00:00:02 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome, It's another episode of the Hunting Collective. I'm Ben O'Brien. As always, it's never you're tired of saying that I've better Brian uh And today we're at the Mediator office here in Bozeman, Montana, and I'm joined by Sam Longer and also driven by Janice Patelis and also Ryan Callahan. All three gentlemen have been appeared on this program before. All three gentlemen worked with me here at Mediator. So this is a little bit of an editorial meeting of sorts where we're going to break out our fancy, spanking, brand new hunting scandal assessment chart. That it was happening in the news here, we felt the need to address it, hopefully. Um In addressing it, we've you know, uncovered some of the issues around the media around hunting and around hunting, how hunting trophy hunting specifically is portrayed, I mean, giving you some perspective on that. Again, we don't have all This is, you know, one of those deals where we don't have all the details and on some of the more intricate parts of this scandal, but we want to cover the fact that it happened and how it was covered and what we thought I think it means, and you'll be uh certainly can check for more from our platform about this thing. But without further to do, please enjoy these three gentlemen discussing the Hunting scandal assessment chart. Hey, everybody, how's it going? Talking to the three of you? Said at the table, Oh, not to listen the listeners. A little two stuffed after two pieces of birthday cakes, sugar snappy. I Um, it's it's Steven Rannella's birthday today. Uh, he's forty five, forty five years old, big, said the candles on the cake. Halfway to ninety. Yeah, halfway to ninety, which is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you are. Steve have an age goal or an expectancy, a life expectsily for a meat eater. Have you talked about it? Have you talked? It's somewhere up around there, somewhere between eight and ninety. I think he feels like he's halfway there, all right, Yeah, I mean if I if I make it the eight, um, I may consider just walking out in the woods. The man. My grandma, she's she's going for well over a hundred. She's ninety right now, and she's just like, I feel the best I have in twenty years. I'm doing great. It's amazing. All right, let me ask a question. She drink alcohol. Yeah, she smoked. Everybody smoked, and she was an army wife, a nurse, and like the smoke was intense. Yeah. My grandmother was ninety three when she died. My grandfather was a eighty nine around ninety when he died. So I was like trying to figure out what the what the secret was. Never did figure it out though. Yeah, and you know, I think your capacity for drink goes way down. Like grandma likes to have like a glass of champagne on special occasion, a little yeah they call a little nip. Yeah, a little little glass beer. Uh. With certain meals, She's like, oh, I gotta have a gotta have a beer with this um blast wine stuff like that. My grandma likes to have a glass of white wine with ice cubes in it. Yeah, yeah, do whatever you want. Yeah, my grandmother had. She would smoke like a cigarette in the morning and she would go out onto there's a little cup always. I found one time on the on her porch where she would go out and this the same little cup, smoke and ash into the cup and then ash put her cigarette out in the cup and then once in a while wash out the cup. But it was her like little that was her tradition. She lived so routines. Maybe something to be said for routine something he said, you should pick up smoking. Yeah, one a day, keeps the doctor. Now, that can't be it because of the tar in your lungs. Can't be it. Yeah, there's a lot of studies out there that I guess I shouldn't just blanketly say studies. There's a lot of studies. So anyways, Steve's halfway dead. Steve, do we feel like he lived a good life to this point? Or I mean, what do we That are funnier to say it though, Like, yeah, so have you heard about Ronella. He's he's halfway dead. Looks great when you see him, give him a hug. It looks great. He needs he seems, you know, he seems a chipper about the whole affair. He was able to blow out all those candles all by himself. Yeah, he passed out. Yeah, Yeah, I'm proud of him. Um, well you know we're here two Um, achieve a difficult well, undertake a difficult task, or achieve an outcome that will be difficult is to determined for the hunting world what um what a scandal is whether a certain social media or um news incident is a scandal, and then assess what the outcome of the scandal should be for the folks involved in it. Um cal you want to kind of like give us a can you try to give us a brief history of the hunting scandal on the internet and what that is in your eyes? Not this one in particular, not this one in particular, We'll talk about this one in particular, scandals in general. Yeah, can you do you remember I'd give you no time to prep for this, but did you do you remember the first time that you you heard about someone a hunter killed an animal legally and then there was outrage. You know? The one that really like blew up was Kendall Jones I think her name was. She was I think she was in college at the time, and uh, Texas blonde, and she went on a safari I think with her dad, that's with her dad, and she had her pictures up on social media and people just viciously attacked her and um, you know I think he was the giraffe one specifically, that's right, yes, yep. Um, but you know all you know, legal activity and a different country and um. I never really got into the details there, but that was like my first like, oh, I'll be damned. Um. So basically, I think, if you could really to sinctly say it, a hunting scandal is when a hunter or a hunting situation makes it into the the national news or sometimes beyond national news. Um. And is I guess that the situation is is judged by the general public. Yes, I mean, Yanni, you want to take a crack at it, How would you define the modern hunting scandal? Yeah, I think that's about it. Someone postive picture innocently enough, and someone else takes it and twisted around or you know it takes it out of context, puts it in their own little context, and then uh turns it into something that's not scandal. Yeah. Yeah, it kind of gets used to this, the anti hunting ideology. It's kind of taken as a case study for white hunters or ship heads and how white hunting should be illegal. Sometimes we do see people hunters doing some stupid ship though. Yeah, exactly. Uh, scandals. Yeah, that's interesting that you mentioned that. It's something that don't that's done legally usually because you're right, like poaching cases, they never get any headlines. There was that that operation the North Shore. We've been talking about it over coast. It's a I haven't seen that covered on CNN. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen it. It hasn't come back to me in that way. You know. It's it's something that I think the state of the Ohio folks would love to see reported on more. Should be Yeah, should be celebrated the work that was done there by sho. If everybody agrees, then it's non news. It's like, well everybody doesn't like these guys. Yeah, so we're not gonna get a bunch of clicks on that. That's a good, good point. I remember, I feel like I was working at Peterson's Honey Magazine the first time we came across one of these um scandals, and it was Melissa Bachman, host of a television show on I believe would have been with the Sportsman Channel of the Outdoor Channel. I believe Sportsman's back then. That was I'm looking at the article I wrote now is in that I wrote an article called the Truth about Lions Melissa Bachman in the Anti Hunting Agenda. UM. Not saying I'm very proud of this piece. It's got some facts in there, but it also has some hyperbole in rhetoric that I have since learned not to include in such such pieces. UM. But you know have I have been, you know, for probably my whole professional career in the hunting space, dealing with or talking about these types of situations where someone you know, the The other one that I wrote about after this was Corey Nolton and his rhino um where you know, they're almost always our death threats involved. I'm sure the gentlemen were about to talk about has already received some um and the death threats aren't are coming from the folks that are anti hunting or animal rights who don't like killing, anti hunting, are pro animal rights, pro extreme animal not yet not not yes, pro animal rights. UM. That's that you know, they say animals are sentient beings and deserves to live. Yet yet the folks killing them deserve to die? Always a fun, weird irony in there, a fun irony to go through pro animal rights, anti human rights. Yeah, and I would I would say, like I've found or recently like these things are just in my opinion, they're a little a little bit just misdirection. Like these folks are um sensationalizing something that's that plays to a narrative that's already had success. As you said, cal like this is something that that these guys know we'll get clicked on, they know we'll get shared. It had that this narrative is is easy to tie into pop culture. It's easy for celebrities to pick up. Um. It's just it's no different than posting a picture of a puppy on your Instagram feed. You're sure that is? Like, yeah, I bet people like something tells me people are gonna like this one. And I think that's of course what happens here, um pup exploitation, pop splolitation, and this in this term lions ploitation. You know it's interesting, Uh speaking of lions. It hasn't turned into a scandal, but recently my new fees is just cram full of mountain lions stories, mountain lions mixing it up everywhere. Do you see awful lot today? Yeah? I didn't catch that one. Yeah, they got another awful lot on trail cam in Arizona. Come came in from right where we were, Sonora. That's awesome. Yeah, they have a jaguar do that every now and