00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, it's the Hunting Collective. Everybody, Welcome to another week. I'm Ben O'Brien and today we're joined by some wonderful folks. The first one of those folks is Brodie Henderson. He's a senior editor at Mediator Incorporat. And we were on the floor of the b h A Rendezvous. They're in Boise, Idaho. We talked about a lot of things, but mostly about hunting ethics, some interesting things about our philosophies on hunting ethics. We gave a seminar there, so we wanted to give you a little rundown if you missed the seminar. And then I talked with Jess Johnson. And Jess Johnson Um is a conservationist. She's a leading voice for women and hunting in the West and elsewhere. And you're gonna find out her philosophies. And also, I'm going to admit to not have enough women on the podcast. I've only had like two or three, so it's an admission that I feel strongly about. And she has some real good stuff to say on today's show. But before we get to that, we're gonna talk about Yetti Cooler is this that's just YETI now, since it's not all coolers. And speaking of not coolers yet, he just launched the load out go box, and you know what's We talked about go boxes and a lot of context and outdoors, but this is basically a hard case with a bunch of kick ass accessories. Now it's got a caddy so you can drop your duck calls in there. You can use it as a fly box, your boat, keys, whatever. It's also got a divider that slips right down in the center. It's a place from one big compartment in this go box too, two compartments. It's got a little gear compartment that attaches to the top lid. They call that the pack attic. It's pretty cool, man. I've just run around turkey hunting and I got my calls in the top. I got my flashlights, I got all my items that basically go straight into my turkey pack and then all my backup items box calls, slate calls, mouth calls, everything in the go box in my truck in case I lose something out in the woods. Got batteries in there for my head lamp for everything else. Um, it's great to have it stays in your truck. It lives in your truck and you're gonna love it. I love it. It's the YETI load out, Go box, go to yetti dot com. Check it out. It's pretty cool. It comes a lot of different cool colors. It's got the same kind of YETI feel. It's not gonna let any dust in there. It's not gonna let any water in there. So you can store this in your garage, store this in your truck. Like I said, you're just gonna like it. I like it, so without further a dude episode, let's go. I guess I grew up on an older road. A bat'll do the meadal. I always did what I've told until I found out that my brand new close a game second hand from the rich kid's next door. And I grew up baths like it's like what I mean, they have a thousand things inside it. I wish I ain't seen. And now I just wanted the real bad dream of being a lack. I'm coming apart of the seams, but thank you, Jack Daniel. Hey everybody, and welcome. It's another episode of the Hunting Collective. I'm, of course Ben ober Mentor and all the other things. And it's today is five fourteen nineteen. That's when this will air to your uh iTunes or wherever you're listening. And I'm sitting here with Brody Henderson. It's up. Rody. Hello, Hello, my first time on the Hunting Collective. Yeah, you've been on the Meat Eat podcast. Yeah, I'm sure many a time. Now your position at the mediators senior editors that correct, and you I think that just means I'm the oldest dude that works there. And we do have you know, folks who don't know, we basically have hired about fifteen of the same person all white bearded men from I don't run the beard. Don't run the beard though, from the ages of like forty all, well you look young, and so Brodie is. Brodie is like the the o G. He's probably been a meat eater working with Steve longer than than most folks, maybe other than Yannis. Yeah, it was honest before me, but not not good man. If if you don't know much about Brodie, you can of course listen to metator podcasts and finding there, but also you go to the meat Eater dot com and find his words there. You're on like a weekly cadence at least now I was I was a couple of times a week. Now it's once a week because I'm working on another secret project with Steve. Secret project. Hashtag secret project. That's something everybody's gonna want to wonder about. Start looking around for clues. But you'll like it. It's coming. It'll be a while before you see it. You'll like it when you do. Um. So, Brodie and I are sitting in a what you can probably here's like a soft murmur of a room here in Boise, Idaho, and Brodie tell him, tell him you set the scene for everybody. Well, we're here, uh, just sitting on the outskirts of the vendor uh display booths. There are a bunch of hunting and fishing companies, uh applying their wares and uh a lot of hunters and fishermen walking around checking stuff out. Yeah. Man, getting ready for the big live podcast that we're gonna do soon enough. Yeah, probably like the final in our little first half of the year live podcast store of Mediator's here in Boise, Idaho with the great members of the b h A back cut your owners and anglers in there. I believe eight annual rendezvous and uh, these are my people man, are they your people too? Definitely? Public Lands proud, baby, We're all proud. I mean the amount of public Lands attire being warned around this room is heartening to me. Um. And we've had it. We've got a great We've got a great week thus far. We just did the field of table dinner. Last night, Danielle Pruett and I mostly Daniel Pruett served a bunch of hungry dinner guests her first wild turkey, which I feel, I don't know how you feel about it. I feel that's quite the sacrifice. Yeah, given up a couple of turkey breasts to feed other people like that. You don't know, that's that's from the heart. That's quite the sacrifice. Even if even if it wasn't even it was my hundreds of wild turkey at have a probability she gave up her first wild turkey, but we did eat some of it. Was delicious. Um, So shout out the old Wild and Hole Daniel Pruett for that last night, Old old cal four O six and I are on the board. We've had some great board meetings. Um. So thanks to the Board of backcounch Unders and Anglers for having us on and and for um, the discussions we've had around this organization, you'll you'll know that this thing, this organization is growing like crazy. There's above thirty thousand members now. I think when I first came on there was less than there was like ten or twelve thousand. You guys added a couple of new chapters just this Yeah, we added seven new chapters. We added a chapter in the Yukon, which is all. That is all, there's nothing. I think they said there was like, uh, maybe forty ish people in the chapter, and that's like one percent of the people in the entire state something like that, So we got a good percentage run there. But yeah, shout out to the Yukon chapter back with genders in English for just just being able to communicate with the lower forty eight the way that you have. So a lot of great stuff going on here, like we said, the Mediator podcast. But this is not, of course an advertisement for this event because it will be over by time you hear this. But Brody and I will be taking part in a seminar tomorrow about ethics of hunting and fishing, and what better topic for a podcast than that. Have some some deep murky waters and so I feel like, well, we're gonna since you probably won't be there, and if you were there, then this will just be a nice refresher and take you through a little bit of what we might say to tomorrow in that little room there here in the Boise Center. And we al we've talked about ethics a lot here. We've had Randy new Burke on, We've had Yanni Janie Poodles, as Brodie's kids say, We've had Janie Poodles on to talk about the ethics. And I think it's it's it's important to define ethics. It's important understand like what ethics are to us. And in general, ethics are just a set of moral principles that guide action. And that seems like a real tight definition until you start to get into until you put more than one people in person in the room, and it gets it gets real deep. And so you think about ethics and hunting and why the two things are so tied together. I mean, the obvious one is that you're killing things, and that that is kind of the center point of how we think about morality, living and dying and what and what governs that. But hunting gives you a unique chance to exercise ethics personal ethics in a way that not a lot of stuff does. Well. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's you know, how are you going to kill something? What's the right way or the wrong way or the acceptable way to actually end the life? You know, that's going to raise a lot of questions. Yeah. So if it's like what's the ethical way to shoot hoops, We're good, Like what's the ethical way to get on a roller coaster? We're good. Other things are more you know, we're it's more impactful in our world. It's such a tangible impact on our world that it requires more of us. That's where it bleeds into the ethic thing. And moreover, like you get you get in a situation to where hunting not only allows you but forces you to make these micro ethical decisions all the time. So my hope is that everyone goes out into the woods with like an ethical boundaries of like I'm not going to shoot this far, I'm not going to do this. I'm going to think and act in these guidelines when I'm out going hunting. But then hunting always ends up challenging that ship. Yeah, like I'm not only gonna shoot at forty yards well, there's the biggest buck of your life standing at seventy yards I can maybe push at this time just all just draw my bones. See. Yeah, And so that's the wonderful thing I think about about those things. Is there anything you want to add to that? And I get it, right, Yeah, I mean it's just this uh, constantly shifting thing for every individual. But what makes it really difficult is that personal set of ethics is going to be different for every individual hunter. And that doesn't make necessarily make one hunter wrong and one hunter right. You know, it's it's more more nuanced than that he said it. He said it, um, yeah, no, right, And I think for us trying to Guy had a lot of problems with the way the hunting community thinks about ethics and has handled ethics in the past. Not because I think this is somehow intentionally wrong, but I just think there's some principles we've adopted that have guided us in the wrong direction when thinking philosophically about it, right, I mean, one one thing I feel like, because we're talking about uh, you're you're responsible for inflicting, oftentimes a very violent death on on another creature. I think some of these ethical discussions are almost yeah, man, like I don't want to say it, but I almost feel like it's pointless because I feel like some hunters are trying to wiggle out of the fact that they're responsible for a violent death by by saying, well, this is ethical or this isn't. But you can't escape the fact that one way or another, things dying and you're responsible for it. And no matter what ethics you choose to adopt, you've got to own up to the fact that you are causing a death. And and there's nothing, there's no way around it. And we should just hit that more head on, I think. And I think over the last probably decade, hundreds have got much much much better at that UM and and we're getting you know, we're getting much better by the day, by the hour, I think as we go forward, for sure. But one thing I always want to touch on is what what ethics are not? Right? Yeah? There, it's not legal versus illegal, right, Some of our laws kind of dance around the ethical question, right, some of the laws are built to prevent like somebody from being unethical. Definitely. There. I think there's some laws that UM are are totally based in ethics that you know, it wouldn't make a difference one way or the other if if you if you did that thing and it was legal or illegal. But we've decided that it's illegal all us because that's because from a moral level, I'm not good. And now a lot of that could be it's not good for the resource, and it's unethical. It's not you know, it doesn't follow our set of guidelines and it's not ethical. But yeah, a lot of our laws kind of are are intertwined with ethics. But when we have these ethical conversations in the constructs we currently have built, we have to say, Okay, if it's illegal, it's unethical. Automatically you're you're out. There's no discussion. Yeah, you don't get to have that conversation. It's totally unethical. Um, so we're not going to talk about illegal or illegal. So if you shoot two bucks and you have one tag, we're not talking about an ethics situation, even if it was by mistake. Even it was by mistake, that's illegal. Now you have to deal with it. Maybe the ethics are how you deal with it, but the action itself being illegal. Now, the other thing I always like to point out is there's a lot of people who think or like to talk about ethics like it's in a a sthetics thing, like it's not the actual intent of the action or the morality the action, but it's how it looks to other people. I generally disagree with that. I feel like ethics are more of an intrinsic internal thing, unless it's extrinsic in the way that'll be seen, so that this kind of strike that from the ledgend. They're not. It's not an aesthetic situation um. And so that's you know, I think that helps ship. Those two things help shape our perspective of how we set this up. So when we talk about it, when we talk about in the summer are we're gonna cover a couple of things, and one thing is that I believe there's a couple of things I believe strongly, and one of them