00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's another episode of Hunting Collective. It's coming at you. It's good. It's August. We're there, man, this is basically Hunting Season. We're calling it that we're there and we're excited about it. You're gonna hear a lot of good content coming up. But on episode seventy three, in particular, you're gonna get Ryan cal Callahan of Cow's Weekend Review, Seth Morris of the Mediator Team, and Fill the Engineer, and we're talking about lots and lots of different things, including some damn near died stories, And at the end of the show there's some some tears kind of shed through a damn near died story. We're talking about trailhead diplomacy, we're talking about mustaches, talking about well white claw. I'm sure it gets to mention in there somewhere, and a guy who's dog killed a fawn in Colorado. He's a fishing guy. He posted it. There was an outrage online and even more outrageous coverage of the incident by the Washington Post. So we get into that. You're gonna hear me scream and yell a little bit, maybe for the first time on this podcast. Because I'm fired up man fired up about that topic. And after that we're joined by Outside Magazines West Siler. He is no stranger to controversy, he is no stranger to leveling his opinion, and he does that on and definitely wild on online column that's featured on Outside online dot com. So you're gonna get all that. But before we get to that, there's some Yetti stuff coming. Man. They just launched. They just launched their whole new fall line, or at least a little sneak peak of their fall line, and it includes a product I'm pretty excited about, and that's the Rambler Jr. Twelve ounced kids bottle. If you've been following along with the Yetti story, you know that there's there's always been an idea that this brand is is for everybody. It's for the hardcore. But now my young son will have a Yetti of his own, and I'm very excited about that. For those of us that are that are hunters, anglers, and dad's or moms, this is the perfect thing to get your kid into. One of the best brands and outthor products that there is, and that's Eddie. So check out the Rambler Junior twelve ounce kids bottle at Eddie dot com. Without further ado, We're gonna get into a very fired up episode of The Hunting Collective right now, let's go. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pedal to the medals. I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new cloes a game second hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up baths. I guess I grew up. I mean, there are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted through a real bad dream or being and like I'm coming apart of the scenes. But thank you Jack Daniels. Oh hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Hunt Collective. I'm Ben O'Brien. It's episode seventy three, and we're in August, damn it, and it's our cal You feel like there's some good hunts to be had in August, because I feel like August is an underrated hunting month. Well boy, they're hot, you know, but like they know. One of the more coveted mule deer tags in the whole wild World starts in August with the Arizona Strip tags. There's some good, good prong horn to be had. New Mexico, this state has some good prong horn and in the in the archery prong horn in August, so you could problem weren't to be chased. If you want to go north, you can go to Alaska, Caribou, you can do a lot of stuff anything else over their south. What do you got Do you have any good August hunting memories growing up in Pennsylvania, Um, there's not much opportunity on anything in August. That's true. You just so you're sad. Yeah, it was just sad boy until towards the end of September when archer would come in in New Jersey. That'd be the first time of the year for me. Usually. Yeah, well here there's some August stuff to do, but August is not Let's not only talk about exie in August. There's some other things great, there's some other things to be had. So if you're out there thinking that time is not yet upon us, it's pretty much upon us, as evidence by pretty much everybody in the office talking about like what's the next time when we can I get I gotta get some maress, my bow, my bow. Oh, ship. My bow is not ready. What do I do? My garage? It's not organized? Everybody with Steve Ornella because his garage is always organized. Disgusting dates. Um, you guys both have mustaches. We do. You've been told often that you look alike? What do you cal? What do you think about that? Is that a point of pride that? Yeah? It's great? Gets you know, send all those lady admirers Seth's way. He's young and virile. Yeah, you guys send back and back and forth. These are some confused ladies. They're like, I don't know when the date is or gonna go, but I need it. What's the When did you first grow the mustache? Seth at Signs West by the Way. I was still living in Pennsylvania, so it was four years ago. Oh really, so it's a fresh over four years ago fresh broom. Yeah, not near as long as cal Cal wouldn't cal you had yours a eight. I definitely grew it early for short stance, um in. But yeah, man, all I ever wanted was like a big old mountain man beard, and it was very obvious that that was not going to happen. But it turns out I can grow a mustache. So that's that's what I got. You don't think you can grow a beard? No, it is. It is not not a good looking site, seth. Would you you a beard guy? So yeah, when I first brought in the mustache, my issue was, like the corner of my mouth here didn't connect real well to the rest of my beard. So like I could grow beard and like not like not have a mustache. I tried that. It looks terrible. Yeah, um, and then the beard with the mustache just looks weird because like doesn't connect here. Yeah. So see you like some headlight situation, right, pink skin? Yeah? What is it about a mustache to just like shapes a man's personality because you can't just shave that off now, No, it's here to stay. It's my dad said. If I my dad's had a mustache since I've I've been a person. Oh yeah, my dad has like high school football pictures of him with a mustache. Did you ever think about shaving half your dad's mustache off to see what he would do if he would just keep the half stash he would save? How puss you again, I've thought about that often. My dad will listen to this and he'll know that. I've been lurking in the night with the pair of clippers thinking about it. I haven't done it yet, Phil. Did you ever grow facial hair? I have not tried because it looks terrible. What do you mean if I don't shave for a week or two, I look like a like a twelve year old boy going through p Well, there was a couple of people that wrote in they finally saw you on Instagram last week. You iced to me out of the pulse. Yeah, iiced you. You got honorable mention on every pole. Thanks man. Yeah, you're welcome. Uh. People were saying that they thought you were chubbier and middle aged they saw your Yeah, no, I think it's it's it's just the name Phil. It kind of comes. That's true, because how do you get chubby out of a voice? Yeah? I like got some depth. It doesn't sound heavy, sounds hungry, sounds like an overreader. No, no facial hair for you ever, feel you know? I I'm too. I'm too scared to try. I look terrible. Really, Yeah, it looks bad. We won't judge. If you want to. That's a lot. Give it two or three weeks, Okay, Yeah, sure, maybe I'll think about it when November rolls around. You can't have no in your heart Phil trying to grow a mustache. I'll shave down to just a mustache. Okay, yeah, it happens. I don't heartedly disagree with shaving down to Oh yeah, you think it should. Like you go bear scan and you commit to the mustache earlier only for the fact, or you commit the mustache out of the gate only for the fact that it's more fun for the people around you. Ah well, the men of the people. Is what's going on? You got a storm going overhead and the light out the window. Yeah, I'm looking over the mixing board just to make sure that curtain feels so we can see this storm. This actually is uh a good thing if you if you follow at Signs West, he's kind of like the Seth is the meat eater meteor all just oh man, look at that. Holy holy shit. I just I just updated the Graham before we started. Did you get Yeah, so that's a good Let everyone know that something was coming. Let's go over and get over there to Signs West and then you'll get those Meeta Office window weather updates. The the the upper floor window updates yeah, yeah, those are good and that's I mean, it's again a man of the mustache man is a man of the people because you're taking advantage of your window office and you're just telling people this is what I see, trying to keep the people informed. One news source to check. It's gonna be out signs west on the Instagram, especially for the weather. If you're in the Canary district of Bozeman. You really got to watch what you do around South Desk because I noticed that he got me doing my my pull ups this morning. That was me trying to send the ladies. And oh, by the way, the interview segment of this show is Outside Magazine's West Side. We had a lot of really cool uh subjects to discuss, one of which, um it was a story where he almost died on a motorcycle, a motorcycle accident and he shed a tear. Was the first Hunting Collector of you guests to cry. All. I don't know if it was crying, It was just like welling up, getting emotional, and so I figured, why not try to make everybody else cry and see if you guys can tell me stories about when you almost died. So Seth, you got one. I got one. You think you might cry, No, I'm not gonna cry on this one. UM. This was two summers ago. I was in Idaho. UM. I was on fire crew on a on a type six engine crew UM for a private company. And we showed up to a fire. We got debriefed. We got briefed on the fire. UM. They said it hasn't moved in three days. UM fire, the fire conditions weren't right. Uh, high humidity, fire wasn't doing much. There was smoke jumpers that were already on the fire. UM they had it pretty much like contained. So we headed in and started putting in a hose lee UM on this hand line that a hot shot crew dug out and we get halfway down towards the fire, down the steep slope, and for some reason the wind shifted and UM, as far as like fire terminology, it blew up, which means it just like got intense and the wind blowing in your mustache. It was that is not good. It was blowing very much. Expecting the end of the story. But like the only reason I'm alive is my UM. So yeah, the fire, the fire blew up, and I remember the last we're with some hot shots. Um, going down to steep slope and it's like you're not running, You're no way, You're you're running uphill because you know, i'd hook it's deep. Um. The last thing I remember hearing before we started running was hot shot. Yeah, He's like, boys, it's about to get really fucking hot here. And you just I just like turned around. There's just a wall of fire, like it got up in the canopy the canopies of the trees and was just like raging our way. So we ended up running like sidehill away from it. And um, as we were running, there was like golf ball size embers that were like flying up over our shoulders and like starting little spot fires in front of us. So we're like dodging those. And finally we got far enough ahead of it and we shot down slope because like it was kind of burning at an angle up. So we shot down slope and there was a designated deployment site, which is it's a site where you go to it's like a last resort thing, go to deployer fire fire shelter, which no one wants to do. Um. So we went down to that and we just kind of waited it out. Um, the fire kind of burned up to us. There was some smoke jumpers there that I started to burn out an area around us, and then they got on the radio is real quick and called in um the seat planes that flew and dropped retardant on on the fire so we'd get out there was it? Is there a memory like this could be it? Oh? Yeah, that was like it was just like it was when we started running. It was just like, it's this could be like my last sprint. It was scary. It was like the first time in my life. I was like, I might not make it. They're seeing the movie Backdraft? No, are you kidding me? Yeah? So I was placing you in the Backtraft. Kurt Russell, Yeah, I was. You were Kurt Russell to when you're describing that in my head, I don't have to watch it. Yeah, which is a handsome man, Kurt Russell, Cal you have a you have a It wasn't one of the Baldwin brothers in there too, probably probably Alec, Probably Alec was it? No, I think it was the Stephen Baldwin. There you go, o, Stephen. I think that's right. Phil. Have you ever seen Backdraft? I have not. No, Phil has seen every Marvel movie, which apparently there's many. How many Marvel movies have you seen? Phil? I thought there was like Marvels one through six, but apparently there's like thirties. So no, No, the m c U, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's uh, you guys laughing at me. But but you're the weird ones here. No, they're over your twenty that started in two thousand seven with the first Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. And now yeah, there's like over twenty. There's like, I can't keep up, can't keep up. It's wild. I have not seen you fill your band from talking about the Marvel Universe to the rest. That's probably a good sorry about these people tomorrow. M c U was banned for the podcast. Unless people write and and and plead for seth and you're talking about those embers flying out of your shoulders, I could just yeah that was that sounds dude, it's crazy. Check out the cast of Backtrack, alright, Kurt Russell was the lead, Nice the little known William Baldwin, Billy Billy, Robert de Niro, Wow, do you remember he was in there? Donald Sutherland Jennifer Jason Lee Man. It was this is a stack cast that cast I gotta watch that came out When were you born? Yeah, it was meant to be. It was meant to be. Billy Baldwin must be the Sorry what we overshot her budget a little bit? Do you have another bald Alec? What's Billy doing? I think he's dead. No, he's alive. Get him in here, get him in here. He owes us. He's not. Billy Baldwin hasn't really been in much. According to his idea IDV page, he's really not been in much. He was in backdraft too this year. There was a backdraft to this this year, backdraft to twenty eight years after the original, twenty eight years after the original, backdraft to the sequel to the ninety nine one. It fills investigator with the Chicago Fire Department who has to track down an arms dealer who uses deadly fires as a distraction. Wow, unbelievable backtrack to start Billy Baldwin. Billy Baldwin. Kurt Russell didn't make it back for that one. In a damn near dide stories for us. Um No, I mean really, because I'm always like, well, this may not work out, but I gotta keep doing this. So I've never really had like the this is moment moment, yeah, because I'm like, I, if this option doesn't work out, then I could very well have that moment. But you know, I've had like, um, you know, some odd panicky things on a goat hunt a couple of years ago. Now, Um, we're going up through these cliff band ribbons that were very vertical, and and I was helping out the hunter whose