00:00:01 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome episode number five of the Honey Collective. I'm been O'Brien. I'm joined today by a unique individual to say in the least, and that's Shane Mahoney. Shane is the president CEO of of an organization called Conservation Visions. You may have heard him speaking in the public venue about conservation, about his efforts, all the things he's done in his life. Shane is a native of Newfoundland, but he's also a scientist. He's a wildlife manager. He's a policy innovator, he's a strategist. He's a filmmaker. He's a writer, he's a narrator. He's pretty much the most interesting man in conservation, both by his awesome beard and hat and the way he speaks, the way he rates, and how he comes across as a hunter. I wanted to catch up with Shane about a lot of things, but mostly about his knowledge of history and how he sees the hunting world right now, and I believe it was one of the more interesting and passionate conversations I've had in some times. So I'm happy to share that with you, and without further ado, Mr Shane Mahoney enjoyed Shane. How's it going. It's going really well. Um. I'm excited to have this exchange his ideas and conversation with you, so it'll be another chance to talk about something we both feel really passionate about, which is the conservation of wildlife and our outdoor traditions. So very happy to be here with you. Absolutely well, thanks for thanks for jumping on with me. I think before we get into it, we should address your you told me you have a shiner. Currently. There was a little bit of an incident the other day. Yes, well, I was doing some tree limbing on the weekend, taking advantage of the fact that here in Newfoundland this winter we don't have nearly as much snow as usual, and I was up on a high ladder and this particularly large branch of some mature maple trees I have on my property decided to jump and smacked me in the face and knocked me just instantly off the ladder, onto the onto the ground with roaring chains on my hand. But fortunately the worst of things did not happen, and I just ended up with a fairly significant cut. And now I'm sporting a lovely looking a bizarre I which wouldn't normally be a complication, except that I'm doing some filming in the next couple of days, so we're trying to figure out if if that can work, and if not, we'll just have to postpone and wait for my my eye to go back to its normal color. Yeah, I'm working on a cold myself, if anybody can hear that. So we're both we're both fifty, but we'll make this happen nonetheless. So I wanted to just talk to you about you know, I've probably got many hours of conversation, like we've had a little bit in the past, about conservation and your philosophies and the things that you care about and are working on currently. But I realized I don't really know much about your upbringing or um, you know, really your hunting history. So I wanted to just kind of start by, um getting a little bit of your background, you know, growing up and your first introduction to hunting and conservation and and really the the beginnings of of of your passions. Well, I think the most important and influential element in my thinking and in my life was that I was raised, born and raised obviously in the Audit of Newfoundland and lived in my early childhood period and into my adolescence in very rural circumstances, in an incredible society, and in an incredible place where the physical attributes, the sea and the land itself, very rugged place sort of imparts a sense of identity and a sense of awareness of the physical and biological world that is impossible to miss. And I grew up in a culture where there weren't any policemen. There weren't any hospitals, there weren't any lawyers, there weren't any insurance companies. There weren't any of those kinds of things, fire departments, or things of that nature. They were really communities that relied absolutely fundamentally upon themselves in one another. We are the oldest non native culture in North America. All the people don't realize that, but the firm cultural identity of a single place, no other place, but no full ang goes back so far as to have that, and we have, over a period of five hundred years approximately, um we developed a very close association with the natural world. The fishing of fish, the whaling of whales, the ceiling of seals, um the hunting of wild creatures, the growing of our own food, and domestic lives, doctor so on. This became just the natural order. It was the natural rhythm of things. And at the same time that world gave all of us as children, completely unfettered lives. Everyone in the community above a certain age who was male was known as uncle so and so. And I don't mean that it's some kind of folk Taylor's way. That is absolutely true. Everybody who was of a certain ages of women was ant. We went in and out of one another's homes. We we slept over in lots of cases, as though we were parts of families. Children that got into trouble were chastised by anyone in the community, but they were also looked after by everyone in the community. So I also came to appreciate over time the kind of values and the kind of cultural identity that comes with people who live close to the natural world. And of course this has been maintained and as exemplified in a sort of very crystalline way with the the new play that has made such a hit on Broadway and elsewhere now around the world called Come from Away, which talks about how Newfoundlanders welcomed sevent of all the Transatlantic travelers, most of whom were Americans who were coming back to North America on that fateful day of nine eleven. And so I came to a very early appreciation of this relationship between human cultures and traditions, the harvesting of wild creatures, and are absolute total dependence on the natural world as a concrete, inseparable kind of idea. Um. And of course all of this takes place organically, and a child and a human being as they mature, but there's absolutely no question that this is the genesis of it. More importantly even than that, perhaps is the fact that because of this childhood, animals and nature became we're not only incredibly accessible to me and to all of my friends, siblings and so on, but it was it was entirely possible for us to enjoy it every day without fear. I mean we we we We lived in a society where everyone knew one another, and where no one was concerned if children disappeared for long hours or played at the end of wars, or when trouting by themselves, as I so often did, even as a very small boy of five and six years of age and even earlier. And also, of course, there were the domestic animals the horses and the sheep and the hens and so on that that people kept, and so you always had these kinds of companions around you. And then if your inclination was stronger than some, which there's always variation, then of course that environment set it free. And I came. My life with animals began as a very very small boy. And while hunting has had an impact on me, animals have shaped me. And so I don't see hunting as the ultimate driving force in my association with animals. I see animals as the driving force of my engagement with wildlife and with animals, and I see hunting as something that is a part of that um and which makes it entirely possible for me to say that I hunt and I love animals deeply, without absolutely any sense of contradiction or any sense of fear that I would not be able to defend that in any circumstance or any debate anywhere in the world. And it extended to wild creatures as well as domestic creatures. I love the ponies, I love the chickens, I love the sheep. I I and I've never lost fascination with animals, whether they are domesticated animals or whether they are wild creatures. And I guess the ultimate, the ultimate expression of that journey then is that I really and this offends some people, of course, but I really don't see very much difference between so called us and then. And this opens up a lot of philosophical discussions, of course, and sometimes makes hunters feel some hunters not at all, but some hunters feel a bit uneasy. But for me, as a hunter, you have to accept that truth can still be able to do it absolutely absolutely well. I mean, there's a lot there um to unpack, but especially but but what strikes me is just in your upbringing. Um, there's a lot of aspects that we're missing in the modern world. We're missing in the urban world and even the suburban world. Your connection to the people around you, A deep sense of trust that that you had there and that that will allow you to probably explore more than maybe you would have if you didn't have a sense of trust in your community, uh, and things like that. So I think that you know your passion for animals in the in the connection you feel to them. I'm sure it was just driven closer by the environment that you you grew up. And I find that to be be something in the modern world that we we lack. And um, I think more