is not ever across that border. And and that's the tragedy of the industry not seeing a more you know, a more powerful uh reality and just the antler or the quantity or the locker full of dead fish or whatever it is. But all they're doing is promoting the commerce of it. And of course the commerce is what drove it to its knees to begin with the buffalo hight in other just the meat markets. And here we're going right back with its huge engine. Bloydn that a powerful notion, like, yeah, right, and so we're beyond fair chase to try to find another path came from the publisher of Falcon Press at the time. Tossed a little copy of a book called The Ethics Are the Style of Writing by Strunk and White Elements of Style or I forget exact title of it now, but it was a little tiny paperback book about writing. And he said, I want you to write a book just like this on the ethics of hunting. And I said, okay, I've never written anything articles, but never a book. So I sat down and I just wrote beyond fair Chase. Uh. One of the things I did right was it wasn't a list of thou shalts and thou shalt not, because they're everywhere and they're nowhere. Yeah, and so you I spun five stories into the book on relationships between the hunter and the hunted, including that buck there and another set in my downstairs from the next year in the same same hillside basically, but at any rate. Uh. I drafted it and uh there was very little editorial stuff. Oh and he wanted to call the Little Brown Book on Hunting because Chairman Mao had just come out with the Little Red Book. Little Brown Book on I would have lasted as long. But well I did. How what I did was I called offered to buy a beer for about four or five members of the Rod and Gun Club that I was a member of, told him the dilemma that I needed a better title. At the price of a couple of beers, I got one of the guys, Mike Trevor uh said how about Beyond Fair Chase? And that rang the bell and so that's where the title came from. And then I wrote the book. And it has five stories um um. One about the Wounded Bull, which is the one that comes back to me most often. Some one personal story about when my son passes up and elk because he wants his father to confirm that everything is good, as we all do. Yeah, and then the next season he he gets an elk there and I thought, wow, it's all it's all fits. But at any rate, Uh, there's a ton of stories about stories coming back to me, but that we'll take a lot. But at any rate. That's where beyond fair Chase came from. And then the breakthrough there was I had been meeting with with the International Association of Hunter Education Educators. They were having an annual convention in Des Moines, Iowa. And so I wrote the guy and I said, look, I've got this book and I'd like to tell about it at your convention. I'll take any place on your program that you might be able to fit it in. Uh somebody cancels or whatever, and he agrees, he said, come on, and uh he gives me the award banquet speaking spot. And my wife Gail goes, she's on contract here with Falcon Press at the time to promote the book sell it, and one of the guys from his staff down down there at Falcon presses along. We go to Des Moines. I read a speech and we get into the banquet room and Gail and Chris, the other guy from Falcon, they set up a table to take orders on the outside of the banquet room. This is the Hotel Fort des Moines, and I get in here, and here's all these oak walls and beautifully kept historic place. And it occurs to me because I knew a little bit about conservation history that elder Leopold Iowa and Ding Darling I when Ding was the first president of the National Wildlife Federation, spoke in that same room. So I threw away my text and I talked about the echoes of their words that are held in these walls. And when that was over, they swamped our preorder table, and Gale and Chris so So pre sold a hundred thousand copies of Fair Chaise. And what'd you tell us before? Seven? About seven hundred? Now unbelievable seven? And Sam, what like when you first read it? Uh? What would you think? Like? What like? What was your reaction to what you've read? When what Mr? What Jim had put together? Well, I think I think it started getting distributed two hunter education courses probably right after I was I went through that, So I didn't read it until just a couple of years ago, and Lantani gave me a copy. But was that the one you started with the story of like killing a sparrow? Yeah, yeah, I remember, I remember that. I mean, I definitely resonated with it and immediately, having grown up, you know, with a BB gun in hand, killing all all manner forgotten mentioned yes, yeah, oh that was go ahead. I'm sorry, oh please please go ahead. Bill Schneider wanted to call it the Little Brown Book on Hunting. I wanted to call it The Sparrow and the Mammoth Hunter. That's a pretty good title. That's that's pretty good. I feel like a T shirt turned out to be beyond fair chase. We like it. But yeah, this this book becomes a seminal project. And and I read it. I think about five years ago when I first I remember when I first started to I had been a professional in the industry for for years, and when I first started to examine my own actions, and I remember it was around a photo I took of elk, one of the first elk I ever killed, was in the Madison Valley. And