whose buddy of mine? The guy who was lucky enough to draw the tag some bitch um and just you know, we're another buddy of mine. And I were like shuttling the packs and rifles and stuff up up the cliff face, and um, I just like I had a moment after those guys were up in like the leap Frog series going up, where all of a sudden I had to like chill out for a little bit. I was like, all right, this is very very unsafe. Um. And then just like some weird panicky things. But it's always like take a second, I'll get there, find an option, go with it. Surprised, I'm surprised you haven't had more death defying. You probably have had him you're just not qualifying? Was that because you feel like you're always there's always a chance. I'm still here, still here? Yeah, have you ever nothing involving fighting fires or hunting. But I was in a pretty bad rollover down the stairs. Sorry accident. Oh yeah, well you got there. This is the only well, honestly, that probably hurt more. I have to apologize to you know, Phil, I'm sorry for interrupting you to make fun of you while you were talking about a very serious star accident was the only apologies ever gonna get Ding rural Washington late at night, and uh, I was in the passenger seat. Ninety degree turned snuck up on my friend and I and he took it too hard and h yeah, which missed a tree like about a three ft trunk by a foot. Maybe he ended up rolling into someone's It was a farm, just farmland. But I mean, I was wearing my seat belt. If I hadn't weren't wearing my seat belt, would not be here. Uh And um, yeah, if I hit that tree, I'm guessing I wouldn't be beer either, because we turned left and I was on the passenger seats, so but yeah, I was scary. But you know um made it out. Yeah, I mean thanks for like all your fans out there, and they keep there all thankful, they keep Did you guys know that there's to keep film moving out there? Face right now? Why why would we get to see? That's the inference. And the first time he was on that, I was like a test that if he didn't do well, we're kick him off. I wasn't serious, Phil, I mean, you're welcome. Did you ever think that if you weren't wearing your seat belt, um, and you were injured severely, that someone may approach you and say, hey, I have a highly experimental solution to your problem, and then you could come out on the back end with some sort of like bionic prosthesis and solve crimes and whatnot, and then it would be the movie I'd like to see super film Man. Yeah, I'll be into that. What would your superhero name be? I don't know. The pubescent facial hair man, the spotty facial exactly. The mixer, the mixer, the filter. Yeah, I think I got this. I got this this one from high school. Does everybody email to meet with superhero? The filibuster? I think buster? Speaking of things that really don't belong on hunting podcast You do you You're from Pennsylvania, Seth. I've been wanting to talk about do sports belong in the hunting community because I lived for a long time or like sports and hunting were the things that made my weekends go. I don't do sports as much as I used to, but I still love I still follow them, but I don't not as intensely as I did. Did you have the same experience in Pennsylvania growing up? I grew up um hunting on saturdays where I could hear Penn State football games going on in the background. Um, that would be enjoyable. It's like a double It's like, I mean, I didn't mind it. Yeah, yeah, you could just hear you hear the crowd cheering, and Penn State fans a pretty rowdy. So yeah, it was like a So you knew when they scored? When they scored? Yeah, for sure, Um did they scored? No they didn't. Um in wait a minute, guy, there's a wounded deer on the field. Holy shit. Um. In college I got season tickets one year to to football games, and I missed like half the games because of funding. So do you feel do you feel that you know because here at Mediata we've set up this kind of anti sports mentality through Mr Ronella and even even cal you would say that you're not You're not a sports fan, are you? It's not for anything other than I know, uh many people I would consider sports fans and the amount of catching up I would have to do would uh. I mean, it's just more dedication than I have. It is. It'd be like, you know, there's twenty seven movies and the m c U and I'm number one, and everybody's caught talking about seven. Right. It's like you'd have to pick a team. You'd have to find out why you pick that? Yeah, out the last fifty years of their team history. Understand why do they wear that color? Well? Yeah, my friends that are that I conspider consider sports fans. You know, they're like they'd know all that stuff. And I'm just a complete poser at this point. And I mean, do you think if you grew up in a state that had like a professional team, does that mean Montana they don't have much for sports? You know, professionals w g M so one of the three channels and sports and Cow's most of your families Cubs fans yeah. They had a huge Cubs fan, huge Cubs fan. Um yeah, so it was like Cubs Notre Dame. There's a lot of Atlanta Braves fans in Montana also for the same same reason that that was the channel we got. So for those of you at they're nervous about being sports fans and also being a hardcore hunter, that's fine. That's a safe place for you. Yeah it is. I don't think it's a problem with it. No, you come to th C. Some people have emailed recently saying that they feel as though they could be ostracized for being a big sports fan, like a big enough sports and that you would wear a jersey from another man. Oh no, I love that type of uh commitment. I think I think I will. I think that's awesome, you know, if you if you can wear it on your sleeve like that, confident enough to wear it on your sleeve like that. But um yeah, I I would definitely like get very frustrated with some of my friends from like, hey, let's go do anything outside and the sorry games on and you're like, yes, sorry, I'm obvious to be here, Blues guy. The team can't do without me? Yeah yeah, yeah, But it is. I mean, that's the truth of it, all right. Sports doesn't match with hunting because you can't. Sports isn't interactive. You sit there and you watch somebody else do and you get mad because yeah, you can't do it. And a lot of sports happen on Saturdays, that's right, and Sunday and Sundays for days you should be hunting unless you live in some states on the East coast and they have blue laws and you can't go. Huney. Yeah, it's just a shame. Shout out to North Carolina. Actually, hey, listen to North Carolina. Was looking at the state rankings for th HU the other day and you guys are number four. Come on, get your hands up, ye, come on, come on, tar heels, appreciate it, Blue devil star heels whatever. Thank you for for being out you're out there. I'm talking to you. Um. Switching gears to trailhead diplomacy, Cal can you can you define trailhead diplomas because in this in this UH interview with West Siler, we talk a lot about the outdoor wreck community, hiker, hiker and biker community as opposed to the hook and bullet community, which traditionally we're a part of, and how to how to make those things better, both from an industry standpoint, but then just a just a user group standpoint of who's using what, when can they use it? Who you know, who has ownership over what, and we know that we all share it. So, um, it's something you'll hear in a little bit with west Siler, you know, just from his post it Outside magazine, But it's Kyle, You've been heavily involved in this idea. I think the first step is, you know, recognizing the fact that whatever you choose to do that day, if you run into whatever form of recreation you choose to do that day, whether it's walking your dog or mountain biking or being all dressed up in camouflage with the bore rifle in your hand, um, you need to recognize the fact that you are the representative for that sport to whomever you run into on the trail. Um, that sport or pursuit like that is just the fact. That's how human beings work. So when you're a mountain biker and you run into somebody who's riding a horse up the trail, that interaction that you have, good or bad. At the end, of the day when you separate and you go you're and recap your data. Whoever that interaction with, whoever is going to be representative of that entire group. You are the mountain biker, whether it's your first day on a mountain bike or you're first day or two thousands and thirty second day, that you are the mountain biking community to that horseback rider, and that horseback rider is representing the entire horse riding owning community to that mountain biker. So, um, that's that's the first crucial step, and the diplomacy part is purely just making that interaction respectful and enjoyable and um, you know, be both respectful of the use of the trail but also in whoever's chosen endeavor, and then really just not having your head so far up your ass to think that that is the only thing that person does. And that is you know, the reality is, especially in the West, is you know, it is a multiple use landscape, and then that person riding a horse could be a major fly fishing person or mountain bike rider themselves. They just chose that day to Yeah, that's one thing I enjoy about living here among the many things that everybody has some kind of outdoor passion for lack of a better term, everybody has something they love to do outside. And so if you were to pigeonhole him'll look at you guy skiing. He's just a skier. He may be a better elk hunter than you are. Exactly exactly, um, but I mean that that is the thing is like you have the power to absolutely set back the hunting community or whatever recreational endeavory year out there doing um to set it back or moving forward with every interaction. And sometimes there's tension on a trail. Um, mountain bikers moving really fast, horseback riders moving really slow, Granny out there walking or dog moving really slow. And you're a mountain biker. Um. You know folks who are new in town and they run into you hunting and there I don't know what the hell hunting is, or if the season's open, or if you're some crazy militia person out in the woods. Um, then you know you gotta have it's just as important to you know, bag the deer or the elk or whatever as it is to make sure that this stuff sticks around. And sometimes that's taking thirty seconds to say, hey man, it is a beautiful morning, isn't it? Or it's a thirty five minute conversation on where'd you come from? What's that happening in? This is a really Yeah do you like to hike? You know? Well, I saw a bunch of hel cup on the trail. If you want to go, take a picture of them, take a look, you know whatever. So yeah, there's no better source of information than mountain biker or a hiker. Uh what'd you see? You know what he's seen out there? So yeah, old retired folks too that they're like they're on the trail every single day at five thirty in the morning, walking their dog and drinking their coffee. They they're out there being observant to you know. Damn right. Yeah, I've had We're in the in the Salt Tooth not too long ago near Stanley a couple of years ago, and we were there's five of us. We just got done a bear hunt and we were we were just gonna go in a little hike. I told this story on the podcast before, but I'm gonna go a little hike. Is the five of us, and we're all kind of we're not dressing our hunting clothes, but we all have one or two pieces of cama on. This is what we what we're wearing at the time. And we've all we've all got bears tagged in and cut up, and we're going up the trailhead. We're trying to figure out how to get to this like Goat Lake. You've been there, Goat Lake. Uh no, And we're going up the trail and this real hippie looking chick comes trotting out. She's looking us up and down, and she made mention like what are you guys doing, And somebody in the back of the group just goes bear hunting, like just knowing that's gonna you know, that's gonna get up her spine and get her aggravated. Well, she got it back and us. She said, well, I've got a shortcut to bear to to go, like just go right up this ridge right here, and then just keep on going that way and you'll be You'll be there no time, You're there before everybody else. And that wasn't it wasn't true. We went away, she said, and uh there was no Goat Lake. I believe the term cliff out came into bow and so I learned a valuable lesson that day. Thanks hippie chick teaching me that lesson to be respectful on the trail. Yeah, man, absolutely, And I've had lots and lots of you know, for a long long time. I was like, I just want to make my hunting as efficient as possible. So starting from very congested and popular trailheads was was the norm. And uh so, Yeah, I had lots of opportunities to chat folks up, and very few of them we're folks hunting. Yeah, And I'll tell you the worst trail interaction I ever had was, Um, while I was riding my mountain bike with another person riding a mountain bike. We got to a trail junction. There's a downhill like let's say, on your right hand and uphill on your left hand. And I was making the turn to go on the downhill saw this guy coming up on the uphill section from from the opposite away. So we met at this junction and I waited for him specifically, and you could tell this guy was Mr Joe, serious mountain biker. I am absolutely not for the record, um, and he had you know, some like battle armor type stuff, looked like a character from Yes, Yes, And I was like, hey, is that iron man. I was like you, I'm like, you should go ahead if you're going on this downhill. He's like, no, no, go for it. It's like no, no, no, you look like you're really gonna go fast. Like I like the uphills because I like the exercise part of this situation. Downhill is not what I'm interested in. So the guy insisted I go first, and then he berated me from the back after he caught up to me. We're wrong, get out of the the way, We're right. And he was just not a pleasant person to be around. That was his superpower. I would have stopped my bike and showed him my superpower, which is an elbow to the chest as you drove bhy talking ship. Yeah, no, no violence. We can't preach violence here the trailhead. We can't be beating each other up and has to pull over idead. You know, but that's just a good example. Is all you can do is is try and you know there there are just some uh people who are not going to be pleasant out there, but screw up. Dr Phil, do you have any advice for people out there on the trailheads. I don't know. I think I think we covered it. My My advice is to lock your car doors because the trailhead thefts are a serious problem. There are you had something something happened. Phil. Uh no, the Phil will steal your ship, and I'm coming for your stuff. Wink wink your well, you don't what the funny thing, the same hippie chick story. We left. We had a rental car. We left one of the car door open, car doors open in the parking lot, just wide. We just open. We came back, We got back. We got lost for like a whole for a long time, we got cliffed out. We're gone for like five hours, and came back in the door to the rental cars wide open. So I've been lucky enough to have nothing but good interactions on trails generally so good. I got a bunch of friends