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The Hunting Collective
Ep. 59: Turkey Talk, Public Land Pride & Drs. Alex and Libby Metcalf
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2h13m
On this week’s show we’re in camp in South Dakota for the first stop on the THC turkey tour. We check in with Sam Soholt, tell hunting stories, research turkey genitalia and marvel at the experience of hunting in our national forests. We also caught up with Drs. Alex and Libby Metcalf, a husband and wife professor team at the University of Montana who focus on human interaction with wildlife and our attitudes toward hunting.
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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome. It's another episode of Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien and it's a good one. It's a very good one. Uh. Here, as April rounds out, turkey season is uh in the West at least in full swing. I am in the Black Hills of South Dakota. My good friend Sam Soholt. We are hunting turkeys. We are telling stories, and we are talking about turkey Genitalia big news, some big news regarding turkey Genitali in this podcast, um, so stay tuned for that. But we also tell you a little bit about our successful turkey hunt here in the Black Hills, his Turkey tour, my turkey tour, his public land bus, and more. I'm also joined by Alex and Libby Metcalf. You'll hear more about them in the podcast. They're interesting folks, are both professors uh in the forestry department there at the University of Montana in Missoula. That they do a lot of interesting things around human interaction and behavior in regards to hunting. So we're gonna learn a lot about that. It's a really interesting conversation. Um and I learned a lot. So I think those guys and you'll hear that very soon. But before we get to that, we're gonna talk to you about a new partner for the program, and that partner is Uh, It's really not new at all, but we're gonna treat it as new because it's official. I want to welcome a new partner on the program, and that's Yetti. I used to call him, we say Yetti Coolers, but now it's Yetti because they make so much more than just coolers. And I'm sure everyone listening to this, for most of you will know that I was employed at one time by Jetty and really I owe a lot of where I am today, what I've been able to do with my life and all the blessings I have to that company UM and to the people like Roy and Ryan Caesars who you've heard on this podcast previously. So you'll be hearing a lot from those guys UM on this podcast in the future. But I just want to let everyone know that there as we've announced other partners when I announced them as an official partner of the podcast, and very thankful for them again, UM have played a large part in UM marketing their products, but I believe even outside of that, even outside of being a part of the organization. I believe in their products. I believe in what they stand for. I believe in their films and their content and most of all, their people. And so you'll be hearing again a lot more from them in the weeks and months to come. And I'm very lucky to have Jetty on board. So shout out to everybody down in Austin, Texas. So, without further ado, let's get started. I guess I grew up on an older road. Apart to do the meadals, I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new clothes a game second hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up baths I it's I grew up. I mean, they have a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen. And now I just wanted to real bad dream being a lack of coming a lot of the seams. But thank you, Jack Daniels. Hey everyone, I've been O'Brien, and it is four thirty nineteen. Man April got away from as fast, but it's gonna be another good show today. And I'm joined right now by my good friend Sam Sohalt, Man of Public Land bus Fame and Sam, it is what your third or fourth time on the podcast, is that correct, y or something like that? First in the new format, So welcome to I mean it's so different, right, I'm excited to be here. Yeah, you don't even you don't even know what I don't know what's happening right now. I don't um as I like to start all these describe Sam where we are currently. So we are in the Black Hills of South Dakota, chasing Miriam's turkeys. Uh, we're currently a little bit more specific, We're currently sitting in my bus. Um, We've got a pot of coffee brewing. It's kind of spitting rain a little bit outside, a little afternoon shower is rolling in and uh, but yeah, it's just been beautiful weather out here in the Black Hills, and everybody's been in turkeys and got a few on the ground already. And yeah, it's the only way to this seems to be a dead turkey. Yeah, I I've I really enjoyed turkey hunting and this spring has been a good one. I've been Uh, I think we were talking about this morning. This is well. I left for the spring turkey tour on March and today it is the April, so I am twenty four days consecutively into my actual turkey hunting and you need a nap. I need a nap. I'm completely exhausted. And as evidence of your tour, I look across the bus here and I guess what you call like the kitchen area. I don't think this is up to code because there is a a number of turkey feet sticking out like a sideboard in the bus, probably what ten ft at least. Yeah, I think there are five sets of feet in there. It can creepily. It's just the clause they're sticking up there with all the tags on them, so it's a little weird. It's uh, you know, it's kind of a nightmarish, but that's yeah. I mean it was better than having like we got here and they were all just like tucked in a corner and I was like, wow, I don't really want to leave a bunch of turkey feet just laying on the floor. So no, it's nice. It shows you guys have had a good a good damn tour and in a good week this week. But before we get to we're gonna tell some turkey stories in the interview portion of the show. Today, you're gonna hear from Alex and Libby Metcalf, who are a couple of professors from the University of Montana there in Missoula, and so we'll get to them in a second. They aren't turkey hunters, hopefully listen to this. Maybe we'll convince them to go. Um, but we're gonna tell some turkey stories. But first, we had a thing in the woods this morning where we were wondering something that I think every turkey hunter thinks they know about but probably doesn't know much about. And Sam and I were trying to google it with a little to no service, and the Google what we were googling was turkey Genitalia, which at like six am, like in the middle of the woods, is a weird thing to be looking up. It's just a weird thing to be talking about, and recording yourself talking about turkey Genitalia is uh, is not so great. But here we are um, and we both decided that we didn't really know and had never having dismembered many turkeys and never really run into a turkey's penis in in our time taking turkeys apart and hunting turkeys all hunt the turkey rut, as we call it. We all hunted turkey rut. We're always doing that. But for whatever reason, when we ever think about the actual act of mating for weeks, I think about, you know, hands, laying eggs and sitting on the nest. But we don't ever really think about at least that's my guess. A lot of people don't actually think about the act of mating for turkeys. Yeah, I guess not very often. I mean other than like setting up uh decoys, which are my buddy, who was not a hunter, described as turkey sex dolls, very sexy, but setting them up basically looking like a tom or jake is about to breed a hand or like, you know, close to breeding a hand. So that's usually in the context in which we in which we look at it. We had and I haven't spent a lot of time in the past years thinking about how it actually all goes down. And I said, you know, we may have seen videos of turkeys mating, what had never have seen turkeys try to mate with my decoys, and I've never seen them doing the thing in the wild. Um, And so I did a little I did a little research, a little reading to educate everyone on you know, following the courtship dance, which we're very familiar with, the active mating, And I'm gonna read a little bit of this. Ah, the male we're going and you know, you kind of can picture the male hopping on the female. Uh, the tom hops on his lady kind of lets his wings down and gets ready for the thing. But the thing that I didn't know is that the sperm is transferred from the male's cloaca to the female's kluwake, so they both basically I have heard it described as like a general opening, so which is an easier way than saying cloaca, but this says like the kloaka is a name for the event that leads to the Turkey sex organs. So they put their cloaks together and that acts as a sort of a channel which too copulate, a conduct for copulation. The Turkeys, they'll place their events next to each other in order to allow the transfers of sperm um. So, so now we know. The more you know, the more you know that little rainbow star thing. So ill of you listening out there, you uh, it's good you have an understanding, a better understanding of turkey sex. Turkey sex that started off. We you know, i'd like to say you're welcome to the listenership, but I don't think I think they we just forced this on them. They probably didn't, They probably didn't want it, probably not, but I hope that they're interested. Really hooked him into service, now, you know. Ah, So moving on. You're a South Dakota native, so you've killed in your life many a turkey. So I I mean, I've killed some turkeys, but I actually didn't start turkey hunting until twelve, was the first year. So I didn't grow up doing it. Um never put in for tags. I just chased water fowl and deer and uh yeah, it wasn't until quite recently that I got in, like got way more into it. Well, and you're and that's and you've rebbed the engine being on a three week long turkey tour, going from that to that, and so I've got seven years yeah doing this. I got four more days here helping just shoot photos and helping guys get birds, and then I've got one archery hunt in eastern South Dakota that I'm gonna try to pull off. And then towards the end of May. I'm meeting up with the Vortex guys, the Hush guys, Born and Raised, and the hunting public and we're all going to chase birds in Wisconsin for one one more grand finale on the air. Yeah, I know we're I'm on my own little tour. It's not quite as long as yours. Um. I don't have a bus, and my wife would probably leave me if if I went for that long, but she knows I want to and she knows that if I could, I would. Um. This is we did a little Texas and then took a tour break. Is it a tour if it takes a break. I think you can take a tour break. I don't know if you can consider it like I feel like Texas was a trip and now you're on a tour like you did a like it was like a like a pre yeah pre tour. Yeah trip, I'll give you that. Uh did this one. I'm gonna go back to Montana, hunt in eastern Montana, drive down to Idaho to do the b h A Andy View. So if you're um, well, by the time you hear this, it's already over. So it was a great time. I had a great time. Um, and then we'll be about the time this airs will be rolling over to Idaho to do a couple of days hunting. Well. I think the Hush guys will be in camp there with me and and possibly even Brian Callahan will make an appearance. And then I'll be rolling out to Oregon Um with benchmate and Federal to do some running around and then back to Montana to hunt up in northern Montana filling on a tag, and then back. That's a pretty solid tour in a short period of time. It's a lot of miles. Yeah, it's it's quite the quite the it's like a hunt and then a long there's like a ten hour drive and then hunt in a ten hour drive. But living in the West, I mean you can't. You do it in the East too, But if you really want to have to see some you know, see the West, the Inner Mountain West. I mean, this is a damn good way to do it, for sure, And I mean a really cool time of year to do it, Like everything is waking back up. And I don't know, like I love the fall because it's all hunting season, but there's something about spring that is just yeah, just awesome. Yeah, yeah, this time of year, for sure. How much of Black Hills history do you have in your head there? Any big? Not much. I grew up on the east side of the state. Different. Yeah, like I've you know, traveled out here for sports and different trips or whatever, but never I don't know much about the Black Hills. I probably should know more. I learned that it was a look like it was named the Black Hills. There's la Coda tribe. I thought, because there's so many pine trees on the hills that they look black, and that's why it was named the Black Hills. That makes sense. That's about as much as I got. But and it was also uh Custer made like a Black Hills. He made a big trip that was written about a lot here to the Black Hills, which popularized the area. And then um, then the gold Rush kind of found its way here. And and for the preceding decades it was very mining and mining centric, extraction centric. But now it seems to be tourism centric, yes for sure. Yeah, and for good reason. Yeah, it's just a really cool area. I mean, even though it's become I mean it's it's still not that populated out here. I mean, there's there's, um, there's a lot of room to roam and a ton of public land out here. And just like you know, like the amount of wildlife that you see, whether it be turkeys or deer or bison or elk or whatever. I mean, just on our drive to go hunt this morning, which whitetail, mule deer, bison, elk and then finally turkeys. Yeah, not to call anybody out, but a member of your party that you've gathered here, you have a lot of people in camp are very popular, um, member of your party. We're not gonna say who it was. Came back. It's not from that's been a lot of time out west. It's a good hunter, but that's spent a lot of time out west. Came back and was like politely asking what bear shit looked like? Well, first, yes, are there bears out here? That's a long way to get around. Yeah, And I said yeah, I mean not a lot, but there are bears out here, and he goes, ah, I saw, I'm pretty sure we saw a bunch of bear shit. It's like then you asked, you know, what did it look like or was it pellets? And you know, I said, well, yeah, bear shits kind of looks a little bit like human ship and you'll see a lot of You said something like you'll see a lot of berries. And I said, well, was it. He's like yeah, but didn't kind of look like that. I said, was it pellets. He's like, yeah, like big pellets. That was definitely. So they did run into a pile about like a lot of elkhit so they there's a lot. They say all that to say there's a lot of elk out here. Yeah. Well, the best is that he asked another guy who's not from out west, and that guy told him that was my favorite. He was like. The dude I was with was like, oh, that's for sure. Bear shit, Ah, I can't believe there's herds of bears roaming the South Dakota els unbelievable, terrifying out here the Black Hills National Forest Herds of bears twelve deep. Um, but yeah, I mean you had a big camp out here. It's cool to be a part of. And we got to roam around the Black Hills National Forest. Now, um, we're not gonna give any hotspots away, but I did ask Alexon let me Metcalf to give some hotspots away at the end of the show. So you will get a hot spot. Uh, kind of a half ass hot spot, but nonetheless you'll get one. Um. But just describing how we approached this morning and how I approached just coming over here from Montana, literally just drove, looked at my onyx maps, looked where it was green for National Forest, and drove around and got out where I thought turkeys might being called hiked hiked in a little bit called nothing there, got to go back in the truck, drive a little more cover, a ton of country glass and for birds calling, trying to get a response. Um. And that's like is as free as a hunter gets. And you know, millions of acres here for us to traverse and little to know, you know other than little small pockets of residential areas and private land and some other controlled access points. It was we were free to roam. Yeah. So last year was my first year hunting turkeys in the Black Hills and UH