is personal ethics being the way we set our boundaries. Right, So we think about how we see the world, our personal experiences, what we know about the land, the animal, the resource, what we know about conservation practices help shape our personal ethics, which means how we go into a situation um, and how hey guys, um. So yeah, I mean, I think that that is people are shouting us out, so it's gonna be a lot of interrupted we're sitting in just like a random spot where it just pulled some chairs over to the side. Um As we have this serious conversation about ethics. But personal ethics are are very important. And the reason why that is is everybody's values are different, everybody's experiences are different, everybody's set of constructs for ethics are going to be different. There's no way to standardize them. There is no way to tell um to really do that. In my opinions, where a lot of arguments get started, this is where a lot of arguments will started. And at the same time, UM, a lot of the things we adopt as laws are really like the standardization mechanisms for that. And so that's where we come into the personal ethics, Like how do you your personal ethic might be that you've practiced your bow in a hundred yards every day for two years. Now, it's more ethical for you to shoot an animal at a hundred yards with your bow than it is for somebody that practices that twenty yards, right, So your personal ethics and standards move around, so they in my opinion. They act as they the general guidelines for how we all move around in the in the hunting space, and then they help govern situational ethics, which is, you come upon a situation, you have to use what you know and what you've already constructed in your mind to act in an ethical manner. So your situational ethics and your personal ethics are kind of always intertwined, although the personal ethics are kind of the starting point for how you see it. You may not act on a situation the way another person would act based on and you may set your personal ethics and get into a situation to decide weight. You know now that I know I can shoot seventy five yards, but the wind is blowing like it's this dear, this animal is skylined. There might be other things that happened that kind of like delete some of the things that you are decided that or your constructs so overroad mechanism for ethics. So that's how I see that plan. Yeah, you're good with that. Yeah, I think that like good, uh good kind of outline for what we're gonna be talking about. Yeah, and then we'll get into social media, like what you know, why is this stuff matter to hunters, what's really going on? Um? Social media being the thing where it used to be prior to social media or ethics kind of played out in a more communal sense, like one to one, one to two, whatever, in a sense that somebody had to be with you. Now you could share with the world all your actions and then they can be judged, and they will be and they will be judged recommenized. So I think that's where most people in this room kind of get a little spun up and I do, Yeah, how can't you, I mean, it's impossible to avoid. Yeah, So that's where we'll present. That is kind of the primer for what we're gonna talk about, and then we'll get into specific ethical contries and I'll let you start, but like discuss, let's talk real quickly about fair chase and like what it means, whether it's good or bad then out affects us all. Well. I mean, obviously the spirit of it is valuable and worthwhile, and I think it's a good thing, um, But it's also one of those things that when you really start thinking it's I think a lot of people don't. They just think fair chase is fair chase right, they don't dig into it. Once you start digging into it, it's actually really hard to define it, like what it is again, like if it's illegal, like it doesn't apply most of the time. Fair chase is tied into these kind of personal ethical values that that we decide how, you know, how we how we decide how we're gonna act um. But for me, fair chase is important. But then again, like you know, i'll shoot a grouse out of a tree man like I do not know I I So we were talking earlier. We'll will debate this continually. That's why I think it is why it makes a good podcast topic, because it is so damn hard to suss out, Like it's just hard to set out. So for those of you listening, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna just here in a minute state something that's gonna sound really hard and controversial and and maybe somebody you've never heard, but I don't mean it that way. What I'm what I'm saying, and I will say, I think fair chase needs to go away, Like I think the concept of fair chase and the way that currently is constituted needs to go away. And I think that for a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons is we have not yet and I don't think ever really will be able to understand what we mean by fair, fair to whom, fair to what? The animal? Damn sure doesn't. The animal doesn't. So so if if we eliminate there's two two people in the equation, the hunter and the animal here, not two people to two beings in the equation, the hunter in the animals. So if we remove the animal from the ethical equation because it doesn't care what you do, if you shoot it from a tree, shoot it on the ground, if you shoot it swimming, if you shoot it dancing, if you shoot it on a reindeer sled, that they don't have an opinion, at least that I've heard. But the hunter is the one that's constructing this need for fairness. Fairness in what way? Um, I'll give a bunch of examples. That's really the best way to get to it. We talked about it. Why is it more fair to shoot with the spot and stock a black bear than it is to have dogs chase it up the tree and kill it. Why is that more fair? Because we feel like we feel the innate need, the personal need to be challenged in the pursuit of hunting. We feel, as modern hunters, we have every ability to be unfair with our vehicles, with our guns, with all these other things. And so I feel there's the fairness factor has already eliminated just for the modern sense of what we are able to do. You know, Um, you talk about what the Pope and Young or Bude Crack Club might say that in the in their definition of fair, Jason, they talked about an unfair advantage, and we were talking about earlier. That's like the hardest unfair is the hardest thing to define. It's hard is it's hard to find as the transverse of that is fair. Yeah. Like the idea that uh got put out there and then I've heard it before is that the animal has a better chance of escaping than being killed. But how do I know, Like on any given day, I don't know what those odds are gonna be. Like, that's why we're running up to that, like a better chance of escaping. Well, yeah, that that leaves the fence thing is the clear leaves. The high offence is the clear loser in that equation, which I tend to agree with in my personal Yeah, that's one that's not that's I think that's a universal among most of us that that's not a thing that we agree with. But when you say unfair advantage, but then you start listening off the things that are unfair, you're like, wait a minute, crank that scope up to sixteen power. Unfair. It's unfair that we have vehicles to drive to where these animals live and then go and hunt them. It's unfair that we have high powered rifles to shoot them for far distances. It's unfair that we've built these crazy fast compound bows. Damn share more unfair than than a wolf or a mountain lion. And so the concept, I think, the concept of fairness, and when we get strung up in this, we we are losing really what we're doing, Like, what is what is the pursuit of hunting? Really? If it if it is what we often say it is, which is like it's about the experience, not about the kill, and that ship like that. If it is, then the kill part shouldn't. If it's the kill part should be very simple, the most clean and efficient way to kill the animal possible, and then the experience can be ethical, like you can you know you can do things ethically with the landscape not to destroy it. You can do things ethically with the resource not to kill too many. There's a lot of things you can do that involve ethics to the point where you get to the killing of the animal. Who gives a ship if it's on the ground or in the air, we are the only ones care. Yeah, And so to me, there's so much oxy meronic like stuff build into fair chase that it just seems like we need to start over too. To define what it is is like almost impossible, like what's fair for a squirrel hunter versus what's fair for uh doll sheep hunter? You know, like every animal, every landscape, you know, it's always going to be different, it's always gonna be shifting. Yeah, well, there's there's there's also a feel thing to it, like how do you feel you kill an animal and sit down by it and reflect on what just happened? How do you feel well when you do something that you know is kind of like sure it was legal, but you know, maybe it took advantage of a situation. You know it, you know, but that's why, I mean, that's why when you go back to the very beginning of this conversation, it's like, hey, listen, you hunting will it's gonna break you down if you're not strong ethically. It's going to provide all these ways for you to mess it up and do things that you don't agree with, where your community doesn't agree with all the time. Every you know, oh, there's a deer standing on the road, I shouldn't shoot it because it's close to a road. Why the deer doesn't care? You're out there to kill a deer? What's the point? But if you don't feel because it's such a very personal experience, if you don't feel like you got the experience you desired by shooting the deer on the road, don't shoot it. But if you don't care and you shoot the deer on the road and it's legal, I can't find I can't find any fault really in that. But certainly people are you know, going back to the social media thing or just word of mouth whatever, like you might not care, but there'll be plenty of other people to do right. And that that gets to look at the more monarchy. How do you present what you're doing? But I think how we present can be can be shaped in a lot of ways of like how we discuss what we're trying to get at right fair chase. I think it's just it's a misnomer, I believe, for one. But I also think it's a distraction from what we're really trying to do. Um and I'm I'm not I don't. Being fair to the animal really, to me comes in at the point where I'm killing it more than the point that I'm pursuing it and being fair to a bear, at the point where I'm killing it and killing it the most least away possible if I have a pack of dogs and if I leave him in the truck and I go, and I know that I can find it faster, kill it quicker if it's up in a tree and their dogs barking. And I'm not doing that because somehow I feel it's unfair to the animal. I'm wrong because it's not that the animal doesn't care. I'm doing that because I personally don't feel fulfilled by hunting that way, and so it doesn't Those things just don't match up. Now. Granted, I like, I don't want I don't think people should give the impression that we're like trying to find a way to do things that are unfair. It's just no, it's the concept of it, right, It's it's not Listen. Yeah, I'm sure that the overreaction to this could be and will be. Surely, let's go spotlight some deer exactly that I'm trying to say, like, take the gloves off and go do I'm not I'm very much saying that we we will continue to wrestle with this for as long as we have modern technologies and new ways of thinking and hunting in the same bowl of gumbo. That will continue to mess this. But we get off track with the conversation when it starts. It starts getting into fair and unfair. That kind of takes us off course in a way that we can't get back from it. Yeah, and you'll get that between ethical hunters of all types, you'll start to have these arguments over fair versus unfair, you know, trad bows versus compound bows, versus muzzloaders versus rifles, and on and on and on. You know. Yeah, I mean I would I definitely agree with that. And I think that if you join the Pope and Young Club or the Booming a Crocker Club, they will dictate to you if a deer is stuck in snow or stuck in ice or in water, you ought not to shoot it. And that gets into the thing from a non hunter or an anti hunter. That's also oxymronic in a lot of ways it is. I mean, like, can you imagine ten thousand years ago some indigenous hunters not taking advantage of those situations. Yeah, we we we have a most of the country. And then and really if you just if you would say people that don't agree with hunting the majority of the time, those folks are out there one saying that they love animals, they want them to have rights, they're sentient being those types of things, but at the same time criticized hunters for what they would see is unfair practices, right practice, Like people they they hate anything with hounds. But if you would explain to them, if you really think of animal rights, and I'm gonna go kill something, the animal has the right to die is quick, it's humanly possible. And if it's twenty yards above me in a tree and I have a rifle, it's way easier to kill it than if it's three yards across the canyon and I've got a bow or even a rifle in that and so there's some like I think everyone is a little like in the modern sense, messed up with this because we have all these modern entanglements that we've never had before. Like you said, it did. The luxury of thinking about this the the that's my pots could be called the luxury of thinking about ship with better Bryant. So that's but that's why I think this. Everyone is thinking about it, everyone's trying to figure it out. Everyone has different