would hunt late season cow tags and always tried to It was really cool scene because it always involved like a lot of first time hunters. And I got this call like, hey, so and so got a cow need help packing stuff out. So I, uh, you know, I wanted to do something congratulatory, so I swung by the up and go, grabbed a six pack of beer, drove out to the Trailhead noticed that there were like six other vehicles that I recognized that at this time of year would only be there because they also kind of got the bat signal Batman in the Marble universe. Nope, that's TC ye, I knew it. That was a comic. Let's stand for in District Columbia. I have no idea. How do you not know the acronyms in your world? My world? Well, you have not that much of a nerd District Columbia comics. It's dark, like I said, late season cal Hunt, So you know, you get the dark at like four o'clock in the afternoon. And I get out there and the truck of the person that was the first timer, um had all the lights on, interior lights on. It must have been very excited. And so all I did at that point was open the vehicle, put the six pack of beer on the seat, turn off all the interior lights, and then I got back in my truck and went went back home. That's truel Head Diplomas here right there. That is trail Head. You can count on, Ryan Kelly, are man of the people, Hey that that favor may get returned one of these days. Speaking of people that aren't as favorable as maybe you are. Callahan, tell us a story about this gentleman big game Garcia. Oh Man. So this knuckle head was guiding fly fishing in Colorado. Say was because at least he's not guiding for the same outfit. The outfit reported that they canned him. But this guy, it must have just been a different level of being blissfully unaware. But I really just put him in the larger urge overflowing population of bad pet owners. Um. This guy would must have been guiding, like walking way at fishing trips, had his dog with him. The dog um killed at least one fawn because it was it was shown to me through various sources that this guy had indicated that his dog had killed some other fond So you know, uh, fawn deer relies heavily on camouflage. UM. In order to not bring attention to the fawn. Mothers will like must give some signal for the kid to lay down, Mom goes out does her feeding and stuff like that. And then they had looped back through pick up their kids and and go on their way. Well, and if you if you spend a lot of time, you know, running around in the June month fishing and tall grass like eventually you are definitely gonna wander on top of and he just lays there and kind of eyes roll back in their head from fear, and but they lay right there. Anybody could catch one. Well, um, this guy of course decided it was a good idea to cap off his fishing day with his clients with like a video of his dog killing this fawn. And then he um proceeded to do um skin the fawn out and uh yeah and keep it. For some reason, then he described the situation as his dog's first big game kill. And um, you know, somehow the guy's got to disconnect that his domestic animal when they're out on the river becomes as if by magic, a wild animal that is free to do those things, and not a domestic animal. That is his responsibility. And he was. He was charged July twenty three with allowing his dog to harass wildlife, the illegal taking wildlife, and the legal possession of wildlife. Yes, all misdemeanors. And I mean that your your animals, especially your damn outside cats, they are your responsibility. They go kill a bird that is is just just like you went out and told the cat to go kill Abert. So this guy cannot keep control of his dog. Dog kills a faun. He thinks his need he puts it on social media. Um, yeah, social media kind of erupts on this guy. Yes, he gets called out in many many places. Social media erupts, he gets fired from his job. He then gets charged and with it's only a fine twenty license suspension point. It's according to cut our parson wildlife. So and then they had, you know, some they dug up some person who must be a spokesman for god knows what in Colorado and calling this guy, you know, really everybody kind of jumped on like the hunting aspect of this. This is not Yes, this had nothing to do with hunting. That the guy described the dog killing the fawn as a big game kill, which he said later on that was a joke. He came out and did apologize, said it was a freak accident. I am truly a lover of the outdoors, what he said later on. So and then the people make mistakes, and I did, And I'd appreciate the spotlight back on the positive side of hunting and fishing instead of personally critifying me and everyone close to me. Yes, And as per usual, you know, the news outlet's like get a hold of this that they focus there's this great positive message that could go out to all that your responsible pet owners, of which this guy does not represent a fraction of a fraction of the number of irresponsible pet owners um in the state of Colorado or nationwide or in that county probably, And it's like, hey, domestic animals take a toll on wildlife. You in order to have a domestic animal need to have them in control at all times. And I'm a guy who used to have a lot of dogs in the past. They were almost never leashed, but they were always in control, and I made damn sure that was the case, and I put a lot of work into training those dogs. UM. So there's many ways of going about keeping your animal in control. But had my dog killed the fawn, I would have been like, oh God called culorauto bars and wildlife and particularly on a freaking guide trip. And then so this all in a weird way marries up to what we're talking about with uh in our interview with west Siler, which we chatted about journalism for a while, like the lack of integrity and how we report stories. And this, this story that we're just going through and now was reported by the Washington Post. And reading through the article that it is the silliest bullshit I've ever read. It makes me I like, when I read it, i am seething. I'm so upset, like it is on that article is obnoxious, like this is the Washington Post. In fact, I worked there for a while. That was an intern there and then worked there for a while, And there's rooms of people that are intelligent, rooms of people that are thinking about ideas critically. And then this ship comes out. And let me just read you the first that I'll read you the headline to give you some color. It's under the tack of Ann Moles. He bragged about his big game hunt on Instagram. It was a baby deer he let his dog kill. That's the headline of the story. And then they relate this irresponsible pet owner too big game hunting in Africa. It is I'm telling you, I would Phil just move away, move away. I will use this microphone as a weapon. Just think about the way this title is constructed. He bragged about his big game hunt on Instagram. It was a baby deer. He let his dog kill. That's not a news story. That's not how news operations function. You say, you know, thirty six year old Colorado man charged with X X and X after Instagram post with dead fawn. That is a headline that states the facts. This leading horseshit is what's wrong with this entire media landscape. Then magically transport you from the banks of a river Colorado two. They say in their Lions Rhinoceroses, I'm gonna read it to you. I read them a nice email, write the article because there's a great example about bad pet ownership that they totally missed, and they decided to vilify hunters who again had absolutely nothing nothing to do with this. What like, I just want to call him and be like, what are you? Where are you? Who's paying you? It's me. It's pretty bad, really shocking that we have a thing and called the nutgraph in journalism, where you kind of are trying to get across the base of the art what you're trying to say in the first couple of graphs. The nutgraph is like the boiled down point of what you're trying to say. Their nutgraft says this. He said it was a big game kill, something usually associated with the controversial, sometimes a legal sport of hunting large wild life in Africa, lions, el leopards, and rhinoceroses. What do you have a brain? None of that even makes sense, right, Phil? God, where did you get that from? Well? I just I just love that the first secon starts to he said it was a big it's like the most the most editorialized, like leading, like yeah, it's it's it's crass. I also just what we need to point out the fact also that hunting is not sometimes illegal. Hunting is if it's hunting, it is legal, that is the definition. If it is illegal, it's called poaching. Yeah, cow wrote, cow did better job than I'm currently doing it. Yeah, I wish I was over at the board right now. It's like, can adjust some levels because it's gonna be rough. It's fine, give me a white call, Phil, I need to calm down, fired up, Like, yeah, he said it was a big game kill, something usually associated with the controversial, sometimes the legal sport of hunting large wildlife in Africa. What the illegal sport? That? That right there leaves me speechless. That's terrible. I desperately to be like can we get on a call so we can both look at a globe, an old timey globe, and just look at the size of the continent of Africa. It's a continent. There are fifty four countries in Africa. There are big game laws. They're independent countries. First off, there are many different management styles here, of which are the same as the North American model of game manage. What are you talking about. By the way, there's fifty states in America. They all have their own game management. This is my other favorite thing that people in this situation do. This is the Washington Post, this is wood War in Bernstein. This is a vestige of journalism. And they're saying, okay, then they say later on they go down, they're describing what happened. And they go down and they say, it was that photo and it's captioned praising the kill that provoked the strongest reaction on social media. And then they go on to quote people, random people in social media. How there is no way to quote comments on social media without cherry picking the comments because there's not just one. You're not talking to an expert. Your cherry picking perspectives that fit your narrative. And if it's a really deep comment thread. Like if there's a thousand comments, as a reporter, you can't do that integram comments off the internet. Cherry picked the comments for you. You can only pick comments on the internet if you've given them context. And this guy says this is here's the comment they picked. A fawn being a big game. Being a fawn being a big game. That's not big game. That's pathetic. Clint Lockhart, a Colorado native who grew up fishing, told Fox News affiliate let me tell me somethingly. His only expertise is that he lived in Colorado and he grew up hunting and fishing. He's being quoted in the news clamp I'll tell you I've got a lot of fawns under my belt. They are fonds of the year and they were tasty. The worst thing about it is that he dresses this fawn, skins it, and lays it out. Afterwards, he bragged about it. They're quoting this guy now. They do go on to quote color parts of wildlife and give some give and it makes me even more upset that they start to give some actual facts away halfway down the article because the way that they let it off it makes me even more upset. Do I need to yell some more phil about this? You have my permissions? Is he is an irresponsible pet owner. He's the same guy who's not picking the dog shit up off of your lawn for the guy leaving the dog ship in the plastic bag along the trail. Yeah, do you know who you are? Yeah, that's ridiculous. Yeah, anyway, I mean, I don't even know what to say, but they do. They do a decent job kind of in the middle of this article at that laying this out in some the monicam of like facts, that's kind of all there, But there's not a whole lot of like guy posted thing he did wrong, he lost his job. This is a pretty quick story. If it's an opinion piece, that should come from that level. This is just like a mess. It's like it's a journalistic the end of the articles, like it starts, it goes through his apology, which is good, and then it says, but it's a Monday evening. The comments were still flowing under Garcia's Facebook page, and they were less than forgiving. Many of them disappeared soon after they were published. Can you add in fill the law and order and then the last line of this whole. For some reason, comments continued to pour in, almost as if zoos outlets. We're covering this story in a very sensational way. We may never know, we may never know. Here's the last line. You you actually allowed your dogs to rip apart of fawn and video the killing. One woman wrote, you're a sick person. I'm glad someone reported you. And that's the end of the article. That's the that's the end of the article, Phil, there's no more facts. One woman wow. And they linked to the one woman's comment so you can click through and read it. What is happening? Cal I was just really real disappointed, disappointed to the point where I took the time to write them an email. You wrote them a very articulate and in nice emails. They have not responded. We may publish that on the website, just with a picture of me just pulling all my hair out, shaving down to a mustache. Second, a nicer man's annoying. What they could have done some good? They really could have. I mean, this is this like any other news half pending. There's facts, right, there's facts embedded. There's also perspective that needs to be added, there's expertise that needs to be added. There's all these things that need to be added to the situation. The job of a journalist is to add those perspectives in a meaningful way, and a lot of which they did. They had a random lady who commented on the Internet, and they had a random Colorado resident. That's the context that they chose to give. And I imagine if you, uh, let me go back and find there. What their names again, do you remember their names? Phil? Uh? No? And there's a picture of a fall in here at the top. Of course, Angela Fritz and Michael Bryce Sadler. Where did you get their an email? Should we give it out here in the air? Yeah? In the Washington Post? Then there you can. Yeah, there's like little contact deal. Yeah, please please contact these folks and let them know in a very calm manner, unlike what I've done here that internet journalism to lomacy. Every once in a while we let that go here on on the Hunting Collective. But this this let me just want to read. Can I just read again the intro? Yeah? Sure, he said it was a big game kill, something usually associated with controversial, sometimes illegal sport of hunting large Africa. Large wildlife in Africa lions, dash lions, elephants, leopards are not like those of the fact, there's so much wrong with this sentence. The dentist who got cecil the lion was from Colorado. That's where they're getting on. That's that's now. Never mind disregard Washington Post. Big game kill is usually associated with with hunting large wildlife in Africa, specifically these four animals lions, elephants, leopards and rhinoceros. What's that from the MCU for with great power? There you go. You got it all right, Phil, Just