then. I think he got whacked, Yeah by a vehicle. M yeah, l f A. What do they name? They named the jay But they got the boss the five awesolot um in the last ten years on trail cams in Arizona. Pretty wild. Yeah, but the yeah, the cat. Think it does seem even though on the Chinese calendar is the year of the pig, we seem to be in the year of the cat because there are a lot of cats of the cat. But and also think about these, like these scandals that we continue to see because it seems like the hunting world is becoming so numb to them that within our community it's not a deal, Like it's less that we feel like we have to defend it. We're like, oh, another one, really, Okay, We'll go about our day. I'm finishing my sandwich, like I'm not. I don't a bunch of people calling in the hunting community, calling for reform over legal hunting that has caused these things. I think as hunters, we've kind of just because it's been happening, you know, for a decade. Well, yeah, it will at all. It exists in a weird space because most of the most of these scandals we see are coming from extremely high dollar international travel hunting, which nine percent of American hunters will never engage in. It's just not even something that's on people's minds. And so I feel like at this point, most most people are just just treated as like, well, I don't know, I'm probably not going to hunt Africa. I don't really, I don't really, I don't really care one way or the other. Well, there's also I feel like some kind of trick in it that you know, now here we are sitting around talking about you know, possible um trophy hunting examining. Of course that's the know, we wanna examine tough issues. But here we are diverted from you know, we're essentially in the meat Eater news room. Here, uh, the editorial space, and we're diverted from talking about important bills, you know, that are supporting public lands and looking at um cases like her rare View Wyoming, and looking at the flyway and looking at fisheries and and you know, looking at conservation issues across the country, were now pulled away into in this case, Pakistan to examine something we really know nothing about. Um. You know, I have friends that have been there and and talk to folks about hunting a Pakistan's Cheekistan some of the places in that area of the world, But I don't really know anything about it. I've never been there. Um. I can imagine what it might be like, but but I just don't know. So we're pulled, you know, I feel like we're pulled enough to at least address it in some short way. And um, but man, strange times, st in times is right, I mean, definitely important to know that folks have been paying large sums of money to go to these exact areas that we're talking about today for hundreds of years, specifically to hunt. Um uh do. But I guess to Sam's point also, it's like we have as a category here on our hunting Scandal Assessment chart, the to what extent was the individual animal known to the public chart? Um, I've got yeah, I've got an interesting Now we should add the field on species. I mean, I imagine a lot of people who are upset about this have never heard of a mark corps prior to and hunters are some of the only ones that are aware of the mark orps. To what extent do Americans generally recognize this species as a lovable creature? It's going to be a low yeah, but I mean do we Let's let's quickly, let's quickly explain what we're talking about. So we have at meat either created under um, under the watchful eye of one Stephen ronnella ah, what we're calling the hunting Scandal Assessment Chart, And it's a tool to help us reason these very confusing quote unquote scandals and determine whether they're really worth a ship or not, whether we should be worrying about them or not, and um, you know, whether there's any existential crises to address. But we have a little little paragraph describing what we do here for the folks that might end up using it, and it goes a little bit like this. I think Sam wrote this correct. Uh. It seems that every couple months, the animal rights activists of America rain hell down on some unsuspecting hunter over perceived wrongness of a kill. As an editorial team, we often have a difficult time finding the right way to respond to these blow ups. So we decided to create this form as a way to separate the bullshit from actual Hunter wrongdoing. Please feel free to print this out and use with your friends next time some movie star declares a social media crusade against one of our fellow hunters. UM, well done, Sam. So this is available, It will be it will be available online. We're going to put it available, put it online, available for folks to print out and use as they wish. There's some talent cheek here. Our tongues are firmly planted in our cheeks, as you can tell by the writing there. But but there's also some you know, there's the reality that this is necessary, uh, in some way for us to determine like what really matters in these situations. Again, I think most hunters are just generally apathetic and annoyed by what's happening here. But you know, I get when I don't know about you guys, when something like this happens, I get more like non hunters like my mom will will call or someone will call and say, I heard somebody shout at giraffe. What's up with that? And they asked me to explain it. So at the very least, you know, if it's on CNN dot com or Fox News, it's being read by a lot of people, so we can at least recognize that is annoying. Is that maybe, um, it's something to recognize. So Sam, you want to kind of run through the first six lines there? But hold, I have we done a good enough job of explaining what today's scandal is? Well, we'll get there. We're gonna we're gonna do this first. We're gonna run through this and set it up and come back and we're gonna all fill it out together and determine determine where we are. Sam, you want to run through kind of the first details. Yeah, the first few fields are what happened, location, species, etcetera. Who was involved? Dot dot dot? And we're they being a dumbass? Does this involve famous people? Was the activity legal? How did the photo get out there? What caused the controversy to gain momentum? So that's what we would fill out for. So let's fill this out for our current, uh current happening and and put put down our answers, um what happened? Well, what happened? An American paid a hundred and ten thousand dollars to shoot a marqueurs in Pakistan. Um. This gentleman's name was Brian Kinsel Harlan. He was he's a Dallas banking executive. UM. He paid what was a record for a permit of which there are very few given out. Um. This one says in this in this specific conservancy, there are three given out. And this is where I'm reading a little bit from a paper called dawn paper at a Pakistan Um. And two other Americans got those tags this year for a very similar prices, one for a hundred grand and one for a hundred and five grand. So it's very conspicuously going up by five grand per animal. And both of those tags were filled within the last three weeks. But those two did not generate this level of ship storm for for whatever reason. For Okay, so location is Um? Where is the area they flew under the radar? Yes? Yeah, this is Um in Pakistan. The sassy village of Um. Say all this stuff wrong. So I apologize to anyone who knows how to these gil get gil get gil shit g I L G I T. However you would say that and the species is mark Or, and mark Or is a type of goaty also known as the screw horn goat, and that derives from the Persian words mar meaning snake and core meaning eater, snake, snake eater. Mr Mr Harlan Uh shot a forty one inch Mark Corps trophy, which is considered a nice Mark Corps of course, UM and Mr Harlan is a banker in Dallas. He's a banker in Dallas, so he was involved. He has UH to this to my knowledge, is not notable in any way other than what we've described. So he's a banker, he's obviously well off, and he lives in Dallas. He has hunted in Pakistan two other times that we're aware of. Again, we may get interrupted his podcast by the gentleman, a gentleman that helps set the sun up um or a few of his hunts up. So if that happens, I'll just put him on speaker to answer some of our questions. But I will follow up with in an article, maybe an a dentom to the podcast some details from this gentleman named Gregg Brownlee, who is part of Neil and Brownlee that LLLC. They booked some of the hunts for Mr Harlan in the past. Uh in Pakistan. And as far as the knowledge that we have on the table right now and about the hunter, um, we can say that we do not think or I do not think he's a dumbass as far as from what I've seen. Can I interrupt because I'm still feeling like we're getting too far ahead of ourselves because I don't even know that this is a scandal yet. It's it's that's what we're here to decide. That's kind of what we are doing this because someone else is making it or saying that, Yeah, I mean, it's it's this is this has been on CNN, It's been on major news outlets. It's something that's that's uh needs to be addressed once. I feel like once it rises to level of national news, right for sure, But the national news isn't treating it. Didn't describe it the way that you just described it. I don't believe. Well, that's what we're trying to accomplish with this chart is whether there's you know, it was a bad idea and that person should walk away from hunting, or if there's nothing to see here. Yeah, wasn't the one headline like hunter let me read you a few Um, let me read you a few headlines. Trophy CNN dot com trophy hunter pays a hundred ten thousand dollars to kill and pose with rare mountain goat um in it is quoted. They quoted Peter us turfy hunter paid a hundred ten thousand dollars to kill a rare mountain goat in Pakistan. That's Washington Post. And then the Hill American trofey hunter paid a hundred ten thousand dollars to kill rare mountain goat in Pakistan. Uh. In the CNN piece, they reference a few things