kind of was asking around, you know, like, what are some good areas to go look? And Uh, a buddy of mine was like, man, just everywhere, Like the turkeys are fairly evenly distributed throughout the hills. So he's like, if it looks like good turkey country. There's chances are there's turkeys in there, so just get out caught, like you said, under your way in. You know, it's like, if it looks like like good turkey country, there's probably gonna be a turkey and they might not may or may not respond, but there's probably gonna be some birds in there. And uh, it's a it's a good way to do it, just to locate something some critters. Yeah, and I was thinking about, um, you know, going to b h A rendezvous being a part of that both you know, your drive, you're we're in the public land bus like by with it is something that you know, we both and we're not alone, like care a whole lot about It's like, you know, you'll will tell the story of this bird we killed. But after that we had killed this turkey. This morning, we had like a three hour session of just sitting in the National forest, drinking a beer, chopping up a turkey, um, having lunch, listening to music. Took a nap. It's like and it was we don't know that land. We didn't pay for it at least so for other taxes. Yeah, now that was pretty amazing. It's it's the idea that that's accessible is um still stuns me. Even though it's something that I've devoted a lot of time and energy and a big part of my life too. It's still it like brings me great joy and passion to know that that exists, and it's does every time that I do it. I feel that way. I think what always gets me is it's it's just hard for me when I start to really sit down and think about it, like how much land there is and how freely accessible it is. It's just hard for me to wrap my head around. Like like today we probably covered let's say forty acres you know, maybe maybe forty to sixty acres of ground. Uh, there's sixty million acres of just federally managed land. So like just trying to wrap your head around, like the how much exploring you can do, like without any cost other than you know, a hunting license, but if you're just hiking or whatever. Um, just being able to go out and use that as a as a resource is pretty amazing. I can't like that idea, you know. And again I was text with Lanta from Bha this morning. I just want I was like, dude, I just want to tell you that that idea above politics, above all of all our disagreements around the government, and it's working like above that. Like there's nothing that I've experienced the combination of hunting, which I love with the freedom of running around in a place that you contribute to and also benefit from in a way that is indescribable for me. If somebody's never experienced it. It is just like I said, every time that I do it, I get something else from It never gets old. Ever, it doesn't matter where I am. Turkey's elk, deer, squirrels, doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. Um. And it's great, It's great. It's in it's raining outside. Is here that last time you were on the bus, I think for the podcast it was raining, weren't it was? We were actually in the Black South Dakota, the Black Hills. We were um, you know, I think I was on one in Big Sky. But the one previous we were in we were in the Black Hills and it was pouring and there was flooding in the in the aun of the land bus. That was it was crazy. Well, we're gonna get to the interview portion of the show here in a minute. But we're also going to tell you this story. This turkey we killed this morning. Um, I've been here. I rolled in last night, like I said, just just rolling through. Stopped, got my license, got my tag, made sure all that was square. Came rolling through the Black Hills, literally just driving around, calling, found a found a bird, roosted him. There's a couple of like two or three dealers and a group of hands that I had roosted, marked them on the old Onyx maps. Came back here, I had some beers, had a little food. I went sleep, slept for about three three damn hours, got up at three thirty, pulled out of here at four am, rolled over to our spot and they were exactly where we left him. And I thought, now you can tell me, Sam, but I thought we were in the money. Yeah, I mean, looking at the map and everything, it seemed like we were. It seemed like we were in the right spot, like a crossroad between like a little two tap track trail and a cut through the timber. So it was like a good area for them to pitch down to and strut down. It was the It was a cross section of um, a little trail and then a power line and so we were kind of right at the acts of that. So we put our decoys out. We were, you know, like said, a couple hundred yards from the roost tree. They were hammering on the roost um. We had them responding a little bit as they were starting to fly down and they hit the ground and uh, they didn't remember. They weren't totally quiet when they hit the ground, but they certainly didn't fly in our direction. They they pitched off away from us to a bench that we later discovered that was I would have been to our north. You know, they sent and then their goblin instead of two hundred yards away, probably three hundred yards away, which if you're a tricky hunter, you understand that disappointment. Like you're you go to sleep thinking about having the pitch off. See the decoys come running and you crack them. Yeah, I mean, like the the textbook hunts, you just get in tight under the roost and they just fly on down right to you. Bam. Yeah, you had one where you it's a barely hit the ground, didn't even have any decoys out, and he yeah, he pitched down. This was the last wed this day, yeah, week ago. Um, Yeah, pitched down and he had not even slowed down yet from his like landing run and I shot him. So that hunt lasted from about five seconds from fly down to we did pretty good today, but we're not that lucky. Um. So yeah, they pitched off to the north to which later like both seeing it in person and looking at the map, they're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense they should be that. That's so good, that's where they would fly. Yes, yea, yeah, Now you know that's again the disadvantage to not knowing the terrain in the country. If we had hunted those birds for a couple of days or we're hunted this area, we would have kind of seen that country and knowing, hey, when they pitch off, they're going to pitch to this bench and then from that bench they can access this little field. It's a little private, like a private so we were kind of like button up against this piece of private whether it was we thought either like a water trough or a feed or something that the shirkey's like to hit. And so you know, I thought in the morning was they're gonna, you know, either fly that way or pitch down to this power line and access this anywhere they want to go from this this area. So they they pitched down, and we decided to go up on the ridge above them. And you tell them, why, why do you think of that? Getting above turkeys and this this mountain, this this mountains terrain is a is a big deal. So if you if you can get above the turkeys, it's a lot easier to call them in. And actually I just learned this this year because I've never hunted, mean other than last year hunting out here a little bit, but just kind of winging it, but hanging out with the guys from the hunting public and and hunting you know, mountainous areas like Arkansas and um, some more hilly terrain down in Tennessee. UM. Just like Aaron Warburton, I hunted with him a lot for those first two weeks, and he just kept kind of driving into my head that if you're gonna go try to call in a turkey in hilly terrain, you want to try to get above them because if they're having to come up over a rise, they're gonna come further in searching. Because if they if you get down own hill of them and try to call them in. Turkeys have such good eyesight that when they're coming down in Like if you have decoys, it's one thing, but still like their way that the Yeah, their eyesight is so good that they're easily going to see what's going on ahead of them way further. So if you can kind of take away some of their advantage and get above them, they'll come marching right up to you. Yeah, man, I think it. It makes all the sense in the world. And having hunted turkeys, I mean you've done in the last three weeks, but you turkeys is always different. You see how they used to rain. You kind of learn to read where they're going to go. And I think both of us kind of today made a bunch of really good calls about like this is where they're gonna go. Let's set up here. They're gonna want to use the spine to come to access this open spot. If we put the decoys here, they'll see them first, pull them in, and it's it's it's good to know, like when you make that guess right and then the turkey does what it needs to do, then the turkey dies. Right. Well, we did was make a lot of right guesses. It's a turkey's fault. Yeah, I blame them any time it goes wrong, it's always their fault. They would have been where they were supposed to be, we would have been just fine. Yeah, because then when we yeah, when we looped up to get above them, both of us, we're looking at the map and looking down and saw the bench where eventually we spotted them. But we were looking at that like, oh, let's get to that bench and set up and call again, because like they're they're going to use it. That whole all those ridges were all scratched up, I mean, tons of turkey sign and that whole thing. So assuming that that flock of turkeys was just bouncing around in there day after day using using that area, and it was really I thought it was a kind of a micro area that they were running in and they had they had they had its circle like a Nascar right, I mean, it just looked kind of like they were just using the same kind of three fingers at a ridge to travel. And so yeah, I mean we looked like, if we can just get down near that bench, they're gonna either end up there or come off the field and hit us if we call, we'll call them in. When we got oh, maybe a hundred yards above that bench, and I'd set my shotgun down to get the call out to hit it to see, um if we get him to respond, and I look up and there goes the neighborhood. So it turns out, Uh, they were all hanging out on that exact bench there, exactly where we thought they were. They just were there too soon, and so it is their fault. Yeah, it's their fault. We didn't kill. Some may also say that we were there too late. Those people would be wrong. They weren't there, They didn't. It's up to us to decide. Now, Yeah, we just it's you know, if you're if you're veteran turkenar and you understand this scenario, it's like the running gun to sit and get type of attitude, Like you could know that bench is great and get five yards from it and sit and just call for the next three hours. Or you could bump up in there get tight with him. And if you're gonna bump around and get tight with him, you know you're gonna spook him every once in a while. And for us too, you know, we didn't know it. We had those birds, like we had all day to hunt, and we knew where those birds were and so if if we you know, knowing, and you wake up, if we screwped those birds were literally is starting over again, like we weren't even here. So we did exactly that. And yeah, we accomplished all that by and I'm gonna say, shout out, you know, shout out the Mike and Ikes. Yes, not a sponsor, but I mean, h yeah, clush, we ate we've drowned our sorrows in an entire box, fucking Mike and Ikes. I mean, I'm a snack guy for sure, and so I always have something in my bag. And after we buggered those turkeys up, we just sat down on the hillside and shared a box of the whole box, whole share able size boxes. That's good. It's good to get that going. That's turkey on the forty Fox. That's ticking in for it. Now. I want to make a detour to something that we also another thing that we discovered and and this this we can call this segment not a sponsor. That's the segment. We had what I'll call a revelation while we after we shot this turkey and we were having a meal, we discovered this thing called oh meals. Yeah, oh meals. Tell people about oh Meals. Again, not a sponsor, but if you're listening Oh Meals, bring it on because you have a fantastic product. Yeah, it was pretty amazing, Like I didn't believe it at first. So you it comes in looks like a you know, any other freeze dried meal package, except when you open it up, there's a heating element in a little bag. There's the food in a little bag, and then obviously the bag that you cook it in. And so you open the heating element, you slip it into the bag with the food pouch, and then you pour in three to five ounces of any liquid. It said. Basically, it just needs to boil liquid, but then the heating element activates and in three to five minutes you have it's like a little hot hand. It takes a little bit for that heating element to get activated, and we learned that because we cooked two of them. But once that gets going, that water is boiling and steaming in seconds and then yeah, a little bit later you have hot food, hot food, no boiling water. Sorry jet boil Yeah, I mean if you sponsored, will go back to you jet boil. But oh meals man, Yeah, that's pretty slick, pretty delicious. It saves any any work on heating up water. You sit there and watch the little bag gyrade until your hash browns are done, and it's quite a bit less water. Uh, Like you know, usually you're like on a on a normal freeze dry meal, you're gonna use a whatever. It's like two cups or you know, it's it's whatever, twelve to fourteen ounces of water instead of three to five. That's true. But yeah, I mean I think, um, that's one of the things that take away from Miss Hunt is oh meals. So shout out thanks, oh meals. Might have to send them a message. Yeah, life on the road, Life on the road, oh meals. I felt like, well, I felt very like accomplished, like we were like I had achieved something when I had cooked my Southwest rice and chicken meal. I just felt less hungry when I ate the hash browns. Yeah, a little salty, a little little twitch in my left eye from the salt. Yeah, But other than that, I felt I felt real good. All right. Back to our Turkey star. It's like a non linear turkey story, that's all right. It's like drag people along. It's like the show This is Us. You ever seen that show? That's not okay, Well let's keep moving on. If you've seen it, you know what's up. Um. So we we booger the turkeys, and we decided that it's not worth sticking around jacking with turkeys that have already putted at us and given given us the business. Yeah, the good news is those birds, like we did hear him gobble again about ten minutes later way down the ridge, and but we still decided just to bail out of there. Um, let him calm down and then possibly circle back around into that area and try to that's something in that's right, um. And so we got in the truck and we just started covering terrain, and like we just knew that west and like basically southwest was a giant chunk of national forest that we could traverse pretty openly. There was a lot of logging roads and two tracks and things we could get on. So we found one we looked like, looked nice and got going on it. And not too too far from that, we were rolling around a corner and spotted the tom up on this little you know ridge above a grassy meadow, and he just kind of saw the truck and slowly meandered his way up into the timber, and we parked the truck, got out and again try to get above him. Right, so we're going, Yeah, so we pulled up the map and where he had gone up into the timber was a little drainage that kind of basically arcd up the side of this hill that you know, we probably climbed about two d feet or a hundred fifty feet vertical, but there was a drainage that went up and it was like kind of like broken meadows all the way up, and so we yeah, drove the truck ground parked and then basically went straight to the top and had looked at the map and saw that there was a bench, a nice like gradual like ridge at the top that led to that drainage, and if we could get to that area, we should be able to probably get him to answer and come up that drainage. Yeah, we did, and we set up and what