we took this photo. We took, we stood, we The hunt lasted an hour and the photo shot photo shoot lasted three hours with the different positions of this elk, and and I remember no one taking a photo of us cutting it up, or no one taking a photo of of of me packing the antlers out, no one taking a photo of me doing anything other than standing around with this dead elks. First elk I've killed. And I just remember at some point in that and that hunt, just thinking I'm not sure what's going on here, Like I'm not sure why I'm doing this, because at that point I was a was in an editor, an editor for a hunting magazine, and companies would invite me out. As you spoke about it hits home to me, and you spoke about like how we've turned hunting into a commodity when you use it to sell things, which which changes a lot of the motivation for some hunters in the industry. And I think that was part of what I was struggling with their It's like, why am I really doing this? Yeah, I'm eating it. Yeah, there's conservation, But what am I doing? Yeah? And that's that's kind of what I was struggling to get at been and and something. I think it really the you know, the ultimate revelation it provided me was it it's it's sometimes not enough just to follow the letter of the law, just what it doing, what is legal, does not completely satisfy our responsibility to this resource. And growing up I for the most part followed the law. There are definitely some um waverings there, but uh, you know, and and I and I feel like by the time I had read it, i'd I'd come to agree that game laws were there for a good reason and that I didn't like to give cops that reason to mess with me. But it really, it really um cemented I think ideas that I've already gathered from from other works and things that and I think that's the this is the great beauty of that title, as you need to go beyond what's required of you as a hunter and and and make sure that your actions are defensible and beneficial to the resource, and that you do you do as much for that animal and those populations and those resources as much or more than than they do for you, And that you you have that that responsibility, that it's a that's a given to take. Yeah, do you think about um your effort too. And then just your own personal feelings will define finding the relationship between the hunter and the hunted, like how we feel about animals. You know, how much how much time have you put into that and your own personal hunting, Well, it grows with time. I mean the first thing you wanted that I wanted to do with with that borrowed gun was to find a dead deer after I sent around that direction. Yeah, and then of course it became take care of it. That was kind of an autopilot. That's why I was there. Ah. But the more experiences you have and and the more you learn about where you're hunting and the history of the place. You know, the Rocky Mountain Front, of course is a classic. But that first ranger up there, Eiler's Coke. He spent thirty days in five four services the first year in thirty days in nine oh six, and he described what's the Bob Marshall Great Bear Complex now, but it was described him by drainage. And in thirty days of hunting each year he saw he said, I never saw or got a shot at a single game animal except one mountain goat. I mean, you could trampled back there in sixty days. But that was the depth to which the slaughter had gone. And uh, he rides and he was a conservation oriented guy. And uh, the front has got a very rich history of people popping up along the way. Sometimes they're in the agency. They made it a wilderness before there was a wilder this act and UH Sun River Game Preserve was created, and I think it was only one dissenting vote in the Montana State Legislature when that was passed through start protecting this stuff. And that was from the grassroots, uh rancher from Shoto or maybe he was a businessman I think from Shotto, but that we had to do better. Yeah, I had to do better. And you feel like we've done better. Yeah, certainly we've done better. And of course now the problem is again as well, life became more abundant, and are people are more interested in hunting and commerce returns. And then when you've got the critter living private and public both you have those conflicts and those of the issues that your generation is going to have to come to. UH management scheme that is good for the good for the critter. That was That was a question I've been I've had sitting on my my list for a while that I mean here moving us in that direction anyway that you know, the fair Chase ethic rose around Leopold and Roosevelt and and all of those, and by and large we have recovered a lot of our wildlife in this country. I was just curious to know, you know, from from me, from you? How do you approach some of these modern um issues of of fair chase and hunting ethics? Where where where do you start? When people are are talking about I don't know, Like I feel like bear baiting is very much in the modern debate. Some people would say that by putting out bait, you're creating an unnatural situation two to chase an animal that may not be fair. Other people would respond that by hunting bears over bait, you have the opportunity to properly sex the bear. Make sure you're taking a bore, preferably mature bore, and you'll have an opportunity