that make it, in my opinion, rather scandalous. UM. I get to that here in a moment, I scrolled down. Goats are gentle individuals, not trophies. Animal rights group PETA wrote on Twitter while some Pakistani's called for a band on hunting such animals UM. And in the past, you know, these types of quote unquote scandals have have ended in UM hunting changes and different in the places, you know, like Scotland, Canada. In different places where these scandals have come from, they changed hunting laws and regulations just based on these, you know, situations that that could spun up. So they're definitely yawning. To answer your question, they're definitely not um reporting on it in but they're they're mad because it's a rare animal. Uh rare. Like if you if you break down the CNN headline again, there's so much fact, so much factor. Our job here is, like just Sam just said, it's to in the end to say, well, is this something to worry about or not in the hunting community? Are we like are they? But like we also said that the last the other two goats that were killed the same goats in the last three weeks, nobody said anything and we didn't either talk about it. So obviously it's already a scan and I just wanted to like put it make sure everybody knows why. Yes, yes, it's it's been covered. Yeah, you're right, it's been covered in all these these major news outlets, and they're not um covering it in a pro hunting way. Uh you know trophy hunting. Trophy hunter pays dollars to kill and pose with rare mountain goat. I mean, they're like, if you were to break that headline down leading with trophy hunter, is that word has been obviously weaponized in this format and is being used like that in in in this title there, you know, why is it relevant that he paid a hundred ten thousand dollars? Like, why is that? Why is that relevant in this case? Yeah? And why My next question was why is posing it makes it seem like the only reason he went over there and shot the thing was to kill it and to get a picture with it to show his friends with rare mountain goat. I think that is what they're trying to get out, and so there that they're assigning motive to this dude, Yeah, without interviewing him, talking to him, talking to somebody from the conservancy which he shot at, talking to the person that booked it. Um. In fact, I get you know, like I said, I got an upcoming interview with the person that helped book this hunt and hunts like it. And it took me about twenty minutes to figure it out. It's not hard, I mean, you know, so obviously here there wasn't a whole lot of investigative work done. They just picked up here's a photo, here's a rich guy with slick back hair that looks the part of the evil, you know, Caucasian trophy hunter. And here's an animal that that is is truly, it is a rare animal around the world. These things aren't running around everywhere, So I think that's that's where this all kind of stems from. Does that cover it? I think so? Gal Yep, speed with the scandal. Yes, sir, you're feeling you feel uncomfortable? Uh? Yeah, I mean I'm fairly certain. I know what the outcome is gonna be here, But me too, I think I don't know. Are you feeling be honest, are you skeptical on the they? Are you? Is your skepticism here because you don't want to like put any more attention on something that you do not feel. We're on station. The only thing all is skeptical about is uh. I just want to make sure that who's the people listening understand what we're talking about, Okay, correct? Yep, I think we're there. I think people could probably get a good understanding of where we are. We have. Also, was the activity legal, absolutely, without question legal. I've read a couple of articles from different sources that that UM use the term poaching when describing killing this animal. That is not That is factually incorrect. He did not poach it. He killed it legally. He hunted it and killed it legally. Um, there's no doubt about that. Um. How did the photo get out there? Um? It was shared on the internet by the hunter and I saw a few shared by Neil and brownleie that or again the booking agency that guy used to go over there and and go hunting. Um what caused the controversy to game Momentum, We've kind of already covered that. Um it was it was picked up by news outlets and again it's in the easy mark for this kind of scandal generation for the you know, and we was talking with Ronella earlier and he's you know, why is it that, like Donald Donald Trump Jr. Is the face of this you know, why is he the face of in a lot of circles like the face of the rich white trophy hunter that travels across the world and kills things for high dollars? Like why that face just says trophy. But I mean there is like there's a certain aesthetic for the for the pet It seems like young females and rich white dudes slip back here are are targeted in these ways. You know. It seems like females get a lot the treatment of it, young ladies a lot more harsh than um, just a regular regular hunter. I asked them to do it to you if if those people are um more apt to post this stuff on the on the old Internet, because maybe other groups that uh, let's say, young black males that also go over there and do some hunting that are well off don't post, don't post. Maybe elderly white females. I don't know, but whoever it is, looking at the demographics, yeah, exactly, if you don't post, then it never gets out there. Well, it's this requires a photo. This requires a well, we'll call a group and grin requires a trophy photo. Like that's part. That's like the main the main deal here. If there isn't one of those, it never happened. Um in this case there is. In this case there is a video of it. Um. So I guess that's how the controversy gain momentum. So do you feel like everybody feel like we've covered like what we're talking about here to degrease same? Do you find any other facts out there you want to share around Mark Corps or hunting in Pakistan or anything like that, so it checks the box sorright? What causes controversies to gain momentum to our earlier definition of hunting scandal, it was this hunting story and picture, we're picked up by national and international news outlets, yes, yep, and that has that includes Washington Post, The Hill, and CNN, among others, all very well read publications in their own right. So yes, national news would qualify for this one. Whether that's you know, whether we will decide or try to decide whether it is worthy of that kind of coverage. Yeah. The only thing I found was that the UM province of gil Get Balta, Baltistan apologize for miss Pross. Yeah, I'm sure that was awful. They auctioned off these permits uh for the rare animals, starting the bidding at a hundred thousand dollars for Marcorps, eight thousand for blue sheep, and a hundred thousand for Ibex yep. And I also found that of UM those tag fees go to economic development in the rural communities where the hunting happens and goes to the Wildlife department. That's pretty good. Again, Like I would just reiterate that part of the issue with these scandals is they have a lot of times they happen far away places with different socio economic structures to ours. And like I said, people sitting at this table, none of us have been to Pakistan, at least that I'm aware of. None of us have hunted markorps of any subspecies. So it's just it's it's it becomes hard and you and you can kind of commiserate with that on some level, you know. I've had this conversation with a lot of people whenever people try to go on a diet tribe about trophy hunting, I'm always like, what do you mean by that? What does that mean to you? Like, um, Africa always comes into the definition. UM. And I'm sure people would like to throw Pakistan in there as well, But a lot of folks like to say, like, why do you need to why do you need to travel over there to go kill this rare animal? What what drives that? And people people just really question the motive of the hunter more so than they do with you know, down home home, down home hunting here in the United States. Yeah, I mean it's not h We're not looking at this, um yeah, pragmatically, like what what purpose did it serves? What? You know, We're not looking at it like that, We're looking at it like is you know, basically the scandal comes down to is this fella an asshole or not? And is what he's um, you know undertaken here something an asshole would do is pretty much what we end up we end up looking at um in these in these deals. We got what's happening over there, Sam's dog Moose is laying on a bear rug inside the podcast studio being kind of adorable doing it. So contempt will take a quick break here to take some photos for the Internet. Hopefully we don't cause a scandal, cause the scandal of any kind. So this the first We're ready to do our scalable questions. Yeah, so let's let's um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I've I've found just because I think we should, we should consider the other side of things. I found the peta article referencing this deal. It's a very short well no it's not, but uh sod from Peter dot Org. Another rare animal killed by wealthy American trophy hunter by Michelle kretz Zer. Kretzer, she says another member of an endangered species, not true, has died at the hands of a wealthy American trophy hunter. This time The victim was a rare astour Markorps mountain goat, the National Animal of Pakistan. Texas trophy hunter Bryan Kinsell Harlan paid Hundon thus to gun down the animal, who had been sitting calmly next to one of his companions in Pakistan's Northern Himalayan region. Calmly, calmly. He shouldn't He shouldn't have done it, because if the animals calm, we'll only shoot him if they're worked up. Harlan can be seen posing next to the dead animal and now widely shared photo. Um Harlan was quick to spout to spout the hunter's favorite line about conservation, but killing an animal to conserve the species is as useful as selling cigarettes to cure lung can