as always, before we get to the interview segment, give us some perspective here, what what are you thinking right now? What's what's on your mind? I'm just thinking about the storm outside. Should we check it out? Yeah, let's let's let's see what's going on, because there's a storm inside my brain right it's Oh, it's still raining. Yeah. Somebody rode their bicycle today. Cow cows cows bike. Someone is Ryan Cowke is my favorite. People call me a hipster cow. Your bike is legit. The milk crate. The milk crate has a bungee corded milk crate on the back of his bike. It's like a shwin what guy, it's for carrying my things. It's a for carrying his lunch store he put in it, and uh a live chicken right down the road. All right, let's get to the interview person the Show'll see if you can follow that up West Seiler from Outside Magazine. UM, we're gonna transport back in time about four days and we're be sitting this in this exact same room to talk to s about a lot of stuff. Enjoy. Yes, how's it going, man, good dude, Welcome to meet either studio. UM I usually started his podcast off. I've had some people right in recently that they miss when I'd be podcasting on the road, and I would ask the guest to open the show by describing their surroundings. We got some sometimes bad, sometimes good, sometimes funny descriptions, So we might as well just let you describe this studio because there's been a lot of debate over the decor in the studio. It's an interesting decor. UM. I would describe this as like half corporate hotel art um and half sort of weird gripping grin photos um, Yeah, they all look like something strange is actually going along beyond just a hunt or a fish. Yeah, that's about right. Strange. It's strange corporate hotel art. I needed that. I needed that because Ronella doesn't let me argue against this decor. But yes, most of the employees here have a grip and crent on the wall of some kind. So those of you that have asked what the studio looks like, we'll take a photo for you one of these days, and maybe we'll film one of these podcasts. You never know. I think this theme of the room is forced perspective. I knew you. I knew you would get it, being a man of the written word, I knew you described this well well in the first person. Well, les, um, let's just get get it over with and you tell people what you do, what you're probably best known for, and we'll get onto the good conversation. Yeah. So I like to say that I write about adventure travel in the outdoors, and I do that for Outside magazine full time currently, but I have written for pretty much every men's magazine and newspaper in the country. Yeah. I used to do cars and I did motorcycles, motorcycle editor at Playboy for a while, and let's stop. Let's pause there for a moment. What's that like? Um, the paychecks are really good. I didn't see as many booby as you would expect. You would say, damn it. I thought, maybe you've been in the grotto. I have been in the grotto. The grotto smells like a cage which monkey has been having sex for thirty years. Lord, it is all made from styrofallo. Rocks are fake and they've all made like forty years ago. Its all the tips are falling off and it's cracked there. Yeah, it's it's it's just the worst of these sexy environment in the world. Actually, met Ron Jeremy there. I shook his hand and told him I admired his work. And what did he say? What was his response? He just looked at me strange and walked away. We're starting off on a good foot. So the grotto was not as advertised. I don't even know if it's even advertised anymore. It is like it used to be, maybe in the seventies. That styrofoam. Yeah, it's it's horrifying, is there it? So you know, Hefner's is no longer with us. What's the mansion nowadays? I think it's still owned by Playboy Corporation. Were sold recently. I I can't remember the exact fate of it. It was. It was awful. It's ready to be torn down. Like I went there probably five years ago last and the carpet was threadbar, you know, just a vestige of the time past. Yeah, it's like you don't want to touch anything, all right. That's that's maybe that we were gonna have a damn near died segment later. That could be your that could be your answered. On outside dot com, Outside magazine, Outside online dot Com, there is a thing called and definitely wild. Tell us what's the name means? By the way, So it's from Henry Henry did with a row quote. Um, and I forget the entire quote. It's from a little point but I can't recite that now. The probably very disappointingly. But I started a at a business fail horribly, and that's be part of my almost died story. Um. And I was casting about for something else to do. Um, And so I went to the desert. Joshua treated my dog and he was a puppy at the time, and he ran off and found a group of very very strange people and we got talking and they went ahead a meeting about me, and they came back said, hey, we had a meeting about you. You're like great guys. So it turns out they were a Native American worship group about the Heather Annual Ayahuasca Spirit Quest, and they're like, why don't you come join us? And I was like, sweet, I don't know if that's going on my life. You know, I'm gonna go do that. And so I flew through space for eight hours talk to God. God's a mean ass bitch. And at the end of it, she was like, why don't you go start a outdoors blog called it Definitely Wild. You're making this up? Is the best I couldn't have I couldn't have liked when I would have sourced and definitely Wild, I never would, but Journey, So it was. I read that for eighteen months as part of Gawker Media group, and then uh, Outside came k not gonna now I work for Outside. That's awesome. Now I've been recently, you know. Uh, I spent some time around Joe Rogan and some other folks, all Remarcus and the like that do a lot of auto ayahuasca journeys, they do a lot of d m T. I've been thinking about it. You're talking a lie. You should? Should I do it? Yeah? It's not a recreational experience. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very powerful, very meaningful, very difficult experience that is not fun. Yeah, you gotta have a guide. Yeah. I wouldn't urge you to do it authentically, not with like some dude wearing like white robes and a banchion of Beverly hills, like, you know, go find some some natives in the middle of nowhere and Joshua Tree be the best way to go. Yeah, exactly what else did you learn to learn anything else? Um? The first four hours of the experience are sure to have shown every mistake that you've made in life and every person that you've hurt and everything that went wrong. It's really hard and very challenging and very personal direct um, And you've definitely learn a lot from that. And the second four hours and sort of how do you fix all that and how do you get back to where you want to be and how do you start to build a better life? So you definitely learn a lot Um Wiley, My dog is my spirit animal. Yeah, it's it's all. It's all very challenging and very personal and very valuable if you're sort of open to the message. Yeah, no, no, I've I've picked up Michael Poland's recent book, The Name Escapes Me, but it's it explores psychedelics, and I mean to read it and learn all you can, because I admire Poland's work from the Omini Wars de Leva and just all his works and and the fact that he dove into that. And I've listened to on a some podcast talking about his experiences and how he's made better and literally everyone that I know that have done those journeys have come out with a greater perspective if if they did it right and if they had someone to kind of guide them along exactly exactly. It's very valuable to people with PTSD. It's very valuable people that just are maybe kind of living in negative existence and they're not happy with it. Yeah. And so you had an ayahuasca journey. You didn't definitely watch, so you did it. You did it with Gawker for a while, and now you're at Outside online. You cover a lot of topics. It was as as someone in the media space myself and someone who's crafting a website that we want a lot of people to read. I look at your stuff and I'm like this, there's no there's a myriad of topics that's all over the place, at least within the lex account. It's it's seemingly all over the place, and at the same time it hits on I think some of the most and most important topics in the outdoors and hunting and even firearm ownership and gear, and I mean just go everywhere. So how do you how are you crafting your subject matter? I just sort of do over the funk I want every day. So it's whatever I'm interested in that taular today. Um So I have a really unique position outside They are really good employer and they let me just have total editorial freedom. So I just come up with stories that I want to tell that I think are important and what I really try to do. I think that makes my stuff unique because I try to cast a very wide net and try to make the kind of content that appeals to a mainstream leadership and get some interested and excited in what all of us do, whether that's hunting, whether that's mountain climbing or you know whatever, hiking, backpacking, and then I try to, like, you know, break down the barriers for them. So you have somebody who lives in New York or San Francisco that can come in and read an article about hunting. Go oh, I didn't realize that hunting was cool. But how could I do that myself when I don't have a dad at hunts, I live in San Francisco. How do I get out there? How do I figure it out? Like make cons of that appeals to those people? A and then Be comes back and it's like, hey, you know you can do this too. Yeah, And that's something we're talking about before. There's a lot of discussion in this office and I'm sure every other atorial workshop that's out there about the term clickbait. We've I've been in digital media for over a decade and clickbait has been there the entire time. You know, we're talking about defining that. How do you define taking a topic that you know that you care about, you know has depth, and getting people in the door to read it without you know, without labeling your content. I mean clickbaits, this negative term. It gets thrown at journalists, um and it's just you know, journalism is under attack sort of nationwide and worldwide right now. There's a lot of insults about what we do. And I just see my job as is trying to convey information to people, trying to tell a storage from our world, and it's just native to that to want to make sure that people want to read that, that it's appealing and exciting and share able, and it's just a good you know, to me, that's a good piece of content and good piece of contison. Something you just come in and forget about. It's something that's you have to share, that's compelling. It's like, oh my god, this is important. My friends need to read this too. Yeah. Are you ever drawn? Do you ever doing long form work? Have you written? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I still do. I think I've probably known at this point for order stuff just because you know it's web and eyeballs. Um. But yeah, I mean, you know, I started in print, started really well respected print magazine in London. UM, wrote long form stories for that, and you know, I still right, probably two or three you know, five or six thousand word articles a month. Yeah. Do you how do you compare the values you know? For you as a writer and even maybe for the audience from from that long form print stuff versus what you do it and definitely wild that's that's you know, it's two times, what's like two times a week and it's pretty frequent. Yeah, I try to do four or five articles a week, so it's a lot. That's it's definitely a whole time job. It's actually I actually write less now than I used to. When I own my own company, I was doing you know, I was certainly I did everything. They were like three or four of us, um, So you know, I was writing probably twelve thousand words today at that point, and now I'm probably writing twelve thousand words a week. So it's a lot calmer now and I'm probably producing, you know, trying to focus on content. It's a little higher qualities, even though we create shorter stuff, you know, we create news hits, you know, things like that. Trying to make sure every piece of content is something that I'm proud of, something that I want to and you know, really want to put out in the world, and it's important what are the values of that content? You know we talked about earlier, like headlines and photos and those things like what are the values you'ven still in your content because, like you said, when you're turning, even though it's slower than it was, it's still that's still a pretty quick pace. How do you kind of set that up to make sure each piece has what you wanted to have? You just in every piece, you just want to tell the truth and you want to help readers arrive at a greater understanding of whatever you're talking about. So, you know, let's everybody, everybody listening to this. We all sort of understand cars, right, so let's use that as an example. Okay, you can come in and say, you know car access better than car y. You know a lot of people just stop there. You know, I prefer the bumw M three to the Mercedes CEO whatever because it's faster and I've always just seen, you know, instead of just saying that, explain why dive deep talk to the engineers trying to figure out what makes that in three crisper or more pure or more communicative than the Mercedes equivalent. You know, how does that get there? How does that than not only how does it get there? Why would a driver want that? Why would a driver need that? Why would they be interested in that? And In so doing, you're just more deeply informing your audience. And that's certed. That's our job. Yeah, I mean, I gotta you know, we talk a lot about journalism on this podcast. We talk a lot of what we We interview a lot of authors and it's just something I've professionally interested in and it's something that I'm trying to form a craft in. So let's briefly touch on, Like, where do you think journalists is? Right now? It's in the two like is it doesn't even maybe it doesn't even really exist, like the concept as it used to. Yeah, it's what compare Walter Cronkite's time too. Now that that thing doesn't exist. Trust the newsman really doesn't exist. It does maybe in some I wish I wish that it did. I think that we are in this interesting time period where the truth is not the truth in some people's minds, and the truth is arguable and that's sort of a weird experience. Um, and we see that everywhere. This is not just political writing. This is which I do some of too. Um, this isn't everything. I got me a huge argument on Twitter with a reader of the other or day about about cars again. I was not writing about my new Ford Ranger. And you know, I've driven every car pretty much on sale in America, if not most places of the world, because I used to do that for a living. And I feel the Ranger is a better vehicle in Tacoma. And I can explain the reasons why. And he was arguing that, you know, I'm paid to say so, and I'm never paid to say anything in my life. I get paid to work for my readers, and it's it's weird that people don't understand that. Um, I've never any of the magazines are