opinions. But I, like I would like to put forth there is this the fair chase is to me, when it comes to hunting in ethics, the biggest problem that we've got gone pr problem kind of kind of not that anybody would be mad at us for having a fair chase doctrine, but it's it's preventing us from really getting to the root of what we're actually trying to do. Um, how we're defining ourselves. Yeah, I define myself as a hunter who loves the experience, right, and I act a certain way during the experience of the hunt. Now to do what makes you to do what makes the enjoy the most right. And then when I get to the killing of the animal, my enjoyment goes away then like I don't get to in the killing of the animal, say like I really love hunt with a bow, so I'm gonna take a bow instead of a shotgun. I don't feel I don't feel like I'm able to do that with my own my personal ethics, because I I know that I could be more efficient with a shotgun than win a bow with the turkey, and so I'm gonna be used my ethical stands all the way up, like I want to get my enjoyment of the experience before and after the kill, but during the situation where I'm taking the animals life, I feel very strongly that that's where turns to the animal and the animal alone. But there's plenty of people that get the enjoyment from aspects of what would happen using a bow. You know, I'm sure sure, and I don't, And I again, I don't. I'm not arguing against hunting with a bow, no, um at all. Really, I love hunting with the boss my favorite thing to do. But I follow strictly followed the guidelines of the seasons and most of the time allows me to hunt with the bow, then hunt with the muslo, to hunt with the rifle, rins and repeat, hunt with the bow, and so I don't really have to worry about that because I know there's a system set up that's going to allow me the opportunity to hunt with each one of those things at the appropriate time based on wildlife policies and carrying past season populations such as such as a state wildife if you just think I should, So, I don't really have to wrestle with that most times. But turkeys just happens to be the thing where a lot of people wrestle with that. Oh no, I definitely know where you're coming from with that arguing. So no, that's we're gonna get into that tomorrow. But I think it. Of course, it leaves a lot of holes for people to disagree. But whatever, I like that, I enjoy I enjoy it. That's where you're gonna get your mind changed and learn things you know on on certain things. Yeah, it'll be fun. Um, and we've got our new editor in chief. If you heard on the last episode of the podcast anything like, I will be there and then Sam Longer and our fishing editor you've heard on this podcast a few times as well. Um, we'll just cover one of these like more difficult ponderings ethically, and we'll move on to our interview segment, which the interview segment is with Jesse Johnson, who is out of Wyoming. She's a first Light ambassador and Lady Hunter. Now I want to say this ethically, here's one thing for you, Brodie. I have to admit something. I gotta laid it on you, gotta admit something. I feel real bad about this. I had somebody right in the other day, Andrea, I believe it was a name. She's like, I wanted to listen to your podcasts and I saw you had like fifty some episodes and I scrolled down. I realized there wasn't any women on there. Naughty naughty, So you're remedying that though, Yeah, but I don't want to remedy it on purpose, to have some like artificially artificial balance. But I will say that, like in a fool, nobody has really noticed until that, and I didn't really even notice. I wasn't doing it on purpose. But the reality of the situation is there's like, there's been about sixty men on my podcast, about three women on my podcast. So next time you come, bring your wife, ladies walking. There are a lot of ladies around here, um hanging out, so could be that, uh just grab one from the crowd every time we go. Anyway, I'm not I'm not apologizing for it. I'm not sad about it, but I do recognize that some bullshit and then we need to all me included, do a little better, including any on the podcast. Yeah, I mean listen, I had any on any Racers r VP production choose the expert of Game of Thrones. I had dr which you're beating me in the game right now. Yeah, dude, where are you out in the Game of Thrones game? You got like six points? I got three. Yeah, but there's plenty of time left. Man. And so for those of you out there and podcast land that tried to criticize my Game of Thrones and knowledge in your face, I'm in the lead right now and the meat eater Game of Thrones office pool, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna win. I'm pretty comment. Although you said the Night King would kill Aria, yeah, man, I got that one backwards. So anyway, moving moving back on to ethics and hunting anyway, Sorry, ladies, I'm not apologizing, but I'm sorry that's what I want to tell you, um so well coming up here in a minute, Jesse Johnson. We're just talking to her about lots and lots of things, women in the outdoors and wyoming, wildlife and all kind of things, So stick around for that, but we're gonna end this up with it was something that we've been talking about on the website, and this is this idea that it is fair to shoot a grouse once it flies, and only when it flies you flush it as the term, but unfair or unethical to shoot a turkey when it's flying. You're saying it, Yeah, it's a weird one, man, Like that's a weird one. You can't shoot a volleyball out of this guy. Or no, you can shoot a volleyball out of this guy, fast moving volleyball, but you can't shoot a slow moving trash can. You're never gonna hit that trash can. Brody, No, I would, I would admit it. It's like maybe a little bit harder to shoot a turkey on the in the air, on the ground. I'm trying to simplify it a little bit, but it's still again, it goes to situational ethics, like if it's flying towards you, and you've got a clean shot, and it's easy to kill. Why not, Like, I don't I I someone would really have to explain to me why that's not included in fair chase. And uh. And some people would rather kick up a grouse or a pheasant and let it fly rather than just look down at their feet and shoot it. Yeah. Um, and I've done it all those ways. And uh, eat and grouse. So I don't really care. How right I had a Randy newburg on here is. I see him over understanding, might have to get him come over, he said, I don't give a crap. I'll shoot a grouse in a tree. I don't care. But you won't find a turkey hunter in America that will shoot a bird on the roost. In fact, it's illegal in some stage, very much, very much so. So that's just a good example. We don't need to get into the details of it. And the details aren't I mean, it's this pretty simple. This is what it is. We've we've constructed these two things. There are a lot of different scenarios and reasons why this is manifested itself, but there are some like there again, this oxym ironic nature of saying shoot the smaller bird in the air the bigger bird on the ground, and what all this means and why we do it, what the history we make things awful complicated, and so as hunters like this to surmise, to summarize. As hunters, we have a very tough task. We have a very important task. It involves taking life. And so ethics are can't be removed from the situation like it would en not some other hobbyist pursuits or whatever you would say. So ethics gotta have to be in there. And right now, you could line up all the people in this room, all of us are b h A members who I think are awesome folks, and ten of them might have ten different ideas about what's ethical and turkey anying, what is it? Um? So I think that just goes back to that personal ethics thing that we drove home earlier. You know, ethics, that's what it is. It's again, it's a good term. It's a term that I think we all care a lot about. Um. We we're gonna do now, as you're going to transport ourselves all the way across this here Boise Center and we're gonna sit down with Jesse Johnson now again. Uh, We've I've had this, I've had this, uh interview with Jesse scheduled well before I realized I had a female list podcast, and I was a uh was easily labeled a sexist by the guests I've had on this podcast. Man. So I'm happy to have Jesse for that reason and many others. She is on on her own regardless of gender, a badass hunter, the dedicated conservationist, and somebody who's just interesting to chat with around all the things we've talked about here and much more. So let's get to it. Here's Jesse Johnson. All right, we're here, We're back. We're here in um zy I know. Once again, I'm joined by Jesse Johnson. How are you doing well? Last day of Rendezvous it is it's the last Rendezvous. Yeah. We had our mediate live podcast last night and then I went to go to bed, and I happened to to get to bed, I had to walk through a bar. You don't make it through that. I didn't. I didn't make it through very well. And so let me just admit to everyone listening now that I'm hungover. And and that would be if you're not familiar with that process is where I drank a lot of whiskey and then stayed up late and had a very little sleep, and now we're here, back in back in the Boise Center. But I feel like it's the kind of time everybody prepares for. You're like, well, I'm gonna be out, I'm gonna have beer, I'm gonna be surrounded by great people and likely not get to bed before two am. Yeah, I mean it said this is a celebration, So I don't I don't feel bad. I don't feel guilty, but I just want to be honest with everyone. Now are you You seem to be fine. I'm feeling actually pretty chipper today. You're feeling pretty good. I'm feeling pretty good. We were just discussing, like the last day of rendezvous is often this is just it's a little everybody's just kind of hit and the runway well hazy does people stumbling around you and know where they are. There's wamas outside. I saw lamas on the way in here, people sitting in talks staring a little bit blankly off to the higher left corner. Yes, well, Jessie, we wanna learn all about you today. I'm going to get through this best I can. If I start gagging or making any weird noises, she'll just cut it paused. But we're gonna get it. We're gonna get it. So first I want to kind of take people through who you are and where you came from and why you do what you do. But then we have some ethical and then some other you know, why do why do we suck at recruiting females into the hunting industry? There's another question I have. I'm really excited. So you grew up in a ranching family. I say, it says you're Montana, Northern California and Wyoming, and so just give people a little bit of your background. You're you know, kind of your family life grown up and and what that did for you. Um, getting into what you do. Know. So I am an only child of ranching family. UM, and I think that was due to being a ranching family and having to run a ranch and run children. I think my parents had me and they're like, oh, once enough, that's good. But the parents are managers, so we didn't own the places that we worked on, but they would come onto these places, and UM, I kind of fondly call my dad a reclamation rancher, so he would come onto these places and bring the ecology back to a balanced, a balanced place. So, whether that was rebuilding stream beds for healthy, healthy fish habitat, working with the wildlife agencies to find better management UM and a better balance between livestock and predator, whether it was native grasses or working with invasive species, and that kind of thing was all stuff that my dad talked about and just sort of I grew up with a notion that this was how it was done always and that when you lived uh in a balast ecology, everybody benefits UM. And that's sort of an older style of ranching, and a lot of people still do it UM, but there's also a lot that don't do it anymore. And uh, I didn't realize that until I sort of left home and whatnot. But we we were on ranches in Montana, UM along the Blackfoot River, uh in Ovando, and then in Wyoming for a while, and then northern California. So I had a very eclectic community. UM. You know, it wasn't just rural Wyoming. It was also rural and very liberal California and some of it as well. UM. And it was a very It brought a different way for me to approach um how I see how ranching works with conservation. And my dad was a hunter, but he was know because of ranching. It was like he would just go out shoot a cool look and way to eat off of it and um, So it wasn't like a lifestyle in that sense. And I wouldn't go out from long periods and long days. It was just when you could fit it in between the ranch tours. So I never really got the opportunity to go. And it wasn't that my dad wouldn't take, ma'am. He absolutely would have. It just never was an option I thought about, um, especially because when I was at the time when you would be introducing into honey, I was in California. It was a very different, um, different landscape and uh yeah. Because of that, I didn't get into hunting until much later in life. And it wasn't through my dad. But my dad's always been very supportive and my mom's the same way. I'm actually in the position now where I get to take my mother hunting for the first time and she's she'd been with my dad, had gone with him, but she now because I picked up a bow and wanted to start hunting. Um, I just bought her a bows gone yet or not yet? Yeah, the bow is not finished yet. She wanted to learn with a traditional bow and she did. Heck, yes, let's go. That's cool. It's funny that, you know, my dad's a lot the same way. He didn't really start traveling around hunt so I did. And now, um, he kind of looks to me to be like, where are we going next? What are we doing next? Where? You know, it's