there. As of two thousand eleven, there were only about Markhords remaining in the region. They are now likely there are likely even fewer now, which again against there's twice as many now and more than twice as many. The International Union for Conservation of Nature places the number at fifty seven hundred and fifty four mature animals in the wild, which is much more than ten years ago. The UH this is just there are threatened by if they are threatened by deforestation, military activities, and poaching in addition to trophy hunters. Um so it's a watch spread problem. If Harlan was genuinely interested in conservation of the species, he would spend it a hundred ten thousand dollars to help secure a protected sanctuary for the animals, not blast them away for pleasure as seen him. As reported by CNN, trophy huntings purported economic benefits to surrounding communities have been found to be exaggerated, are practically non existent. And while the vast majority of Americans the post trophy hunting, most are interested in eco tourism and the chance to view while animals in the national habitats, activities which do not do benefit the animal in the community unlike trophy hunting. It's time to stop trophy hunters and protect endangered wildlife. Tell UPS to stop shipping hunters trophies for them immediately, and then there's a link to uh, write a letter to UPS that that's gonna fix it, to get him to stop shoulding him a triphy an So, so, anyway, that was my reading of a pet article, all right, dactic though, Yeah, well, I think it enough. If we were trying to stop something we didn't like, I'd probably be one thing that we might try to do. Um, you know, there's a lot in there to to cut up. But again, um, this is not the None of this is new. You just you just will. All we've done is it's it's like mad libs. All we've done is changed the characters in the play like it's it's if it wasn't Harlan, it would have been someone else. And if it was a hundred ten thousand dollars in the Mark Corps, it would have been fifty bucks in a rhino, fifty bucks in the elephant. It doesn't really matter. Um, you know, the facts don't seem to matter here. They they've taken a number from two thousand eleven that makes it seems like there's less Mark or than there actually is. In fact, what this seems to me is that since they've started the community based conservancy over there, that there are more Mark Corps. Uh, they're certainly doubled in the last eight years. So there's you know, and there's been hunting during that time. So the prescription that turvy hunting is a problem, it's just not the reality. Whether we like Mr Harlan and his activities or not, it's not real. And that local community, the management body now has three hundred thousand American dollars more than they did yeah prior to this, because of the three Americans that came over. Well, Peter says that that doesn't go to wildlife concert. It says it goes to uh, it's unknown where it goes, like it goes to maybe the mafia or something. That's what they say. You enjoy how these three American trophy hunters are right up there with military activities in Pakistan and de and deforestation, deforestation, and there's some serious military activities in UH Northern Pakistan and poaching and hunt trophy hunting as well. Yeah, I mean there's you know this is again if you watch the film Trophy, which I believe is on Netflix, so a lot of the similar um information is included in that documentary. Um. But the funny thing to me is it it's is almost bad that they're spending all this money, Like it would it be worse if he didn't spend any money at all. It would be better, if you would be better. The scandals in the scandal's eyes would be better. If he didn't spend any money at all. So if it was like a ten dollar animal, if he pot the animal, if you poached it, well yeah, because then if you post it, you just be lumped into the poaching group. Then you're just that's illegal, and we don't like either but paying. But everybody doesn't like you, so we're not gonna talk about I think about how much poaching goes on of all kinds of crazy rare animals and whatever. And again, like I said earlier, poaching story gets no love from the from the headline. Did you hear that? See that headline yesterday that in uh, the Philippines, they just they just intercepted a shipment of like thirty tons of pangling scales. WHOA, Okay, so there you go. I'm being I'm wrong every now and then. Well, but I mean I I found I found that because I follow some some pretty out there like news websites that track this specific kind of ship. I mean, I don't think CNN covered that. No, no, And that's that's like serious systemic poaching, multiple millions of dollars. Listen at this point, if you google Markhors, Yeah, the Mark ord Wikipedia page and then the next thing down is Texas from NBC News from two hours ago. Texas businessman pays on hunters and that was to kill rare goat in Pakistan. Like we can continue to go down and um read more of these, but I mean, it certainly is not the mark or the plight of the Mark ORPS is not a national news story. I'm sure of that. I have no way to no evidence of like what it's ever been covered before. Everything I'm reading is they're doing quite well. They've been recently downgraded by the a u c N from endangered past vulnerable to near threatened, which is just above least concern, and it says that their population trend is increasing. Again that what PETA doesn't understand what they're doing there is they're they're they're quoting at two thousand eleven number to show how low the population is. But what they're not, what they're they didn't realize by that misleading sentence is that what they're doing is proven. You know. The opposite of their point is that if there's fifty of them, now there's twenty, and hunting has been allowed during that time or at least a portion of that time. But I don't think all of that time hunting has been allowed. Hunting is I think has only recently been within the last like three to five years. I don't know the exact I do want to be careful though, as far as like the species of concern language though, because I'm sure there's some serious milestones in there, from like yeah, verge of extinction, probable extinction, there's probably some real milestones down to all the way down the ladder two species of concern UM. So near threatened is above least concern, then it goes vulnerable. So we'll go from least concern near threatened is where we're at right now, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct in the wild, extinct. We'll just call that extra pated worldwide UM. And I don't I don't see the data here, but we are trending in the Mark Corps world UM in the right direction. Yeah. And and here's here's where I always fall on on this kind of thing, because I'm conflicted with you know, quote unquote trophy hunting. But at the end of the day, whether Mr Harlan went there with bad intentions or not, we don't know unless we ask him. Even if we ask him probably wouldn't tell the truth if he was somehow went there with some bad intentions. Um, the result of his hunt was beneficial to the land on which he hunted, Like we can we can say that, I can say that honestly and and know that I have there's factual there's facts to back that up. And and the equation to me goes, hunting creates value. Value leads to conservation, and conservation leads to the propagation of wild game populations, kind of the African model of wildlife conservation. Yeah, I mean it's and and and again let me add to that that I do feel that some of these countries internationally have taken, um, you know, have harvested for one of the parts of our hunting culture that's that will make them the most money. Right, they have exotic animals with big things on their heads. And then they've harvested the culture here that promotes killing rare things with big antlers or horns, and they've said it pay us a lot of money for those things. We know it's you know, supplying demand. Basically, they're supplying the mark orps and we're at some level demanding it. And so that's also happening, but at regardless of how it's happening, at the end of the day. There you know, I'm no mark or expert, but I feel like there's more mark ors now than there would have been five years ago. Um. And that seems to always kind of be the through line of this stuff. And I think another element of that that a lot of you know, advocates of this wildlife conservation model would point to is because of that monetary value, then there's kind of a cultural appreciation and a cultural opposition to poaching. Like that's what they always point to in Africa that if nobody cared about these kudu, if they're not valuable, then poachers would probably come in and kill more of them. And because there is value than there's money for for game wardens, there's money for you know, people have jobs tracking and supporting hunting efforts, um. And without that, uh, these animals would likely be poached to extinction. I don't find that as compelling as the North American model of wildlife conservation, but you know that point is often made. Well again, this is again, this is like a mr. Actually, nobody's are you know in this deal. They're like, you know, in Pakistan, they've got some issues they need to figure out. They're using American dollars to figure them out. But over here, we got it figured. We're good to go. Like our model conservation is not perfect, but it's the best one there is. UM over Pakistan less so, but they're definitely using American dollars to as as their way to figure it out. UM because and in this case what they most of the Middle East and in Asia and all over the world, UM, they call those things community based conservancies. And what they mean by community based conservancies is, uh, the community gets together and says we'd like to value these animals at a certain number. You know, a lot of times they'll have in this case, I think