folks could could take heed to the way you grew up and the changes that we've seen in the last few decades. Well, I think that is true, and of course it's a it's part of the great conundrum for conservation in in many ways, because we know that there is increasing urbanization occurring worldwide. I mean there is a there is a continuous and strengthening move to cities of course by people in cultures all around the world, and this is having a lot of effects in the sense that it is separating a lot of people from the natural world more and more. But at the same time, it is also freeing up considerable landscapes that at one time were occupied by people that are now being reclaimed by wildlife at many parts of the world, um, which a lot of people don't think about. But this is one of the outcomes of urbanization which is a benefit to conservation in the sense that it's more spaceful for wildlife to thrive and exist. Um. The flip side of it, of course, is this problem of association from the natural world, and we are going to have to find ways to bring people to a concern for animals and wildlife regardless of where they live. Fortunately, because our relationship with animals is such an evolutionary thing. I mean, it's so deeply bettered in us. But the one thing that city people, if we could call people city people versus rural people, do not differ on is their fascination with animals and with wildlife. Um. That's why the television shows like the BBC's Planet Earth, which to a large extent simply featured the biological diversity of the planet, attracts the largest television audience of all time. UM. So we're not helpless in this debate, as some of the rhetoric might suggest. And because children like technology just like we did as children, just like every human child has since we broke the first stone. Um, you know this is uh, this, this doesn't need that. We can define a significant conservation ethic within people in those circumstances, and we might be reminded, as hunters and anglers that it was the urban elites of the United States of America, the George Bird Grinnell's and the Theodore Roosevelt's it was the urban elites of your country which led the movement for conservation at the turn of the twentieth century. Absolutely there was a lot of Europeanism in those ideas that who would be a hunter? Right? I mean, um, that leads into a great uh, a subject that I wanted to cover up. Not I wasn't sure we'd get to it today because there's so much but just uh, the beginning of conservation in this country, um, and how you know, eighty years is a long time, um since we really got into the things like Pittman Robertson Acts and some of the more important legislation. UM. But I believe it was you know, the turn of the century when Pinochet define what conservation was and started to understand this idea that market hunting was going to two was ruined us to our wild life into America and we needed to have a different set of ideals. So talking, I know, you have a lot of knowledge about that, and you've been really involved and you know in the North American model of wildlife conservation and theorizing and talking a lot about how conservation came to be and then in the pursuing you know, preceding decades why it needed to to change when it did. So I would love you. I As an aside to that, I think there's a lot of hunters that do not know much about that history, and in our outbit removed from things like Pittman Robertson UM and and funds they pay into because they are generations, removed from the idea that it was necessary. So I think it's it's important to to cover those things well. It is important because in the broadest conceptual sense, UM, knowing our history is what prepares us for the present and the future. UM. And also knowing our history is what helps give our nations and our people a sense of identity. And one part of the history of the United States and of Canada meant certainly of some other countries, but really significantly in the United States was the rise of this idea of conservation and which was really kind of the forerunner of the sustainable use movement, etcetera. UM. You know, it's hard for people today to believe that a hundred and twenty and indeed a hundred fifty years ago, UM, the ravages being applied to wildlife and other natural resources such as forests, for example, but also river systems so on, were just extreme in in the United States. In particular and in parts of settled Canada, the depletion of wildlife was at such a state that, as I have said and reminded many policy makers, if we had had endangered Species acts, you know, at the turn of the twentie century in the United States Canada, most of the iconic species that most readily come to mind too people when you say the word wildlife, you know, such as black bear, or white tailed deer, mule deer, elk, you know, species Canada, geese, wood ducks, wild turkeys, and all these kind of iconic species. They would have all been on the endangered species list. There's absolutely no question of that. Depletions were so extreme and so geographically extensive and widespread that every one of them would have been elicted. And yet we live at a time whereas hunters like to point out, most of those iconic species, of course, are ones that are very safely distanced from anything like an endangered species listing, and they are in extraordinary abundance in many cases. So we have somebody there are being killed in our highways and turkeys in our driveways. It goes. So this is an example, first of all, all the extraordinary capacity of a country to move from wildlife crisis to wildlife triumph. And of course every country in the world is preoccupied with this issue today, and yet we have a demonstration of our capacity, as you know, beings to undertake such rescue missions and be successful. The second most important comment about that, of course, is that the people who responded to the crisis were people who, in many cases never needed to worry about their opportunities in life at all, because they were elites, they were from wealthy backgrounds, and so on and so forth, and yet they threw themselves into this fight as nationalists, essentially, as Americans, as people who believed, as Roosevelt articulated that if you did not care you could excuse me about the natural resources of your country, and if you did not want to play a part in their management and custodianship so that future generations could inherit them and share them, then you really had no right to call yourself an American. This ultimately got translated in the American social political environment to the White House because as a result of you know, an assassination, obviously um Teddy Roosevelt comes to power. He becomes the President of the United States of American he draws into the vortex of power are in the White House, these ideas and then brings them to the nation and to the governors, to the to the political infrastructure of the country, and then sets about, you know, doing the famous things that people know about him, you know, setting up national parks and wilderness areas, while life reserved and all of that. And while all of that was important, the most important thing that people like pin Show and Grinnelle and Roosevelt gave and which Roosevelt personified, was he gave to the American people this idea that conservation of wildlife and natural resource has mattered. And despite the fact that not everybody had been a fan of Teddy Roosevelt's when he was in the presidency, and despite the fact that you know, when he left the presidency obviously eventually, um, it's a very interesting that no American president since Democrat or Republican has really done it, has really done much to damage the basic kind of infrastructures that Teddy Roosevelt put in place. Despite the fact that he had so many critics at the time, that suggests to me that he embedded something in America. He embedded something in the American people, and that that makes political leaders think twice about changing too much the way that the resources of your country are managed. And this doesn't mean that every American citizen knows the history. It doesn't mean that every American citizen walks around preaching this. Of course they don't. But still there has to be a reason for why his programs and institutions have been so resilient over a century. Well. And I think the uniqueness of those ideas is really codified in the fact that today every American values wild life. I mean, we we disagree in a lot of ways about how that value looks and feels, what it means, but I think we all, unlike you know, Africa or other areas of the world, we all have a value determined value for those animals. And I think that's really, at the end of the day, the legacy of the early conservationists. I mean, I think it has to be that that there's no one in this country that would would stand for the wholesale slaughter of the animals like it was in market hunting times. No, I think that's that's absolutely true, and