really special to have like that, be able to do that with a parent. Yeah, and we talked about I was talking to a couple of guys at our show last night about I don't feel It's not that I would feel bad for an adult onset hunter or someone who just kind of is looking for a community and doesn't have it, didn't have it in the Patrilninials sense, but but I do feel I feel like that they're missing out on something pretty special. And I think back when the you know, the days following my dad in the woods, I just remember this like larger than life character and I just wanted to be ever wherever he was. Um, and now he kind of it's kind of flipped over he wants to be wherever I'm at. It's really precious and um my dad and I used to go on things called nature walks. My dad, you know, when I was a little girl, and he'd go and he'd teach me, like make me know the different types of trees. He'd talked about the edible plants. Because of walking Encyclopedia for like nature, it's really my dad's the same way. Every bird and it can be like two miles away and a little black dot like flies across. My Dad's like, Oh, that's such and such. It builds its nest here. This is what it does. My dad's same way. Everybody knows and I always makes fun of like redbreasted nut fucker, what is that? What that's like? That's a generational as much as we talk about on this podcast and elsewhere, it's kind of like the generational shift in hunting. You know, my dad doesn't hunt the way I did. We don't. He doesn't think about I don't know that he thought about conservation as a hunter. I never really asked him that, but I just assume that he had never really thought about it all that much. But he did know the natural world more than I do you know he knows trees, birds, and you know, I think more than I do. So there's there's something you just had to give credit to that I always wonder, you know, it's like I find myself like I pull I'll pull my phone out and google something to try and identify a plant if I'm somewhere where I can get self service or whatnot. And I always, uh, my dad's never needed that, Like he's read the books and it's like absorbed and he just knows it. And I'm wondering if that's an attention thing that comes from technology always being at our tips of our fingers, or if it's something that's more Maybe he just has a better memory than I did. Yeah, you don't know. But again it's funny how you know, at my age and even where you are in life, that how those things start to flip back and you can give back to the people that gave to you. And we did one of our live podcasts, Steve asked us, you know, we had we told a story about what or why what our dad meant to us and hunting. He's like got a couple of emails with people like what about what your mom meant to you and hunting. And my answer was very much. She took down barriers for me. She took care of our family, and she never stopped us from doing what we loved and she supported us, and like that's as important as anything. My mom was the most optimistic, like is the most optimistic human I've ever met. She's like that person that, uh, especially working in conservation, I find myself I can get really pessimistic about our outlook sometimes. And when I'm really feeling like that, and I go home and I'll go spend some time with my mom and we're like out out hiking, hunting, horseback riding, just being outside with her. She always like stops and takes everything in and she'll be at the top, like, look how beautiful it is out here, look at this. And she has a story that she told me. I'm obviously no memory of it. I was six months old at the time, and we were living um in Wilson, Wyoming, so right near Jackson for a little bit, and they were in a rough place with jobs. I think life was really stressful for mom and dad at that point. But she tells me the story of standing at a window and looking out the window and having like a big moon come up and like just having like a really beautiful view out there window and moms saying like this is precious, Like you're in this and this is precious, and don't ever forget that this is precious, since I'm going to choke up now every time she tells me that, I'm like, that's what I needed to remember. Um. And so when things get really like I don't know, sometimes the outlook is hard on conservation and when it gets like that, going back outside and going this is precious is really important. Well, it's just the term conservation and the idea we always say, you know, Lantoni would always say, like go fight, win, and that's kind of how it is. Like it's a fight, you know, it's a fight. Conservation is a battle for you know, standing up for what you believe in, but also for you know, all places and water and critters like the communication. Yeah, you know, it's not something that you it's a passive. It's not a passive experience. You have to push forward and fight and understand what you're trying to get at. So I I do when it you have to think of the world is precious. If you're going to be involved in something called conservation. Cont Telling your kids that from an early age does something to that. I mean, for me, it did something to me where it made me look at the world in a completely different lens. UM, And it just was always that way, and I was very lucky for it. But I wasn't always in the you know. I when I was in California and I was based in dance, I went to I wanted to go to school for dance. Yeah, and I were step dance and like, and it was just that's where I was like gearing towards and UM just uh through sort of life cycles and getting bucked off a horse and being pretty laid up injury wise for a while. UM had a change of path essentially and went from dance and theater and and performing arts into h different road and it ended up at conservation in bow hunting. Oh yeah, it's funny how you trudged. I examined, people say, like, how did you get to where you are? Like, I have no idea. If I was trying to get here, I would have never got here. Yeah, have you told me ten years ago I'd be sitting in a backcountry hunters and anglers, ron devout in a booth called meat Eater. Yeah, but like yeah, it sounds like a weird weekend. Yeah, it's like huh interesting. All right, well let's let's let's real quickly kind of rattle off your conservation resume, because if we have a lot of things that I want to discuss, we'll kind of give people, you know why I am in Wildlife Federation, the things you do with artemis give people just a quick snapshot of what you do. So my my job, um, what I get paid for, is with the Woming Wildlife Federation and I am their legislative li is on an advocacy coordinator. So what that means is that I spend a good portion of my year at the Woming State Legislature, uh lobbying on behalf of hunting, wildlife, wild places, habitat, funding for all of that, um, basically anything that touches any of those. For example, this year, I worked on thirty one bills UM in the Wymi State Legislature for the eight weeks that the legislature was in and then when the legislature is off session and in their interim UM, I watched their committees whether it's there and basically any time that the legislature is beginning to talk about wildlife public lands or anything like that. Um, I'm there, I'm in those meetings, and UM I'm just sort of tracking it, watching it, or lobbying on behalf of it. And then the advocacy side of that is I also build the community of conservation ambassadors for Woming Wildlife Federation. So it's finding people in different communities, empowering them to take and move their stuff forward. UM. So we're not a top down organization. We're an organization that works from local communities like grassroots UM. And and especially in a place like Wyoming. UM, that's really how you get things done there. They Wyoming doesn't respond well to top down work, not in that culture. And so what you know, all of those things that you've you've worked on here recently, what are the you know, what are some of the highlights and some of your winds and losses? And boy, I mean the losses is uh. I think it's just the game of conservation. But you know that we do a lot of work in and for mule deer mulder habitat. I think particularly migrations UM and the migration corridors are ramped up why. I mean, it's been a leader and a lot of the migration work, UM mainly because we've just had researchers on the ground a lot longer than a couple other states, and we have these GPS colors, so we know where the deer going, we know how far they're going. But now we're in this uh stage of having to be like what do we do with this knowledge and how do we make the table large enough? Because it's a public land, private land, working landscape issue. It's not just BLM land Bureau of Land Management or for service land. It's private land, state land, and we have to get everybody at the table um. And when we're talking public land, we also have to talk about the multiple use factor of like it's not just like public land for conservation. Is public land that has the option for development, has the option for resource you know, resources that come out of that. And Wyoming has a very resource heavy um economy. Yeah. And for those who who don't know, and you correct me if I'm wrong on this one, but you know, the the idea around migration corridors for mule deer especially is to make sure the habitat is intact and they travel across public and private lands. They travel across all types of land use areas, um. And the difficulty is to put that all together and say, we need to protect this corridor. We need to pass legislation to make sure people aren't you know, put a bunch of houses on where these these animals travel, etcetera, etcetera. Ex And how do we do this best? You know, and in and its houses, it's oil and gas, it's whatever it is, and it's um you know, how do we do this in a way that again, you can't do it top down, like where the legislation is like needs to come from the table where everybody's sitting and agreeing at It can't just be like somebody introduce this legislation that has no backing because that and that's where we're at right now is we found ourselves in very polarized places and we're trying to like scale it back and be like, how do we fix this? You know, we don't want it to be conservation versus oil and gas. That shouldn't be the way it is. It should be the fact that we can be able to sit down together and find a solution. And if that means it's a case by case thing. If that means that we find the news and things, UM, that's what w WF is looking for. We want that area where we find the balance because that's where you actually get the strongest support for something. So, you know, I'm trying to think if I obviously I think of my dad listen to this and not really knowing about my grace corridor is living in the East Coast, And what's the boiling point? Like you know, obviously it's kind of the extract of industries versus conservation a lot. Like you said, I mean, we really run up against that that combativeness or at least the idea that there is a pushing pool. Is that the boiling point or you know, what's the big boiling point of this issue of meal deer migration? You know, I think that's the on the surface level, it's the boiling point. But I think when you look at like for like the nuance of it, it's actually the unwillingness to listen to the other opinion and UM, to be so strongly rooted in one side that you're unwilling to sit at a table to even like remotely try and compromise UM. And I think it's that at the it's the industry versus industry rather than person when you have to see somebody that has a face and you sit down at a table and you're like, oh, we actually all have the same values. I've never met anybody that's worked in the oil and gas industry that didn't love mule deer, that didn't love hunting, that didn't love clean air, clean water, places to go out. It's just from a different value of um, you know, they understand that it's jobs. It's you know, seeing it through that lens, which I can very much understand, even if I don't always agree with the way that they see it. If I see it as a human and a person with some dynamics and not just like the evil industry that with like animal rights activists we were talking in a recent podcast, like I like to think that folks that work for Peter wake up in the morning and there they care like they're not They're not some evil group of people that are trying to do And how much worse would this world be if like there weren't like yeah, you know, Peter can for especially for the hunting community, can be like sort of something that makes us roll our eyes, but also how much worse off would our world be if it was that level of people that just didn't give a ship at all. I mean, at least they wake up caring about wildlife, it's guided or not, like when they feel altruistic about what they're doing as much as we probably do. When we just come at it from such different perspectives, that's a sort of good and I like I said, I'm sure there's ideological connections between the extract of industries. In fact, like pragmatism is one thing that we talk about as hunters all the time, Like we look at wildlife in a very pragmatic sense. We try to use common sense management. We know, this is what we do. You know, I imagine if you talked to an oil and gas executively, like we're using pragmatism to try to judge our situation. We do use oil and gas. We do need jobs. This is a huge industry for our country. It's a big part of our economy, and we look at it that way. I would say, if you did like a blind study and you had people that work for both and you're like, ask them their core values, I can't imagine that they wouldn't be very similar. That's good And every time I have someone on that actually works in conservation, just because