they have an auction for a certain number of attacks and they'll and this happened to me when I hunt into Pall. They they they auction off a certain number of tags for an area, a certain designated area where you can hunt these animals, and then select a community or subset of communities where the the benefit would then go to. So that but the community has has impetus to care for the animal because the animal is now brought monetary value back to to that community. So that's what they call a community based and servicy and most of the time what they'll say is like these animals because they don't have value in these places, are um seen as you know, I guess a nuisance would maybe be a good way to put it, at least a competition for livestock um or a quick source of food to be poached, so that that's where that comes from. And again, man, you guys can all chime in, um, but I'm a little conflicted. I feel like it's you know, again, it works. What is it the way? Is it the perfect way to do it? No? Not my opinion. Most several things I've read have said that by and large, hunting from our corps is not legal in Pakistan. It's only under this new paradigm where they auction off a bunch of a couple tags for an insane amount of money. But locals cannot hunt these animals, which is a little bit bothersome to me, because you know, we're we're so deeply invested in the North American model where wildlife is the property of the people, managed by the state for the benefit of the people. And what you're doing when you buy a hunting license is purchasing the opportunity to claim one specific animal to you know, buy it from the from the you know, the American citizens who own it, and it's managed for buying large manage for opportunity that people in the local communities are the ones who get to have the most opportunity to utilize that resource. And you don't see that exist in Africa or in you know, Pakistan, other international hunting situations. Yep, um, yeah, I agree with that. Like you said, again, it's works, but it seems like a quite the band aid for the problem. I mean, we started we had a problem in this country at the third of the century, late eighteen hundreds and early n and we prescribed a solution and it wasn't this one, you know, and we did a lot a lot of the local critter population on the premise of depleting competition for livestock. But I do think we're gonna find a lot as to why did the controversy gay momentum In the first question on the sliding scale, let's get so, let's let's explain the scale, because the scale is something we debated internally whether we would even include the scale or whether we needed the scale or whether the scale mattered at all, um, or whether it was fun or just kind of like a damaging thing for the actual person was talking about. But we'll go with the scale. And if the feedback is that rassholes for having a scale, then maybe we'll get rid of it. But we're concluded for now. The scale is there are one, five, one to ten scales and those scales would add up to a total score possible score of fifty. And we've added of the final score, we've we we have uh, five different ratings that go if you score from zero to ten, from eleven to thirty and so and so forth. Um. And we'll tell you about exactly what those things are at the end. But we're just gonna go through this and score this particular event. See what's up with this, mom, this thing? Uh? To what extent was the individual animal known to the public? Um, one is very not known at all and ten is famous. I give it him one solidly on one cal a one. We will go with one. Yeah, clarify this can be seen in two ways. To what extent was the individual animal known to the public species wise, I say Mark corps to the general public would be a one and does this individual animal? Is this actual individual animal known and named and famous? Also? I want correct? Yeah, And I was talking to Ronell about this earlier and he said, you know, he's like, make sure to make the point that in this in this case, a one and a ten are both used by the media as a as a negative. If it was well known, if it's got a name and a collar, it's a negative because you killed an animal we all know and love. And if it's a one, it's very rare, and it's a negative because you've killed something that's very nobody knew about. Ye. Nobody knew about it, and that's why it's bad. Or everyone knew about it, and that's why. And that's what I see a lot. It's like, oh my gosh, I've never seen anything like that that can't be legal. Yeah, yep, Oh my god. Rhinos. Shooting a rhino can't be legal because it's a rhino. When it seems because it's on an animal cracker, I've never seen one. Um, so we're we're silently on a one there, and I think probably rightly so. Um, how imperiled is the species that was killed? This will be an interesting one one being not imperiled at all. Same man, white tailed deer at ten being you know, likely endangered or in that scale, probably not extrapated because we'd have to be able to hunt it, but would be near in danger. Mint. That's the word, Yanni, give us a give us your vote one to ten. Um. Well, I would say that we found out on the scale that it's it's it's in near threatened. Um. The only other one that's less is least concerned. Then it just jumps off the list completely. I don't know. I would give it a count ten. Ten is most imperial, Yes, ten. I mean, if we're going off that scale that we looked at, the International Wildlife Scale, ten would be extrapated from critically endangered, Okay, right, yeah, because if it was extra pay you wouldn't have anything to shoot at at all. Yeah. So I'm gonna give it like a three, three, four, I think. Okay, when I fill this out earlier, I put it out of four. Yeah, I'm I'm going off that scale. I'm gonna say it's a three and a half. I would probably go five just to make it easy for us, and we'll say four. It's kind of in the middle of where we all ended. Okay, four, so we're up to five. Who has a pens? We're actually keeping track here, digital age bro. We have a we have a printed out piece of paper. We'll call for a We do all have printed out piece of paper. Um, knock on that window. We're gonna get somebody to bring a pen in. Okay, I'll knock on that. Give it that. I think we can. I think we'd probably keep it. Nine, We can't add I got it all he's got, he's got. Next on the sliding scale is to what extent do Americans generally recognize this species as a lovable Creature's gotta be a one? Yeah, I mean it doesn't even look that lovable. I've never seen it as a cartoon. I don't think it'd be very fun to cuddle with. No goats are typically associated with satanic rituals and the devil. Good point, cal it's gonna be a one based on the cuddle the cuddle scale, the cuddle scale. Um so what so one? We'll go with one. That means we have six total and we only have two left to go. So it's not looking um good for the scandal here. How offensive was the offending photograph or other media, the offending photographs, so we can look at the offending friend and we have a video. Is well, we should we should, we should definitely watch the video. I was gonna say, do we lump the video in? Yes, I think it has that. So it turns let's let's watch the video and we'll get a little play by play on the video. So we'll say the offending photograph or associated media, associated media, because it could be who knows a flip book, you never know. We're gonna watch the video. We'll describe to you what's going on. Of course, you know, we'll share share this allans. So it starts with a let do with the he's going up the hill, has no pack on. These guys pulling him up the cliff. Yes, guys help him. He's definitely struggling. It's like a steep nasty So it's a slow motion shot of the bullet impacting somewhere behind the shoulder. They're dragging up a hill to pose the photo. And then there's a bunch of locals cheering around the dead. Yeah, a good number of them there. Uh. I can't say it's a very flattering video. It's not very flattering video, but you know the photo itself. I'm not seeing any blood. I don't see a tongue lalling out. If we had Meat Eater shot that same video, though, Johannae tell us our Meat Eater producer here, that would have been like a very engaging, romantic scene, don't you think. I don't know if there's nothing in there that really qualifies as a scene in my world because there's no real scenes. It's like very clippy and fast, like a montage. It's like compressing what looks to be like probably four to five hours into what is that ten seconds long? Thirty seconds long? Um So I don't know, I mean you just yeah. That is the problem with when you when you put something out that's so quick, is that there is no context and so everything can be taken out and so what they make it turn. What it looks like here is that he jumps out of the car, he jumps up to boulders, he lays down over his pack. It takes a shot, and the shot moving slow motion, and the next thing you know, he's posing with his nice trophy and actuality. What happened is it probably took the dude four days to get to this part of the world. Who knows what kind of environment he then lived and slept in for who knows how many days because we don't know the full story. Um, but it looks rough and dusty. I don't know how many days they hunted for this animal. I don't know how many sunsets and sunrises he enjoyed. I don't know how how what kind of relationships he built with all these people that he was out hunting with. Um, there's a lot there that we have no idea about. But again, when it's compressing the thirty seconds, Um, yeah, it looks uh so, I would say, really the only thing but from my point, if you're going the only thing that looks sort of offensive or offending there is that they like everybody wants to put the freaking shot in the slow motion and see the bullet impact. Like who gives a shit about that anymore? It's like, I'm sorry, I just don't get my jolly's off of watching that, like the