the hell happened? What we called and immediately stupid turkeys. Well yeah, but there were three of them, so we only saw the one. But we called and three different tom's answered, and we're like, well that's a pretty good sign like that, you know, because they're gonna battle for coming in. Like when I sat down and heard that, I mean, we didn't set the decoys up. You know, we heard three gobbles went around the corner, like, hey, let's get in an open area on kind of the flat spot where these spines of these ridges will come up and meet it. So if they're going to travel on the spine to get up here, they're gonna see these decoys come across this flat we're gonna be in the money. And it wasn't. I mean, we set the decoys out and maybe got I didn't even really have time to put gloves on or do anything. I mean, it was, you know, a hundred yards seventy five yards there's bird goblin and it didn't even really do a ton of call and say was working the old pott and peg fields like and didn't even do a ton of that. And this in the first bird, the one we had seen in the road, was in on us within you know, five minutes, probably setting up and he it was it was picture perfect. I mean, came across this open this open bench, strutting, spitting, drumming. Given the full full show comes out of strut at about sixty five yards. There's a little opening where him and I kind of he could see me, and I could see him pretty clearly. I don't know if he saw me or not. Um if he did see me, he didn't react like he saw human like. He just he just came around the corner and took a couple of looks around. It looked like he was looking past Sam, like to Sam's right, and saw something he didn't like, something in some part of his scanning of of the of what he was stepping into, and just putted once or twice and just turned around and kind of meandered away. And I just kind of worked around the back side of that knob and then gobbled going away. Yeah see yeah, peace. And so we thought, well, we didn't really spook, and he just was wary of of coming any further. So let's work our way around the ridge. See if we can get in front of him and stay above him and work get him to work back up this ridge at us. And this is a good tip for any of you out there where if you have a bird come in and he kind of like doesn't quite commit, uh like, let him move off and then get back around to where he was gobbling and strutting coming in and then call again. A lot of times they'll think that a hand was trying to come to meet him, and all of a sudden, there's a hand back where they wanted to be in the first place. So get to where that turkey wants to be. So yeah, we just kind of stayed on the back side of the ridge and worked down to u different open area about two hundred yards hundred fifty yards away. Yeah, and just you we were just milling around. I'm like, hey, hit the call, let's see see where it is. Hit the call all and a different bird is now it's maybe a less than hundred yards away that time, So I quickly chunk the decoy. Just just put a hen down because I'm thinking, well, this last bird might have gotten flared by the jake decoy. Let's just put a hand out as to not have anything really other than that's sexy sexy hen there, um u. Let's get set up and I get back, you know, probably thirty yards from the decoy gets set down. You are off to my left, and now the turkey, like this is not the turkey We're we're planning the hunt and where he's coming or he's gobbling from I think he's gonna be in between you and I or come right to you. And now we've got trouble because because originally I had set up to call, like to think that we were going to call him back basically from the line that the first turkey took. But now he's looped around, basically walked past where we were sitting originally and is coming to my call. So I was on the back side of the tree. But yeah, that was pretty were that he was gonna come between me and you and that shotgun. Yeah, so I was I couldn't where I was. I couldn't see you, or at least I when I was looking and trying to scan for the turkey and scan for you, like I knew the tree you were under. But I was like, he's gonna have to be from twelve o'clock to six o'clock for me to shoot him. I'm not going to shoot him from six to twelve, Like, I'm just gonna kind of cut this in a pot because I'm not gonna I like Sam more than I want to kill a turkey. I don't want to shoot him. So a little bit of a sticky situation there, But he came around perfect I mean it came right. I mean he came right at my like one o'clock and came in and I saw him at like seventy yards. I shifted a little bit, got set up, and here again this turkey comes into about sixty yards fifty five yards and just hangs up. And he didn't even I mean, it's very similar to the one before him hung up. I don't we don't know why they were hanging up, like there's no Yeah, we're assuming, I mean not. It could have been a lot of things, but um guessing that somebody's been in there messing with those birds with the decoy or or some you know, and trying to trying to get in on him, and they have seen that and then like something in our setup that they're seeing. I was shooting a weather B eight the new weather B eighteen nine. And it's not the synthetic version, because we'll just blame this one Ryan Callahan. He took my synthetic version. Um, so there's a little shiny nous. Just get out the spray paint. He would appreciate that. Actually they like that. But it's a fantastic shotgun of got the job done. Um So I'm not sure what these two birds saw. But this guy, I mean, I'm playing the last instance and I had not even knowing at this point, I didn't even know which bird this was. I thought this might be the same turkey um from the first time. So I'm thinking he's doing it again. And so he gets about fifty five and starts to peel off and he he's facing away from me now and I got a clear open shot. I'm like, well, if he stops within the next five yards, I'm gonna kill him. And he stopped perfect, you know, quartering away, just put it on his head and boom. I didn't hit him in ahead, but I hit him that crippled him, and he took a few flops and just kind of laid down. He would have been he was dead on arrival, and I put another shot in him and he was done. And then we celebrated. We celebrated, and he's like, there's something you said this even when we were going up this hill to kind of get into this situation. It's like like I love this man, like I love this I love this so much. So I don't know why. It's so much fun. It's the cat and mouse, like it's the cat and mouse game that you play knowing that this is like a twenty pound rapture that sleeps in trees. You look at his feet, it's like you're chasing a dinosaur. It has you know. Now we know all about it's Cloaka and the sterious sexual intercourse that they have, but there's there's something about it at the time of year. The way that you, you know, are playing this game with a turkey, like you're talking to it. You are literally convincing it of something that is is untrue, like you are you are setting a narrative for the turkey. And so I had the same feeling as you. It's just like electric. You are electric, electrified by what's going on, and the experience is um, it's just it. Yeah, it's so interactive. And when you get a burden close and they gobble like within whatever fifty sixty yards, like it's just like whatever that sound is that they admit, like whatever frequency, it's like one of those like just like you can feel it in your heart, like it hits so hard. Yeah, there's nothing like I don't think I think elk is of course really compared. Can people say like turkey hunting is just like elk hunting, but it's it's not Yes, you're calling an animal in, but it's not the same thing, not the same, not at all. And it's just a different time of year. The natural wolves just it's coming alive. It's just a different function, um for a hunter. And I wouldn't say one is better than the other. But god damn, I love turkey hunting. It would be hard for me to sit here and say that I love l hunting as much but not more. I think they're probably on the same plane. But whatever I mean, it doesn't really matter. No, the point is, if you're not turkey on a lot of people in the West, now that I've lived in the West, will say, like this bear season. Like listen, man, no it's not. It's a turkey season. You get as soon as you filled your turkey text, then you can bear hunt. That's how it should always be. So let it be written speaking of bear seasons and turkey seasons, um, Colorado does not have a spring bear season. And last year my older brother was turkey turkey hunting and they put a bird to roost, went in there in the morning, bird flew down and they started calling to him. I had this big tom on a rope coming in the hunt got busted up because they called in a black bear. Their turkey calls scared it off. So yeah, Steve Ronella has a story about that exact same thing, realizing he was doing he was hunting the same thing that the bear was hunting, and having like some some revelation because of an understanding of the predatory behaviors. But yeah, I mean, this is this is a cool spot. I'm doing the one the one day wonder. I am now leaving to go back to Montana to try to kill another bird before I have to go back home and then hit up the b h A. Rodney. So I'm doing. I would say what what I would refer to as a dick move was just coming into camp eating all your food. I'll forgive you. I'll forgive you this time. Yeah. Yeah, well I appreciate, uh, I appreciate your rodding. Riding along and um go follow Sammy at sam Sohole. You'll see all kinds of stuff public land, tease. Go there. They actually have turkey T shirts there. We do, which other than the meat eater, no one else in the world makes a good turkey T shirt. I'm glad I we're talking about that. I'm like right on par with you know, I mean, go buy meatiators, so first and then yeah publicly and so I'm get in trouble with my bosses. Yeah you gotta say it, but all Spring say that. Yeah, all Spring. Um. Any turkey shirt sold, we're given five dollars to the Nash Wild Turkey Federation. Beautiful, Yeah, beautiful, And like I said, there's not a whole lot of turkey. There's an analetic like what I would call new school turkey gear out there. Um that you could feel real proud, and I think the public and tease you can what I think. Yeah, that's the way I feel about it, and say I didn't even ask me to say that. He didn't know, he didn't I like him. So I happened to be wearing one face. People listening, So go buy a T shirt. I appreciate it in advance. Would be cool, and so does turkeys, So do turkeys and sodas the n w TF so do I. Um. All right, we're gonna get into the interview portion of the program, and now that we're gonna take a hard left at turkey hunting. We're going to move into UM some of the social sciences and the human interaction with hunting and wildlife. Now Alex and Louis Metcalf are our interview guests today and they are professors at the University of Montana in Missoula. Am I saying that right? Is that the University of Montana in Missoula? I get confused. I'm new. Yeah, is that right? Okay? I got that right. So I went over there UM a couple of days ago, and I right before I came here, and I got to meet with some of their students, some of their b h Ah club students there at the university, and they blew me away. They absolutely blew me away. Um, you know, shout out to the Matine and Hannah and a bunch of the other people that I met that are doing things UM in their college years that I didn't do. Sam and I probably were running around being adolescent idiots at the time. I'm speaking for you, Sam, That's fine. I'll accept that. I definitely was. I speak to myself on that one. UM, I definitely was, and I wasn't thinking in abroad context like these guys UM close. Yeah, like talking to this guy Craig Martin who was the president of that the the chapter over there for b H. I mean the way that they think that they talk about sustainability, they talk about harvesting animals, they talk about mentoring new hunters, they have Hunting for Sustainability, UH event that they've put on. They have a bunch of mentorship programs that they put on. UM. It was it was I I wish that I had more time to podcast with them and also their professors, so so everyone here could learn UM about the way that they see the world at the at the stage that that they are in it because it is unique. And I was I will say hopefully they listened to this at some point, but but personally for those folks, I was inspired by what you guys had to say, UM and buy your passion for the outdoors and public lands and wildlife in the way they should look at those things. I will do anything I can to help foster that, UM. And I think, you know, Montana is lucky to have these young people that or that are there at the universe of Montana. So thank you for that, UM, guys and gals. UM. And then I sat down right after that, I sat down with their professors Alex and Libby Metcalfe, and it's it's an interesting conversation. It goes to the social sciences and the way that you use UH social studies to build data sets to kind of tell um. Either they're working with state agencies and they're also just working on an academic level to tell folks the motivation of hunters and how they interact with wildlife. So there's some interesting stuff there. It, I will tell you, after thinking and listening back to the interview, is a complicated thing to understand. It's it's not as simple as here's the data, here's the results, um. And so you may find it to be a twisting and turning tail. But hopefully you'll listen to Alex and listen to to Libby and learn a little bit about what they do because it is very important in my opinion. So, without further ado, we will travel back in time to Missoula, Montana. Well we'll see Alex and Libby metcalf Alex and Libby, how are you great? Yeah? Good to be here? Could to be here? It's good to be here. I always like to do this, like like to break the ice here, right, haven't you guys? Described the surroundings, so people won't they won't be able to see where we are. It's very very mysterious. So Alex, you want to kind of describe where we are in the in the micro and macro sense of the word. Yeah, I mean we invited you specifically to this room and not our offices because this is a much better setting. Um. But yeah, we're here in uh, you know, Missoula, Montana. It's a beautiful day, um, blue skies looking out at Mountain Jumbo at main Hall here. We're sitting in the in the Forestry building, which is a pretty historic place on campus. Um. The college here has been around for over a hundred years and founded right here. Um. And we're up here on the third floor, um, right outside the Wildlife Biology main office, and we're sitting in the conference room with a wall of black dissertations that are all extremely important, a lot of words. Um. And then of course above the dissertations, UM, we have a few of our native species here, um, in stuffed form. Yeah. Yeah. Where I went to college, there wasn't any taxi germy. Yeah, but very jealous. Yeah, we I mean, you know, being younger professors are our taxidermy is is coming along. We're working on the collection, but they have a better one in this room. It's pretty good. Yeah, I like it. I like it, Libby, Um tell us about yourself in your relationship to Alex two so people know all about that. Oh yeah, Alex is my spouse. He's my uh my partner and also a faculty member here with me at the University of Montana. And I'm an associate professor in the Department of Society and Conservation, and I have kind of I sent on a couple different curricular programs, but I direct our Parks, Tourism and Recreation Management program. But I'm also part of the Wildlife Biology program, which is the number one wildlife biology program in the nation. It gotta mention it here in the College of Worse sound effect like yeah, and so I um. I've spent the last decade here in Montana thinking about wildlife and how humans and wildlife interact. And I've done it from a couple of different perspectives. Um uh my. Probably my most notable work in the human dimensions of wild I feel this is is probably my work on gender and hunting. So I've been thinking a lot about how we engage women in the