to take a good, clean, standing shot. Um. And and this is something I struggle with, And I'm just curious, like you know, having being the guy who wrote the book on fair case what what's square? What square one? What? Where? Where do you start when trying to parse these difficult discussions. Well, you kind of start at midpoint on a spectrum, and that that midpoint is where you accept responsibility both for the taking of that animal that is equal to your responsibility to see to do that that animal was even there. In other words, if you've got to realize that you're just not a freeloader. And I think there's kind of a middle point in the hunter's career where when I borrowed that gun and shot that dough, I hadn't really I didn't even know why she was out there or why the plan was public. And as that awareness grows, and you don't have to have that all for your first start out of the shoot, but when you when you decide you're going to be a hunter, I think it would really be it's I know, it's to your advantage to start viewing it and it's the full context of why this is going to even happen, and uh, that enriches it. My best hunt was when I ran into those three guys south of town. I didn't even fire a shot or tag anything, or I didn't have to drag anything out, but I hadn't experienced that added to the beauty of living in the joy of life, as Roosevelt called it, I mean, what more could you get out of an activity? Yeah? Well, isn't that? I mean that that is ethics, right, I mean, it's just like the the evolution of your experiences and to form the way you interact. I think if you have the commitment, you know, we're all going to stumble, you know, every now and then something, we'll go all right out there. And you don't have to beat yourself up on it. Just put it in balance of a journey that you're on and uh, when you get to be uh in my demographic, Uh, all I gotta do is look out the window and spot that deer truck and the alleyed out here. I mean there's a trophy, ye. And it's because our society is said, you know, we do not treat these things casually. They are fellow passenger on this planet, and they're telling us a lot about what we need to know if we're going to make this ah as rich for future generations as it was for hours. That there's still generations within the womb of time with an expati and expectation that we're going to leave them not only a livable planet, but a relationship with the other life on here that we haven't had traditionally. You know. And in some of these writings that I've been made available to me by my sons for various Christmas is there's one called a Forest Journey, and it points out that the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were Civilization's birthplace was once a forest so dense the sunlight could not shine through. And that's the sand piles were out there blowing each other up on right now. And uh, we had a second chance here, We had a new world, and we made it a bunch of mistakes. We didn't say please when we put put on the Eastern shore. We did not know. We didn't say thank you yet. But nonetheless, I think there's way more to getting the full measure of the experience than just the day of field with the rifle in your hand. It's learning all you can learn about the places where you're going and their history, how they got to your custody. And there's beautiful stories lit heard through that. And and then when you have an appreciation, you know, the hand of Roosevelt is on you. He put these fourests around us. Yeah, against the odds, for sure, I know. And uh, all the other people that pop up at the various points and various levels in our society all had to make a contribution, you know, for that moment you get in the woods, and when you know as much of that as you can possibly stuff into your brain. Uh, then I think you're getting the full joy out of life. Yeah, would you hear you tell that? Do you think it would be necessary um or fruitful for you as you are now to travel back to that twenty year old young hunter who shot the dough in the head and explain these things to him or or do you feel as though the learning was necessary? I think the a that it came to you was necessary. Well, I don't think you can stuff that into somebody. Yeah, you know, I think you yeah, show them pieces of the puzzle and tell them there is such a thing and motivating people anyway you can to pique their interest and have the materials available for him, you know, having the access. I shouldn't have had to wait till I was turning seven five or whatever the heck it was, uh to start really really studying Theatore Roosevelt. I thought he took Sam one hill that was enough. Yeah, No, I think it's it's it's all very interesting to me because add through this conversation and listen to you talk. There's so many threads, there's so many through lines to what I how I feel, you know, and I'm sure how Sam feels and how a lot of people that are coming of age and hunting right now feel, and a lot of the for lack of a better i't really like this term, and a lot of the adult onset hunters now feel because I think there's many many folks who are picking up hunting at this point in time when they're in their thirties or forties. They never had a father or mother to teach them that, and they're picking up hunting as an adult. In the reason I asked that last