bullet impact and seeing that shock wave go through uh, the animal's bodies. It's not good for me. And if I don't really like the look of that, then you can only imagine what not anties. But even non hunters think when they see that point. Well, I'm saying, this freeze frame of the of the grip and grin and just the country behind him looks staggering, and I'm like, why, why can't you do just a quick pan across that. I want to see what those mountains I went to. It's a new pal and hunted animal that no one will know about. And we made like an eight to ten minute black and white film and that showed all like, never showed the shot, never showed we we showed the animal dead and the animal being eaten. But it was a tiny little part of of the film. The film is about people in place and then um and so there's nothing to separate this dude out of the fact that he's a rich banker who made a thirty second video with me. Um. When I went to Nepal the hunt blue Sheet, it's it's the same, you guys are pretty similar adventure. So how offensive was the offensive photograph or a company media? I would if I can go first, I'm gonna only give it a I would give it like a one, except except for the slow motion bullshit. Because of that, I'm gonna bump it up to a four. Four. Nice. Should we bring in a non hunter and have them yeah there right now? Because well, you guys keep going, I'll go grab a non hunter and we'll show them this and see what their reaction is. Okay, continue, given your number, I want, I'll go find it. How offensive was that little video and the grip and grin you know you made? You made some good points and it kind of kind of changed my mind a little bit. I did not find it terribly offensive. I found it to be low quality and slightly tasteless, but not, you know, grossly offensive. But you're right, the gratuitous SloMo is a little annoying. I'd probably give it a three Ryan callheah, I mean, I just I can't even get that high up on the scale. I I am going to withhold my judgment until our special guests ways in. Is that just because I don't want to influence anything? Don't influence Kylie Kyle, you gotta pull up your microphones. Is a little closer to your mouth. I can hear you joining us now? Is our what's your title now? Executive assistant? Pretty much office badass that just takes care of everyone's problems around here. We wouldn't build a function without her Kyle machine, ah, who you don't hunt at all? So I have? Um, I have not, but I do. I've wanted to, and I actually am ready to go. I just have not actually done it yet. So you haven't gone on your first hunting trip yet yet. It seems like you're relatively cool with it, being that you're employed here. Yeah, my my whole husband's side, everyone, my friends. I grew up with it. I just I personally haven't done it. It was my goal to be thirty into it, and then that has gone and passed. So so how old are you? All right? So we're gonna show Kylie this video and then get her immediate reaction. M y all right? What do you think was that was? Was there anything offensive in that video? Wasn't offensive at all? You gotta scale here with one being absolutely un no way, shape or form offensive and ten being I am horrified that that ever made it into the public purview. Yes, I feel like vomiting. No, but I'm also to me, that's also hunting. I think I could see where people would see, like when he held up the creature. I think that's where people are like, oh my gosh, it's a it's a pet, it's an animal. For me, that's just hunting. That's exciting you. You got something, you hunted it. Um for me, No, I don't think that's so the way that they portrayed it in that little thirty second video. Nothing about the video was offensive to you. So are you already normal? Alright? Pick a number for us, please? For ten being the most offensive? Oh yeah, I would say maybe like two, just because I see that. I can see where people would have an issue. Got it. I'm gonna jump in here and say one because this is from my perspective. Thanks Kylie, Thank you wonderful of offensiveness. And I do not I do not feel offended. I did not feel offended. I I too don't feel offended. We should have a field here for How offensive was the mainstream news coverage? Yeah, I mean that's that needs to be a part of it. Um. How offensive was the offending photograph? For me? I'm kind of with Kylie on this one. I'd give it a three if I was going to give it one. So what what part of it was just a little bit offensive? The video, I mean the slow like the it the video plays into all the stereotypes to me. So that's I think the awareness level of the hunter and the whoever made the video was low because it's it's it doesn't show any of the appreciation for the animal, the appreciation for the land. That doesn't show any appreciation for the death of the animal and how serious that thing is. It shows a dude shooting an animal at dying and slow motion with a juvenile fucking animal standing right beside it, which whatever it is, what it is. Um, it was an old, mature animal. So I guess that really doesn't matter. But I mean that's how goats live, Like Rocky Mountain, the old see an old billy with brand new you. Yeah, but again I don't think that doesn't matter. Hanging out, it doesn't matter. It's hunting. He'll ship that has, you know, offspring. Um, So I think there's just defensive. Part to me is there's a little bit like like the self awareness of this guy doing this, whomever edited to the video is is pretty low. Like it shows high the first thing after the shot is a high five. And not that you have to cry, but this cut really does play into the hands of the stereotypers out there, I believe. So, Janice, you were four, Sam, you were three. Yes, Uh myself, I was a one. Sticking to it, Kylie. We're gonna scale with Kylie on this one man. She said to band you said three yeah, so um three right, yeah, we can go three. Three is good. Um, so right now we're really low. We went to what extent was the individually un known to the public. We said one, I think we're at nine. Yeah, how improwable the species that was killed? We ended up a lout of four there correct, correct, five to step the marriageineralized species not one, So that's five and three is six. Three is nine. You're correct, So far we're at nine. Um. The last, but not least in our ratings is how aware was the hunter that this might that this might create a giant ship storm? Um? This is an impossible one, not having talked to the hunter to know. But we can. We can take a look at the evidence and the empirical evidence and figure out what we think. Um. And again, like there was some examples, what was the example saying that we used of somebody that was clearly aware that they were the dude was hunting a named critter and said I'm going to go pedals to There was a hunter hunting and was that New Jersey somewhere on the East coast pedals a bear And there's a guy on in some message boards and on the internet social media saying I'm gonna kill pedals. I'm gonna go get pedals Like this dude would have been a ten. He was aware and wanted to create a giant ship storm and was throwing the middle finger to everybody that love pedals. So that would kind of be the ten. And the one in this case would be the guy. I was just doing illegal hunting activity and um was going about his business and had no knowledge that it would add any possibility to create any kind of media backlash as this one has. Yanni get to kick us off on this one. Um, I want to give him a one, but I just thought better of it because these days, with our the current state of media, they if you go overseas on a uh, very expensive hunt for some animal that most people don't know about, and you put as part of your story your experience on the internet. Anytime you do that, you have to be somewhat aware that it could possibly create a ship to him someone give it to yep. I can see that. Sam. Yeah, That's about where I'd land on it, and that you know he's absolutely right this day and age, you know you're you know, you're walking that line. If you're going to go do this kind of thing, I think we will probably fine if we can keep this ball rolling on the Hunting Scandal Assessment Chair, I bet we do find a situation where there's a truly blissfully unawares person out there, But I I don't think this fellas in that category. But two is where I would I would land just because if we're saying one's like absolutely totally unaware, totally to have be ignorant to this whole social media world around you. Um, but yeah too, yeah yeah, I start by saying, like we're going this isn't the last we're gonna Like, I think, because we've recorded this and had this kind of discussion, it bears for us as a team and probably me individually to go and do some more research on this and continue to you know, check the meat eater dot com, check social media, and will continue to talk about this just so we can kind of answer some of the questions we have at this point. But that is how these scandals go. Like it's a story breaks, it goes to national news, and then well you find ourselves asking a bunch of legitimate questions that we don't have the answers to them. So I think, just because we've elevated this, this particular one, well we can didn't answer these questions. But I agree, I think I think this dude, whenever they're thinking he was doing a good thing, I that would be my guess, um, and all this, I think he was going over there convinced that his money was going to a good experience for him and uh, you know, a positive for the community. Where when he was hunting, I'm I can't be sure of it without asking him specifically, when I'm pretty sure that's the case given who he was with. I know who he was with. So um, how aware was the hunter that this might create a giant ship storm? Um? Yep too, is what I would say. So I think we're all Well, that gets us to a total of eleven. That'll a possible fifty. Well it's actually a possible sixty because behind was the activity