the sensibilities of the nation have changed in many ways, of course, but I think you're absolutely right about widlife. And and of course this is the great this is the great suit of armor that that conservation wears. Right. I mean, there's there is a citizen, citizen rebacking these values. It's not just a handful of professionals in the US Fish and Wirelife Service or geological survey of the National Park Service. It's not just a group of you know, of effective bureaucrats buried within you know, government offices in Washington. It's not just a Secretary of Interior. It's not just anything. It really the solid fabric of this movement lies in the this sort of generalized kind of awareness and sensibility that is now part of the American psyche. And you know, I think this is what all opportunity for conservation going forward springs from that reservoir of commitment and hope. Absolutely When then you go to seven, specifically when Franklin Roosevelt got a bunch of people together, two thousand conservations in fact, and they call it the North American Wildlife Conference, and and that was I think that is a huge point in the readings I've done in the history of of conservation, because they then began to put together a way to pay for all these ideas um, because obviously that you care about wildlife, you want to take care of them and leave places for them to roam, and for hunters to want to pursue them. Well, you have to have some sort of funding to do that. So talk about a little bit about you know, the user pays public benefits model, and a little bit about what was happening in the late nineteen thirties there around Franklin Roosevelt and then the passing of the Pittman Robertson Act, and then what that meant going forward, because I think that's often also a lost aspect of the conservation movement. Well, I think one of the first and most obvious UM residences and similarities in fact between you know, this time period of the mid mid in late nineteen thirties and the original cement period of the turn of the twentieth century and a little bit before, was that both were fueled by crisis um America obviously had you know, suffered the incredible effects of this sort of dust bowl era. The economic challenges were there, and interestingly enough, of course, a relative of Theodore Roosevelts is in the White House and does a great many things in the conservation realm, the conservation Corps, and yes, there was a variety of pieces of legislation established in that time period. Um. You know, the the North American Conference and Wildlife Management Institute were founded at that time. A number of very influential NGO groups came to rise at that time, the Wildlife Federation, just just the cooperative Wildlife Research Unit process. I mean, there were many, many, many, really substantial innovative changes that took place in that period of crisis in America at that time under Franklin Roosevelt's Roosevelt's leadership, the the ideas that there should be a user pay system to some extent, and that that kind of in in a sense, oversimplifies conservation in America. But the phrase is often used, and so it's helpful to discuss it in those terms. You know, this this need was identified much much, much earlier. George Burt Runnell was the first one that I am aware of who actually wrote in Forest Stream, which he was the editor of for many decades, UM, that it should be the hunting community of the United States of America who paid for all wildlife enforcement. Um. This was an idea that was thirty forty years ahead of its time, but nevertheless, the notion that there needed to be money, that the resource had to be managed and protected, that the money had to come from somewhere. This was already floating in the sort of conservation air. And when end we finally saw this solidify or codify, who was when you know, people decided, okay, let's pass legislation and find a way to raise significant amounts of money to help support the state agencies fundamentally in your country, which were of course constitutionally legally given the responsibility for the public trust of those resources, in other words, to manage and custody of those resources that you know that existed within their individual jurisdictions. And so the idea surface that you know, a way to do this was to put a federal excise tax, you know, on commodities that will be used by people who were involved in the outdoors, principally people who hunted um and so rifles and ammunition and things of this nature, and that we could place a tax there that would eventually be would be redistributed back to the states based on the formula of land areas and population, etcetera. Etcetera um, and that those moneys would then be given directly to the state agencies to manage the state wildlife resources. Of course, you know it. First of all, there were more than hunters involved in that process, because obviously anyone who practice shooting, for example, and the target practiced skate shooting and trap shooting its own, and so forth, anyone who actually purchased the firearms and ammunition were also contributing to that fund and therefore also contributing to the state agencies capacities to manage wildlife, whether they were hunters or not. So there was always a more diverse community helping to fund the state agency than just hunters. But over the intervening time period between nine seven and the present day, you know the Prisment Roberts and Act and the moneys that have come from it, I mean it literally had has raised billions above billions of dollars every placeable amounts of money that had been diverted to the management of wildlife in your country. And even to this day, of course, the dollars spent by hunters and also now because of subsequent legislation, the money spent by anglers people who fish are a major component, a majority proportion of the moneys that the state agencies have to operate with. So it's a it was a seminal piece of legislation, bord of ideas that had been launched thirty to forty years earlier, finally enacted and passed, and you know, has just made an absolutely unbelievable difference to the conservation and management of wildlife in your country. And you are the only country in the world that I'm aware of who has something of this specific nature. And it is not by any coincidence in my view, that the the States of America also has the most mature, the most complex, the most innovative conservation UH institutions and system in the world. Yeah, yeah, no, And I think you know, I think uh in my research and readings, it's about six of those state agency funds come from UM either license sales or or Pitt and Robertson funds UM or excise taxes. And that's that's that's huge. And over the over this eighty years of its existence, there's something like eighteen billion dollars or the funding that's that's been pushed in. That's just that number is amazing to me and it's amazing as a as a child that I wasn't taught that, or coming up as a hunter that that wasn't in just instilled in me that you're part of this history, this tapestry of a bunch of really smart people who cared about wildlife. They created this amazing thing that you're now paying into UM for this privilege. And I wonder if you have thoughts on why we don't as Americans celebrate that as much UM as I think we should. Well, I think part of the reason is just that, you know, you have to have UM. The idea of communicating history has to be someone's purpose, just like anything else in society. UM. The idea of communicating your political history, for example, in the United States of America, has been a has been undertaken by generations of amazing writers and historians and academics, etcetera. And so you know what happened joining, for example, the formative years of the founding of the United States, what happened during the time of the Revolutionary War, what happened at the time of the building of the consensus at strife around the constitutional frameworks? UM, what happened joining to America during the Civil war or what America's entry in the Two World Wars. You know, you know America has done. Your country has on an amazing job of capturing that history and bringing that history to the American people. Similarly, um, you know, the efforts of your armed forces over you know, a very long period of time, obviously has been widely celebrated and communicated and commemorated um by you know, American citizens who who who gave that knowledge and offered that knowledge to the rest of the public. And that's why there is such strong support in your country today for the men and women who serve in your own forces. But someone has to do it, someone has to take this on. And you know, while many people today talk about the North American model, I remember when that term was born, and that term did not exist until nineteen nineteen eight, did not exist in the English language. Yet a lot of people I talked to today, you know, kind of you know, speak about that term as though it's kind