question because I often wonder if it's necessary to to to go hunting as a child or as a young as a young man or woman without all the burdensome knowledge of the past to be able to just enjoy and interact and simplify. And to to have done that is to have done it in a pure way, and then it and as as you grow your experiences, you'll grow your knowledge and grow that your intellect, and grow your your ethics and your fair chase ideals. And I always wonder, you know, as an adult onset hunter, somebody's thirty five right now listening to this that just picked up hunting, um, whether you feel they're at an advantage and intellectual advantage being able to assess the history and and the gravity of hunting, or at a disadvantage because they weren't able to come at it with a childlike enthusiasm that you know, we'd all like to have. Well, I think both avenues are four lanes, they're both highways. Yeah, exactly, and uh, I think it's one thing to come on with. Well. You again, when you study the biography of some of the heroes, Uh, they came here because they were living in a concrete urban environment and reading about adventures of the frontier. They wanted to have one and and that cost a buffalo of a little cannon ball crickets. You know, it's life. But then the compensation that came as a result, you know, Uh, we're back with wolves, were back with lions, were back with with with buffalo, were struggling with buffalo. Uh, but just think of the the reality of that struggle. I mean, here's a Native American taking a handful of calves off the Rocky mountain front and hiding them out at Pablo. That made a huge difference the species that might have gone. And it's in uh the book, the Buffalo book I'm reading now of Steve Steve yeah and beautifully documented. Yeah, that's one of Steve Rinella's best best works. Yeah. And uh, the summer of nineteen or I call it the Summer of Our Dance. It's in our Christmas letter. And what had amounted to was we got acquainted with a little Native American girl named Millie, seven years old, adopted by friends of ours. And uh, we heard that Millie was going to well, I was right in this room. I was sitting here. I had Jesus Christ Superstar on my on my tape player. A little Millie came up and she was dancing to the music. And I got that little girl a note fit that she had something in her, uh, was a talent. And then then we learned that she was at the Pulse and Pow Wow this year. So Gaylee and I went up and Millie's mom and grandma had decked her out and finest dancing gear, and we joined in what they call the circle dance, were you get the part of the part of the outer ring. And inside the circle dance was a little Millie and four hundred Engian dancers. I think, Gail, okay, I'll get that. Yeah, you got it. But at any rate, and we were in this outer circle dancing around him, and in the background was the Mission Mountains, snow Captain gorgeous. Several weeks later, we're on the Rocky Mountain front on the other side the hockeys, and it was at a gal's birthday party, and the attendees were almost all ranch families and stuff and through old gals, most of them with more than a little gray hair, got into a line dance and they were stomping out this western tune on the Rocky Mountain front, and in the background was the saw Tooth Ridge and your Mountain and just glorious front. And so the Native Americans were on the west side, the ranches were on the east side. They're all dance and with the with the Rocky Mountains in the background, and two of the guitar playing singers in the western band on the front where members of the Blackfeet tribe. Things come full circle, without knowing it, without knowing it was under the same we're you know, participating in both. We were in the outer circle of thespabilities Mother's invitation, circling the four hundred interior dancers, including little Millie that I first spotted her talent sitting in that chair, Stars Christ Supers were just thinking of the wealth of experience in a lifetime that you can harvest here. And hunting is like that, you harvest an experience. You maybe hang stuff on the wall to remind you of the day, not whether your animal was bigger than somebody else's animal. You know, it's the glory of the day and the experience you had. And uh, is that the message you that you would I want to give desire to give to because I wouldn't say young hunters, but new hunters, people that are trying to examine their own pursuits and understand what their motivations really are. Sure, and I think the more you learn about the conservation ethic buried in this democracy of the wild, We've got this country most places on Earth, you know, the uh, Fertile Crescent didn't go from a forest so dense the sunlight could reach, couldn't shine through to a sandpile by accident, because here we had and subsequently that was you know, I think, seven thousand years ago. But nonetheless, that's what happened to the land because there was no relationship between the people and the things that were out there, and granted, you know, when the Marines landed there, Soddam had his private anelope hunting ground, and the Marines that were camped near Saddam Hussein's private fenced in hunting ground started supplementing their meals of with wild game and they imposed a bag limit on themselves. Wow, that's the strength and the depth