legal if you if you if if you're illegal when you do this activity, you add ten points to the final score. That's true, So the possible sixty if you yeah, theoretically a possible sixty, we built that. I don't want to see what I don't want to know. I feel like I feel like a sixty is going into a zoo at night. I bet the bad ones are gonna get Are you going to You're real bad, like you threw a grenade into the whale tank at the fucking please please. We're not challenging you. No, no, and none of the those things aren't hunting. Um. So let me go through quickly the the rating for the hunting Scandal assessment chart. We'll start with the lowest. If you score from zero to ten, we say there's nothing to see here. It's the sinct If you're in there in the eleven to twenty range, raised eyebrows. But let it go one to thirty. This is why we can't have nice things. Thirty day Instagram suspension for the offender thirty one to forty we say, do not pass, go and return to hunter safety class. Get baskets forty one to fifty. Bad idea. The offender should quietly walk away from hunting. What do you think about that? Those those uh scores? Fellers to make motion on the table to just downgrade this too. There's nothing to see here. Yeah, it's like we have an eleven here, which would be like raised eyebrows would let it go? Um, I mean my raised eyebrowser in the attention that this has received. Yes, yes, aggregate activities here, Kyl makes emotion to the I agree to get this down to there's nothing to see here? Do we all agree? Agree? Agree? I agree? I think there again, there's nothing to see here. This dude did not evil in my opinion. He very much was doing what he believed I think to be a good thing. Again, I'm making a lot of assumptions there. There's a lot of assumptions in this conversation, and coming days will will add as much detail to this as we possibly can if we can. Who knows if we will be able to. But uh, some people might look Yanni, what do you think about if if we use this, if we go forward with the scoring system, what do you think about, Um, this forty one to fifty being the offender should quietly walk away from hunting. I feel like we're being mean no, and I feel like some people are probably sitting there here when they're as you're listening to this thing, and said, may just passing judgment. I think we tried very hard not to do that and take it from a very uh objective. Yeah, if there's anybody out there that thinks hunters aren't judging each other, boy, you're you're missing the boat. But I want to say that that's why I like thirty one to fifty, which is do not pass, go and return to hunter safety class. All of us, I think, in our community of eleven million or whatever we are now in this country, agree that what you are taught there in that class is pretty straightforward, simple basic like how you should go about doing it as you go first for safety, and then there's also some ethics that are usually taught in those classes. And if you're gonna score this high on that chart, you're obviously just breaking those like very basic you know, rules and guidelines that we sat and that we teach kids as young as you know, six and seven these days, and then all of us should be going through so um again not trying to pass any kind of judgment. It's just like real basic shit about how you know you don't point a gun at somebody and I don't know, you shouldn't we have it? Did we find any We went through this when we were doing this to try to see if we could, if any situation would would get to the forty one to fifty, which is quietly walk away from hunting. And I don't think we got there, did we. I think we did with the pedals to the pedals. The bear guy was the one thing that was like, with the information we have here, this person, while legally you know, hunting, we believe to be legally hunting this bear, did it in such a way that would hurt us all, yeah, intentionally, and we felt like that was Yeah. I think I think the cecil the lion he landed on the do not passty somewhere in there where it wasn't illegal, wasn't really asking for it, but God damned it hurt us as a as a society. Yeah. Yeah, But I think this goes to one thing that I've been thinking about lately and some of the stuff that's happened around to years. This is like, we can't we have to leave room. We can't be so rigid in our ideas that we have that we don't leave room for um for criticism, Like you know, we gotta leave room for someone to to criticize within our community, criticize what we do, or from without criticize what we do. And the issue we have with this is that the people that are from without our our the criticism is totally unfounded, not researched, and and not valid. In my opinion, Um, I'm I'm happy to take on valid criticism of marcle Hunt if it's researched and and done well. But when the PDA criticism comes across the board and it's just full of just untruths and half half truths, and well, and not only Pete, I mean, we'd like know that Peter is like they see something like this and they're like, oh my god, Christmas in February. But like CNN and some of the other outlets that you mentioned, it's like, in this day and age, we're all really looking for some people that can say that we're doing good journalism and giving you the facts. And that's why I was so happily surprised when we read that first article you had up that was from the Pakistani and I don't know that that it's like Dawn dot com, let me go and find it. I want to make sure we're regretting them correctly wherever it came from. It was an article that somehow managed it was. It was so like uplifting when I read it, because somehow they just said what happened. Maybe we can chalk that up to some sort of language barrier. We very well couldn't. But there was no judgment as to you know, right or wrong? Is this like, hey, yeah, I mean it's something you might want to know about. It's clear that it's clear that I talked to the writer here, not talked to Instagram message with the writer of the CNN story, and he and he felt that he, you know, practiced the good journalism. I think he's dead as wrong. He should be ashamed of himself. Slander. This is like close to slander. And he clearly had prejudged the person and had a bias against hunting when writing this piece like it. It is clear, I mean, he he goes as far as to his first lines says that we sparked outrage and yet who right now you can google the internet and you can't find the outrage that he speaks though, and he says and he quotes Peter and then ends that sentence with While some Pakistani has called for a ban on hunting such animals that right there, which pakistanis Who are they credible? Are they not? Who called for somebody on Pakistan that you're a comment you read on Facebook. All the all the Pakistani news sites I've looked at have not seem to care a whole lot about this. Yeah, I mean it is is manufactured outrage, um, and the outrage cycle because I think it's laziness only because Um, this writer knows that this will get clicks. He knows it will do his job to bring in traffic to to his organ so he cares less about he knows the headline will get it done, so he cares less about the facts within. Like that's just that's clear. And if it's insane to me that this person doesn't have a little bit more of a moral compass and a little bit more caring about is is the folks that are his readers, Like it's insane to me, And like that goes back to the problem that we're talking about. So the the original article that Yanni was referencing is Dawn dot com um, and I don't think it's a newspaper out of Pakistan, but it covers Pakistan. Um. And you know again, like you said, that's just basically what it what it says. I think this is probably our our friend. Right now, I'm gonna step out and talk to this guy who set the hunt up. I'll be right back al right. Well, UM, as we kind of round this out here, we actually uh, we're able to talk to took a little podcast break. We're able to talk to a young a young man named Gregg Brownley who UM is a part of Neil and Brownlee, which is a booking agency we talked about earlier. Greg has been to Pakistan, was there in two thousand and fourteen, UM and has UH guided and booked hunts for UM. Mr Harlan who we spoke of in the with the marc Orps hunt UM so we had he was in actually in the cheat did stand with some clients flying back. It was nice enough to to chat for about ten minutes about UM this situation. So we wanted to clarify a few things we learned from Greg and then also maybe in the future we'll be able to talk to UM Mr Harlan the hunter. So we'll again check the media dot com. We'll had some more color to this as we go. As it seems relevant. But um, anybody having reactions to that conversation we just had with with with Greg No, I think it just uh supports what we were saying. Really yeah, I think it really did. Most of what he said supported exactly what we thought. You know, we had um asked him just for a little personal color on on Brian uh Harlan and only good things. You know, a consciencis hunter somebody who um spoke with the Pakistani media um during the hunt and was talking about you know, conservation and the money that where this money would go and um and how it would benefit so yeah, and he made it sound like these hunts are celebrated by local Pakistani's. He he added, um, you know an additional level to this that the the mark Corps truly are value list to local Pakistani's without this hunting involved. He said, they'd rather shoot a Markhorps than one of their own goats. Ten dollar goat, ten dollar goat. Yeah. That yeah, like without the value of hunting, that these goats are worthless. Not these Markhorps are worthless when compared to a ten dollar goat, which is livestock because they compete for grazing in a in a pretty uh, pretty rugged environment with not a whole lot of grass. It looks like hardy hardy. Yeah. Um. And he was saying when he did the similar hunt, Uh, they had three hundred locals