written for, newspapers are written for any of the videos that I've done anything ever had anybody from corporate come down and go, hey, man, you know this needs to be a positive whatever about Ford. You know you need to create across these talking points that they're trying to advertise. It's never been that. I've always had the freedom to tell the truth, and I see if my responsibility of the journalists to do that for my readers. Yeah, that's rare, is it? I don't know, It seems like this is what we all do. I mean, we're all trying to do it. Yeah, I think doing it void of of corporate influences is really hard to do the funniest thing and not yeah we have it here, nobody comes and sits along on my podcast. I can say whatever I want, so things like that just just here. But that's always based on audience feedback. It's like, okay, we can put all this aidence feedback. We think if you did this less, you get more of this, so like, oh, that's that's that's informative. I think part of it. I'm just not a very good journalist. You know, I'm not terribly employable. I'm lucky to have employer and outside sorta understands me and let's me do what I do. Um. Yeah, I mean I can imagine with a lot of people who care about that stuff and a lot of people, um that we always see only less corruption and less like hey, you know, an advertiser told me to do something, and more just like incompetence. Um. I see a lot of people working as journalists who just don't don't understand what the funk they're talking about, and I get really frustrated with that. And I think part of that is this is not always the best paying career, so it tends to have younger people. You have a lot of people who are doing the doing the heavy lifting, and the guys you know what they're doing, are sitting upstairs, you know, calling shots and earning tons of money. Yeah. Yeah, and that's I mean, I've seen that so many times. And like you said, there's especially in the dig of age, you can read one article and you can regurgitate that and sound like an expert, you know. And I've always I've always been drawn to more third person, like, let's just break down this issue from multiple angles that right of the things that that draw me in, how do how do we achieve a greater understanding? And I think part of this part of the burden on this So there's a lot of a lot of media out there now, there's so much, so much more than ever before, and part of this has the responsibility for consuming quality media has to go back to some of the consumers. You know, if you're listening to this, think about who you're reading. Fine journalists you know, hopefully like me, that have a transparent history of working for their readers that you can trust. And we're out there, there's lots of us out there, you know, go listen to those guys don't go listen to you know, Tucker Carlson well because then you know it's it's part of a there's a worldview issue that I have with it is especially like you're arguing a guy with a guy Florida and Toyota. It goes to it, there's a bigger thing than that that we're choosing our ideologies, we're choosing our path and we're staying in those lanes we're looking to be affirmed. I mean, there's plenty of journalistic quote unquote outlets that are just there to confirm one worldview, and and that's that is the literally the opposite of journalist. I just can't imagine being a journalist that does that because it just sounds so boring and limited, Like where's the fun in that? Like none of us are getting rich doing this is not the best paying career. Um you've been fortunate to find a certain degree of success, but it's like, you know, like I would be so bored every day if I just like I would just go to something else. Here's what I started to do, and I like, I listened a lot of MPR. I listened to a a lot of podcasts like Joe Rogans and then find people through that, and then I've chased those rabbit holes and like I found ways where I feel real comfortable staying out of the mainstream media cycle and in my own cycle that I've where I feel like it's it's good and productive for me. But you know, every once in a while, I'll flick on CNN just to check in, just to see if they're talking about, you know, something valuable to me. They're never not, they never are, and I'll spend like five minutes there, and it's always Trump. It's always just it's just, it's just stop Trump. It's unbelieved. I get it. He's a terrible president in our in our country's fucked right now. But like there's other stuff going on that we can talk about. What I'm saying, I don't mind if that leads, I don't mind. You know, the president, the office of the president is a very important thing in our country. Influences many many things, yes, but it's it's not so much more and so and then I start to break down, Okay, from from the news desk there, what has to be going on for those folks to think that this is okay? What has to what do they have to What are their set of values? What are there? What are their modus operunda to get them to think like that? How would they sit in their editorial meeting every day because I know they have one, and decide upon this every day. What is pushing him? You guys, what we're gonna talking about today? You know, we can talk about all these topics, but let's talk about Trust's reaffirm the same storyline every day? You think that, and it all just plays into Donald Trump's own person too. Aside from that, Yes, it's crazy. You must be so boring. I think they're allay just chasing celebrity. You think so? You know, Yeah, I don't. I'm not. I've listened to other people that posit on this and talk about this that smarter than I and I just wonder That's what I wonder about this, not only the people involved, because I know these are all smart people. They wouldn't be they're intellectually driven people. There's no there's no way they would have gotten smarter than we are. Yeah, there's no they would. They wouldn't have got to that point if they weren't intellectually sound and could reason themselves into a good spot. But when they get there and they're making that two million dollars and they go on TV every night and they're having the same conversation over and over and just like forwarding the same storyline, and it's same thing all Fox News, same thing there. You're just like you're a fearmonger. You're you're you're running the same track every day. You're like a Nascar It's like a NASCAR race. Right turns, right terms. What are you scared today? It's it's Congress from New York. Yeah, it's like happening. Yeah, it sounds they've pushed us, They've pushed us to the polls. And then people in the center looking around, like what do I do? What if I a lot of things. I was talking to a buddy this week. I was like a lot of things. I think if you wanted to pig me as a left winger, you could just pick out the ten things I've said or think that that probably a line with that ideology, or you could pick out the ten things I've said or think that aligned with the Conservati are great examples, probably because there's probably probably all. Both have friends that consider like a lot of my friends think I'm terribly, terribly conservative. You know, I own guns, I love shooting, I love hunting, I do all this stuff, you know. I advocate for a secument rights, that kind of thing. You know, I'm a terrible, terrible conservative. And then my other friends are like, you know, well, you support universal healthcare, social safety makes left this hipping left, this snowflake. I get the same thing. Man, if you're if you're and and that's I think that's what the that's why this the vitriol is so dangerous. I just challenge all the people to fight. Yeah, it's just it's only you. I'm forty one to know we should do it out. After this, I would just fight it out. You like guns, but yeah, I mean I've I've you know, I've been. You get in that sphere and you you you think, Well, I'd just like to have a conversation. I'm not sure where it's gonna end up. I'm not sure who's right or wrong. I would just like to have of let's let's have a discussion or a discussion, walk away friends and hopefully maybe learning from each other um or you know, at least just have a fun time having a beer and argue about something. Calling back that I just We just did a podcast with a vegan and an animal rights guy back to back, and I've had most most part. I think people are you know, understand if you're gonna come here, you're gonna come from the conversation. You're not gonna come to kind of be affirmed in any one way. There were some people though, that are like, why would you give that person a platform? You know that I knew this was coming, and it's okay, of course, why would you give that person a platform? Those aren't ideas that are relevant. I guess they are. They are somebody believes in them. Yeah, especially talking about this from a hunting perspective. You know, if we're gonna go out and change people's minds, we have to meet them where they are. We can't go to a vegan and say you're a dumbass. We have to say, okay, you know, we have some we have some ideologies that are similar and we are trying to achieve similar things. You know, let's discuss this more reasonable perspective. Yeah, and then if you if that was on Fox News, would be and that guy in a little box shouting screen, shouting each other, and we have five minutes to do it. That's just not an effective way to communicate. It's not communication. I'll actually have a story about this if it's okay if I tell it. So back when the whole suss of the Lion thing was going on, He's lived five blocks in the CNN studio um in l A. And you know, I was. I was sort of there designated like a fuck last minute, we need an animal guy or like a nature guy, like who the fucking l I understands that ship called West and so I would like rushing, get a haircut, like a spray fake tan, go on CNN and get yelled at about lion hunting. You just like it. And I was on there once talking about Walter Palmer and Sussa the Lion, and I was, you know, making just a very factual argument that regardless of the worlds of it, hunters are what pays for animal conservation in Africa and if we take that away then and there's not gonna be animal conservation in Africa because nobody else is funding it. And some woman out of gas was like, you're wrong, You're wrong, and I was like, well, very simply, what have you done for animal conservation that you're arguing that Walter Palmer's model for this isn't invalid, and he's like, I'm a v good and I'm like, okay, so you're not listening to what I'm saying and you don't understand animal conservation, I'd like to give you a hung right now. It's I'm sorry. So you've been in Yeah, you've been in there like you've seen Yeah, that's it's it's those things we sit around here, and when one of those things pops up nowadays, which they invariably do, like that does really fun trophy score. We had to make that because we get real stressed out about these situations. There was the one here recently where there was a couple kissing over a deadline. I believe it was, you know, and so that those things and definitely pop up, and there's there again as an example of what I'm talking about with the Trump storyline. This is a storyline that has been picked up by mainstream media. They know it works, they know it fires people up on both sides. They they know it creates a real disparate debate with people very far away, and the way they think and see it, then it's easy to put them in two boxes and let them go. Yeah. And it's also it's sort of like watching watching a car crash. You can't look away. You can't look away. Everything's just so horrible. Made a good point, but that lady is crazy and she only eats vegetables. Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure what to think about this. I'm not learning anything, but I know I'm angry, but I'm angry at one of them. Please. So there's I was thinking about and talking about Outside Magazine and just just the fact that Outside online and Outside magazine is so different from It's so different in the way that it's presented than say the meat either is or say Peterson Sunning magazine or some endemic hunting magazine. There's so many differences there in the way that the information is presented. You're in a unique position to kind of understand the ins and outs of and both like lifestyle mends, you know, real print journalism, like you've kind of seen it through all those different prisms. You know that. I know, I think our our our guy, Steve Rinella has written for Outside all all the time, and he'll come in and be like, listen, guys Outside Magazine like they're one of us. They get it. I've I know these guys and and totally agree, but there is it's it's presented differently. There's a different way, different lens with which a lot of this information is presented. So I think you're in a good spot to kind of see you know, traditional outdoor hunting media or just say hunting media, and then then what's traditionally been a spouse by the outdoor creation set. I've always thought it. It's funny because you know, we we are industries talk about each other very different work for outside. So I'm hike and bike, um, and you guys are hooking bullet and we both sort of sort of like disrespect each other. Yes, and it's it's it's weird and necessary. Um, you know, the outdoors shouldn't be a polarized environment. We all enjoy it. Mountain bikers don't need to get mad when they see a hunter. Hunters don't need to get mad and they see mountain bikers. I just see, you know, people are enjoying the outdoors. They they're on my side, right that somebody who's going to vote our interests. Um, that's somebody who's you know, funding these wild places. Obviously different funding mechanisms here, and one side of this has disproportioned impact, and you know, but hopefully that can change, and hopefully we can engage people in a conversation. But I want to talk about that. I'm glad you brought that up, but we didn't meet people where they are, and so being disrespectful and looking down on people and not understanding people's perspectives is just doesn't get anybody anywhere. So what do you what do you think? I know, there's no magic bullet to kind of bring these groups together, but there there is. There's a lot of examples, real tangible examples of kind of how these two different things are presented. One of them is the national monuments. That's one that always I come back to. So, how would you like take you take national monuments? So just to just to call it quickly, Patagonia, who recently has embraced, you know, backhunch hunters and anglers and evarts showing up there and saying these people have a credible voice to me. But at the you know the time of Bears, Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante and things like that, they're saying the president stole your land. There's people in the hunting world that are espousing the president gave you access back to your land, Like these disparate clearly both are lying, yes, Like the disinformation is so clear on both sides. But I think that's how that's it's a nice analogy for kind of how we see each other, you know, within within out the reckon hunting. So like you've written about it, how do you look at is that a good analogy