of always been with us. Well, no, it wasn't always with us at all. And the interesting thing is that it was a Canadian who came up with the term, of course, Dr Valerius Geist, and I was a student of his, of course, and remain a great and fast friend of this amazing man, and I undertook the idea of popularizing it and then, working with other colleagues, we did just that. So when somebody raises the term North American model, it is a primary example of what I am saying in response to your question. It took a group of people who were determined to communicate this history to make that emission without any real resources. We didn't have any plan. All I knew was that this concept had to go forward and led to efforts that eventually involved state agencies and provincial agencies and governments. And when I see the North American model as a term today, it makes me sort of marvel at the fact that we can bring a new concept to the broad public and have it embedded and have it talked about it and have it exercised. But what it amounted to was a need, a need to explain to people that there was, in fact a model in North America. So in a way, it too was born of crisis. Because one of the reasons why that term was developed it was because there was a growing trend in Canada and the United States at that time in the nineteen eighties, nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties, and which persists to this day of privatizing wildlife HM and the the arguments that developed between those who were in favor and those of us who opposed. The privatization of wildlife, which remains, as you know, a very hot topic, led to the question of well, what's at stake? And it was a result of that question being posed in people's minds that they're developed a response. And the response to what was at stake eventually became formulated in the concept of the North American model, which described the system of institutions, policies, and laws that arose out of the sustainable use of wildlife, which we've just talked about going back to the time at Roosevelt and Grenelle, etcetera. That that system was real, it wasn't a falsehood. And if we were to privatize wildlife, many many, many of those policies, laws, and institutions would be rendered either unimportant, useless, contradictory um and eventually we would undermine the successes of North American conservation. And that's where that term came from. So it too very much been was really born out of the need to defend something that's need, that's something really to really to look a look through here in this conversation. I mean that this I believe there are seven tenants of that model. Talk through that. I mean talk to how those were determined or or how you call those out and what that structure you look like, and why that was important. But I think the first thing to say at the outset with this, because you know, this is a conversation that you know often arises in as and as different viewpoints are brought to bear on it. You know, questions of roles will know why seven went out? Ten? Why not this one? Why not that one? And they the idea of putting together this framework was not too um was not to suggest that this was all their loss or two say this could not be rewritten or redefined or improved upon, or attitude. There was never any of that kind of authoritarian and kind of dictation going on when this ferment started in the late nineteen eighties and carried through through the nineties and now as a sort of common discussion of Parlors. No. But this was was an attempt to remind people in Canada and the United States that we did have this system first of all, that there really was a system. And that system included things like the Pittman Robertson Fund, and it included things like state agencies, and included things like government programs, and included things like international treaties for migratory birds. It included things like the strong science programs and so on and so forth. And it was they were like identified as major principles or ideas to remind everybody that they need not have happened when we started the conservation movement that the late nineteen hundreds, early part of the the late eighteen hundreds, early part of the twentieth century, we had very few game laws. We had no enforcement agencies. We did not have any university programs. We did not have any state or provincial agencies. We did not have any federal agencies responsible for these resources. We did not have the science programs at the universities. We did not have any of those things, and nothing said that we had to. But they emerged bit by bit, synergizing and actualizing one another, until we built up this system that relies on agencies and professionals and academ EMICs and and and participants, hunters and anglers and other people. And so the seven principles that are identified should be seen as guideposts, as very important and integral, and their principles in the sense that they they speak to philosophical things, you know, um, wildlife, the marketing of dead wildlife excuse me, would no longer be part of the North American system, and that obviously was an attempt to move against the market hunting issues. The principle that wildlife is an international resource, you know, the idea that wildlife moved across boundaries, both across state boundaries and between the United States and Canada, Mexico and the parts of the world, and that only by accepting that could we come up with the institutions that would be necessary for conserving the waterfowl being at best example, the idea that wildlife that hunting would be a right of every citizen, but of course they would need to be appropriately trained and you know, certified, and to do it under legal means and so on. So these were the kinds of principles that were identified and originally by hilarious guist Uh and promulgated afterwards by many others. But they were identified to remind again people in governments and in policy institutions that these principles really mattered. For example, the principle that science is the basis for management. This is a principle that we have abided by in North America for the last hundred years and eighty years since we started to gain real knowledge of of wildlife science. And as you know, there is a big debate today about whether we are starting to turn our back on science and manage wildlife from a totally emotional perspective. So, you know, it's a really important man that the audience understand that the principles are are not sort of meant to be like the like Moses delivering tablets, you know what I mean, like the there's a flexibility and an organic part of all of this that we have to accept, and that means we have to accept a lot of different viewpoints as being potentially legitimate, but of course they have to all pass the critical test, and the critical test is whether those viewpoints are in the best long term interest of wildlife, right, And I think that it's such I mean for everyone listening here. I knew a little bit about the beginning of that model and learned about it here recently and was shocked to know that it wasn't longer reaching than the eighties, but I think or you spend that in to you know, you start off at the turn of the center and you spin that into the current day. You look at the grizzly bear hunting band in British Columbia, and then the the constant really just debate around wolves and apex predators, mountain lions, and the emotionality that that that it's sucked into these debates where pragmatism is kind of not able to shine through. You are you concerned about about those ideas? And and because of the history of our wildlife conservation is so pragmatic, do you do you feel like the loss of that in some way is going to be one of the hardest battles that conservation has to fight. I think it's one of the battles that conservation has to fight. But again, I take a somewhat different view of all of this um confusion and mayhem, if you will, because at the same time that we can argue that, you know, science must be the basis where decision may king. I think we all really accept in any quiet moment of reflection, that emotionality and passion are not restricted to any particular group within society or the conservation debate. Hunters of passions not anters of passion and die. Hunters of passionate um. Those who have more of a preservation philosophy, who are primarily focused on say things like national parks and and you know, protected areas. They have great passion and great commitment, and they have a very legitimate argument to make about these these institutions and policies being a part of the conservation matrix. I don't think there's anybody today who would say that we do not need to consider protected areas or national parks or stay parts of things of that nature, even if they exclude hunting in some or many or cases. I think most people would agree, yes, they're very much needed. People might say, you know, well, I only think they should be in place if