sport and which is kind of cool. Yeah, we were talking to one of your students, Hannah earlier, and she was explained as graduate student. I believe that was correct, um, and she was explaining kind of her. The thing that struck me was her interaction in like Sportsman's warehouse from when she goes to a something I had not thought up. When she goes to a big box store or really any guns store or hunting store, and she's with a male counterpart, whether it's her boyfriend or just a friend or whomever, that the the salesperson would would talk to her, would talk to the the mail and they never even give her any eye contact even if she asked the question. Um. And that's not something I'd considered before talking to her, so and I expressed her, Listen, I understand that we need to we need to get across this gap, and we need to do better than pandering too women hunters and outdoors been with pink things, and then in the way that we've the tropes that we devise the kind of to do that currently. But that certainly her comment got like really fired me up on on that subject. So I'm started excited to talk about that. Alex kind of run us through, you know, in your professional career what you are up to. Yeah. So, UM, let's see, I followed Libby around. UM. Yeah, so I we both did our grad work at Penn State. UM. We were in different programs there. Libby was in recreation part to tourism. UH. There I have to learn all the different acronyms for d r M, rpt M. But I was over in the forestry UH program at Penn State UM and was thinking more about private land conservation specifically like forest landowners back east. UM. But you don't talk to landowners very long before you end up talking about wildlife UM. And so coming coming west, UM, you know, the wildlife conversation definitely blew up. And I think you know, the wildlife biology program here recognized that they have obviously just amazing depth in the biology UM, but that as you look around the state, in the country, in the world, UM, you know a lot of the problems that we have UM with wildlife center around people. UM. The answers aren't going to come from the biology. And so yeah, so as we came here, UM, you know, me and the resource conservation program and Libyan recreation UM you know, our interests in wildlife crew and kind of their interest in incorporating the Human Dimensions Crew. And so we were able to join the faculty goodness five or six years or something like that. And UM, how many students do you interact with, you know, on a semester basis. I'm trying to get my college then go back and it's been a while. Yeah, So it depends on the semester for sure. For me, I teach UM our large introductory kind of introduction to natural resource conservation course. It's about a hundred and twenties students in there, mostly freshmen. Uh So it's a big lecturer hall. The potential for sleeping is high. So I have abandoned power point and I wander the room right and I draw on the board and I like raise my voice at random intervals. Yeah. Um. And so I interact with a lot of those students, um, you know, through the fall and it's kind of just the beginning of their career here. So it's really fun. They're they're excited to be here, they want to change the world. Um. And I get to kind of be a part of that optimism. UM. And then that same semester I generally teach a graduate theory course on kind of human dimensions that we will be an I swap back and forth on UM and there's generally fifteen or so grad students in there, and then in the spring semester I teach a course on collaboration UM, and I have somewhere between forty and fifty undergrads being there. And then we've got our lab UM that uh, you know, depending on the year, we have yeah, five to eight grad students in there, either Masters or PhD working on there. And we we like a lot of professors here, we run a pretty intimate lab where we're meeting one on one with those students UM. Probably not as frequently as they would like, but as frequently as as we can UM, you know, on a weekly or bi weekly basis, to really work on their particular project. So yeah, a lot, hundreds of hundreds. I was asking to Liby this before we came on UM. Like you said, there's a lot of important work that goes on in the wildlife sciences in this building. And and but for for a conversation as relatively short as this would be, the kind of microwave all this into something that we want to really want to cover and talk about what's important for people to know. I'm gonna give Libby ships to set it up. It's a in a broad sense with what you guys work on with all the I read a lot of the papers and I've I've looked at kind of how you explain what you do and it's not just like chef or driver. It has more nuanced to it, I imagine. So give us, give us a rundown kind of how do you guys think about the world and what you try to achieve here. Yeah, that's a great question. I'll try not to screw it up. There's no wrong answer. You guys ever telling your students no wrong answer except when it's wrong. Everybody gets a trophy. Okay, Um, yeah, we are, our interests are we're social scientists and we study people, and we have the benefit of studying people in really cool natural places, and so are kind of a thread that we've between our research and the work we do here in our different programs is how we incorporate social science into decision making processes for natural resources. And so that's whether that's wildlife and thinking about how we integrate the science to understand how a community might tolerate a certain species, or how we think about different management actions that are coming out from state agencies or all the way through to UM kind of our three efforts, and how we use data and science to kind of inform our initiatives and where we should be directing UM efforts in the state. And so we're really interested in kind of that incorporating that social science into natural resource decision making process. What what brought you to that, I mean a little bit learned of what you currently do and and maybe what brought you do this place, but what brought you personally to those interests? Yeah, that's a good question. Uh, you know, I always think about like people always asked me how I got interested in studying gender and hunting, And I did my masters at West Virginia University, and prior to going to w VU, I really was not interested in hunting at all. It was not an activity I wanted to do. It was not an interest of mine. And starting to work in West Virginia and work with some of the local leaders and some of the locals on the ground, I started to understand how hunting was a critical part of the social fiber of that community and in particular how frequently women were out hunting, and just starting to understand the different motivations that women had. And one of the things I noticed was, um just obviously the bringing game home, game meat home to their families to support the livelihood of those families. And so that was something that stuck with me in my master's and then transferring up to Penn State, I had an opportunity to kind of explore that a little bit more, and so I just started to really think about how hunting as a recreation activity and how um women engaged in that sport, and how our decision makers were not really thinking or considering that particular group or segment of the population. And so that really inspired kind of my dissertation work. And from there it I just I fell in love with thinking about wildlife UM. And you know, I have like the anecdotal kind of like you know, reading um certain books like Prodigal Summer or uh, you know, some of the kind of more popular media books that talked a lot about carnivores or talked about predators in the relationship to animals and humans and just being totally romanticized by that and uh, when we you know, the call came out to work at University of Montana, and I was like, oh, I think I'm going to put my name in for that one. As department goes, that's exactly right, and so it just it just kind of it just developed from there. And Um, what we found when we got here to you M in the state is that our state agencies are colleagues that we're working with across campus. We're really just interested in how we use this social science to make decisions. And so we were able to translate a lot of the theories and the ideas that we've been practicing through graduate work and and actually apply those into a lot of real world settings out here. Cool. Well, give me, well the first thing that comes to your mind with application of those theories, give me the best example. That's a great question, um, and so coming, and that's that's the way that you get to the answer. You're like, you know, that's a wonderful question. I will I will refer back to this often during this conversation. But I just met with some of your students of b h A members and and I've every question they asked me. I replied with great question. Great question. That was only to delay So my sin apps is good fire, and I could think of something to say, UM, yeah, great question, great question. Um I you know it's a that's a great question. So I'll just take my gender work. Um I there's a particular theory called constraints theory, and we've applied this across different recreation settings, and so it's been used on persons with disabilities, it's been used on UM older adults, has been used on indoor recreation settings, outdoor recreation settings, and it had not been applied this theoretical approach to hunting. And so I went through and UH used the model to predict hunting behavior. And so I used how women were constrained by hunting, how they negotiated through that hunting. UM. I use measures like self efficacy, so their confidence that they felt while they were hunting, and also measures of social support. And so if you look through like a lot of the R three literature, these are things that you know, UM organizations are touching on. They're like, oh, you need mentors, you need support. And so what I did is just measure those using kind of tested measures out of psychology and social psychology and those details exactly how do you measure that it's a great question. How do you even do that? Um, Well, we are mixed method researchers and so uh we do a little bit of interviewing, um, but we do a lot of kind of survey work, and so we ask a lot of people questions. UM, and so we often have like a battery of questions. And so it's UM, I might ask you, tell me about your your hunting constraints on a scale of one to five, one being the least constrained, five being the most constrained. Tell me how um constrained were you buy these factors and they might have things like complex rules and regulations. Um, um you know um no time, uh, no resources, No, I don't know where to hunt, I don't have anyone to hunt with. And so then I'll get people to respond on a one to five Ler scale. And so I take that quantitative data and I actually, uh through the theory understand the relationships between certain variables. So I understand that you know you need contint you have constraints, but you also have these motivations that help you overcome those constraints. And so through complex sampling and complex statistical analysis, very complex, the most sophisticated only the most sophisticated modeling techniques that requires a calculator. It does. There's a nice like we have these like computers and these software systems and we throw in all the important details and then it spits out a model at the end um. But we're able to get to kind of these ultimate variables that were interested in. So I'm really interested in what's predicting hunting participation. And so from that, from my kind of model of our understanding women, I'm able to say, Okay, if they have more support, if they're more confident, if they have fewer constraints, than they are more likely to participate in some type of hunting activity. Yeah, I think that you have anything to add to that, alxhol this look what she said. That's it's super interesting to me. I know it always calls back to our three, but I think that there's a lot of conversations I've had recently that are around this the complexity of of those motivations, right, how we get to where we are right sitting in a room with your students here. Half an hour ago, I was just kind of studying their stories to try to determine how each of them came to be where they are today because there because I believe you guys and they are are both in a pretty amazing place where you're able to spend time analyzing these factors, understanding them, and then in articulating then to other folks. UM. So when you when you started on on this particular venture, like what difficulties you run into, what things you're looking for, what pitfalls and these kind of um studies are are out there? Yeah, I mean I can go right to my my most limiting factors of my research, which are always great. Sometimes Uh, it's really hard to get at to understand the people who are not engaging and hunting. There's not a list of non hunters out there. Damn, it is right. We could just do some targeted marketing. UM. They It's the same thing we often hear about kind of this elusive wildlife enthusiast group. Everyone wants to know about the wildlife enthusiasts or like, oh they're increasing more people are wildlife viewing, um, And then you go to want to study that group. There's no list of them, and so one of our challenges as researchers is finding the right sample of people to actually ask questions of and I think it's in particularly interesting with when it's related to our three, because you're really trying to capture the people who are not hunting. And so my work on gender was a study of it was males and females, but it was of people who are already big game hunting, and so I'm asking about the things that are constraining them, but they've overcome the constraints, and so it's almost kind of this like post talk analysis of how they did that, and um, what we're really interested in those people who aren't doing it, and so how do you find them? Is there an answer to that question? There is no answer question you don't hunt. Come over, I'll ask you a few questions. Do you start when you're thinking about these things? Do you start with a hypothesis of this is why more women aren't getting into hunting? Is there their concrete hypothesis? Are you working just from some sort of data set? That's a good question. There are some guiding research questions, and we we find those in hypotheses like when we actually get into the analysis. Um, but we we often try to figure out what's missing out of literature, and so you start with a kind of oh, I have this brilliant idea. Let's see if it's even been studied, and you start going and digging into the literature, which is made. Even in the twenty years that we've been through grad school and here, the internet has been phenomenal in that regard, so we were able to access a lot our research, um, and then we we we develop a research question out of that and UM and go from there. Yeah, I mean the methods will follow based on the question. Right. So you might have something that some phenomenon that you just don't know a lot about and you need to go learn more, and you need to do just what we're doing here. You go talk to people, you you know, train yourself to be a really good listener and ask really open ended questions and follow follow the threads, and those will lead you to you know, it sounds like a podcast absolutely, UM's your own private podcast, private podcast through research protections. Yeah. But then if you you know, let me mention we do kind of mixed methods. So we'll often pair that interview more exploratory research with some sort of quantitative follow up where out of that interviewing we come to a hypothesis and we wonder if if you know A is related to be or um and so will then design a quantitative study with a representative sample that allows us to infer up and scale up to pop you some populations, and so that's where the survey work comes in. So you guys brought some notes, you have some examples of your works. It's time to get in and go. I like to still a good podcast fodder here, papers, papers, rattling, two mediums beating each other. Good academics of our papers right now. I appreciate