for the way that these two communities approached these things. There's there's some fundamental differences there, um, and you get back to to motivations. UM. So public lands obviously a very large topic, and we can't cover it all in this or ever. You know, we get sitting here for the next four years not cover at all public lands. Uh As somebody who has grown up abroad, um, has spent a lot of time traveling the world. Public lands make America unique. Other places do not have hunting and fishing like we have hunting and fishing, or any outdoor recreation like we have about their recreation. All these American traditions, everything that makes our country great, in my opinion, is based on our history of public lands were totally unique, and we're totally exceptional. America is not very exceptional in a lot of ways. America's very exceptional in our worlderness, it's it's a brief, it's a given, you know, given the history of our company, it's our country. It's very brief, but it's been it's been so steadfast and its effectiveness. Yes, I grew up hunting and fishing and my dad, as you did, as probably most of these readers did, because we had public lands. I am who I am because of public lands. America is what it is. Because we have public lands. Anybody working to protect those public lands is our ally. Anybody working to steal those public lands is our enemy. People are arguing on the more liberal side of things, and especially particularly about national monuments, saying the President stole your land. It's a little bit of a you know, exaggerated arguments. You know, there's obviously been nuance to this, but that message is honestly intended to achieve stuff that's aligned with our interests and the interests of the American people. People arguing for land transfers for land sales that are trying to steal our lands are our enemies. They are trying to take away our birthright as Americans, right, So deception around the public lands transfer, arguing this is not a theft, that this is not a sale, this is in our interest, are lying. They are enemies and we should all go kick their ass. I agree, I mean, I agree, I just I you know, I said on the board of BH back on trainers and anglers, and they asked me when I joined or when they asked me to volunteer, I said absolutely, and they said why is because of my son? Because of my son, Because I I feel I've lived in places where there weren't public lands at my you know, at my fingertips, and I have lived in places including where I'm at right now, where they are, and I can tell you the feeling of waking up in the morning is completely different. It changes your life. So I'm not I'm not saying everybody has to go that way. I'm just saying, you know, and we've had some recent discussions about public versus private and some of those issues within the hunting world, which is like, no matter what, if we expand access and we create more protected public lands, that's for everyone. Yes, whether you decide to use it or not is completely up to you, and you have the right to do whatever you'd like. You can stay in Florida or you can drive to Colorado. It doesn't matter. And so it's it's universal. And I think the issue, when it's politicized in the way that it has been, is what disappoints me because it is I always make fun of the public land movements is like apple pie, bald eagles, public lands. But it's true, it is. I can't think a thing more American than public lands. And yeah, you go back to other things. Our country isn't about, you know, racism, or country isn't about you know whatever. It's about going hunting, fishing and camp in, hanging out outdoors. And you know we're we're going to lose that even if it just starts taking place incrementally. You know, your son might have fewer places to camp, your grandson might have even fewer, and your great grehant son might not have any. And we can stop that now. Yeah, And there's there's a couple of things. There's a couple of threads to pull on here. I'd like to get your opinion on the first one I think is is the American like in the American ideal build into like manifest destiny is Homesteading is going out and picking a parcel of land and calling it yours. Used to be forty acres in the mule. Now it's do you have enough money to afford your own land? And so we're we're talking about I mean, there's something that that tugs at the American ideal now and some people would argue, not me, but others would argue, you got Centator Mike Lee out there and Utah arguing he's gonna pass through Act. Right, he's talking about the American ideal of going out finding land and persons again and making it your own. That's an American ideal. I would agree with that. But what he's doing then it's twisting that ideology to fit his needs. He's just using that. It's just it's just a big lie um. The people that benefit from public lands being sold are not a working class family that wants to build a cabin. Right that you can do that right now, you need to get to a a remote part of the country, probably Alaska. You're gonna have private land. Right. The people that are taking our public land, that are working to steal it from us are billionaires and they're not trwing homestead yeah. Argument, any argument that like, oh, let's just open up Montana to private purchases. It's not going to be you and I buying it. It's going to be you know, the Wilkes brothers and the Coach brothers and Exxon and you know, people like that, and they're gonna take it from us. We're never gonna see it again. They're gonna destroy it. We're not gonna have any more dear that simple. Yeah, And that's the divide. The other thing I would say, so I I think it's part of what we're talking about spins back into like the vitriol and the separationist language of our two poles, of our right and our last. However you describe those two things like the language that that's what's disappointing to me about the language on both sides around something like the National monuments. But it comes out, it rises from from wherever it lays dormant when every big political, you know, issue comes up, and it's like this, there's two things we hold and I'm sure you would agree public lands is an American ideal and the valuing our wild life. While not a long last dame, it's been going for about a century and can always value it, but we were sure ship do now, all of us, whether you're liberal, Democrat, vegan hunter, you're like, you see there's herd of elk, You're like, I wish they would stay there, right, And we're just all thinking of different ways we can all allow that, we can all agree on that. And the thing is like, there's not really better ways to get there than what we have right now. We have the world's best, most proven and most effective wildlife concert Asian model that's ever existed. Arguing that there's other ways to do this, arguing that should be conducted in private hands, it's just this works, you know, it needs a little more funding. We need to sort of maybe change from funding the horses around that were like totally hunters for it. But that should not be that difficult to do, and we need to focus on certain results based solutions for that, not wild ideas that involved giving all our more stakeholders rather than more stakeholders more. Right, because we're all in this together, and that's your point. Our North American mile conservation is as effective as there is in the world. There's many ways to describe that. And if you're listening to this and you need a few ways. It's not hard Like there's more mallard ducks than there there ever has been. There's more white tailed deer that ever has been. There's more black bear right now than there were when white people came to this continent. We're doing a good job, and there's successful way. More of US's way, more of us is way more agriculture, is way more pollution. You know, animal population should only be trending down right, just three twenty nine million people in this country. Animal population should not be where they are now, and they would not be if our current model of conservation was not as successful and proven and wonderful as it is. And anybody trying to take that away to argue against it as an asshole, all right, we'll establish that. And we aren't drinking beer. I like to um. Now. Now you're in a position you specifically, and I think I am and other other folks in this building are to speak on that fact that. Okay, the fact, the fact of the matter is, and you've written about this, written about the duck stamp, and you've written on outside online about conservation funding and the way it's currently modeled. You we are, we're in a situation where there's a lot of hikers and bikers, there's a lot of people on out or wreck crowd. The conservation is buzzword. Everybody's talking about climate change, we're talking about healthy ecosystems. Everybody's talking about more access to places to go and recreate. All that is great, there's a gap. There's a gap in understanding. I believe you tell me if I'm wrong. So how do you describe that gap and understanding of how we currently fund conservation? So a nobody but basically listeners to this podcast understands how conservation is funded das fast. Majority of Americans have no idea that taxing taxes on hunting equipment pay for animal conservation. They just need we're a bunch of bloodthirsty rednecks. We know which we are. But that's another story. UM So, I think the first, you know, step in changing this and making this uh, making funding a little more broad and getting more stakeholders is just education, like, hey, this is what's paying for this right now, And maybe that just encourages somebody to go by duck stamp, or maybe encourages might just understand the issue, understand what's going on here. Um there's been a lot of talk about like a backpack tax, right or mountain bike tax i. Initially, you know, you hear that on the SERVERCE like, oh, that's a great idea. We should we should spread the burden of this across all outdoor users, not just hunters. Um. The more I've learned about that, the more I've seen that's possibly flawed. Umbe it's very easy to say, like, you know, if you're buying guns, if you're buying m o um, you know at some point you're contributing to hunting. Right, It's very difficult to say a backpack is for an outdoor person. What if it's for um, a poor kid in the city just trying to go to school? Uh, where do you draw that line? And it just ends up in this giant mess of like you know, somebody that's going to go, well, that backpack has a waste belt and blah blah blah blah, and it just it just gets really complicated. It doesn't really benefit anybody. And so the solution to funding um and this is such an amorphous, weird answer, but it's just um taxes with very broad basis, right, and voter voter supported measures and you're seeing that happen in Georgia. Um, there's stuff we can do where it's just hey, you know, let's choose the tax everybody a little bit and you know the burden will be so small that we're funding this is the funding is sustainable. Everybody becomes a stakeholder and that's sort of the way forward. Here's broad voter backed tax measures. Right, so you know, just to be clear, the Outdoor Industry Association says that it's an eight seven billion dollar yes enterprise, which is you know, so we're calling out THEO recreation seven point six million jobs. Yes, it's a big I mean, it's got they they got a big hammer to swing politically, and I've written a lot about that, and you know, it's a huge industry, but it's you know, it's thousands of mom and pops. Um, you started thinking about, like the biggest, most influential, richest dude in the outdoor reck industry is of Entreneard and he has a lot of political weight and he uses it. There's not many other people like him. You compare that to like cars, and it's like Ford and Chevy and Chrysler and they've been doing this for a hundred years and we're just sort of now, you know, like Cam from NEMO going like, oh, I should join this thing and go to Congress and testify. And you know, Cam's company probably I don't know how much Earmans, but you know, in comparison, very very smaller than a major industrial players bringing this for a hundred years. We're just we're just learning how to lobby, we're just learning how these measures passed, and we're doing a pretty good job so far. But this is like a five year old endeavor. Yeah, well let's back. Let's back up to Pittman Robertson and Daniel Johnson. The things listeners, this podcast your regulation and you'll have heard lots and lots about it, but we'll cover it again kind of what it is and what it does. These are excise taxes that are levied against in the situation for Pittman Robertson guns, ammunition, bows, arrows, things of that nature, hunting equipment of all kinds, um and in the Danel Johnson it's tackle rods, anything that is related to fishing. These moneys are taken. There's I believe it's always get that number lem percent excise tax that's then sent to sent a lot of places. It goes to the treasury, it goes into part the Sectary of Interier, Department of Interior, and that it's funneled to the states through an equation. That equation says, Okay, how many hunters do you have versus how many? I think it's licensed sales versus um I know you can probably help me out with. There's there's like there's three different specific equations, and it goes to fun a lot of things like habitat. Take Texas for example, there's not a whole lot of public lands and access projects that can go to fund so it goes to fun things like the state will go and do landowner um initiation where they're flood flooding rice paddies in the winter for waterfoul habitat and every and there's some of the money that's set aside for hunter education and different things like that in each state, and each state will and the beauty of at the end of the day, the beauty of this is if this money, along with license sales and tag fees, isn't spent on what it's appropriated towards, which is where that money came from, the communities of hunters and fishermen, and you're talking about state wildlife agencies, roughly sixty I've seen six of state agency funding is coming from our American system of conservation funding. So we have that that's been going on since ninety six. That was Frankly D. Rhodes Avelt called a bunch of people together and said, how we're gonna solve this. They figured this out, they passed, they took, and the sixting excise tax on guns and the ammunition. They pushed it towards this stuff. And so now today, roughly eighty years later or whatever the number is, it's still working, but there's less hunters hunter participant rat or decreasing, so there's less money. And also, you know, we're looking at a tax that's on guns and ammo largely right, and a lot of people buying guns and ammo are not necessarily participating in hunting, so the tax is kind of weird in that way. And then by pegging wildlife conservation to something that's subject to such a large national debate right now and could be subject to some political changes and stuff in the future, I mean, who knows. Um, you know, be nice to find a more stable and broad source of funding that came from all Americans who enjoyed the outdoors, not just the guys who go hunting. Absolutely, and