of the conservation ethic in North America. Like I said, there's this. It seems it seems as though that's a great example of like this innate value system that we have and it's borne in us for some reason, and we and we purge it out with this commercial hype that we pour onto this first of all the tournament to something monetary and then go through this big restoration process and now the camp you know, the camp utalizers, I guess, or again stalking the commons very much. They are, very much they are. And again, as we go through this conversation, the history of what we do and what we love, the sides of the coins seem to be the same as you flip it, you know, it seems to be there's um takers and there's caretakers at some level. Absolutely, and uh, that's probably not going to change. And as long as uh, we keep pushing our d NA forward. Well, Jim, I like what you're saying about fair chase as a almost a state of mind or a journey through life. But there's a difficulty in that if that's, you know, what we're trying to abide by, because there will always be be takers. And the way it seems that you're portraying this, it seems difficult to impose personal decisions onto others. How do you how do you navigate that? Ya? How do you tell someone don't do that? That that? How how can one say that's not fair chase to another to another hunter? Well? Right, And it's different at different stages in the in the individual's evolution as a hunter. You know, there's probably a time when a young hunter still thinks the only purpose in being out there is to take. And the sooner we move that threshold of understanding forward. And I think you know, today materials are available that you can sort of infect the young hunter with with an idea or a thought or a sense of value. And I think it helps people who are are sitting on the border saying I'm not sure I want to be a hunter. I mean, I sure like wildlife, is it okay? And uh, that's those are the kind of people we're looking for and to have material available for them. Uh, you know beyond fair chase was just step one. Okay, you want to you want to be a hunter? Think about it this way and and I think the net effect of that will will show up is in society as we as we progress here. And the other thing is to tell them, you know, appreciate the real beauty of of what you got out there. Not only don't you have to take anything, but you can have a great day and let one walk on by if you want, because you just, uh, I guess, make choices that try to enrich the your lifetime experience for yourself. Realizing that or accepting the fact that some of this may take time. You know, you may have to have a handful of experiences. You may have to find time to go to a book cabinet and read the autobiography of Theatre Roosevelt. It's a thick one, or I mean, so many people have written about him, but there's a marvelous consistency that comes out of the more of it you read, you find very few contradictions. And uh, in fact, after I read his autobiography, I read his wife either wrote as Abell's autobiography to see competing intermation. Yeah, sure, if you read my wife's autobiography to be like a lot of life, that jackass, that could be a private title. Um, now, it's it is interesting, you know when when to introduce those things and how? You know, I think we use modern hunters, you in your hunting life, Um, have not had to struggle with a thing called social media. You know, we're I feel like infantile in our communication on this platform. And hunters I think have been struck with the conundrum that is is unique to this time, in this generation. You know, we we now I believe I'm thirty three. I believe that my generation of folks, millennials, I'm in that generation. Sad to say that millennials can no longer walk into a room in most places. Maybe Montana is a little bit different, but in most places in the world, in the in this country, say I'm a hunter without have to having to then explain why, like what how it benefits? How can you You can't be like, hey, I'm a hunter and the next someone will ask you why. And I think the y is just how does this benefit society? And so now we have a bunch of people struggling to communicate on its mass platform. With that everyone has access to what we're actually doing, and it gets sensationalized, it gets misrepresented, it gets boiled down to one little photo. There's so many point touch points for hunting that weren't there, you know, during your during your formative years. You know, there's people can reach into the honey community. Education then yeah, yeah, I mean the n r A had the hunter shooting safety programs, I think, yeah, but they weren't required and I never took a hunter D course. Yeah, and so your communication around hunting was you know, even you were saying in some some of your later work is like we were trying to get the magazine out, you know, we're trying to get these printed materials out. And now the information at our fingertips, I think puts puts the modern hunter in this in this well, it certainly accesses a hunter to a body of knowledge that I never stumbled across until I mean, like my seventies, for god's sakes. Yeah, and uh, it's kind of like you sit on the point of a pyramid double sword. Well, I don't know my hands work here, but you know you're sitting there with a photo of a dead deer and