there's an animal that's in desperate need of a protected space. Other people would say no, no, I think they must be much more expensive than that. But I think most people would agree that we need a a if I could say, a more preservationist element in the mix. At the same time, hunters and anglers are very passionate about their traditions and often speak with great emotion and little science about their particular activities. Um. And I think that's really helpful because I think if we were all to speak simply dispassionately about animals, I don't think there would be any hope for them in this world. So I think the trick here is to realize that there are certain elements and questions that demand a combination of science and passionate commitment, and that we need to collectively all sides of this debate figure out that appropriate balance. Now, there are philosophical differences between people. You know, some people believe in animal rights, for example, as a somewhat more extreme view, and a lot of people do not. But as you move down and across the spectrum of conservation and ideas, you know, there's much more similarity between groups of people. Then there are differences, and we need to find that ground as well as a as a basis for discussion. I am, however, very concerned that science is being um um, the profile that science has in the management of wilife is being decreased. I think we are living in a world where information overload is the common practice. We're living in a world because of our new technologies that allow every opinion to be instantly received by hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people UM. And that phenomenon is affecting a lot more than just the management of wildlife. It is undermining scholarship in many ways because everybody is an expert. It is undermining good science in many ways because anybody can get out there in quotation marks scientific opinion. Uh, you know, through mechanisms that are not controlled in any sense. You know, it's not like you have to publish in a peer review journal, because you can just get it out there through Facebook or YouTube or whatever you want to do, a Ted talk whatever. This is leading to a decent ableize circumstance of knowledge and I think this has very significant and dangerous implications for UM, for the management of wild And let me give you an example. So we have a great many people who are opposed to the idea of international trophy hunting, for example, because they identify it as an egotistical proposition. Somebody travels from one country to a place like Africa and they shoot an elephant to rely on things of this nature that they bring back the trophies and they put them in their living rooms or whatever. There's trophy rooms, and a lot of people have a negative view towards this, including by the way, many hunters, as you know. Um. But the so the emotionality is I don't like this, um. You know, the animals should not be taken for that reason. The primary motivation is not for food, etcetera, etcetera. And so I don't believe this should be done. But the reality is, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you view this issue. The reality, the scientific, empirical, knowledge based reality is that that activity contributes to the conservation of wildlife habitat and wildlife species in many regions. It isn't perfect, it isn't without corruption and loss and disfigurement. But there's no question that when you analyze and bring the facts together and interpret them, that those activities help, in some specific cases to significantly improve the chances for existence for lions and pray species and ecosystems. Indeed that would otherwise be lost to other activities if hunting was not occurring there, that would end up inevitably in the loss wildlife. So this is a this is a classic example. Let's before us right now. On the emotional side, many people find it difficult to understand. But when faced with the absolute facts that here is the alternative. Have these activities and protect that wildlife landscape, or lose those activities and lose the wildlife that exists there. And many people will say, ah, I didn't realize that. I still don't like it, perhaps, but I have to accept that it has merit for the conservation of wildlife. And I think this is the important thing. Then about emotionality. The important thing is to have a litmus test for emotionality. So I have a lot of people in the non hunting world who dialogue with me, and I have a lot of people in the hunting world who dialogue with me. And I have some people in the world to dialogue with me who say we cannot understand how you are a hunter, and I say, I understand why you find it difficult to understand. But for me, there is only one question. So whether I like a particular decision, you know, whether that's about protected areas or or hunting and angling, or any any issue that you can think about that impinges on conservation. My only only question, ultimately to myself is will this benefit wildless And if it does, I'm in favor of it, even if I don't like it and I'm against it, I'm against it obviously if it fails that test. Yes, And I think it's a great point you make about emotionality. And I just feel like because hunting and conservation, and especially in a different continent with a different set of value systems, I think that the complexity and nuance is lost in that emotionality. And that's what really what hunting is grounded upon, is that it is nuanced and that it is complex UM and it a lot of times it's oxymoronic, as you as you explained, there's a lot of ideas that killing animals to save them is a general one. Who get all the time that people say, well that makes no sense. Well, yeah, maybe on his face it makes no sense. But if you use, you know, your question of is it good for wild life as the guiding principle, I think that always gets us gets us to the right place. Do you do you feel like, specifically the British Columbia grizzly bear band is something that UM will be repeated and does that concern you or do you feel like that's a UM an outlier in some way? No, I wouldn't say that it's an outlier, um, but I also think that it's a It's a classic example of how of how our attachment to wildlife at an emotional level and a psychological level really tends to play out the issue of the hunting of carnivores generally mountain lions, grizzly bears, wolves, um is. You know, it's a phenomenon that's debated intensively, not only in North America, but it's intensively debated in UH in Europe as well at present time, where links and wolves and even bears, brown bears are expanding their range. I mean, we have we have wolves now living you know, the outskirts of Rome, um. And so it's generating an incredibly intense discussion and debate on social acceptance of the animals themselves by rural people and shepherds and people who have livestock, etcetera. Uh and of course by people who are opposed at a philosophical level to all kinds of hunting. So it certainly is not an isolated event. And of all the hunting that takes place in in Africa, of course, you know, it is the it is the hunting of lions which is one of the absolute most intensely discussed and debated, and of course the conservation programs that have developed in other countries, let's say for India, for example, which is very much a conservation program built in almost entirely on protected areas and preservationist ideals. It was the tiger, of course, that became sort of the emblematic and sort of was helpful or encouraging or incentivizing for that nation to to undertake the massive conservation efforts and very successful conservation efforts. I would point out that they have, so I certainly don't see these grizzly bear carnivore the issue, you know, as being isolated in a sense. And the debate within British Columbia has been ongoing for a very very long period of time um and that province has seesawed back and forth on the issue. It has mounted several scientific reviews of grizzly bear populations and sustainability over time. In fact, the Province of British Columbia has invested quite heavily, more heavily than most jurisdictions politically in trying to you know, sort of get at this question and decide whether there should be hunting for grizzly bears or not. UM. So I think that we can expect a great deal more of this. UM. If I were to look at this whole issue from the anti hunting point of view, I think that there's a tremendous amount of focus globally on African hunting and trophy hunting and so on in the African context at the present time, which we're all aware of. UM. It remains to be seen. What it's going to unfold on the continent is many, many great complexities obviously there UM. But I think it is fair to say that there will be increasing attention paid over time to the hunting of the charismatic big carnivores in North America, and that is going to lead to even further increased debates over wolves, reintroductions, management status of these species, interactions