this to be clear, all I do is talk about it. It's you know, I alwould say like the thank you for what you do, but also just getting an idea of what that's like on the ground, what you go through every day you get up and face these issues and you know how you come at it like it's it's a I have to counsel myself a lot, you know, it's you can sit on a podcast and have a lot of you know, high level themes of like, yes, you see the other person as a person. But I absolutely have moments where I'm so angry that I yeah, you know, it's we're all human. I have like gone and shut myself in a bathroom stall in the legislature and cried before you we all we all do that. So what I think there's a concept in a word. I was actually another in a recent podcast talking to the the Montana the University of Montana chapter of h A, and there's folks and these are twenty eight whatever the old folks there. We kept using the word sustainable, and I just thought, in regards to wildlife and regards to wild places and in regards to what we do. And I was just like slack jawed looking at him, like these guys get it, like they get it and they're you know, however, they got it. It's in them because that's the right thing. So as a conservation somebody who thinks about this stuff all the time, just talk about what sustainable means to you and kind of how it intertwines and all that you do. When I think sustainable, I think like, like, what what is the outcome that is going to make the most sense and be the best thing for the longest term for the most amount of people. And it's that sounds like it's easy to say, but when you think about it, it's like, you know, I'm I'm I'm in the game of compromises. Because when you sit at the table and you make a compromise and you find an outcome, everybody's good with that place or or wildlife or that decision will be protected by everybody that was sitting at that table. And when you leave evil out of that table um you end up with something that has holes in it and does not hold water and is likely not long for this earth. You know and and and whether you get into the things of like what's going on with the grizzly bears right now, or what's gone on with wolves or things that have gotten really polarized. We've seen struggle with finding long term solutions because we can't sit at a table anymore and we just lob bombs across an aisle. And uh So when I think sustainable, I think like this, this ability to have the most protectors for the longest time um and and the things that that come back around. And whether that's an ecology, whether that's not human at all, whether that's uh having a a an ecology of place that's sustained for the longest amount of time, you know, Um, it's just that circle. It's got to be able to come back and feed into itself and and exist um without a ton of work after that. Like so, I think when you build that, whether it's a sustainable um policy or to sustainable ecosystem, or it's a you know, a decision or just a lifestyle, it's something that has the most impact with the most protection of that impact for the longest period of time. That's awesome. And I can continue to mentally go back to that word all the time, these conversations like sustainability. I'd like to repeat it to myself sometimes let's make sure we're remembering that's what we're out here to do. But let's make sure we're remember you to push that forward. So that's great. Um, we're gonna spend some time now talk about women in hunting, and I will start that by saying, Jesse, I, I've made a lot of errors in my life. I have a lot to have a lot to own up for. I had fifty four episodes of this podcast before I had a woman on. It was like a dude party for fifty four weeks before I had a female uh, sitting with the headphones on. And I don't I think that's it's like symptomatic of what's going on. It's not that I was out there. I wasn't doing either thing right. I wasn't trying to make it balanced, but I was was also not trying to make it unbalanced. I was just finding interesting people, pulling them in and talking to them at a you know, a pretty quick pace. You're doing it every week. You're just trying to get people that are interesting and and let people in on their stories and it strikes me that all the people I know in the industry, all the things I've done that in that first in this first fifty four weeks, that I didn't one think to go pursue a female perspective. I also didn't. I also didn't find it weird that there weren't any and so I don't like somebody I was asked me, I said, would you like apologize to all females for not having anyone? Like? No, I don't because it wasn't I didn't do anything wrong in my opinion, but I feel like it does. It is it is, you know, it's a symbolism for what we got going on here in this industry. And I certainly don't ever think I mean, I never looked at that as malicious, you know, like it's not like you're and I think most people reckon ignited that, I hope. So a lady rode in Andrea um, I wonder if I could find her an email, and she just said, I just discovered your podcast and I like to scroll through and listen to the women episodes first when I find a new podcast of the nature. And I scrolled through and she was like, I had a guy named Aubrey Marcus and she's like I saw. I'm like, oh yeah, and there's a dude and she's like that, I realized you had no women on And luckily for me, I was able to say, hey, you know, I'm having jesse On. I had Lily met calf On from the University of Montana, who studies um women's motivations and hunting. So I was like and I also didn't do that intentionally, it just kind of came that way, but she made good points. It's like this, this is there's a perspective out there that's being missed. It was definitely missed by me. Well, I think you know, when you look at the hunting community and in the industry and everything around it, um it it's historically Caucasian men um and and when you have a when you have something that has leaders in that arena, that has had it for a long period of time, and it's built the system of of what we expect, what we look up to, or what we think is possible. A lot of that is like what we think is possible um and it's all wonderful men who are doing work like yourself and everybody else. But it's also it. Uh. If you don't see yourself represented in that, um, it's hard to imagine yourself being in it. And um, it's hard. And it's not even that like, you know, when I got into hunting, I'm a I'm a late I've only been hunting ten years now, I think. Um. And when I first picked up about and started looking at this arena, I was finding myself really enamored by how Steve Ranella talked about hunting, but also really disappointed that there was no woman out there that was like, you know, people like, oh, who's your hunting mentor who do you look up to? That's like out in front of people right now. And I couldn't find a woman that I was looking, you know. And they they're out there, there's an amazing group of women hunters, but they weren't on a platform where the world got to see them. Um. And so I think that inhibits it, because if you can't see yourself in that position, you never pursue to achieve that position. UM. And I have a really uh my colleague and I Joy Bannon, who's also a wonderful she's our policy director for Woming Wildlife Federation, and we were sitting and we were trying to come up with who would be a really wonderful Whyman, Game and Fish commissioner who we could put in UM and recommend as w WF to be a commissioner. We sat there for an hour and a half before either of us saw that either, but both of us were qualified to do it, and we were coming up with like all these great wonderful men's names, and then we're like, yeah, it'd be great if there was like other women commissioners and we'd like sat They're like, wait, both of us have this ability to do this, why aren't we doing this? Um. So, it's that it's the representation and it's normalizing it because still people like, oh, you're a woman, you're a hunter, what's it like to be a woman in a hunter? And um so, I think that's some of it, and uh, it has to be a conscious effort to change that, because like you said, it's it's an unconscious thing where you just you don't notice that it's happening. And you go fifty four episodes and you have all these amazing, wonderful men on that are talking about great things and passionate wonderful things. But um, until I do the same things that that woman. I go and I scroll scroll through and I'm like, what are the you know, women talking about in this arena? And it's hard to find? Yeah, and it for so once you identify an issue, right, and we know I've said this, uh in the past two and I always am repeating things. But you know we know that like at Mediator, our audiences like men you know on a good day. Um, And I like, so you identify that as a problem, Like, that's not what we want, Like, we're not in this to just to speak to one side of anything, whether it's you know, religion or gender or ray. We just want everybody to enjoy and be enriched by the things that we and joy and are enriched by. But then once you've identified the problem, the issue becomes the natural thing to do is kind of pander two the folks that aren't in the bucket, right, So then then you have this disingenuous outreach that doesn't really affect what you're trying to affect. And so that's where I think a lot of us are in this industry. We know there's an issue with it, we know it's growing. We all celebrate women in the outdoors and those types of things, but what what what we tend to do with pink things? And and everybody always brings up pink, but it is true and we we're pandering too women. It's a um and from the outside of it, it feels like a disingenuous outreach. Um and And I think I had a really lovely conversation this morning that actually may have given me words for this that I hadn't had before. Um But the best way to change this is rather than outreach, We're not in a space, honey. Community is still in a space where I'm not sure we're ready to retain female hunters. So we can reach out all we want, we can bring them on, but is this a space that feels good to be a woman in? And oftentimes that is not true yet um and and I think it's changing. So I think there's like great, I mean that the effort is there, the desire is there, but whether I mean, it's everything from language, what community are you part of? The sportsman community? Like it's everything is it comes down to it and it and it leads to an error of um I think subconscious uh being uncomfortable and and so until we have a space that is that is uh built to feel like a place that we want to stay. It's going to be hard to keep women retained into it. And that's not just women, it's any diversity into the hunting community. And a great point to make it's like we're not we're just sitting talking about this subject. It's not just that women need to get into it. It's everybody does, right. We want everybody to have the opportunity to feel accepted and come on in, and we have to make sure that behinding community is ready for that because like that's some of it is is is there are times where it doesn't feel welcoming still, um, and that's a that's a change that I think. It happens slowly and it will never happen as fast as we want it, but it will happen, and it's happening, you know. Just it's it's happening, and it's the work you guys are doing. It's the work I've done with Artemus. It's it is changing. It's just you know, service fast as we Yeah. Yeah, And I think there there's all that. There's also there's cultural sensitivity to it and in a lot of like more liberal environments like Hollywood that they're forcing out into the front women UM to try to balance the scales in a way that all of us that are you know, sitting back on really really is that, what is that how we're going to solve this problem? And so I don't want us to do that. Drawing more lines never helps you get across any line. And then you know, putting down white males that come on man like, it's not that's not going to do anything. And so it's I find myself generally trying to untangle very tangled issues, and I think this is one of them that seems on his face like, oh, we'll just we don't have him, We'll just talk to him and they'll come over. It's super easy. But it's just not, you know, and when you have a one on one conversation, that is exactly how it goes, and that's actually how you started, is you know, have him come over and sit on a podcast and talk to him. UM. But it is also when you're trying to do like the large cultural changes, it is, it starts with the little things. It starts with UM. I think understanding that hunting has had a voice that UM is having a hard time being relevant anymore. Is maybe the way that I would put it, it's it's not welcoming to any outside communities. And it's not because it's angry people and bad people or things like that. It's just a very closed door culture. And um, whether it's the language we use, how we've marketed who we are, who we have let speak for us for a long time. UM. You know, you ask anybody that, And I hate using the word anti hunter because like if you ask anybody that doesn't understand the nuance of hunting, um, what they hear about us and what they think about us? UM. And if all I saw was what was put in front of them, I would think the same thing. Um. You know, I spent some time in California. I know exactly what it looks like from the outside. UM. And I was lucky I grew up in a family that sort of showed me the nuance of that early on. But it it was very Uh. We do not speak in relatable terms to anybody except people that have been in the hunting community for a while. And we don't communicate our stories in relatable terms. We don't um speak about common values, and we lead