come and yeah see the animal when they brought it off the mountain, and people were cheering and celebrating the size of the animal that their local ecosystem produced. But kind of in a attempt to say, like Gideon on the action and possibly sway the hunter to return and hunt in their area or go hunt in their areas, right, Yeah, they want that. There's like we we would love these funds to be contributed to arch unity. So we're trying to raise and protect these animals to make them bigger so that triv honorable want to come and you know, and like I said, that goes back to what we're talking about earlier. That's a conflicting reality for me. Uh, but Greg just sent me it's a little more information that we were talking about, like the Kashmir markhors, which is one of the three subspecies that are over there that are honorable. Um. He basically said that Kasmir Markhorts saw its population is once game rich area dwindle to thirty individuals by the early nineties, due to uncontrolled poaching and competition with local livestock, the markhorps had no value in the eyes of local Pakistan. He's realizing that something needs to be done. Local leaders decided to set up a protected game reserve for the mark corps and moved out all domestic livestock. In a few short years, funding was drying up and and it was impossible to find in this rural area of Pakistan, where the average salaries five dollars a week. They decided to auction a single permit to hunt a male markhorps, with of the proceeds going directly funding anti poaching and protection of the animals and the game reserve. The plan worked and the population steadily began to increase as many local people started to see the value in the mark corps. Today, the population is upwards of thirteen hundred animals and the Tushi g r Game Reserve with the total of five hunting permits per year, and other areas are beginning to create in services of their own and an attempt to grow the population. And again he references that these permits are a hundred thousand dollars each so, UM, that's the reality on the ground. Like it or don't. That's what's happened there. Those are the facts from someone who's hunted there, greg and hunted there, and it was a part of some of the beginnings of UM these game reserves, you know, becoming you know, really truly funded by American trophy hunters or international triphy uners. I guess to say, so that's that. UM, anybody have any closing thoughts on what we've done here, what we're trying to do. With the complex nature of all this business, it's just it just seems so arbitrary that this particular thing was seized upon, as it often does when these scandals rise. It's like, how did you how did you pick this one? How's this guy any worse than other three guys you shot Mark Corps in the same spot in Pakistan? Um higher highest dollar amount. But if I'm the dude from CNN, I'm like, wait, a hundred thousand, hundred five thousand, that's good with that. I just gotta wonder if he didn't hear about the other ones. This one just randomly came across his sphere and he's like, oh, I bet that pist off a bunch of people. Well, and I need something to write about today. Yeah, I mean, as a hunter, you have a choice right to let this kind of scare you. Like if you feel if you're you know, if you're the guy who went over here and crack the mark orps, you have a couple of things like you can hunt, and a lot of these guys will not allow their identities to be put out there. That like if that if somebody wants to share a photo then the animally gotta blur their face that you'll see that a lot. And he's hide out or trophy um hunting circles, so like you have it, like it's just scary for this guy, Like he's I'm sure getting death threats and I would attempt to talk to him and just kind of see what's up. I just read through all the Facebook comments on that video and there are death threats in there. Yeah, and so you know, you know, from talking to Greg and getting some color on this guy, like he really truly, I thinks that he's doing a good thing with his money. And and by the numbers, he is whether you think, you know, whatever you think of this activity, the numbers say that he is doing a good thing. So, um, I would admit to being a bit conflicted. How how does this really make hunters look? But at the end of the day, I would side with the dude who spend all his money, hard earned money, to go go towards conservation. It's hard for me to to argue against that. Yeah, as long as you can look at Mark Corps as a species and not the individual Mark Corp named Billy, um, then it's a it's a plus for the species. They're gonna do better without Billy overall in the long run than with Billy by having Brian take him home. They're read about that. Cal give us some give us a very deep closing thought. Were shallow? It can be shallow. I'm not gonna judge you. You can say Mark Corps are pretty You're gonna book your Mark Wis Hunt tomorrow. Yeah, you know what I mean. It is it's just a bizarre thing because for me like that may as well be like a doctor Seus's type animal. Right, So it's uh, I know they exist. I've I've heard about him before. I've read about accounts of folks going over there. Um. But um, yeah, I mean it's it's definitely a departure from home. Um, until you kind of break it down to you know, Hunter goes through some sorts of sort of license fee, pays for the opportunity to uh, you know, try to take old billy home. But um, yeah, it uh it's I'm more offended by the sensational nature of um, how things are portrayed, Like we can't give people enough credit to come up come to their own conclusions. Um, so we want to nudge them a little bit. And in this writer's defense, you know, maybe his sounding board is just straight up easily insulted type of person. He said, hey, what do you think about this? Like, oh, my god, worst thing ever? And then he's like a headline people enraged by a man paying a hundred and ten thousand dollars from Mark R. So uh yeah, yeah, not that this particular thing, this happens happening so often. Now that that's this particular thing shouldn't be surprising in or it's not really special and it's in what's happened, but it's happening, so we need to assess it officially. Nothing to see here, Nothing to see here, folks on the Hunting scandal assessment. So We'll put that there's nothing scandal assessment short on the mediator dot com. You go over there and you click on that son of a bitch and you print it out and you do it with your friends. Get serious or don't you know? You know the best possible thing you can do is UM print that thing out, invite a couple of your non hunting friends over and UH go through that chat together. Be a good eye opening, good conversation amongst amongst friends. Think that's right, have a conversation. Yeah, yeah, I have a conversation. It's a good way to close it. Thank you, gentlemen, Thank you. That's it. That's all. We're done. We're done another hunting collective in the books. Thank you again to Ryan Callahan, Sam Longer than you honest tell us for taking the time to crack through this with me UM and filling out our huntings anal assessment chart and talking through what is the complex and difficult happening in our world. So it was, you know, to me, just a little bit cathartic to talk it through with some folks. And again, I think the hunting community less uh is less concerned with these um scandals. But if the non hunting community sees them on news outlets and it's covered in the mainstream and it's pretty consistent. So it's something that we need to address. And hopefully this is the beginning of a long conversation about how we address these things, UM and if there is a problem, how we can solve it together in a constructive way. So hopefully this this discussion helped with that we do take it seriously, even though we have sometimes our tongues firmly planted in a cheek. Um, this is something we do consider to be, you know, fairly serious. What else? What else? What else? Oh? Thank you, thank you, Thank you to everyone who came out to Renown, Nevada and Sacramento, California to the first two shows UM the live tour the Meat Eater podcast. I was able to join um callahan and Patelis and Ronella and Remy Warren and uh Grey Thornton from Wild Cheap while We're in Reno, and it was amazing. That was my first time being on stage for for podcasts like this and to meet the thousands or so folks that showed up to hear you laugh and cheer during the recording. Um Man, it was rewarding for me. So I'm I'm I'm happy that I was able to do it, Happy that Steve Ronella has has created a platform such as that. One is graciously happy huh be a part of it, um, And it was you know, to meet everyone for young and old, to meet everyone and hear your experiences with our content. Man is inspiring. And we're gonna do it more and better and m continue to promote what we feel like is the the right conversation, the right experience with hunting, fishing and the like. So thank you again. It means a lot to us. Uh. There's more dates for the live tour if you go to the media dot com and click on events, there's more dates. There's more tickets available all around the country, from Seattle to Kalambazoo, Michigan to Dallas to Houston. UM. I will be in the at the Boise Show at the b h A Rendezvous on stage, and I will also if if we end up doing one in Austin, Texas, I will be there and on stage for that one as well. If you were wondering UM beyond that, go to the meet dot com do all the things over there as well. Sign up for the newsletter. Go to the store. There's a lot of gear there for you to purchase if you'd like to, and we hope you would like to. Um. That's it for now. Again, thank you for tuning in, Thanks for being a part of this conversation. Come get us, get in contact with us. If you have any critiques in any scandal assessment chart, or anything we I had to say today, We're happy to read it. Bye. M.

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