I think when you, yeah, if you were to, if you were to take a step back from min and I think some I think some hunters and the English a little bit scared that if you let other stakeholders into the game, things might change, right, you lose some right, and that's probably legitimate. That's probably a legitimate way to look at that. That is probably a little scary. But at the same time, you really care about the resource, you have to you have to look at seven million dollars and be like, we gotta get we got the same we gotta get the same kind of flesh that's coming from the roughly twelve million hunters. Yes, have to. Yes, And as you said, you're tacking on. If you're a tactical guy. You're buying a RS, you're buying that, you're buying two to three rounds and at a nice pace, you're shooting three gun matches. That money is going straight back to animal conservation. Animal thank you. You probably weren't thinking that. It's also not on your receipt. It's paid by the manufacturer, and so you'd never see it. It's not listed in the state game rigs for any state that I've ever seen. Um, and I've done some checking on that. It's not it's not detailed. You almost have to seek out this information if it wasn't for sort of meat eater pushing this message so hard. I don't think even the hunting meeting doesn't really talk about this. You know what challenged me is we had Backcau was working at Yet. We had a meeting with pataging you about partnering on a public LANs film and b h A was also in that meeting, and I was sitting with some folks that worked at Patago, and you know, we were talking about this. Probably you've probably experienced this a lot, and with your audience, and like within the industry, they're asking questions about, Okay, how about this money, what about this funny? What about this you guys say you fun stuff? Tell me all about it. You should know about it, you're involved in it. And I was, ah, and I've I've read a lot of it, and I still fumbled through most of the details. It's very complicated. And so this is probably six five, six years ago, and I had to sit back and go, I don't know anything about this. I say things like conservation and that we fund conservation, and I tried out the party lines, but I know about the real facts here, and they're they're complicated enough. Also, you know, we want to see you a cheat, cheat in front of us. So about this, because we're sitting here something over stuff right now with you and I write about this for our living. Um, you know you Yeah, it's it's complicated. There's no one source of information that's really comprehensive because it is so deep. It would be really nice to have just like a campaign, you know, on billboards and on the internet and stuff, just saying hey, hunters paid for conservation. Here's how it works. Yeah. And so once we get there, once we all can agree that this is happening. It's it's a model that's worked over decades. We've we've of course added to it with Dingel Johnson. We've added to it when we added bows and and you know, other hunting gear into the Pittman Robertson mix. We've added to those exercise taxes. When you actually look at and I have looked at kind of how the money gets where it needs to go. It's I mean it's pretty it's pretty tight for a for a government run you know, taxpayer funded, government run system. It's pretty damn tight. Yeah. It works well, and it works really well. I mean this is there's people whose entire jobs is to you know, start of watch where this money goes. Um, it's all spent very effectively. This is I mean, the system is solid. It is not swing that we can assault. And you can imagine this. Folks in the government are looking to appropriate funds. They'd like to steal a little bit from the kidy here and there to go to fund of road here or that, but they can't do it, or buy some missiles or yeah, yeah, a couple of missiles in taxis whatever. They can't do it. They don't get that funding that gets pulled away. It's not all spent specifically protected in legal framework that this money cannot be used for anything else. It doesn't. This money does not go to a border wall. This money does not good anything. It goes to animal conjuration. And it's awesome. Yeah, And so when you know, when the Outdoor Industry Association I was reading and I wrote a story about this for a magazine years and years ago. You read like the Outdoor Industry Association's reasoning and a lot of these points you just brought up of like why that seven billion dollar industry wouldn't take on a similar type of exercise tax, which we call we now it's just called backpack tax, and in its general world, I can like when I read it, it kind of reads to me like for every for every reason that you wouldn't do it, there's a reason. There's there's a parallel in the hunting industry where the same thing is happening moment pop shops. You know, we we work a lot with say Vista Outdoors, who in federal premium they pay I think they pay I can't remember what the numbers again, but it's in the fifty million dollars range. Again, I think it's fifty four million dollars in seventeen something like that. I think you look that up. They pay a lot of money. But there's also a lot of mom and pop shops out there that are that are making their own rifles, making their own ammunition, that they're paying that exercise tax. Every piece of that every piece. The outdoor industry argues that every backpack isn't for the outdoors. Um. And that's an understandable argument. But every bullets sold for hunting. And so when I read it, it kind of reads When I read the Outdoor and Industry Associations and what they call it, it's just says where we stand. Af When I read it, it just reads like somebody's trying to get out of their allowance. It's like, I see all the issues. I see them clearly, and none of the things brought up here are wrong. Um. Really is a little bit of like, well, you guys are paying for this, we don't want to have. We don't want to have the same. It's unfair. Yeah, there's already. One of their points is that there's already tariffs on many of our goods. But there's already tariffs import tariffs on many firearms manufacturers. And because you're paying fun tax doesn't mean that in other tax is not applicable. They also say, we believe Congress must first meet its obligation to fund the land management agencies and fully fund to land on our conservation fund, which we hope might happen soon. Um. And so there's one hurdle. There's other things when they say, like our Pittman Robertson tax model doesn't always go to broad based wildlife conservation. Broad based access programs and and they're not completely can be kind of narrow. It can and it can be spent specifically on hunter programs, hunters ED Hunters. Hunter ED is in every state, So every state fund that gets Pittman Robertson dollars spend some of that money on hunter education. But it's like it's less than timber seven. I think usually it varies. These companies want to see it misspent more on like mountain bike trails or you know, parking lots of trailheads and things like that, which is understandable. But I think if we really established that, you know, these funds are about wildlife, you know, everybody can buy into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I think, yeah, I think that there's and they say though these taxes, and speaking of Pittman Robbers and funds have generated substantial revenue that supports important conservation work. Most of the hunting and fishing t access along with license fees, duck stamps, built fuel taxes and other revenue generation. And of course these are under Daniel Johnson Pittman Robinson feed directly back into those specific activities by focusing the investments to species and have debt restoration, and on and on they go. This model does not work to shore up the massive shortfalls of broader recreation and conservation funding. But but those are two different arguments, two different entities that need funding. We need we need to continue wildlife funding. We need to continue our our wilder conservation model, which is largely based on hunting, because that's just the mechanism for management. Um. I don't think there's an argument that we don't also want to fund trail heads and stuff. But you know that can be a separate thing. You know, that can be WCF and this can be dealing with Johnson Pittman Robertson applied to backpacks and mountain bikes. And that's what I say. I say when you look at if I would if you were to take the model of funding that goes with with Piven Robertson funds, and you will strip away what it anything about it, just say, here's a model where the taxpayer willingly. Mind you, like, sometimes you can't get through the door without paying it. So it's not always we say willingly. But we're in the hunting industry. We're not arguing against. In fact, we celebrate it many times. So this is like the taxpayers willing to pay it. Understand where it goes for. It's heavily regulated till it gets through the treasury and gets through the parmament material, it goes to the states. The states must spend it on things that directly benefit the taxpayer who paid it because you were too take strip away, hunting, fishing, any other elements and just present that. But like then, this has been going on for about nine years. It's working real good. If you would just take that that outdoor Industry Association say, why don't you just do that? I don't. I don't think they're going to I don't think. And they have more political weight than maybe we do in this world. Um, so you know, again, let's meet people where they are and focus on solutions, not picking a fight with somebody. And yeah, it to be clear, I'm not picking a fight. I'm just trying to understand. Of course, you're trying to understand what everybody doesn't contribute. Some of they all appreciate, we all appreciate what you say, like, hey, you're great that you're challenging us on this, but here's the way we want to do it, and we think that's just as equally appropriate, and it's going to do exactly the same things as that model would do. Here's the plan. I'd be like, go for and I don't really care how we get the mother. And they're not really arguing for that, unfortunately, and I find that frustrating. Um, they get really excited about WCF, which is important, but you know, you really want to see wildlife conservational funding that's coming from off shore oil drilling. What do you have to do with that? Yes? Nothing, You have nothing to do with that. You're celebrating something you have nothing to do with your money. Yeah. Uh So that that is frustrating. I remember and doing my research and reading this, I just like, Okay, there's parallels to all the issues that the oh I has with with a backpack tax already going on within within our American system of conservation funding that includes Pittman and includes Dingle. So I have nowhere to go, I would challenge I'd love to have a conversation with those folks. I have never had that and just see where they are. They may have a really good explanation. I'm gone for you please. Yeah, I would love to love to talk to him and just interesting conversation. It's it's a challenge that I think is valid, and I'm I hope they have a good answer for it. I I don't know, I hope they would. So you feel like in general and you, like I said, I was reading a piece of road on the duck stamp, you have communicated this to to the audience. Let's forget the industry for a minute. What's their reaction to it? Um? A lot of people are really interested, people that you wouldn't expect. Again, people are just ignorant of these issues, and it's not their own fault. They've just never been exposed to it. Um. Back when I lived in uh in Hollywood, I would um love doing dinner parties at my house. UM. And one of my best friends, who always also loved the cook, was no well from fits in the tantrums, and so we'd have like random band dudes over cook them all dinner. And I would always cook meat, and she would cook all the veggies and sides and stuff. And um. You remember one time we were I was serving antelope shoulder. Uh. They were just sitting there eating didn't didn't tell what it was. I didn't tell what it was. And they were either like, man, this is what the hell is? This is like the best damn thing I've ever eaten. West You're a hell of a good cook, and like all you know, and you're like, well, that's that's an antelope. Guys, like we have antelope, Like it's the prong corn shoring pictures. Remember one of the girlfriends of one of the band dudes just like put her fork and knife down and it just like death glared me the rest of the rest of the time. But every you know, there were two are people there and they were like, we had no idea hunting paid for conservation. We had no idea that meat tasted good. We annoyed the hunting was anything. But you know duct dynasty, Um, you know rednecks committing ritual animal slaughter, right, That's how most people see us. And so just changing that perception opens people up to this larger conversation, and so that that really has to be the first step in this. Yeah, I think it's great, and I think I only really started to realize this, I think in a real intangible way when I lived in Austin Texas, and I worked at a company where most people didn't hunt, and I found myself as a representative for the idea moreover than just a participator. I think you probably in that boat too, Yeah, I mean you spend a lot of your time answering those questions, and so I'm sure that that helped you, you know, be better a kind of formulating or articulating what this is. Absolutely, I think a lot of people just sort of like, how some always that hunting is a really neat tradition and helps the animals blah blah blah, and don't have this fully articulated argument ready to go. And you and I's job is to make articular arguments. Um, so we we almost seem like an information card about hunting, just like everybody just like how dare you? Hut? And you're like, here you go. I'm just leave them with that walk away. And there's always been people who are like, you're an asshole, I'm a vegan cecil Alan, you know, blah blah blah blah blah. And there's gonna be a lot of people whose minds we can change, a lot of people who even if I never participate in hunting, are at least like No Man Hunting School. Don't say hunters are assholes, you know, to dinner party somewhere in San Francisco. Just just people that smell their own parts or something. But it's a good movement within what we do, you know, from hunters and people that enjoy access, enjoy wild place. It's a good movement. I think it's also probably important for US hunters to be reminded of this is what we're doing. Um, you know that we aren't just doing this because the meets good. We aren't just doing this because it's enjoyable. We are just doing it because remember doing with their granddads. You know, we're doing this for a reason. Um, there's a very honorable reason here. It's it's a really powerful thing. And you know, maybe just that knowledge helps, you know, encourage you to go hunting one more time a year. You justify it to your family or you know, you back to Pittman Ryans and I mean I when I was writing at this article of reference, not probably this