with the Endangered Species Act. I think any of us who believe that that is not going to continue and be an intense debate are fooling ourselves. It is going to be very real. On the other hand, UM, you know, the idea that we can have unrestrained growth of large, dangerous carnivores in our midst greatly bears, for example, but also wolves which can be dangerous animals of course, and mountain lion, which we know can prey on people, etcetera. You know, whether you know society at large, it has a sort of an unlimited either indifference or willingness to accept these large carnivores in their midst You know, that remains to be seen, and I, you know, I highly doubt that you know, people are going to eventually want just you know, uncontrolled numbers of these of these big predators in their midst We we live in a time we're that realistically, you know, cannot play out. And of course what tends to happen in these debates is that the people who don't necessarily live with the dangerous wildlife are often the ones who most vociferously wanted protected at all costs. Having said all of that, there is a reason why these big carnivores capture our imagination, generate so much emotionality. Uh. This is not by accident, and this is not a product of modern media or any of those things. You know, we have always had this extraordinary relationship with the big carnivores. You know, we mythologize them, we feared them, we marveled at them. Um, you know, we have always had even as hunter gatherer people's there have always been cults and and amulets and things that have celebrated these big carnivores as a sense of power and prestige and so on and so forth. So we should not see the modern debate over these big carnivores as something new, or if you're on the anti hunting side, see hunter's interest in managing or hunting those animals as something new and bizarre. Nor from the hunting side, we see the emotionality to safeguard, protect, you know, those those animals as being something that is bizarre or new either. It kind of always has been with us. And it's for that reason that alone that I feel confident that we will continue to have major debates over what is best to do with with these big carnivores. And um, you know, society's values change over time. The values in America and the values in Canada, the two countries that we talked most about within the North American context, although they're not the only countries Mexico is there in those two countries, and I may say probably particularly in the United States. Um, there are really significant cultural shifts taking place as the society becomes more diverse, as new and different values emerge in the urbanized centers. As we've talked about earlier in the party cast, there's a lot of reason for us to expect that the idea that carnivore hunting will be criticized, you know, we we should expect that this is probably going to continue because of the social trends that we can see before us. And the real question is, then, um, how do we, from a hunting perspective, you know, mount the most socially effective arguments for having a sustainable harvesting, management based harvest of those of those carnivores. And some might say that we are already doing that. I would agree. Some might say we're probably not doing it as effectively as we would hope to, and I would agree with that also. So I think we we need to be prepared for a continuing long term debate over the harvesting of grizzly bears and it will never be settled then, in my view, absolutely. In other words, is it possible for me to envisage your time in British Columbia, for example, where some kind of limited harvesting of grizzly bears. Um. You know, is is permitted or could things change again? Yes, I believe they could, um and um. But even if they do, they won't change in that direction forever either. Well, and you make some great points there. One one of those is that this is just a continuing conversation like that, this is through generations. Obviously, you know the cultural societal changes will drive this conversation one way or the other way. But this is to me just a continuing conversation. And and if it was, if it was one question I think I feel like we all have to ask is and you've said this in the past, It's like, is what you're doing good for wildlife? Is it good for society? Good for for our society? That also is it good for wildlife? And if you can continue to answer that question yes every time, UM, I think we we will be okay in the sense of hunting. But one thing that has concerned me, and we've talked about this in the previous podcast A good bit is just the general sense that hunting in and of itself, the act of hunting, does not have the best public relations UM in in the grand scheme of of the world, whether that's you know, moreover the Africa trophy hunting issue, but but generally just the killing of an animal for sport, or or how you would explain modern sport hunting. Do you feel like, you know, in that ongoing conversation there is a way that you would would talk to hunters and say like, hey, here, here are a couple of things we can do better to drive this conversation in such a way that eliminates some the negative pr that we currently feel. Um, whether you think it's due to to really what hunters have put out there into the world, or that the world is changing in the face of hunting, long question, but well, I think there's a tremendous amount we can do. Frankly, and I I've always believed this, and I've always marveled at how slow we are to do them. I can't explain, um, you know, I don't find it hard to explain to the debate that's going on in society at all. I don't find it hard to understand the value systems, or the philosophies or the opinions of people who are opposed to hunting at all. I don't have any difficulty understanding that, Uh, just as I don't have any difficulty understanding why people feel so passionately about hunting and and how people can become real conservationists not only through hunting, but as part of their hunting world. I don't have any problem understanding any of that. And I don't think any group on either side of that divide, if we can call it that, are are more or less intelligent, or more or less fanatical, or more or less emotional, as I've said before, and I don't think any of that is a distinction. What I really find difficult to understanding is why the hunting public has been so slow to do some of the obvious things that we always should have been doing, and to cease doing some of the things that we obviously should never have been doing. So in the latter case, for example, some of the graphic imagery that we have been showing for now twenty five years, quarter of a century, it's a long time on our television shows, UM, often accompanied by you know, the glorification of the kill and of an animal in suffering or an animal which has suffered. UM. This has done incredible damage to the hunting world. Whether the hunters want to admit it, Whether the production companies want to admit it, whether the television stations want to commit it or admitted I don't really care. It has and it continues in today's world of almost inevitable viral exchange. It has opened up the possibility, through hard to track channels, an enormous flow of this kind of information to distant computers and cell phones all around the world that provide no context and which inevitably need the naive observer to fall on the side of opposition to hunting. Um. Things we also should never have done is we should never have tried to prove to the anti hunting world that the only thing we care about when we call ourselves conservation is the are the animals that we hunt. So I'd like to ask you, Ben, and ask your audience how many of the organizations that we have that are based on hunters and founded by hunters and talk about doing conservation, how many of them are really focused a non hunted species at all? Yeah, how many awards do you see being given out at those events for people working on non hunted species? What do we think conservation and ended with the game animals? Well, that's the exact message we give all the time, and our industries are giving it all the time. So when you ask about the things we shouldn't be doing, I think there's there's probably millions of little things that go on the social media circuit every day we shouldn't be doing. And then to get on and say that, you know, criticize people who are against hunting and say that they have no conservation ethic and so on? Did John You're not have a conservation ethic? Yeah? Who's going to stand up and say that that's ridiculous? So this is the other things that we do as a as hunters that are things that we we we we should not be doing, but we we do all the time. We shouldn't be slandering people with sort of racial nomenclatures like green eads, you know, and antis. Notice how they all end in those ease like Nazis and so on and so forth. What do you think that makes us look like? I mean, these are all