that I should have brought some papers. Um, so give me like, let's let's let's start with one of pick your favorite. You got looks like you have about eight or nine. Um, pick your favorite and tell me is give us a quick rundown of you know, one of these studies and we're and we'll dissect it. I've read a few of them, and talking about Elkin brucellosis, I was insane. Why would you have not start with that one? It's like my our favorite one, I said, my favorite, your favorite? I don't know. You're just playing the hits right now. Yeah, we're playing the hits. Yeah. One of the first studies that we call liabrated with Montana Fish Wildlife, and Parkson was trying to understand, um, you know, how the agency could approach the elk and brucellois management problem that they have out of Yellowstone and let me see if I can do this briefly. But you know, brucellosis is a plenty plenty of time. Brucellois is a pretty um nasty disease that was introduced by livestock originally you know, hundreds and someone years ago. Uh, it's now in the wildlife populations UM and is often transmitted back to cattle, which is bad news if you like to eat steak or sell steak. UM. And so yeah, so there's lots of options on the table for how to manage kind of elk on the landscape and keep them from interacting with cattle and spreading the disease. And so there's been UM lots of effort by UM, the Cooperative Unit here on campus, Mike Mitchell and some other folks have to WP too, to kind of collaboratively get the major stakeholders involved to come up with some options. But they wanted to know what the broader public thought about that, both just general Montana residents, UM landowners specifically, but also hunters, and so we worked with them to do kind of a three tiered study of those groups UM in a concentrated area right outside Yellowstone, UM as well as across the states. We could just kind of understand how the whole Montana public felt. UM. Yeah. And it's one of those opportunities where you go in with lots of ideas about what might matter. Right, Like we thought going in that when once cattle were infected, that people would change their minds, like it's an emergency, we got to do something about it. UM. We thought that UM, you know, the the kind of status of the elk population would be really important UM. And that that did come out, But what really rose to the top at the end of the day was like public access to private lands. So it didn't really matter what kind of tool we were talking about. It didn't matter what stakeholder group we were talking about. The public, hunters and landowners themselves wanted to see landowners reciprocate with public access if they were going to receive some sort of assistance from the state. UM. And so it puts an interesting kind of context to the discussion UM of the issue here. And so yeah, and what I think what I like about it is that we have this you know, uh nasty publication um with lots of numbers and citations, um, and no pictures. I think I think we successfully avoided any picture pictures to help a public charts. Yeah, I think to lead off and say that what you first found is that these people were united on access is very surprising to me. I don't know what do you attribute that to? Is it the place they live? Because that's not that can't be the case across the country, not in my experience, at least with LU the anecdotal evidence less than yeah. Um yeah, I mean I don't think we've got into the mechanisms of it, so I um hesitate to speculate on what what that is, but um, you know it's it's something that some stakeholders advocate for and other stakeholders advocate against, and so what allows us to live is shaking ahead of me. I'm always I'm always the one who's like, I'm underselling. I'm trying to say at least as possible. I don't even know why you wouldn't just this is a perfect example, Like, so we couch this idea in reciprocity and so when we're thinking about am I right, yeah, yeah, And so the idea that if you're going to get something from the state, that you have to give back. And so this idea of reciprocity is is if we go back to like core human values, this is a thing. This is a thing that people like. They want to know that if they are giving, they're getting something back in return. And that's just kind of human nature. And so the idea of reciprocity in terms of getting assistance from the state and then opening up your your land for hunting is a real thing. But the best case scenario for the shared ideas and the culture of a place used to have that reciprocity be so ingrained that that even when even in a micro case like this that it's it's it's evident, is a mate, it's great, it's great news, It is cool news. What else is in there? It was a good study? Um what what what did you find? In the end? As you as you wrote your paper there with I was gonna say, like, we wrote this nasty thing, but it was nice. Is an FVP really kind of forced us to think, um, you know, outside the box in terms of how to communicate our work at the end of the day, and so we have you know, we survive here by publishing, so that exists, but um, working with them to put together kind of a graphical uh representation of this research at the end of the day. UM. And so what this allows us to do is to take all of these things that people think are important and put them all into one model and understand how they really, um you know what comes out on top. And that's when that public access came you know, came out as kind of the strongest piece. So when we put it up against whether people like to see animals killed or not, whether we put it up against um, whether the elk population is high or low, whether cattle have been infected or not, that's like, that's an amazing together. Yeah. Yeah, you're talking about economic driver for private landowners that is seemingly put set aside at some level for for this idea of respirosity. Yeah. Well, and it's kind of cool because, um, you know, sometimes when we work with FLBP, they're looking um to make sure that they're you know, they they're looking for help to make sure they're thinking about an issue the right way and that they're they so a lot of times we'll work with the state when it's you know, a little bit more of a controversial issue, or they're looking for some kind of um assistance with the scientific kind of robustness of a particular study, and so we'll come in work intimately and closely with the state to come up with an idea, and then they kind of turn it over to us to do the sampling and to make sure we're asking the right questions and who we're asking them of. And so as as we think about this, and my husband would be modest, but he is really good at sampling, and so how do we sample people in a way that statistically sound? And so he thinks about this over and over and over. The ladies guys, yeah, sampling sare just talking. We're just about my college duds. It's really tired grad school. It's as I went to a school that was all girls before I went there and played the numbers that I lost. But I'm still I still stand behind my strategy. But so we thought, think about it. We sampled, and we in the statistics, and we did some waiting and and so this represents the groups that we intended to represent. And so a lot of times people like, oh, it's social science, you've manipulated the data. No, we didn't. This is this is you know, we followed a pretty um you know, rigorous approach from the start, and so we can we are confident when we say this is how people fell across the state, and we didn't just we we sampled landowners as a particular group, We sampled hunters, and then we had a general population as well, and so we got kind of all these these three different groups that the agency is really interested. Like any any science, at the end of the day, it's up to the decision makers in charge to weigh all sorts of different evidence. UM. I think our role is to put numbers to the human dimension to this instead of lots of speculation or people saying they speak for the majority, let's go actually measure that. Yeah. In this podcast, we have been having a lot of conversations about our model of conservation and talking about how you know, each step of that process. And this is heartening to me because it is highlighting how science, um and even social science, which we don't think of a lot as hunters, how social science impacts wildlife management on a state level. Which is what what which really the key, the center point of our model of conservation. And so what you guys are talking about is hopefully for everyone listening, if you were ever to doubt the science or biology that's baked into state wildlife management, they're holding these these animals and trust for all of us. This is a great example of how how this leads up and why I really wanted to come and chat with you guys exactly what you're just said. And it's the fact that you're talking about elk transferring disease to a money crop, which is cattle, and people still not I mean, that's the common trope in the West, is the private landowner versus the public land user. And the way that that all the way that all works out when you guys are talking to these survey folks, how do you how do you speak to them? Do they fill out a form? Do you speak to them personally? Obviously not Again, we do it different ways for different studies, but you know, we do a lot of mail surveys um so we you know, are mailing you a packet of uh, you know, a letter and a questionnaire that you fill out and if you don't fill it out, we will send you a postcard to say, please fill it out. If you don't fill it out, we'll send you another one come to your house. If I couldn't have the time, I would. Yeah. We want the easiest path to be to fill it out and send it back to us. Um. Yeah, so a lot of that. Again, we do a lot of interviews too, so we'll go out and talk to people and record those interviews and the and the words become the data. Particularly with elk in in brucellosis. Did you have any interactions with the private landowners that you felt were impactful. Yeah. So, UM. I sometimes get the UM. The position of being the person of contact on surveys. I think, my this is my husband gladly defers to me to be that person more affable, gets the calls. Yeah. So I get the calls and UM and they end better. I mean I really I I truly enjoy talking to people, and so the idea that I get to pick up the phone and talk somebody through our survey in the importance of filling it out. And it's really interesting because we've got landowners, hunters, we got all sorts of people. We've got husbands and wives like UM, and they all have something they want to tell me about the survey or about the issue that we're actually studying, and so um and so part of this research is sometimes just listening to the person unting of their end of the phone and if they have a complaint or if they have an issue, and just being willing to have that conversation. And so there was like you know, we get minor things like um, one wife called me and said, why didn't I get the survey? I'm a hunter? And so then you have to talk through sampling and you know, this is a simple random sample and so you weren't chosen. Your husband was chosen. And absolutely your voice is important and here are the ways that I think you can contribute to, you know, wildlife conservation. Then you get folks who think you're asking the wrong questions. Why would you ask this question? This is a stupid question, It's totally leading. How do you not how do you live your life as a social scientist and not just want to punch yourself in the faith like I had I had an interaction this morning. We're like social sciences, they're they're not talking le what like I don't how did you possibly make that inference from nothing that you know, and so I think that I'm sure that's you deal with that all the time and then and you have to just I mean, we just systematically go through like here are the stuffs we took, here's why we did it. Let me tell you a little bit about the waiting will do. Here's how I think it represents UM. And that's where we like, what's cool about us. I think as as a university professors and faculty, we we have that training and grounding to feel confident in the design that we've chosen. And UM. Yeah, we don't do it perfectly. We don't ask the perfect questions every single go around UM, but we we strive for kind of developing solid questions and we do all sorts of crazy stuff to UM to check these surveys before they go out. We pre test it on like all of our students, so we make our And you think the public's critical, try giving your survey to all your students. I met some of them pretty critical people. We got that critical part of the critical thinking down. He really didn't give me all your feedback and then it's like tore it apart and they're like, like you know, like yelling at you on paper and you're like, Okay, I have feelings too about this red pen for something, and so we do that. We we test it there. We of course, if we're doing work for the agency, the agency is working with us on that survey development, so they're comfortable with the kind of questions we're asking. We'll send it to colleagues across the country to critique and review. And you know a lot of the a lot of the questions that we use, um, we don't come up with on the fly. They've been used you know, in the literature and in other studies over and over, and so there's some validity that's been built over time. But it's a it's definitely young science. Um, yeah, it is. And like I said, a lot of people there's there's the methodology I think is important to cover here because people it's I think it's relatively easy from the outside looking into poke holes and in some of these methodologies, um, so specifically ELK and brucellosis. When you when you go to write this paper, what's your interaction with f WP, you know, what are they grading you on or are you how are they thinking about the result that you know this paper that you're turning in at the end of the process. Yeah, I mean I think that they want to know. I mean hesitate to speak for them, but but they want to know when they go to the commission to say, you know, just just as they would with a population model of elk UM. They want to say with confidence that you know, the data are what the data are, and that people people's attitudes are this UM. And so the pure review process allows, you know, a higher level of confidence in in those data and in our results. So you know, so they'll defer to us in terms of thinking about what the theoretical aiming is and how to kind of couch this in the existing literature. Um. And then as that goes through the pure review process, the results then are much more robust for them to have some confidence when they present them to the commission. So what did they present this case? Um? I think what's the abstract? I think I presented it and pant I was pregnant, so uncomfortable, so I'm like, I'm only pregnant enough at the time, so it was like, did I eat like an extra hamburger or was that a belly? That's the awkward stage pregnancy that Um. Yeah, now and then and then I had pregnancy brain. So it was actually probably better that I did it, because then if I probably didn't even remember that it happened at the time, he was eating ice cream and you want don't talk. It was it was comical, I remember that. UM. And so we we presented them with kind of our our key findings. We talked about the access to private lands, We talked about having uh that elk population objectives were somewhat UM. People wanted to see some regulation that followed some of the population objectives UM, which like as elk populations were too abundant, like above objective that people were more okay with kind of UM, you know, more lethal control, more heavy hand on the management side, UM, which is it's intuitive UM. But literally no one had put data to that before, which is, you know, sometimes we find exactly what people think we're going to find. But now we have data, we know. It's a great it's a great point. I mean it's there's this anecdotal like, yeah, of course that's to say, but how do you know and how does that interact? How important is that relative to this public access question. Oh, it's not that m that's very get's interesting