before on the show, but I was, I was like, I'm gonna pull a hundred hunters, just normal people, not probably most of them, not industry, all the people I can find and any hunting CAMPU. Man, I'm gonna go ask people what is Pittman Roberts. And I ended up getting a hunter people. And I made a little notebook and I had my little check check thing. IM couldn't explain it sounds right, yeah, And this was you know, three or four years ago whatever whenever that was. And so I just knew, I said, I just know that. And and I don't blame those folks, Like I said, it's not it's not apparent when you buy a license that you have to know this information. Of course, it's not a parent and that creates one of the beauties of the system. The system is so strong that you are participating in it, whether you want to or not, whether you aware that you are not. Um, you know, like this is just it is what it is. It's incredibly strong. It's just a great foundation and there's a lot of beauty and at But I think also learning to understand that, learning to understand what you're doing is also a great step to being more politically engaged, to understanding how things work in this country, how taxes are spent um, you know, and then being a position from there to consider the information you're consuming and make smarder decisions in life and think about what you're doing a little more consciously. Yeah, and I think I've experienced this with I've never spoken a little are personally, but I know a lot of people that have. And that's like when you know, the hunting industry and BHS in particular, push back on all Jason Chafitz back when they were trying to transfer some land in the Great State of Utah and pretty much tramped him down and then took him his career, destroyed his career. Here's a guy that was like, WHOA, I didn't think about this group, didn't think about their voraciousness. And then you start kind of aligning the values, Well, what these values do we align on? And then you start to realize that, oh, that's pretty deep. Yeah, and it's it's it's based or value. It's foundational. So yeah, that's a good way to put it's foundational. There's there's some things that aren't foundational though, Like I know for a fact, I don't know how you feel about this or even how outside. Don't want to ask you to speak for outside unless you want to. Um, do you find that like there's there's just things like trophy hunting being what it is. Yeah, that's like less of such a it's just a weaponized term. But yeah, I think I think more tangibly predator hunting something that I mean, I really enjoyed predator hunting. Um. You know, I think the North American conservation model again is strong enough that any hunting participated in is positive. Um. Some of the methods of take in in predator hunting can be controversial. UM. What I've learned, I think as I've become more serious about hunting and be able to you know, call it part of my job. Um, is I've actually I was judgmental about some of this stuff. UM. I was always like, well, I hunt for food, I don't hunt for trophies and all this kind of stuff. And then I learned more about it. Like I just I think I learned just not to judge other hunters. Um. Even if there's some type of hunting that I personally am not interested in doing, I understand that it's valuable. Um. You know, I love my dog. I'm a huge dog person, and I don't really think I ever want to hunt a wolf. Um. As a result, as the record me either, UM, I have a lot of thoughts about wolf conservation in the lower forty eight and think it's largely a positive thing. Even I know a lot of people um caught up in some propaganda run and not being Having said that, you know, if you're hunting a wolf from a place where wolf populations are sustainable, good for you. Um. I'm not going to judge that. It's not something I would do personally, but I understand why you do it, and I understand that it's valuable, and I will defend you absolutely. Yeah, and you I'm sure you run into maybe not, but I just know from reading Outside and some of the stuff I read, I'm like, oh boy, yeah, that's that's deep. I got a lot of disagreements with that. How do you how do you square those things? Or do you have to You probably don't. I don't. I don't have to, um, but you know you have to understand. You know, we are a large mainstream magazine. We're forty years old, and we are we were very much outdoor recreation, not hunting. UM. Hopefully, you know, when Steve writes articles for us and out side, that gets a message across. Hopefully some of my content gets some message across but you know, largely outside really thinks, you know, they just don't think about these issues, and so they don't understand them, and so stuff goes through there that is from people that have other opinions. And our job of the publication isn't to represent some unified this is how you should think, you know, like Fox News does, you know, Our our job as a real publication um is to present a diverse array of voices, put information out there, foster conversations, and hopefully, through that entire product lead to a larger understanding of not just these issues, but also how other people think about them. So I don't see somebody saying something negative about hunting um in my own publication and think that's bad. I think that's a great chance to understand how that person thinks, to learn more about how they think, and then understanding that how we can change our minds. That's great. That's a great example of that. And we're gonna give us some more lighthearted stuff. We've got a couple of segments to get through. The first one is called Damn Near Died, and that's sponsored and brought to you by Yetti, makers of coolers and all kinds of indestructible things. And uh, you just gotta tell me you got a damn your diet story. You told me it was motorcycle related. I've gotta go. And so I, in a former life, built the largest motorcycle website in the world out of my apartment when on my credit card, in sort of myself in a very reservation having done that. But I was riding a dollar attack in superbike one night out to dinner. Um, and on the way home. You know, I dressed for dinner jeans, you know, leather motorcycle jacket, combat boots, racing gloves, you know, intern dollar helmet, you know all that stuff. But I was in jeans. Um. You know, you walk in the restaurant, take every jacket look good. You know your motorcycle has all kind of course, So I running home didn't see it. Um. Uh, just now you do. Restreet corner like thirty five miles an hour, nothing crazy. He just going around corner going home right, ran over a pole glass car accident and uh like just slid out of meat. There's nothing I could do. There was no slip and do anything. Was just boom on the ground, bouncing bike. I got stuck under it. Um. You know, the human body of all do about twelve miles an hour, and so the formula is you lose one millimeter flash for every mile an hour you're going on an average pavement surface. So I was I was trapped under a form found motorcycle sliding. I was only going thirty five miles an hour or so. UM, but enough of us slide, enough of some bouncing around to do some significant damage. UM. I wore off probably half an inch of flash on my ass. UM. I had a metal plates in my arm for a previous accident that I had been having trouble with. One was gonna have replaced. UM. That popped out into most of my arm with it. UM. Two ribs came out of my chest. They never went back in. The doctors never fixed that one for some reason. They're sort of on top of my chest and a big amount of cartilage, which is weird. UM, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. UM. I hit my head pretty good too, I think, because I made some bad decisions after that. And you know, this motorcycle was loaned to me by Aprilia. UM. I was not in the nicest neighborhood and I was well mostly worried about leaving the motorcycle on a street corner and getting stolen over going to the hospital myself. Um, I also kind of so in the crash, I'd broken off all the left hand controls of the motorcycle, which as you know, is the clutch lever and gearshift leaver. So I manually put it in second gear using my hands, and then I pulled out the clutch cable wrapped around my broken left arm, which is completely shattered and basically just a noodle at that point, and used the basically the stretch of my arm as the clutch. Uh. To ride home about twenty five miles, and I didn't make it all the way home. I made it about two miles from my house, and I was starting to pass out, but there was a friend's house right there, so I pulled it in the friend's house, walked inside, and just a bunch of stoners, you know, bull butt, oh college buddies. Uh one. So I sit down the couch and they like pulled my helmet off for me, gave me some shots of vodka, give me like a bong rep. They were like, dude, you're getting a lot of blood in our couch and I was like, oh, bleeding. You know, I hadn't really thought about it from that perspective yet, and so they drove me to the hospital. UM. I remember sitting there like talking to the check in lady and she was just like taking a back and I didn't arrive in an ambulance. They didn't think I was like dying or anything like that. They were just like, shoots, this crazy guy, like he's on meth or something, just like sucking whacked out at that point. And I remember like listing all my injuries to her, very matter of factly and being like, yeah, I pulled the leve plate on my arm, I'm gonna needs some surgery on that. And my left knees missing, so that's probably gonna be a surgery too. I'm pretty sure a fractured my costacks and multiple places, and my asses bleeding as you can see the giant hole of my jeans as I strolled in and hear with my assaying out of my jeans. UM, this is being you know, it's a sediar signi UM, which is a terrible, terrible hospital. Never go there if you can avoid it. I sat in the waiting room UM for either five hours or seven hours UM in a pool blood before I got a bed, and I was in that bed. There was one five hour pier one seven our period. I wasn't really sure, and so I was in that bed for the other period and I remember passing out and then waking up because I was being jostled and there was like a crackhead fighting two police officers from top of it. You know. I was like, please don't do that. Where the crackhead come from. It's l a, It's just crackheads everywhere. UM, this is a good. At the same time, UM, I had just UM sold my company to you, a group of venture capitalists UM who promised me a six figure salary and health insurance. And I turned my previous health insurance off so that happens UM, and they weren't paying me. The paychecks never showed up. So I had no paychecks UM, no health insurance UM forty seven thousand dollars of medical bills. UH. And and so after this, I couldn't wal off in three months and I was single. UH and like life just sucked. I almost lost my house. My friends had paid my writen for me, friends had buy me food. UM. One of my friends luckily grew pot around the corner, so you just let me have access to that for free as a pain killers and a new pain killers. It was the most challenging period of my life. Um, and it was really really low. I spent Christmas by myself, spent New Years by myself. I'm really glad there wasn't any more challenging this one. Some friends saw how low I was and saw, you know, I was having a very difficult time, and they were, hey, we got you a dog, and they got me Wiley. Yeah, and I was, I cannot take care of a dog. I do not want this dog, you know, like this is not something I can take care of, Like we know, this is why we ache a dog. Greatest thing of rapping you save my life. Then Wiley led to Wiley lead to I now have Booie and Teddy. Um, and I'm pretty sure my now fiance Virginia swiped right on bumble because I was had to dog with my profile photo. Dude, this is the most full circle podcast I've ever done. You started out with Ayahuaska and you got us back to this. Yeah, dude, that's beautiful. I'm glad that all happened because here you are. Yeah, I mean learned a lot from it. I wish I hadn't happened, but you know here I am. I left arm will never quite be the same. But you know it's actually really good for shooting a Bogue's like natural bend in it. You got good form. How did you get such a good form? Natural? Well? Thanks for telling that story, man, I'm sure that's hard to tell, um, And I'm glad you're you're survived. You look from this angle no worse to wear. You know you're living in bowsman, You're living the dream. Ye exactly. All right, dude, thanks so much, Thanks for having me. Thanks West. That's it. That's all another episode of the Hunt Collective in the seventy three of them feeling good about seventy three of them feeling good about this episode. We had a lot to cover and I had fun. Man, I always have fun. But I'll say this, please do us a favor. And as we talk about journalism and writing and how to speak about hunting to the mainstream, we need to address these issues in the mainstream media. We needed to to. Don't be as excited as I was in the intro to this podcast, but right into the Washington Post. Find the contact right into angel Fritz and Michael Bryce Saturn. Lets them know that that that what they what they did in that article in the Washington Post just isn't appropriate, isn't productive. It is harmful to the discourse in this country around hunting or really around any subject that they would wade into in the manner in which they did. So I'm fired up. I'm real fired up about it, and I think it's something that we can, we can make a statement on. We should, we should do it for the right reasons. Don't scream like me, be more like Phil's calm and collected. So go and do that for me, Michael Bryce Sadler and Angela Fritz, give him, give him a buzz over there to Washington Posting and let him know very articularly how you feel. Um, if you if you agree with me, if you don't ignore me. Um, what else? What else? Oh? The mediator dot com. You go to the media dot com and there's a store there, and there's a store there that includes th HC merch. That's the Aldo freaking Leopold shirt. That's uh pro nuance, anti bullshit. Don't let anybody tell you that the word nuance is going on out of style. It's still one of the best words in the Englis language. So go get it and uh, what else you know? I'll tell you next week is gonna be a good show. We've got my good friend Remy Warren. Remy Warren has a fantastic new announcement for the media world that you're gonna be hearing about in a couple of days. He's gonna be here next week on the show. We're gonna talk about that big surprise announcement and hopefully you'll be excited to hear exactly what it is you're and and because of that, you'll be hearing more from Remy. So I'm excited about that. I've been working hard with my boy Remy over the last couple of weeks and months on this project that we will soon announce. So stick around for that. Thanks for listening, and we will see you next time here on t h c oh u'mber seven tennessee. Who whiskey got me dragging heaven and uh and just stopped. It looks good to me. They're gonna have to department to the farrady. Oh to he be able to do that, to be needed

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