things that I look at, and I've looked at for twenty five years, and I've I've I've spoken as much, I think as any human being before hunting audiences and talked about these issues to virtually no avail, and in my own personal estimation, I don't think I've moved the needle one bit. What do you what do you think? What do you think it's going to take to change that? Is it going to take some kind of you're going to take to change that? As a crisis, and I think we're getting damned close. In the last five years, we lost two million hunters in the United States of America. By our own surveys, we've lost two million. We have a demographic wave moving through the hunting population in the United States and Canada that inevitably made were inevitably means we are going to lose millions more by the demographic wave. I'm obviously referring to just we're a very old age class. Yea, we call them age classes in the hunting world, we call them baby boomers. In this country, that generation, recruitment processes are not replacing them. So I think we're going to need a crisis, and we're also going to need to have some conservation leadership in the hunting community stand up and do certain things. So it's fine for me to say what we shouldn't be doing, but I think there there also needs to be ideas about what we should be doing. So. Here's an idea that I have offered up to a number of organizations in the hunting world. Take some significant percentage of all the money that comes in from the from the hunting world and devoted into some broader conservation effort. Why don't we give ten percent of the money that we raise two non hunted species efforts. Yeah, sea turtles or dolphins or other things that have captured butterflies, things that have captured the imagination of children around the world. Why don't we prove that we are really about conservation written large, and not just about conserving the animals that we shoot. Why don't we establish awards for people who do things in conservation, and whether they be a hunter or a non hunter, treat them equally, as is now starting to happen. Why don't we develop television shows that celebrate the animal. I mean, there's a million things that can be done. I mean, you know, and there's there's good efforts starting along these roads. Then, I mean, there are companies you know that that are out there are starting to do really good things in this world about conservation and the and the new films that are being produced by some of those companies are excellent, and we're we're seeing some movement in the television world. We're starting to see this, but we need to do it all much harder and much faster. As I've said to many people running our hunting conventions, the day that the non hunting world, the day that the non hunting world, and I would say even the anti hunting world can find something of real value when merits for them on that floor, then we will have begun to move forward in the way that Teddy Roosevelt imagined. Yeah. Yeah, do you think that man was a fanatic about songbirds? He love birds more than he loved hunting. Yeah, yeah, A naturalist, a naturalist. Yeah, do you feel like, uh going forward? You know, there is this mentality in hunting that I've seen, and I've seen it propagated by a lot of very famous folks, a lot of some of the figureheads of our industry from a celebrity standpoint, that said every hunter should should support every hunter, like this idea of tribalism, like we must if we don't all support each other, will fall at our core. Or if if if we don't support every type of hunting, re hunter or every pursuit, then we somehow fail. I personally don't agree with that. Do you feel like that's part of the reason why change hasn't been as a parent for the hunting world? Um, I know that some people feel that way, and I have some empathy for the position, because you know, if it's a hunting community, just like any other community, a political party, or a country, you know, it's just constantly consumed by infighting, and clearly that's that's not a good thing, and it destabilizes the best of messages and the best of intentions. So I have an empathy for that viewpoint. But like you, I feel there's a limit to this. I feel that we have to we have to realize that hunting has to be made relevant in a modern society. We cannot continue to treat it as though it is experience of the American and Canadian frontier. We have moved moved a long way from the days of Lewis and Clark. We've moved a long way from the days of Autubon. We've moved a long way from the days of Roosevelt. We moved a long way from the days of Leopold. We've moved fifty to sixty years beyond the days of Rachel Carson in Silent Spring, fifty to sixty years a generation. And we have to make this activity the oldest of human activities. We have to make this relevant to a modern society. We have to normalize hunting in a moderate society. And when you start to think about those as your goals, which they are mine, I wish to normalize it. I don't wish to exceptionalize it. I don't wish to make it exceptional. I want to make it relevant um. And you start to think about doing things very differently. You start to think about new organizations. You start to think about new magazines. You start to think about new television shows. You start to think about new marketing possibilities. You start to think about new coalitions. You start to think about things like food, wild food. You start to think about people whom love animals, and you want to be able to reach out to them and talk to them about your own love of animals. Um. You start to explain the fact that the rancher who is still believed to care very much for his animals as he does, or the small scale farmer who does care very much for their animals, they know those animals will die. In fact, they're raising them for death. Yet they have managed to maintain a position in society that's viewed as relevant and valuable, and they are believed to really care for their animals. Isn't that true? It is, so we need to ask ourselves the question, why do so many people believe that we don't care? Is it really the animal death issue? Because that's just the same for the rancher in the farmer. Maybe it's us, Maybe it is. Yeah, And I think there is introspection needed, and I appreciate yours personally, and then the forced, you know, forced introspection that we can all get from conversations like these. I think it is absolutely essential to challenge every idea, um and everything that that we believe is true. Because, as I'm sure you are, our upbringings are very different. But I'm sure as you have come to to be a part of this broad conservation movement, you've changed your ideals and adjusted with your expanded knowledge. And the more you've known, the more that you have theorized new things. And I think that is that's true for me as a hunter to a smaller scale than you, But I think that every hunter should listen to your words and just and start to examine the ways in which they act and the ways which their groups act, and how that can be be better constituted to get to the goals that that that you put forward. UM, yes, I totally agree with you, Ben, and I would say this too. And you know, despite the fact that in this podcast we have covered a lot of intense series and problematic areas and so on and so forth, the the the the resilient truth is that when the hunter man, woman, young, old, and when the hunting community of every that mixture operates at its best with a conservation ethic in mind, with the idea of what is best for wildlife in mind, it is a It is an unsurpassed force for the good of wildlife. UM. And the frustrations that some of us carry every day when we are embedded in these debates every day, is that we know that to be true. And what I am trying to do in my small world of influence and with the time and energy I have, is to unlock that part of the hunting world and to chip away at things that that limit that potential. And just said, it's free, as it was set free at the turn of the twentieth century and which history proves did an absolutely unbelievable thing. All the odds were against us yea as a nation's I mean not just as hunters were against our nations. Well you think about white tail white tail deer. I mean five hundred thousand of them in ninety seven. Today there's thirty million of them. That is unbelievable. Um And as we've often said, and that this greater conversation, there's not this isn't, you know, some big attempt just to be negative. It is just an attempt to talk through some of the tougher things and get to the point where we all know where we have to be. Is that that you're There's the reason that hunting has changed my life and conservation surely has changed yours is that it is it is transformative in many ways. So that's why it's important to me and to you. And while these conversations happen, so um I that's a good way to end it. But before we get out of here, I want you to tell everybody, um yeah, about the wild