well, and we were also able to show kind of where on particular management actions where there was a lot more disagreement, and so we used a method that depicts that for our agency, and so UM, like I'm showing you this, there's a bunch of figures with bubbles on them, and some of the bubbles are big, and some of the bubbles are small, and the small bubbles suggests that there's a lot of agreement, whereas the big bubbles suggests that there's a lot of disagreement. And so UM at the time they were considering kill permits, and they were for UM later season kill permits, and there was a lot of disagreement around those kill permits, regardless of your hunter, landowner or general population. And so the other one that was kind of interesting was permanently fencing haystacks was also a place where we saw a lot of disagreement on how to manage ELK. So it's kind of an interesting depiction. It's called potential for conflict Index and it was developed out as some some researchers at Colorado State University and yeah, pc I and you can go I mean you can go to our you can guys can whoever's listening, look us up and on our web page we have the report. So if anyone's interested in kind of thinking about the other thing that's interesting there is that we like to talk about these groups, and we just did in terms of sampling, like landowners, they're all the same hunters, they all feel the same way, um. And that's this data really show where that is appropriate and where it's really not. Where you have, you know, varying views within the hunter population about the acceptability of different management techniques or even hunting itself. Um. And so figuring out when it's appropriate to kind of think about hunters as one group and when you really can't do that. Yeah, that's that's That's something I think about a lot and we've I've talked about in recent podcasts. Are we talked about our three a lot. I just sat down with a group called the Sports AND's Alliance and they they deal with specifically legislation against or fighting against animal rights activists, and they were, you know, and much of that conversation was around how do you feel like you have a united front on one side that opposes that his animal rights and opposes what we do in some level that you know, really kind of right now it's edges, but eventually that would be pushing inward. And then you have this hunting group that's hard to define, right. It's very regional, it's very pursuit base, it's very perspective base and value system based, and it's all just a mess. And so if you guys could please help, Well, it's interesting to find it a little bit better. Well, you know, I always groused me back to this critical piece of literature from the sixties. Um, this is an early recreation study. In the title was the average camper who doesn't exist, and so um, it's literally in one of my papers. As I was scanning, it was like, oh, I got that reference in there. Um. To suggest that all hunters are all women, are all landowners are the exact same is something we we all do this. We all say hunters, we all say landowners. Um, but they are very different and and like you said, it's different regionally. It's different if you're on this side of the Rocky Mountains or that side of the Rocky Mountains, if you're um living with grizzly bears or without grizzly bears. Um, there's just a lot of variation, and so you know, studying UM issues from a very micro level all the way up to a macro level is needed, and so you can't just do one study. There's often kind of a tiered process of trying to understand all the job security there right there, it's never ending future research, never ending story. Yeah, yeah, every paper has a future research. That's where we shove it all. Well, it's like I was just reading on your report here it says that the this pc I revealed that public access for hunting can reduce conflict among cattle producers. That's a sentence that I maybe before moving out west, definitely before talking to you guys, something that I would have I would have bet against rather than bet for UM. So again, I could probably keep coming back this in this conversation. I know this is a little bit different with brucellosis and less ELK is less disease, less disease transferred, things of that nature. But it but again it goes to the point of well, that's a fun stuff. Is like, sometimes we confirm what we already knew and now we have data, but sometimes we find surprises, and that's that's really the exciting stuff. When we go in with one one idea and the data just shows that we're just wrong. Uh, and then another idea. But when well, when you think about like these groups as we talk about, even if you think about outdoor recreation of those as a group, you can break that down at the skiers, climbers, hikers, all these other things. I've done that in the in the past for marketing purposes. But and then you think of hunters as as all this different group of upland hunters, Turkey hunters, you can break it up recently as well. Do you feel that the that the hunting subset is more complicated and it's like in its dissection than than maybe the outdoor wreck group. It's more variedance perspectives, Like, how would you line that up? Because it's it's yeah, that's a really I've actually never thought of it that way. I Mean, what's interesting about hunting, and I would probably lump fishing in this with this as well, is that there's such a variety of how you do it and when you do it. Um, you know, skiing, for example, it's very you know, there's one season, there's resorts, and there's that country and I know there's nuance between wis not you're not but you're not doing in the swamps of Louisiana and in the planes this is not you do it on the mountain and you go down. That's right, and so mountain you're welcome your pursuits and it's crap. And there's and so for hunting like there, I mean, there's the you know, how you harvest an animal, um which firearms use, whether you are into archery, whether you're into big game, small there's so many variations of how you hunt. And then you layer on top of that in recreation we have this theory called specialization and so how you progress through an activity and become highly specialized or not um And so when you start thinking about that, there are they. I feel like hunters and anglers are are very much there's there's a lot of them, and they're all doing it slightly different. And goes back to one of your kind of points on motivations and how do we how are we understanding those motivations from or experiences or recreation experience preferences. How are we understanding those for every activity and making sure we understand the full picture of what's going on in the landscape. Yeah, yeah, so I think the answer is yes, hunting is way complicated, super complicated, super complicated, more complicated. We've built typologies within you know, certain hunting or fishing activities, right, so you have it's not just that you are a saltwater angler. You there's like six different types of saltwater you know, like so um people are different. That's exactly right on your pigeonhole. Yeah, I've got I've got a typology for you there. And they're always range. When we do a typology study, there's like this we call them to all I come to all around enthusiasts. There's someone who's like jazzed about everything, and then there's like the dud group, like the group at the end who's like just kind of low on all motivations. Why are you doing? Like actually don't want that guy, the fact that you're doing anything, because it's a d percent harder to do something that it is to do nothing. That I've found. Um, we talked about about all the time in the hunting group about like just the way we we have a guy that works for our company. His name is Mark Kenyon, and he's a white tail guy and like all he kind of has just a one track mind when it comes to that, and aways making fun of him. I grew up as a white tail hunter. I love white sail hunting. It's a fantastic thing to do, set up in a tree and all. But I can't just do that, and I don't just think about that. But he does. And there's there's folks like that in upland and waterfowl, like they get this niche and even outside of like just the media landscape ward, and it's just kind of a valuable thing, just as just in your your own you know, your own place in the culture. There's a lot of people pick a lane and do you guys have any ideas about why that is or why like what motivates people to kind of stick into one. I think it's like it's boring. White tails get boring after a while, but not other people like wake up and that's all they think about. They name the dear. You're not very good at keeping your audience. I love you guys, come back. Well. It is interesting because obviously it's like generalist versus like highly specialized, right, and we know that, um so if we look at like, you know, we've heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and um, it's kind of a psychology theory where you have like you meet your basic needs and you can go up this pyramid and get to self actualization. We also call that kind of flow experiences. And this is um, there's a philosopher I'm going to screw up his name. It's like Shiksimahi and yeah it's really good, really professionality doctor um. But they talk about flow experiences and so, uh, if you can and flow is I mean you can think about your favorite hunting experience or your favorite outdoor recordation experience where like the world just kind of just disappeared around you and you were just highly focused on one thing. And so I think people who who might specialize are looking to achieve that flow experience and so um, if they can get there by doing the same activity and learning it so well, they can quickly get to that point in time where they feel like they are in this absolute state of self actualization. And I know that's a little like no, no, I mean, I've had folks on pockets that were in bear attacks. They're talking about flow states. It's a strange connection between those things. But that's interesting for me to think about because I was getting made fun of the other day. For me, I was like, I'm a generalist, man, I say, I like to do everything. I don't. I can't spend my time only doing a thing when there's so many other things to do. Um, people are making fun of that means you're good at nothing. I'm like, oh, that's probably true, but all trades master master of only. But it's interesting, interesting to hear how that that manifests self and hunting well. And I wonder if, like generalists maybe think about flow and the flow motivations are different. So maybe it's like the scenery or being like, you know, there's some other things that are getting you to that point and it's not just the activity itself. Yeah. Do you guys ever think about motivations like intrinsic versus extrinsic and how people are motivated to do things? Yeah? I think about it like all the time. You should come to my class, which is to cover the section on motivations. Yeah, that was a good guess. So how do you when you think about hunters and obviously when you study it from a social level and the interactions, you have to think about motivations. Um, So how do you think about in the modern social media age the extrinsic and intrinsic motivations of hunters. Yeah, um, that's a good question. We can think back to like motivation theory, so expectantcy balance theory, and so how people, um the outcome or the benefit you're hoping to achieve as being kind of one of these these driving forces. And so a lot of times in in our theories, we're thinking we're interested in that end goal, like what are you hoping what's the benefit you're hoping to achieve at the end of it, and that is closely lined up with your motivation. And there's just really cool paper um by some researchers I don't know in the nineties, um looking at they have a list of like three hundred and seventy five potential outdoor recreation motivations and there's like this massive list. It's like, it's an awesome paper because you can when you're doing survey research, you can just grab it and like avoiding your spouse. Yeah I'm hungry, but it's all yeah exactly. Um. And so when we start thinking about motivations and which ones of that list of three hundred seventy five or whatever it is. Thinking about which ones are tailored mostly to to hunting is important. And so we know that different groups are motivated for different reasons, and so we I looked at motivations by gender and so how why women and men are motivated differently? And there were some motivations that were the same, so being a nature, getting outdoors, things like that. There was some um coalescing around that. Um. I noticed that men tended to hunt more for so like hanging out with their friends rather than women, whereas women tended to hunt for more family related reasons. And so uh uh, which is just funny to me. Um, you know, men are going out to socialize and when we're going out to take care of their family. And I'm going to say something, but I'm I'm also I sent this one out. I had an awesome hunting season this year where I got a total of one day. Um. And this is because of my two very small children. And my husband was going out for like a weak hunting trip. Awesome wife go hunting for a week. Um. And I said to him, He's like, what do you want me to do? I said, get a damn dear, That's what I want you to do we need some meat in our freezer. I said, you know, he's like, should I get it? Wait for a big one? I said, no, you get a deer. And so this idea that some you know, there are are these differences between how men and women hunt and not true. Actually that is inaccurate. I said, do I shoot a dough on day one? And you said, hell no, I need three days, like day two afternoon. Okay, maybe now this is a good podcast. We need to break to swim right into that. It's not hard. That's interesting to think of for me because I was again talking to Hannah, one of your grad students here, and it just struck me that there's so much conversation around women and hunting. I remember when I read there was a study I want to say in responsive Managements are Better Virginia. I probably got the year wrong. Was that. But they started to identify groups, you know, as as honey was on the rise for the first time in many years since the eighties, identified groups that were getting back into it. And there they started with local boards returning military members, and then and then females, and I thought, oh, well, that's a as far as like population sets, it's like half of all of us, more than half, and then a few of us that like to eat, a few of us that were in the military, and then all half of us or is third doesn't make any sense? Well, it's fascinating. So when I was publishing my dissertation work, I had to so we go through like a peer review process, and you send it out and it's blind. You have no idea who's reviewing it, and they like because it's blind, they like shred you. And so it's, uh, it can be a really hard process. And I think I had a statement and and and ultimately my reviews were great, like they really helped push my paper into a better place. But one of the statements was I disagree completely that women are going to um make up for the lack of the decline and hunting population of males. And they just disputed the fact that women were going to engage in the sport as as much as I was making a case for it. And and you know, I've I guess I've that reviewed stuck with me because I keep thinking about it. Can women really make up um met a big piece of that that population decline? And I don't know, And but for me personally, we have to try because, like you said, it's fifty two percent of the population. Um. And so if we are not putting a big push on females and and and in particular maybe uh as women emerged out of college or into college, and then also family unit type hunting, I think we're missing something. I think we're missing a lot. I will I will get a little bit, give you a little bit into the old media kit for this podcast mail female and that's pretty typical reflects the we were just looking at the stats of hunting participation that's in ten really well, at least I'm representative, that's all tried. Yeah you want this is average right there? Um, it's always been interesting me and I've seen that pretty much everywhere I've gone. Um. And so when we say it's rising to what to what end? Right? Um? So getting into your the paper that I read and then some of your work on on this, how do we start this conversation, Like we know it's a growing set, but it's only growing to the point where I couldn't really shrink in my opinion, That's how I start thinking about it. This couldn't shrink anymore. It can't be four percent of the population. It just doesn't make any sense for the future. Funny could be Yeah, um, and so is that how you start thinking about this, Like it can't go down, it's got to go up, or what's the what's the way you approach? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Like so when I first got into like looking at women and hunting, I you quickly start looking at women and kind of how women experience recreation, leisure and the different constraints that they have that men just don't have. Um. And it's not it's not I'm not saying that because men don't have constraints hunting. They have they had their whole suite of different things that are preventing them, um from going out there. And you know, we look at like changing gender roles in society that's preventing for men from going at as offten. I mean, I have to have an equal number of days of recreation as my husband does. And that's because we have an equal I mean it's it's hard for me, Like it's hard for me even manage it sometimes. And so I like this idea that like we should be studying both experiences, Like it's not enough to just you know, just focus on women. But that's what I'm really interested in. So we'll focus on that um and thinking about you know, like life stages um. The fact that I hunted twice pregn in and twice while breastfeeding was a different set of constraints that you will ever have to deal with. I had not had that constraint. You didn't have to pump every hour and a half on a hunting trip, and so like that's can you adjust that time where like there's a buck pump in fifteen minutes? Can you do that? I can't do that. Like I was just third square and they'll go there. Took us about forty minutes. But it was hilarious. I mean I I hunted with my girlfriend at the time, who was also doing the same exact thing, and uh, we're like still questioning. I have refrained from asking any biologist if I detracted animals because I was like totally in this state. I have no idea. But there's just different challenges and so understanding like the women's experience and what they are competing against and just that's that's an important inquiry and that's an important piece of trying to get more women involved. In the activity, and it's it's like you said earlier, it's not like a one size fits all model, Like we have amazing Becoming Outdoors women programs and across the States, and that fits certain women and for other women it's not. It's going to be something completely different. Maybe it's the local bore and so that, Like you know, there's no silver bullet with women and hunting, but it's the kind of suite of options, in the suite of support networks and the suite of mentor programs that are really gonna, I think make a difference. And that's where uh, I think conservationists and hunting advocates or others can learn a lot from the marketing and business world right where you know, you don't sell a product by talking about it one way. You know, you figure out all the different market segments are that are out there, and you talk to them specifically about the thing that's in their way. But it's it's hard to talk about it. It's such a reductive fashion to like, hey, ladies, nobody's doing it, like hey, I mentually this is another podcast like that. Some of the problem issues with our three My My Lovely Boss Steve Ornella said, like, you can't tell someone this is a declining activity. Come on, jump on board. When he said that, I was like, dude, this is that's one of the more powerful things around this idea descriptive norms right there. Yeah, I would start using these terms like it sounds smarter, um, But yeah, and I think that's a that's a that's a big thing for us, Like how do we first describe the plight that we're in and recognize that there is an issue here. There's, like you said, there's obvious reasons why were we are where we are, Societal and cultural reasons to kind of have have driven us to where we are right now. We can all probably recognize him, But what do we do with him? There's the question. Yeah, I and I, um, yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this. I've been in these some currently in the throes of the working on the Montana State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan. I know scorp as. It's finally fondly reading SCORP. SCORP sounds like a small ugly dog, um, But we have so scorps are needed across the fifty states to get LBCF state side funds, and so it's an important document and their guiding documents across you know, they happen every five years Montana is doing there's I've I've worked with Montana the last go around, and so it's a kind of a privilege and an honor to be asked again to help with it. And so I've been interacting with them my little advisory group on that and thinking a lot about how, uh just how we talk about hunting in outdoor recreation and a lot of times it's, um, it's a small piece of these plans, and for me, I want to kind of elevate some of the R three efforts and make sure that's incorporated into our planning, our state planning efforts. UM. Likewise, I've you know, after you haven't talking to my buddy Greg Lemon and you know Greg right, and um, he told me to mention how what was it? Dapper handsome? He was on the podcast. I know he doesn't film them. She got laugh But Greg and I and and Insane with colleague care Josh mill Spot, who's who's been in Crockett chair here and UMS campus and the wildlif Biology program, we've been thinking about how do we we have all these kind of awesome groups popping up thinking about our three things that we have you know, field to fork, we have you know, farm to table. We have all these like you know, cool like local for or like all these cool programs in all of these nonprofits or conservation organizations, and and it seems like we're not even certain who's doing what, and we're not even certain if we're all pointed in the right direction, and so um there is. I think I'm hopeful that in at least in Montana will start thinking about them more comprehensively and holistically, because I think once we can kind of organize all the efforts, we can point us all in the right direction and make sure we know what what is it the left hands doing with the right hand at those hands are doing the same thing. I'm not good with the immediate do any of these things for sure? I I think about this exact thing a lot like is it a marketing issue? Is is it a public relations issue with hunting? In fact, when I started this podcast, that was one of the first things I said, I think there's a pr issue with what we got going on, Because when I sat in the room with your students here, these members of b h A you'd have no marketing problem or pr problem hunting if you just talk to them, right, if you just spoke with them and asked him like, it's hunting good for your life, good for what you do, you would know problem. People would be lining up to take part in the world that they've created for themselves here at this college and in in this town. Um, did you have Lincoln's paper there, because we have a colleague who who wrote a paper kind of on this kind of like we think of hunters as kind of like the rugged individual affords their own path, you know. Um, and sorry, it's not true. Like, Um, you were you know, raised in a family that's supported, and you learned from a mentor or you had resources to teach yourself and while other people didn't, and you live in a town or a place where there's access, and you live in a country that you know has embedded this into their wildlife management. Um. And so yeah, we can reduce it down to thinking about just participation by the individual, But there's this kind of whole, kind of nested rings of support throughout society that constitute what they called like the social habitat for hunting, And all of that has to be intact um for the hunter to even be in a position to say yes and to go do that sport. Is there a place that we as a community can step in and maybe haven't stepped in the like in that in those rings of of support where you know, maybe it's after folks leave the parental the parental nest and get out into this. It's like I think we lose most hunters are Recruitment dies off mostly in this environment in college because people are out from under the think the guys of their parents and that influence. They're seeing all the world around them. Everything is new and exciting and there's all these things you can do with their life. And hunting is takes a lot of money, as your students are telling me earlier, like it's five for an out of state license. That's ridiculous. They can't afford. That takes a lot of time and energy and equipment, and at that time in their life they have little time, little energy, and not a lot of funds to buy things and go and do things. So I think that goes to your point, But it's also an opportunity, Like I think there's they're they're they're um the folks who come out of families that are supporting hunting, and they may lose it in college and maybe they come back to it later in life. But there's also a group of people who didn't have it. And I was in that category, Like I wanted it, never had it growing up. And then as I was, you know, in college and exposed to other people, that gave me the opportunity to learn from other people and to get some of the things that I couldn't get as a kid. And so I think there's there's a lot of opportunity at this at this age, you know, to recruit people who didn't come out of hunting families into the sport. Well, it's it's interesting, I think, Um, it's it's been identified. So I'm part of this larger grant with thirteen other states and we are strategically implementing intro to hunting courses on campuses. And so we just did one two weekends ago, m up at the Boode and Crockett Ranch. Earlier silly I was home with the kids general general yourself into some cartoons and well it was hilarious that we took so Josh mill Spawn I took the students up and UM, the ranch manager, Luca Coli, and Josh and Uh. One of Josh's students, Dan did a lot of the session. I I was fine differing because I felt like I was completely like mom role. I was like love and belonging. I'm like, let's have some who wants more spaghetti? Everyone good enough to eat, please put granola bars in your pocket. Um. And but we had this awesome, this awesome trip and we like rolled out of UM and these like black suburbans and went up look like secret kids on the school bus, Like are you secret service? Were like, no, hunters, hunters can't tell you yea. So we rolled into the ranch and I mean we had a range of experienced levels and some folks had hunted before, and UM, a lot of folks had never even they didn't even know what to do. They never saw a gun, they've never thought about firearms, they've never thought about the regulations. And it just because it was free and because they just had to show up, it was really easy for them to do. And so this grant with their teen states um UH funded by off Well, was the ticket for that. And so we partnered with FWP. We made sure we had a game board, in there kind of going over the rags with the students. He unrolled the new kind of display of FLVPS regulations, which is an improvement. Um, and uh, the students got a chance. Josh and Luke took him out to the range and they had all these different guns to try and the students got to shoot clay pigeons. They just got to do some target practice. They got to just experience what it meant to be around firearms and had that safety around it. And then we did a bunch of you know, habitat and how do you look for deer and elk and things like that, went around the landscape and it was just really cool. Yeah, and hearing about it afterwards, I mean, I think you reflecting on that there's different needs among different students and so there might there's not just like the hunting recruitment program. It's you know, we have people who know what they're doing and they're interested in these programs, but they need a different type of mentorship than the folks who can't spell hunting and what are kind of interested And um, it was fascinating too. I mean b h A in the student club here has done a phenomenal job and they were the precursor for this course. They've been doing the Hunting for Sustainability program and so a lot of the students who were in bh A club came and helped with the weekend, and so we were able to kind of start that mentorship model. What's really cool is that Josh and Josh's leading and I'll assist a course in the fall where you get college credit to do Hunting for Sustainability and I know, game on Game changer um, and so it's a four hundred level course where you can, you know, it's kind of um ala carte style. You can take one credit and do the weekend, or you can do two credits and write a paper in addition, or do a third credit, and so we can have students kind of build their own program. Yeah, I mean it's agains. You keep coming back to that word complex. It's a very complex thing to do to try to first dissect and understand these different groups of people and then come to some conclusion about how to create more hunters out of this gumbo of ingredients you're not really sure of. Yum. It's cool to put some data to that too, Like we're talking about lots of ideas that might work, and we need people that are getting creative and producing things and leading programs, but we also need to kind of learn as to what's working right, um, and so building in some metrics of success to those programs and figuring out you know, which, which you know, approaches are working for which groups and how much, and which are worthy of investment and those sorts of things. That's where some of the data comes in. Do you guys have you know especially I think Women Hunters is probably the most interesting of all those to me personally. Um, do you have suggestions for folks? Do you have things that, based on your works are are something we could all try and do or or give us hope? Ladies, ladies, Um, yeah, it's I think you know again all not all women are the same. But there are things that I was Josh and I were really clued into over the weekends that, um, women do not just step up and say yeah, I want to shoot that up FIREM I want to I want to take more runs at the clay pigeons, you know machine and so um, just being aware of that women might not volunteer and they might they might need a little bit extra assistance to even just step up and do the do the task that we're we put put forward. I really advocate and this is just something over my years of working with high school through college, I advocate at least at this time, Uh, women focus programming, And I think having college courses is awesome, but I would love to see a specific section just for women and thinking about how that experience is just different than the experience of males. And it doesn't mean we always have to do it that way, it just is, you know, I think women focus programming is a thing. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and we struggle with are we pandering if we say like it's a women's hunt. Are we pandering like a do I say, please, everybody come over? It's all it's only women. It's it's very important. What would you treat everyone as equals and say like, hey, everybody, it's a hunt for everyone. But and I struggle with that. But after talking to you and talking, you know, talking to hand In some of your other female students earlier, they were I think because they're around you, guys more open to say like, here's of the things I that I experienced that you'll never like the perspective, You'll never have. I don't think that's very normal in the communication with folks. I think because they're exposed to you guys, and social sciences and the things that you've you've talked about here, they're more willing to say the things they've said to me that were you know, when I go to the sportsman's warehouse, this is what I experienced when I go out in the field, this is what I experienced when I talked to other hunters, this is what I experienced. And so it's cool that they were open enough say that, But I think most female hunters probably aren't. And it's amazing to me just um, yeah, like the women. I mean, you met Madeline Damon, who is here and ah she is, you know, itching for like a woman to go hunting with. She said that to me, Like I if I would just have it's different with a woman. What's the way she put It's like, it's just a different interaction. It's a different way to approach the outdoors. And I'm like, Okay, guys like to think that we're helpful and unhelpful ways, you know, um and over explaining and being overbearing and jumping too much sometimes damn well, we're our own worst. I mean, we've we've experienced that. I mean, I've rarely hunt with you now, thank god, thank god. I'm separation family reasons and friends, and I had to get away from my family the data support. But I mean, it's just a different experience. Like I you know, I told him, he asked me one day what my hunt. I was going away with a girlfriend on a hunting trip. He's like, what's your hunt? I don't even know what you do. He's like, saw me like packing like bottles of wine and goat cheese, and he's like, where are you going? And it's like, oh, we're going over to a cabin, I said. We get in the car and we literally do not stop talking even when we're hunting. We're still having a conversation somehow. And and so it's just a very different social experience when in some women. And I'm feeling the need on our campus right now to UM. I think we are UM is poised to encourage hunting. Our president Bodner is interested in this, are I see it up the ranks. Sardine, our director of Wildlife, like we we are interested in this and getting our students involved. And so I think my next step is working with Josh and figuring out how do we have a women's focused effort on our campus, at least at the college level. Yeah. I mean, if someone would ask me, what, you know, what's my opinion on recruitment, especially for female hunters or just around the bus. I just want more hunters. I don't care how we get it. And the folks like you that are actually thinking through the logistics of this and looking at the data, I'm trying to paint a more accurate picture of exactly how to take that action because I think why it's valuable, because I don't I mean, if we have to have all women classes to get I don't care. I have no I have. I would put no constraints on how we get new hunters in as long as we're speaking and you know, ethical terms and sustainable terms when we do, which we are UM and so I think most hunters would say the same thing, and that would be my gas. It's like, I just want more people to enjoy the thing that I enjoy in responsible and informed way. Do I care how we do it as long as it's within those constitucts. I don't. I don't UM And so you know, bring on the solutions. I think we'll we'll, we'll put them out there. Yeah, I think hunters need to think beyond hunters to write, like thinking about the broader social habitat for hunting um and and the fact that hunting exists not because of hunters, but because all the other people here in the country support hunting. Right that the majority of people in this country, whether they hunt or not, support hunting UM. And you know, doing what we can to represent the sport well, you know, build connections and good communication about what we're up to um with the broader public. UM. So even if you know, as a hunter, I don't want popular I don't want hunting to get so popular, like I think a little bit more fun. But you know, like, well there's a difference with men and women. UM. I was teasing. I had these students come up to me. You know, I talked about hunting my classes all the time, and these like three guys come up to me and they're like, Livy, we're trying to hunt in this one area and we don't know where to go. And I said, yeah, I was like, here, here's how I would tackle this particular block of land. And actually, if you're looking for something close to town. I would also go to this one particular spot that I just discovered. But you're gonna have to hike. You're gonna to do this. And I told Alex this, and he's like, why would you say that? And I said, because I'm interested in getting people outdoors and I'm interested in getting I find the spot. Finally find a good spot, closes down and she goes, I'm gonna learn about it. This is a perfect segue to a thing that I do on this show. I got a lot of heat for it out in the internet. I'm gonna keep doing it. It's perfect. That means you're doing something right. I know a lot of heat people are upset. It's called now here's another part of this conversation. It used to be called before I met you guys, used to be called hot spot cool dude. But now problem hot spot cool person. I think we can work on that cool individual is where this is. This actually is presented by First Light. They make lovely hunting clothing we wear outside. Um, so thank you first Light. I'm going to try to convince you guys to give me a hunting spot, and you have to be very specific can be like these mountain range or something like that. You have to give me a very specific hunting spot for all the listeners this podcast that they would go to and what they would find there. And no, there's only been two guys that actually give me anything. Yeah, I refuse, immediate refused me. Just oh my god, this is the problem. Do you want to know what there are? Three? Issue is that no one's given up their hunting. So that's what I'm saying. That's the bell of disagreement. Yep. Uh, it's the last hurdle that you have to cut. You know, have to clear yourself your own spots exactly right, recruit your own spots. Well, yeah, if you guys want to give somebody, I got a dove spot, and I got like a kind of an elk spot. That's far. That's what you got. That's all I got. And most people don't want to give spots. I don't understand it. What's your end? How many of you asked? It's like eight two out of it's not good. Yeah, not a good data, but than zero. Yeah, So if you guys want to just it could be longitude loaded too, that's fine. It could be the exact like Trailhead give some spots up back in Pennsylvania. I'm not saying I mean the place. I'm really I don't. I get I have no qualms and I go to a place that actually a lot of people use, and so I have no issues giving it up. Um. It's so we we like to go up by Phillipsburg and um, that's kind of a fun space for us as a family, and so we've actually been. Um, you know, there's the East Fork Reservoir up there, and then there's the next road which is kind of where you go to Moose Lake. And as you're going up to Moose Lake, remember that Moose Lake. Everybody Moose Lake on the left in the woods is I think it's like angry calls on surveys grant to after you were tearing down stereotypes. That's right. This is for our three folks. Um, it's called Carpet Lake. And you just get high enough and there's I've seen multiple elk in there. I've never actually taken a shot in there. Um, but it's it's the thing I like about it is it's easy terrain and so you're not having to kind of scale a big hill, although you do have to work a little bit, especially in deep snow. Um and it's just there's some nice kind of paths. There's some nice just it's just a nice area on it. It's wooded, it's has some la makes, it's pretty. It's teeming with elk teeming depending on how people and now people in tends of people. We should study this though, we should say this would be a good Yeah, like is this really a thing? If you talk about your spot to people go there. That's why I did. I'm doing this because they're like want to you need some people. Yeah, I do need data, but I also like mess with folks, So that two things. I like data and mess with folks. You should say the next person you interview, and if they say they're not giving up their spot, you should. You should have them come give them my number, your number. Maybe you could just always call into this segment from now on, just like, yeah, look at the data. Te win assholes. All right, we're gonna the final segment here. It's called first time. Is this a little bit? Let We'll get you out in the easy spot. This is presented by Federal Premium Ammunition. And I've been shooting turkeys in the face with their new TSS load here recently. It's very nice works. Well that's one of the multiple shot size. Yeah, third degree ye shot size. I mean just pole ax and Turkey's like it's ridiculous, it's just knocking her with their feet. Um. But this segment, so thank you Federal Premium. This segment is UH where you're gonna tell me your first like we're gonna goll go with I'll let you pick the first hunting related first. I'd like to go with first rifle because I feel like that's always a big deal. And then maybe first animal you killed, that's also big deal. I'll let I'll let you if you have a more interesting one, you can pick of it. Let's try those two, Alex, give me your first rifle. Well, my first rifle was um uh dough white tail in Pennsylvania UM on opening day, which is um which is an experience dude, I from Western Maryland. I mean they're all about it, but like one point two million hunters or something number might be wrong with Orange Army. It is the pumpkin patch. Um. Yeah. And I had just switched over from UH I wear glasses and I was sick of wearing glasses in the field and I just got contacts like the week before. Brilliant planning. Yeah and uh and so yeah. I was up in in north central Pennsylvania and I was kind of posted outside this this big thicket and I got in there, you know, way before, way before light, and I could there's tons of deer all around. I'm just waiting for the first light. Um and yeah. As it started getting lighter, I'm like squinting through my scope and my contact is my contacts are just like itch in my eyes, and my eyes are watering and streaming. I can't see anything. I finally just take the contacts out and throw them on the ground. Um and raid, it's kind of shooting. Light came up. There was this nice big dough headed into the thicket and pulled the trigger. Um and uh yeah, um, how were you? I was actually in grad school. I didn't really big game until grad school, so I was it was probably two three. I don't know that solo solo mission. Um. I was with a group of guys at a camp up there, but we had kind of split up and had our own spots that we'd scoped out. Oh yeah, I'm I'm very familiar I grew up in western Maryland. Basically, I mean we could walk to the Pennsylvania border and um, I can think twice where bullets wiz by my head on opening day. Yeah, it was a close proximity twenty minutes before shooting light, the shooting begins, and yeah it doesn't stop, don't. Yeah. A couple of times I killed small bucks and already had a few holes in them. Yeah, through a few things slowed them down for you at bit. It's the thing, all right, we'll libby you have like a first I think it would be breaking the Ginger sterotype if you just told us about your first rifle that you were given or purchased or owned. I purchased. I feel like it's very un well, yeah, it's very unceremonial, like an away. I literally I started hunting birds with when I met Alex in Pennsylvania, when we first started dating, and I was like getting it dunting then. And he had two really cute dogs that became my dogs. That's actually my inn sampling of dogs per dogs dogs classic play. I know, I'm a runner, so they were like a perfect match, um to go out and just run with. And um, so when I moved to Montana. I was like, well, jeez, I better getting a big game hunting. And we literally were just driving I think we were driving through Idaho. We're going to Spokane or um, and I just said, let's pull over to Cabella's doing it. I'm doing it like I did. I literally was like, no time, like the president, Let's just grab a rifle and and so I bought my savage and um, I've only I've only shot one animal with it. And when I time, and I shot my first deer on some private land and I was with another woman and we both shot Mulie's that day. And we we had help. We well we could have had help, but we were like, no, we're gonna we're gonna get these guys. And we're doing it all in the field. And we just started going to town and the hand waving's that is not the correct emotion to be begging. But the private lander was like, he's like, oh, I have like all these men that come out and they never do this. We just pick it up and leave. We said, we just wanted to practice, you know, doing it ourselves. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you guys for for joining me and I appreciate your your work here, and I would tell you if if it is any evidence of what your work. It turns out the folks that sat in this room with me that your students were unbelieved. Will um. These these are exceptional humans. The fact that they hunt, it's maybe tangential to like the fact that they seem to be uh, their heads are firmly fixed on their shoulders. Yeah, they are. We have outstanding students and all of our programs around the College of Forestry, they're they're remarkable human beings. Yeah. Yeah, that's why we do what we do. Yeah, if it's any evidence to the future of conservation and forestry and wildlife management, we're will be in good hands at least around here. So thanks guys. That's it. That is all. Thanks for joining us this week, every one. Thanks to Alex and Libby and Sam, Thanks to the Black Hills, thanks to the University of Montana. I love this new format because it blends like the current, which is where I'm sitting right now in the Black Hills, with the evergreen, which is the interview with al X and Luby. It's this It's a cool way to combine where I am and where I've been and when mixed together UM topics and sometimes don't touch on each other, but almost always have some relationship. So I'm very UM happy with my myself personally the new format. But maybe you're not happy with it, maybe you think it's terrible. Please write in and tell me th h C at the meat Eator dot com. Th h C at the meat Eator dot com and that stands for the Hunting Collective. If you're wondering, right into that email address, tell me what you think about the new format. Ask questions which we will answer on this program, and also record yourself asking a question from making a comment about what you've heard on the podcast. Email it to me. Just do it right on your phone, Just go to notes talking to the phone and then hit send to the email at th HC at the metator dot com. You do that, I will listen to it and if it's good enough, if it's under two minutes, it's real clean, we'll put it on the air. So hopefully we can you know, in the months and weeks to come here start putting much of those together in packaging them for you UM as a part another part of the new format of the podcast, So please right in th HC at the meat eater dot com. And what else would I say? I'll say that there's a video out there, hopefully we'll go watch. You go to the meat Eator YouTube channel. You also can get there through the meat Eator's social of Steve and ronnella turkey hunting um and he's hunting with me and it's it's it's one of my favorite turkey videos. I think it's got a lot of a lot of for those of you that aren't turkey veteran, it's got a lot of educational stuff in it. You'll learn how hunter talks to a turkey and how a turkey talks to a hunter. It's a huge um, a huge production for us. We worked a long time on it, so it's important that you go watch it. So go to the YouTube channel for meat Eater and look for Steve and my latest turkey hunt. You're gonna love it, promise, or if you don't love it, okay, right into th HC at the mediator dot com. I'm happy to read your opinions either way. So without with all that done and with this episode done, I'm off to hunt more turkeys and we'll see you next time on the Hunting Collectives enjoy once again old number seven, Oh number seven, Tennessee whiskey got me drinking heaven and h and he stopped. It looks good to me. They're gonna have to department to the far rede to the far red, drinking in dre heaven
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