with the things like we kill animals, which is a really hard thing to bring somebody who really cares about animals to the table whip um. And and rather than speaking about our experiences or emotions around things, our vulnerability when things don't go right, like when like hunting is a deeply emotional thing that happens, and and um, whether it's joy, whether it's sorrow, whether it's mistake, whether it's in whatever happens. Like, there's emotion in what we do. Um, and we don't talk about it, and it's seen as, uh, something that's not cool to talk about. And you've got to be like the most badass hunter that's up on the ridgeline with the biggest chandlers and like have all your cool matching gear on. And um, that's not relatable to somebody that's sitting at home going I want to do that. But also, holy crap, that's scary. Um. Yeah, And we've run into like what really motivates us? Why are we doing the thing that we're doing right. We've we've built these constructs around what we do that are that make it seem altruistic, that make it seem like it's for everyone. And I'm just not like I'm not believing a lot of it. I just and that's why I started this podcast, and I was like, I don't really I care about this, but I don't believe that we believe the ship we say. I don't. I don't. I think a lot of people say conservation and they don't understand or they just say it because it protects the thing they want to do. We use conservation as a word, not as an action. Yeah, very much, very much. So, you know, you just and the same thing with with all the other you know, elements of why I hunt that we've kind of all parroted, and you find yourself kind of returning to those rather than taking the time to critically think about really what you're doing. I can't tell you. I mean, the reason that I feel like I know that we're not doing a good job with us yet as a as a community is that in my word, you know, I go to legislative committee meetings, I go to Game and Fish Commission meetings, I go to season setting meetings. I am often times in there with only paid staff people. Hunters are not showing up, and um, you know, even when we had are the Game and Fish Commission meeting around the Grizzly bear hunt in Wyoming. There was not a lot of people there on voluntary status of like a citizen that's interested. And so it's hard. It takes time. Sometimes you have to take time out of a day that's a work day. It's not easy to do. Um. But it's also like, I'm a paid staff person, I'm a lobbyist. I'm there. I'm the person with the facts and the numbers and the bullet points. Um. And I have my own personal stories. But when I show up, it is not nearly as powerful as if like five just citizens of the place showed up and advocated on behalf of themselves for what they wanted. Um. My voice will never be that loud because I'm a paid staffer and well, and so I don't not to make light of anything. But there was a seminar or something that I saw. It was like how to influence politics or how to influence local hunting and fishing pole see, And I thought, well, that would be a quick one. Just formed, be educated, form your opinion and then voice it. And and luckily we live in a in a time where there's a lot of ways to voice that. You can write letters, you can write emails, you can can tweet them, can tweet them, for God's sakes, tweet them. You can go and show up physically to these places. And as my buddy Ryan Callahan always says, like that's all it takes. These these people are not like politicians, are not leaders. They're just they're not. They don't know that there's to lead there there for you to tell them what to do. And I've I sat with Senator Martin Heinrich last night and ask him that question, like, how much does if let's say you got your staffers have collected ten letters on the subject and then then they've given you the summation of those things, how much does that effective you do? We said, that's what my job is. I've watched a vote change on the floor because of one letter someone sent in Wyoming because it's a small legislature where a tiny state with five thousand people, we have more cows and people. It's you know, we have this really incredible blessing of having our neighbors bear legislators. But when I've been i was at legislature there was a bill coming through was actually the Hunting Technology Bill um and it was just giving the Game and Fish Commission the authority to regulate some of this crazy technology that's coming out, UM, and or if they want to regulate it. Was just giving him the power to but there was a legislator that was against it. I reached out to a couple of my friends, UM, who were back in Lander, who were in this district, and they sent some great respectful, kind but firm and what they were asking emails UM, and they sent a text back said hey, we just sent the emails. I watched him look down at his computer and the vote came around, and this was the second time they had voted on it, and so this is like I knew his vote from the day before. This is the second time going through, and he changed his vote and I was like, there's three emails that came in from people. That was it three? UM? And he stood up and he said, I had a young man in my district that sent this, and I think I need to listen. And that was the AHA moment where it's just like, see, I know it feels like you're faceless and voiceless in this and it's because you don't always get a response back. Because when you're one person, you get eight hundred emails. It's really hard to send back, but they do listen and it does make a difference. And even the tweets do, which is a concept I'm still trying to wrap my head around tweet them. I remember when I first I was in college. They said I went to a like a journalism symposium and the people from Twitter were there and I was like, what we were just making The name was like, oh, you're a Twitter somebody that was and we just walked away as like whatever, ten twelve years ago whatever it was. Um, so that's a that's a side. That's the side. But yeah, I mean I think you're you're very much right, and I've come to to find that we're able to impact these things. And if you look at the examples from back anglers, and that's not that just happens to be where they are where we are currently. We get in this thing, especially in this kind of insular back b h A world. People hear me talk about this organization all the time. I'm on the board. But that's happening in Dust Unlimited, it's happening Delta Waterfoul, it's happening in Rocky Mountain. ELK Foundation these are bigger groups with more corporate feel to them, but there's people in the ground volunteering and doing the things. And I am sometimes guilty of maligning the organization for what it for its mistakes or what I feel it's not doing right without really focusing on the people. There's a lot of niches that they feel and I think you know, b h A is different from many different organizations, and they all fill in niche. There's always there's a place on the map for everyone. UM, and I think you know, from the outside looking in, UM, i've seen them get too augured into what common space on the niche they've fill, rather than the fact that there's some differences that are very vital and very needed. You know. For instance, PHA has been amazing and getting you know, the younger generation involved. No other group has come close to that. And and rather than the whether it's a jealousy or things that happen, it should have been a learning thing, be like what's PhD doing that's working? Why okay? And then you know when when you flip that around and BH goes, okay, we're growing organization, how do we get more structure, you know, so that we're a little more air tight when we look at the larger groups and we can function on that level as well. So rather than like learning from it, it's there's always been tension, and um yeah, there's there there, I will say just from being in it. Man, there's a lot of strife in it, and there's a lot of like finger pointing and name calling and politic ng around. If we stopped politicking each other and started politicking the politics, you would get done there. It is. That's a T shirt. I'm always trying to find T shirts. Um yeah, you're the right job. I think you know, we got T shirts hanging behind us. I do feel like that's very, very true, and and being I'm not a like a bordy type of guy, like I don't. I don't, It doesn't. It's not something that i've but I was brought to this because of passion and also very because I see in the people here what I want to see in hunting and fishing, Like it is a mirror of what I feel personally is the right way to act. And and passion here that's really powerful, right. I don't necessarily see that in other groups, But that doesn't mean that what they're doing isn't good for conservation. And then the other point I would make is that, well there's a lot of groups pushing back on v h A is leftists and green decoy And if you come here and you walk around, you you're just like, I'm not seeing it. I'm not not seeing it. Maybe there's some insidious plot we're not aware of, but I was not seeing it. And a lot of that pushback has been, for lack of a better term, from leaderships of other more traditional legacy conservation groups. It's fear based, you know. I think we we try and conceptualize like, um, it's easier to to cause something leftists and green decoy and you know, come up with things and actually have a nuanced discussion about what it is is bothering us on it? Um. We like to title we we we turn it. Well, they turn you it stopped seeing you as a person and they start seeing you as like a nefarious intent. And we do that all the time on multiple levels. There's there is one thing that I wish um, you know, speaking on the hunter involvement level, um, and how I wish more I would see more people at public meetings and speaking up. But the frustration comes is that Tears, I've noticed are really really good at showing up when something's taken away from them. They're really crappy at advocating for stuff they don't have or stuff that isn't in danger yet. Um, you know they can. They'll show up with pitchforks and torches if you try and take something. And that's good. It's good to have that. I'm not knocking that. But what we are bad at is getting ahead of the rolling ball. Um. We're really great at reactionary, we're not great at like planning and positive movement. And I would love to see a world where we kept the politicians so busy with positive legislation rather than spending all our time fighting negative legislation. Um. And we're starting to see that, you know, some of this LWCF stuff at the national level, something like the Recovering America's Wildlife Act, all these things that are positive. We're seeing people starting to learn how to advocate for rather than just being like, you know, oh my god, bears ears everybody like pitchwork and I don't like. Yeah, it was explained earlier in one of our episodes, is like we don't wait till the wolf's at the door. We wait till that's in bed with us, like we wait till they're already gnalling on our ankle. And we should be we should be asking ourselves, am I in a place where the wolf might come to my door? That? That should be what we're busy with is worrying about what happens when he gets there. He shouldn't even be at the front door. We should be worrying about where he's coming from. Yeah, I mean in the gun rights world, that's how it is. Yeah, it's very effective. It's like, so there's some intricacies in in that thinking where to be so proactive, Like like a human psychology, that proactivity kind of manifest itself in some fear based communication, which is where I think it gets it was where I think it gets a little shaky. And so what we have to kind of do, I think is a community is decide, okay, we have to be proactive. We have always been reactive, but let's do that and as you said, a very positive way. And as foe who have a voice in this world, and these leaders in our conservation groups, let's not always act like the sky is falling in order to get people to go. We don't need red font and exclamation points on every action alert um. And we should pick and choose when we use it. And and it's yes, everything is important, and yes it's a game of a thousand cuts, and you know it's it's uh, that is the case. But the integrity. If we lose integrity, So if we come out and the sky is falling, the sky is falling and sky is flying, people are eventually going to realize that this guy is not falling yet. Um. And it might be on its way, and it might be leading up to a much longer you know, we know that every little cut is like bringing that fall closer. But in communications and the way that people react, eventually people go death. Um. And and that's I'm so terrified of that happening, especially because it's a hunting community. We're five percent, We're tiny, tiny little bit of the population. We're powerful, activated, interested, loud, five percent we are. But we have If we lose our integrity, we don't have anything. Yeah. Yeah, And I've you know, always talking to the folks I know in this space and telling them, you know, you're leaders in conservation. You're like, do not fall into that fearmongering. Do not because it's for an organization like this one, especially for b h A. You could come. You can wake up every morning be like our lands. We're gonna losing our land. We're losing our land. It's all going away. Please, you know, buy a membership. Please buy a membership, or you're gonna lose all your public plans. And like you said, that becomes problematic to the point where you're only then desiring action around some sort of you know, like trepidation instead of waking up in the morning be like, dude, I really want clean air, clean water, public lands to