you're kind of the top stone on the pyramid. And the more you know about the vase all went into that being possible, the more appreciative you will be. And uh, I think the probability when you appreciate all that it took to get that to your custody. The more you appreciate that, the more likely you are to contribute, look for a way to contribute, and to learn more and more higher have a higher degree of satisfaction. Yeah, do you feel like, just just almost by osmosis, that that that appreciation would transfer to somebody who's never done it before, Like would be so relevantly, you know, so readily seen, and the imagery of the communication, and like, well, I think they would cause them to hunger for the experience. You know, that's that laid out as an option in front of them and in their democracy where anybody who wants to can give it, can take a shot literally literally, that's well put hunger for the experience. I think I learned of all the things we've talked about, that's a learning that I'll take away because I really do feel I I just I probably make it more complicated for myself and I than I should. But I feel like, no, it'll just come like a flash. I mean, when those three guys stopped on the trail, that's to date, that's the best trophy I've ever egg. That's amazing. And I made a huge mistake of not finding out who they were. Well, if they're listening to this, yeah, the older man on the trail would like to say thank you. Yeah, that's right. I mean, how many activities do you engage in that you can get so emotionally moved that you sit and cry your eyes out because it's just so powerful and you think, Holy Macro, thank you Jesus for putting me here, you know, giving me this generation or whoever you know puts this all together for you. Well, well we thank you. I thank you, I'm sure Sam, thanks for taking the time to talk to us, for your works and hunting and you guys are tough. A lot of questions man, man, and uh yeah, I just yeah, I just feel thankful that we were able to spend this time and thanks for having us here and and any old time. Thanks for being a steward for for generations to come. For what else couldn't you do? Who got all that stuff in your head? Just a lot, a lot to get out? Well, thank you again, and and I can't wait to another conversation. Yeah, I always great talking with you. Well, thank you, Thanks Jan I'm looking forward to Alzheimer's running forget all this stuff, the world less complicated? Thank you. That's it. That is all another episode of the Hunty Collective. In the books So Privileged, you have a chance to sit down with Jim Pozzlewits to learn about his life, to let you all in on what he's done with his life, the story of his journey through the hunting world and the conservation world into developing the ethic he has around both of those things. I hope, very hopeful that this informs you and inspires you to do good work in our world. It certainly has for me and Sam as well. So onto the next thing. What are we doing right now in meat either and I always try to let you know what we're up to, where we're going, what we're trying to do, what we're trying to grow. And at this point in time, we really want you to go over to the meat Eater's store and check out what's there and see. If you can't find a T shirt or a hat or maybe a hoodie, you never know what you'll find there. There's all kinds of cool stuff with a hunting collective logo, with the meat Eata logo. There's an awesome shirt for my boy Ryan Callahan. Smells now, lady. You'll see that there, so get it done. Get over there. Also, I will be appearing at many of the live podcast events during the Meat Eat to Live podcast tour. That's gonna be fun. We're gonna be a lot of towns. We'll hope to see you there. There's vi i P tickets some available. Mos are sold out, but there are some v i P tickets available and we want you to show up and hang with us at these events. And if you've never been to one, it's basically a bunch of us sitting on a stage doing a podcast talking about what we love. So I'll be appearing. If you want the dates, you can go to the meat eator dot com slash Events, slash Live Podcasts and you'll find the dates there. But if you just want me to tell you right now, I will. It's Reno on February seven, Live at the Sheep Show. That's some tickets available for that and get over there sign those up. The doors open to one thirty pm. I'll be in Sacramento on February nine at eight pm at the Crest Theater with the crew, and I'll also be adding one more as I will be at the Boise show at the Live at the b h A Rendezvous and that's on May three. Tickets are not on set right now, but they are coming soon and there will be other shows added than I'm likely be attending those as well. Regardless of where I am, you should try to get to where the Mediator Podcast Live Tour is because we'd love to see you there man, and it is. It is uh a real tangible event where you can come and hang with us and hear from us, and we can hear from you. Um we really I think everybody on this team would say they really appreciate anyone who comes out to spend time, money and energy on what we believe is the right thing to talk about. So with that, we hope to see in those towns. I will be talking to you next week on the Hunting Collective podcast with another great guest. Hopefully you will enjoy see you