harvested issues. About something we've discussed in the past, and something I think it's very important going forward, and and something you've been working very hard on in recent past. Yes, well, uh, it's very a proposed because, of course, um, it came out of my thinking, much like the discussions we've had today. It came out of my thinking and my search for something that would make hunting really relevant in a modern society, and and instead of fighting social trends, to set it up in a way that is shows how it is actually working with important social trends. And this led me to the idea of the growing concern that people have for health, for the role that the arm it around and plays in maintaining or harming their health, and with the concern that people have especially with respect to the quality and source of their food. And in thinking about all of this, I began to wonder, well, how much wild food do we really as hunters and as anglers harvest in Canada and the United States, Given that you know, forty million of let's participate in those activities every year, and just knowing from myself and from friends and colleagues, just you know how much wild neat uh, some individuals consume and just how many people they share it with. So I launched this what's called the Wild Harvest initiative. It is a continent wide assessment of the harvest of wild fish and birds and mammals UM you know, on in Canada and the United States. UM. It is bringing together the list of all species obviously in the list of all harvests that are recorded by the management agencies. It is estimating obviously the total biomass or total weight pounds MS of of that harvest for all species UM, then determining through various sources the actual consumable weights of all of that harvest, working with economists to give it a fair market value. And we are obviously talking billions billions of pounds of wild food that is harvested, to give that a an actual economic value, real economic value in today's market if it was in the marketplace, and then to work with agricultural scientists and others to say, well, okay, we have this commodity. It is worth this amount. It is providing this amount of food to people. Now, what would happen if we ended hunting and angling? You know what would it cause society to actually replace all of this wild food? Along the way, we will be establishing a sharing index to indicate just how many people those individuals who do hunt and fish how many people they actually share that wild harvest with, so we get some idea of the the ripple effect or the generosity footprint of this activity in society. UM. And then we intend, of course, to to mobilize this knowledge in the context and coalition with people who harvest other things from the natural world, such as wild fruits and wild berries, wild mushrooms and so on and so forth. Medicinal plants two again pursue my goal of normalizing hunting and demonstrating to a modern public, not the world I grew up in because it has passed, but to a modern public why this activity remains relevant and why people should consider engaging in it or coming to understand that the people who do engage in it are doing something that is very honorable and worthwhile. UM. I see the trends of where hunters and anglers are coming from you know what, demographic, what locations, and it is very clear that it is possible to reach people, bending back on the earlier part of our conversation, who live in you know, urban areas and so on and so forth, because they are very much concerned with this issue of food and the quality of food. UM. This is an attempt on my part to bring hunting before the modern public in a way that they're already sensitive to, which, as I said, is the quality of their of their food. And I'll also be emphasizing the other aspects health benefits of this activity in terms of emotional uh sensitivities you know, at the time spent in the outdoors and in nature, the physical activity benefits of the activities so appealing to the broader issues of human health, for which there is a growing body of scientific evidence. Of course, um and just trying, as I said, to make people understand that while this activity may not be for everybody. While and everybody will be a rancher, not everybody will be a farmer. For a group of people in society, this is a way for them to take responsibility for the meat they consume, and most people in society do consume meat. Um and at the same time demonstrating that this is the largest environmentally friendly food procurement system in existence. We do not destroy habitat, we defend it. We do not despoil the environment we protected, and at the same time we share. We have this virtually insane drive to share this wild food with friends, family, colleagues and even strangers. As I've said in many lectures over many years, none of us will go to the grocery store and buy a beefloast or a chicken and bring it to our neighbors and give it to them. As soon as we harvest the deer, harvest and elk, harvest wild mushrooms, harvest wild berries, harvest wildfish, the very first thing we want to do is to share this. We want to give it to somebody, We want to have them for dinner. And when we do share it with them, they're absolutely delighted to sieve it and they immediately want to share it. They'll say, oh, thank you. You know, my son is coming to dinner tomorrow night, I'm going to cook that for him, or uh, you know, my my father and mother would love to have that, so I'm going to share this meal with them. There is something innately human about the drive to share wild harvested food, and we are about to launch a major communication effort with the help of now partners, which include you know, industry groups such like blophold at Sitka and YETTI groups such as that, as well as with state agencies in the data and Florida and Texas, a wide variety of NGOs, while Sheep Foundation, Dallas, Sportsman's Alliance, s c I, Houston, I mean a lot of Elk Foundation, a lot of NGOs, too many to mention. We're about too soon start to launch the information from this. We have built the database. We have an amazing and the most knowledgeable database now formed database on all of this, and I'm really looking forward to it being a way to have comfortable conversations about hunting with people from very, very diverse backgrounds. As a medical doctor from the San Francisco Bay Area said to me at the end of the lecture a couple of weeks ago, she said, Um, you know, there are many people in the San Francisco Bay Area who are opposed to hunting, But she said, there are a lot more people in the San Francisco Bay Area who are fanatical about new culinary experiences, and one of the things they really are intrigued with and interested in are these wild harvested foods. So you know, it's a it's just my attempt to to seek in the middle of all of this debate and a quiet space that I know will matter to people. I'm not trying to make them hunters. I'm not trying to make them anglers, although I be delighted if they would be open to that, just trying to make them understand that this is relevant and the reason is relevant. It's because it's about healthy time in nature and the harvest the food of the highest quality that we take responsibility for ourselves absolutely well as a hunter. I appreciate you, know, not only your words, which are well spoken, but your actions in that regard. I think that's um, the ability you have to to articulate these ideas but then also help them stand up with this data and these these efforts I think is is um can be revolutionary. And I appreciate you sharing those and and sharing the rest of your story. And I thank you Shane for your time. Thank you very much, Pat, it's been a real pleasure. Care of yourself. Thank you. Okay, by life, that was a good one. Episode number five in the books. I want to thank, of course Mr Shane Mahoney for all that he does and who he is, and for his efforts with the Wild Harvest Initiative and Conservation Visions. If you want to learn a little bit more about that, you can go to Conservation Visions dot com. Click on Wild Harvest Initiative you can learn more about his efforts there. I think those could possibly be industry changing numbers that comes out of his study of where our wild meats go and why they're important. Thanks again to all of you for listening to episode number five. You can go to the Hunting Collective dot com to check out the other four episodes, including John Dudley, Ryan Callahan, Steve Ronnella, Aubrey Marcus. There's videos there, there are articles there. There's a bunch of stuff at the Hunting Collective dot com. We're also on iTunes and Stitcher. If you'd like this podcast, roll over to iTunes, give to review, subscribe, subscribe, tell all your friends to do the same. For now, that's all we have. We're gonna be joined next week by the one and only Remy Warrant, my good friend and someone you all want to hear from. So thanks again. Bye,

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