be accessible. And that's my positive view of the world, and I'm going to go out in the world and make that happen. It right, And there's like some manifestation of those ideas, that positive that you can't have if it's fearmonger, you can't have that. That it the ability you lose the honest communication and and and yes you get an initial reaction, um, But I also worry, you know, when you do send out like that everything's bad um. And and sometimes it's very very warranted um. But you're in the reaction from everybody that's writing in say like in the email notes, it's like, oh my god, everything's bad. And when it hits at a policy level or a legislative or or delegation level, um, the you know it, it snowballs. You know, I walk up to you and I yell at you. You then get uncomfortable because you've been yelled at, and so you go yelling and you either immediately put up a wall and say I'm not listening to you. Like you don't tell somebody to change the color the shirt by walking up and smack him across the face and saying I hate your shirt. You you go up and you become a friend. You see them as a person and you go, hey, man, like that's your color is not great on you, and then maybe they'll listen to you. But like you know, when you when you do this, like everybody freak out. Walls go up almost immediately, and um, the integrity is not structural um in that sense. And uh, sometimes it's warranted. Sometimes you have to go to that length. I'm not saying that it shouldn't ever be used. Yeah, sometimes you need to be like the wolf out the door. You need to be a little bit scared wolf just lay down in the bed freak out, freak out time. Yeah, so they're like you said that, there is nuance to it, there is ways to approach it. But I will tell you and anybody else that is a member of the n r A that's out there, like you get these robot calls. I got a robot call from Colonel Oliver North that just was like this desperate plea was this, we're losing our freedoms. They're after us, They're coming after us. These evil people want our guns. They need to take them away. They're literally going to come to your house, you know. Um, And I just I'm thinking, listen, I know, I know that there are people calling for restrictions on guns. I that I don't agree with. I'm I I'm very understanding of that. And when I go to vote, I always take a look at that. I always take a look at it. But man, that's a desperate like it seems like you're desperate, maybe a little bit in debt or like I want to know the person that's like puts the phone down. It's like, uh, there's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. But it was like if if I was trying to sell you a vacuum, and I like, dump some dirt on your floor. I'm like, look, look at this dirt. There's no way to get it up. You're you could, Oh my god, your kids, it's gonna be here forever. Your kids are gonna get sick. Here's but I have a vacuum and it's a hundred bucks. So I just I don't agree with that. There is a reality in the world where that is that does happen, and it needs to happen. But I think it just goes into intentional language, and that goes across the board, whether we're talking conservation or women's involvement and things. You know, the way we speak about hunting has needed a facelift, and I've been very appreciative for what you guys that need either have done for that. Um you know, lead with her now and and what everybody he's brought on has been a very good job at broadening what it means to be hunter. Um. But but we only get as big as we can and there's the next step. That's that's I think what we've brought in is the conservation and hunting nuance. People are starting to figure that out, but now we have to bring in the conservation, hunting and diversity nuance, and that is a much harder conversation to have, And it's one that like language, how we tell stories, how we communicate with people, um is really really vitally important. UM. Well yeah, like I could promise you though, we're not scared to have it on this program or the media program or anything that we create. Like I'm not scared of any topic. I don't care. I actually enjoy And then a big fan of these entanglements like that. I feel like, if we agree on nine of things, that's very boring. If we just talked about this, let's focus on the ten and get somewhere. Let's move towards productivity. So I would say that, but to get back to the two women and hunting. But we're gonna let's just try to solve it here right now. It's like it's key. If we could just solve it, then you know, we move on, split we move on. What are a couple of experiences that you've had where you've come away thinking, boy, that was a negative I had. This is And again it goes back to the kind of the epiphanies I've had lately about how we do this and the issues that I've not brought up. A young lady named Hannah, I believe, and in Missoula there, when I was talking to the h a chapter just said to me very simply, I go into sports his warehouse or at the big box retailer with a with a male counterpart, whether it's sometimes a boyfriend, sometimes just a friend whatever. And so she it's like, we'll go in there and I'll ask a question and the clerk will talk to the male person and not even look at me, like I'm just there to hold the bag. Um. So that that got me thinking about those experiences. I don't obviously, I can't have that perspective. What do you got? I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. I think there's a there's a phrase for that called man's planning. Um. But I you know, I have I have those experiences and and UM have them a lot outside of the hunting community, even especially in the political job that I do. But in the hunting world, Uh, it's it's very similar. It's uh not being taken seriously or like I know what I'm talking about. Um. I am an archery only hunter. I started with a bow, I learned with back tension. I had a phenomenal mentor who I mean, had me blindfolded in front of a target kind of learning form before I ever did anything else. Um. But also taught how to time my cams, how to tie a peep site, how like everything, taught me how to tune a bow. Um. And I've found myself going into bow shops and uh knowing more than the bow tech and uh trying to explain what I want done because I don't have a press and being like, no, this is what I want done, um, and then being like you must not know what you're talking about. Have you ever tied a peep site in before? And just being like, yeah, I tied that one, um, you know, and and that kind of thing that's been a frustrating one. And I think also we experienced it in the car mechanics world, but also the the just when I go into buy a bow um. Actually my first experience as I walked into a store um and kind of knew what I wanted and I was handed the choice of like raspberry, pink, pink, camo and like turquoise or something. Yeah, and it was it was very much like, no, I want to hunt with this and they were like, I'm sorry, you want to want it. I was like, I want to go hunting with this. I don't want to write pink bow. Um. And So whether it's just those kind of things, the assumption of like why I was there or what I knew or how much I was there and UM, I've been lucky that I haven't haven't had Hannah's experience where I've had gone in with a man and have them only ever speak to that UM. But I also find myself when I do go in with a man, UM, and I think this is something that I do a lot that I need to work on. Is I tend to let them talk and I don't know why. I know just as much as them, but I just end up in those situations. Sometimes I'm like, well, it's either if you explained that, Yeah, do you feel like I think one of the things. You know, we got a lot of people come up that this event and others that are brand brand new hunters, you know, we get that a good bit. And I've also I've heard a couple of times that female hunters very much feel more comfortable learning this from other females. I'm like, always skeptical of that, because I like, are we are we still pandering here? Are we calling them female hunters? Or are we trying to put them in a little group like, oh, a female hunting camp, you guys go over there, and oh, you'll just be pilf and things like. I wonder about that. So there's two sides of it to me. One, I hope we're not creating these like artificial female hunts. So, but the other side, do you feel that that's the effective way to teach a like a female, a new female hunter to go and do it, to be surrounded by a bunch of women. It depends. I think it depends on the person. Um. I think some women that is much more comfortable, and that is exactly what needs to happen. And you know, sometimes you need to be in a space where, uh it's okay to talk about the fact that women have periods in the actors. That's really taboo, you know, and sometimes you need that space where you can have those discussions where I don't think those discussions happen in a male based hunting camp. Um. And especially when there's like questions from women about how to deal with things like that, Um, those happen in those female camps. And what I will tell you is the female camps are I I've been in a lot of all I've been the only woman and a lot of all male kids before, and I've been very rarely in an all female camp before. So I'm very jealous of the women that get to do that. UM that the I think it depends on the person, though, because I have been out UM with the first light crew in Wisconsin. Uh there was six dudes and me, and they were amazing, and they were welcoming and they were uh funny and kind and I felt very welcome. That it took me three days to realize I was the only female in camp. UM like it it was. I've had those wonderful experiences, So I think they happen in both places. I think what it is is the people that are there in the intention of it. UM. If there are female hunters that are wanting to get into it but are feeling like a woman is going to be easier to work with, than that's what you should go with it. There's no shame, there's no like. Go with what works for you. UM. I was taught by a male mentor and he was amazing. UM. And he was my boyfriend at the time, and it was amazed saying, uh that we didn't kill each other. But he was also a very wonderful human. Edit. And so I've seen I've seen the what I hope people can do. Gosh, that's a good answer, man, Like I think that's a very honest answer, not like, well here here's what we should do. That's it's it's different for everybody. Um, I tend to try to generalize things, but I appreciate you bringing it back to the bigger bactory alley. Some people like that, some people don't. It's like, I will never you'll never catch me dead in the color pink out hunting. But you know what, if you want to rock pink and go hunting and wear makeup and haul that, you should freaking do that. All right. Well, you know there's some other things we want to cover, but I think we saw the woman things we're good at that we're people to just treat us like people. What's the word that we're going to use. Because somebody wrote in to the Meteor podcast and they said, I don't understand what's wrong with sportsman because it's sportsman whoaman. It's like that made me laugh. Think, like, what's the word we use because I'm as I'm a writer, um or I've written a lot of things, and I get a little I don't have an answer for that. Sports people sports people. Now I swear sports woman is more of a mouthful. That's just sportsmen and women. I have to say sportsman has like a different it's not just the men thing that bothers me. I really hate sport, really hate sport. Both sides of that work. Like that word. We canceled that word. Thank god we took care of that canceled. Yeah, I think sport. I think when we talk about intentional communication and language, sport does not communicate well what hunting is. Um. But I don't know. I don't have an answer for that. And it's something I've struggled with with with Artemis. You know, we were like, okay, we're Artemis, but what do we call all the amazing men that are supporting us? And we're like, Artamen, you know, like you have you have these like but there is no word yet and and um, you know, I find myself intentionally avoiding sportsman and sportswoman. I will just write hunter and angler, um, which is not fun to always have to spell out and too it's a long and it's a mouthful and that kind of thing. So I guess the call out there is like we need a word. Um, I don't have an answer to that. Right in th HC at the Meat Eater dot com and then give us the word we ought to be used to describe us, our little group here. Yeah, because I'm you know, I get nervous, like sports people that stupid. Yeah, it's just a weird one. And I used I I get lazy. I use the word sportsman because there isn't a better word out there, but I use it and then I internally cringe because they hate it. There's a lot of people that are like damn snowflakes changing the words talking about diversity, like I wonder why this community has had to close our policy for so long. That's why I like that. That's the point I like to make is like, man, I disagree there. I disagree with a lot of things A lot of people say. I mean all the time, and I when someone comes in and goes walks into our community and is not really one of us, right, there's an example out there, and I'll just with a fellow named Charles Post who's in our who I love and I think it's an awesome human being. He's he's kind of in the outdoor wreck space. He's an ecologist. He's from UC Berkeley and he and he started working in the hunting space and doing a bunch of things. Came with this podcast a couple of times. He comes from California. Man, he if you ever met the guy, he's like granola in the best way possible, Like he wears strappy shoes and like he's real bubbly. He's like the opposite of what we would expect to have in our world. And so when he first came in as like celebration, somebody that's not like us came over and then he stepped out of line and made some comments about gun control, and he now has to a lot of people said, now he has to leave. He's not one of us. What the fuck? What how are we going to achieve a bigger community if that's how we treat people who float ideas we don't agree with this straight from the topic is supported only you know, when you talk about having we're talking about policy, and you know, like you know, the best thing is when it's supported by everybody at the table. Uh, we are not making strides and conservation because our table is fucking tiny and it's not friendly to sit at, not having it like we should be able to have opinions and be able to disagree with each other respectfully, but still work towards the same goal, like our common goal. That light at the end of the tunnel, I think is probably across the board the same for all of us, but it's very nuanced and how we get there and how we want to see it get get You know, we should be able to do our own journeys. You should be able to take this trail trail, and I should be able to take this trail and we still get to the top. And no wonder, people that aren't white bearded dudes don't want to come into this. Yeah, the beard seems like to be the thing now. The whole Mediator office is like the same person just cloned. Luckily Ronella has no beard, honest doesn't. But the rest of them, all of us, we just just bearded fellows and then we'll have a mustache and that's it. Um, it was no wonder people don't want to come in If that's the way we're gonna treat him is a dude from California. What do you think he thinks? Yeah, like, think about their new one, Like where did they come from? Why did they think that they do? And would you feel the same way if you were in their shoes, raised where they were and had every I mean, people are a product of a lot of different things. And yeah, and then and you know, bring him in, celebrate the diversity he brings to our group and the expertise he brings. But then when he speaks up on something like gun control and he was wrong. I told him so, just be like, hey, man, you're wrong on this. You're wrong on this. Let me tell you what we think. Now if if he wants to get into a more robust conversation around that, and we him and I have I'm happy to have it. I welcome those And why is criticism? So, I mean, we're it's hard. It is hard to hear criticism. It's very hard to hear. And it's uh, you know, for me, I had to have some self examination because I was the person that was like the I hate the term, but for lack of a better term, like the Barbie doll huntress we solved women and hunting problems, but it was very critical of that. And and I had somebody reach out and me like, hey, but if that's how you feel confident in the outdoors, like, shouldn't you just go out like that? And I'm like, ship, I was wrong. Um and uh, and so to hear that. But it's hard. It's so hard to hear something when you have like when you're passionate and you're want to say something and so so the critique we should always take, um and and at least examine it and warrant if it merits passing through and being something that we need to change, or um if there is the gentle pushback of like, hey, no, that's not how it is, Like let's sit down and talk through this and maybe we can find like a road for word together. Oh. That's a hard thing about examining these kind of like cultural things and the broad scale. Sometimes it sounds like this vapid, just nonsense, But it is important to kind of maneuver in them and around them to the point that you know, these conversations mean something. Um, and I think that I think it does. I think it does. So we're gonna get to a few things. It's a couple of segments here on the show, and the first one is brand new. Um, I don't really have a name for what we'll call it. Name that Conservationist, that's what we'll call it. And it's it's brought you by First Light, who you work with. So thank you for doing that, and thank you first Light for sponsoring this program. I'm going to leave today and I'm gonna drive over west of your inn Idoh, put on my first Light and shoot a turkey in its face. Yeah, and then yeah, then I'm going to Oregon and shoot another turkey and it's face and then I'm gonna eat them. So thanks to First Light for being a part of this segment and my turkey killing. This is where I'm gonna say some stuff, some facts, types of things, and you're gonna have to guess who I'm talking about. And if you get it, I'm all give you. I'll give you a meat eater T shirt and then you can wear it so terrible at these and and you know, guess what. It's unisex based on the topic of this podcast. It could be worn by men or women. In your face diversity, all right. This person was born in eight and raised in Burlington, Iowa. Do you know who it is? Yeah, I'm so bad at this new Okay, this is a it's an easy one. This should be easy. He graduated from the Yale Forest School in nineteen o nine. Got it yet, I'm terrible at any of these. To tell me the name and I'll be like, oh, yeah, that sounds correct. But I am not the fact. Remember, I'm the I'm gonna make it easy. I'm gona trying to make it easier for you here. He's from Wisconsin. He wrote a famous almanac. Although wrote a famous I was sitting there and I was like, going between like three others and hus, I'm not sure how are these are going to be? So I was pulling up. That was too easy, although it was all though. Now, if you look behind you, we have a brand new shirt. It says it's a picture of all tho its like you freakingly freaking Leopold. That is a great shirt. He's a badass, and my brother actually did the illustration for it. He's a badass too, But I like, I don't know if a lot of people know what he looks like. That's what he looks like. Walked past this booth and I didn't read the name, and I was like, that's a really cool shirt. And then came back around. I was like, look at him. He got he's rolling a pipe and he just looks like a conservationist. I feel like he should be sitting next to a fire with like a journal in his hand, ends a little little glass of Scotch on the rocks on the side. Yes, So if you don't know about Aldo, I always get it wrong because there's a loophole the company. But it's Leopold, as I've been told many times, Leopold. If you don't know about that guy, go read a Sand County Almanac. It's a seminal piece of conservation letter. It's beautiful. It's one of those like you get through it and you're just like have chills. You're just like, yeah, and what plane did this person exists to write this? Um? You know, Steve and I both I would say and not to pare what Steve says all the time, because like it is the piece of literature that kind of changed my perspective on on like how to approach these thoughts and ideas and like in terms of killing animals and conservation and predators and all the things that we kind of deal with. He's the one how we look at the nuance of things. I like it. And if you turned around behind you, there's a shirt that I came up with that says pro nuance, anti bullshit. I love that people. A lot of people are buying it. I want to. I wonder if people want to have bullshit written across their chest, But these people don't care. I want to wear this under the blazer when I go to work at the legislature. And if you like, if you win, like a bill pass you just in your face. All right. We got one more segment, and this is one that a lot of people have come up to me this week and either chided me for, threatened me about or said it's funny, but mostly they're upset now and I don't care. I don't gonna care. I'm starting a revolution. And this one's called and here's another one. It's usually called Hotspot Cool Dude, but in this case, hot spot cool lady. And this has brought to you by Federal Premium Ammunition. We do love their We were talking talking to some of the dudes here, Michael Kin and Jason Nash. We're gonna go turkey hunt with these guys and talking about some of their compara bullets last night, talking about some of their new their new coming out with a new custom shop. I'm gonna go over there and check it out. Um so on what happened? Thank you, Federal Premium. This is called hot spot, cool lady, And this is where I tried to convince you to give up your hottest hunting spot to all the listeners of the hunting collective. Now I've got at least four spots thus far, and I've had a couple of people tell me to screw off. So those are basically your option. You can give up your hunting spot. It can't be a bra. It's gonna be like longitude latitude exactly where people could go. Because what I'm trying to do is start a revolution where if no one has any spots, then there won't be spots. If everybody shares all their spots, then the hunting spot ceases to exist and we all can just go wherever we want. Not you have to keep your mouth shut. That's what I'm trying to achieve. But a lot of people came up to me and yelled at me here at the show. So I mean, listen, you can do whatever you want with this. Do I give it up? Do you give it up? And look, you could give up like your squirrel spot if it makes you feel comfortable. But well, I'm gonna go bamna get lynch when I go back to let me before you say that. I had a guy come up here a couple of podcasts ago Uh Libby Metcalf and her husband Alex gave up a spot, and a dude here at b h A came running up to me and was like, that's where I hunt see my things. I learned all my spots from the man who taught me how to, who lives very close to me. Come over your house, he's here. You'll no I the and I don't know that I have a longitude in latitude, but what I can tell you is uh, for residents in Wyoming, we have an over the counter tag um for mule deer, and you can shoot a buck bigger than anything you'll find in Utah in the Wyoming range in your face. Utah leach a lottery tags um and you have to work for it. So giving away spots doesn't mean that it's not still eight miles back, guys, straight up, and I am sometimes on my hand and knee curis thing everything as I crawl up there. Um. But the South Crow Creek, the Salt River Range, that's real. I like that. That's real specific. So I just we'll just repeat that so you if you guys are taking notes, it's just like South Crow Creek right is amazing. But this is also the spot, uh where I have been in storytelling for b h A. And I told the story about how we went in there and broke a bow and I walked out with a softball sized ankle and our tent got trampled by three thousand sheep. And but there's also monster deer in there. Um. But it's it's a it's kind of a challenge, like can you do it? Can you do it? As you can do it? Can you do it? Like? Nice? So we got that. I mean, we got spots right now. And I got spots in Montana, Wyoming. I got a spot in Pennsylvania. Dude, I got a lot of places to go. I'll take you. Can you do it? I can do it. You gonna go hunt meal deer in the Wyoming range. Unfortunately, for like you out of state or people you gotta like put in for a couple of points the regions. Well, now I can't. That's a lot of efforts. It's a lot of effort. I like to people to give me hunts and just I'll take you to these secrets about that I didn't tell you about that has large meal that you could get pretty easy. I like that. That's a good way to be a recurring guest on the Hunting Collection is to be like I'll give you next time, I'll give you another next time, I'll give you the other spot. All right, good, well listen, thank you for what you do, Thanks for being a positive voice for this world. And really like on the ground level, what you do in legislature and what you do is a lobbyists is important, way more important than my talkie talkie show here. Um So, I very much appreciate that. And thanks for being open and Canada about you know, women in the outdoors. It's something that will continue to cover on this program and many others. Um So, go follow Where can people find you? All right? Well, Wyoming Wildlife dot org is uh the who I work for. Um But then you have Artemis dot n WF dot org UM, n w F for National Wildlife Federation UM. And then I'm on Instagram and Facebook as Jess Johnson or Jess C. Johnson. All right, go follow Jeff. Thank you. That's it. That's all another episode of a Hunting Collective in the Books. Thanks to Brodie Henderson. Thanks to Jess Johnson for hanging out. I really appreciate them. I really apreciate everybody at b h A, all the members, all the staff, everybody that came out took part in a wonderful weekend empoiseat oh everybody that came to our seminar talking about hunting ethics would really appreciate you. It was a great conversation. Sometimes it can seem, um, it seems like it's not so pointed because there isn't going to be a conclusion. But just talking about these ideas and having the conversation I feel is important. But we'll also what you need to do here, go to the meat Eater store, meat eater dot com, the up meat eater dot Com. Go to the store. There's all kinds of cool stuff there. We just launched a brand new Aldo Freaking Leopold shirt. The Man is the Father of conservation. He is the writer of some of the best works on concert sation, and now there's a shirt to celebrate them. Here from the Hunting Collective. We also got pro nuanced anti bullshit. We've got hoodies, We've got all kinds of stuff there, So go check it out. Go check it out, and write us in at th HD at the mediator dot com. Um, you're gonna love it, and we love it. Thanks for joining us. I'm gonna leave you with old number seven. See you, oh number seven, Tennessee whiskey got me dragging in heaven and uh and just stopped. It looks good to me. They're gonna have to department to the parade, Oh the fardy farre

Save this episode