00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey, everybody, it's a hunting collective. This episode seventy five. It's a really good one. I'm very excited to bring it to you. Um. We have Sam Longern, the fishing editor mediator, and Miles Nolte, the director of Fishing and also like the director of our new show dost Boat, so you should go check that out. We'll talk about that in a little bit. We're also talking about an evil evil man, William Perry Penley and how we can um see him removed from his current post in the BLM. And then in the interview ports in the show, we're talking to Brant McDuff, who is a wildlife educator and a public speaker and he often covers the history of taxidermy. There's an interesting conversation. He's a theater major out of New York City. That doesn't often happen on podcasts of this nature. So I'm excited to have you comment on our conversation. And he's a good dude. Very different for a hunting podcast, um, but I enjoyed him and it was a good time. But before we get to that, we're gonna quickly about Trophy Copper. And Trophy Copper comes from Federal Premium. I'm hopefully you're aware of what trophy copper is, but these copper polymer tip bullets are now offered in two new bullets, fifty five grain two to three RAM and a two grain eight lapool mag Hopefully we'll be shooting those two bullets that entirely different critters, but you should be using them this fall and beyond. That's Trophy Copper from Federal Premium. Go to Federal Premium dot com and check that out. Everybody here at the Meat either loves trophy Copper. We endorse it along with Mr Patelis and Mr Ronella, So go there, check it out Federal Premium dot Com. So, without further ado episode, I guess I grew up on an older road, a pedal to the medals. I always did what I've told until I found out that my brand new close the game second hand from the rich kids next door, and I grew up fast. I guess I gw up. I mean, they have a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted to a real bad dream of being and like I'm coming a part of the scenes. But thank you Jack, Daniels seven. Hey, everybody, welcome Episode seventy five The Hunty Collective. I've been O'Brien, this is coming to you as August winds down and we get into the thick of hunting season. I've got some hunts coming up you'll be hearing about later on. But before we get to that, we're gonna get to Miles Nolte. Good morning. What's up? You know, just live with a dream buddy. Yeah, Phil, Phil, we got a new tabe, a new podcast table, we got all kind of new microphones. How you feeling about. There's a lot more room. I'm a big fan of what's happening in this room right now. Phil, I feel like you're part of the process. You guys can't see this right now, but Phil used to be crammed into a corner, literally behind a sheet. Now closet, he has a literal seat at the table. I know it's earned or unearned as yet to be seen, but I'm at the table. His chair is higher than all of ours. To Phil freed himself from I kind of feeling he actually is sitting in judgment over the rest of us. From It's true, I was saying earlier this is his little kingdom so decorated. Yeah, so it's starting to look like a real like somebody really thought this out earlier, it was just we had one West siland described it as like Hotel Art. He wasn't wrong. Hotel Art is still up. It's still there, but it's starting to look like now there's just more of it. So it feels kind of homie. Yes, it's true. Um, we're all reeling from last week's Phil reading mean comments. That was quite a revelation, wasn't Phil. Yeah. I mean I personally enjoyed it. And we made a mistake. We didn't have Miles come in with his velvety voice. Well we'll rectify that over the time. I gotta say, as a as a longtime listener and part time contributor, I thought that I thought that ship was really funny. I died laughing. I was giggling like a schoolgirl during it. When I listened back to him like I was like, hey time, I was like, well, that just knows. I was having a good time during that. It was good. You cannot deal with angry comments in a better fashion than that right there. It was very very great. So we'll get to that. But we're gonna make some angry comments before we get to that. Um, some of our own before angry comments. Last couple of Yeah, two episodes ago, I screamed, I might scream again, Phil, So I get to make sure you're a little got the fairs on the faders this time. Fade that out. We don't want we don't want to scare people, blow everybody's car speakers out, and we don't want to scare people to work. Um, we're gonna start by talking about a gentleman named William Perry Penley. And if you don't know who William Perry Penley is, he's the new acting director of the b l M, which is the Bureau of Land Management. And before we get into all this, Sam has has the longest of all of us, possibly are probably the most intense history with conservation. We can all agree with that. Um from working at b h A for how long? Sam? Five years? Five years? Um, so give us just give us a quick rundown of the BLM, what it means, the public lands, and kind of why the acting director of this branch of our wonderful government might be important. Yeah, the the BLM is, you know, a giant portion of our public land estate two forty seven million acres out of the six hundred and forty six total that we possess his American citizens. UM. But it's it's often kind of place second or third fiddle, I suppose to some of the more prominent public land management agencies, like the National Park Service in the United States four service UM, those were founded much earlier, UM, you know, into the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, really codified in UM the in Theodore Roosevelt's administration. But the BLM land is often looked upon as the land that nobody wanted. It's the stuff that homesteaders passed by because it was arid or rocky or UM just otherwise difficult to prove up what you had to do with your hundred and sixty acres under the the Homestead Act Allotment UM. Some of it was land that people did want, but it didn't work, and so maybe they shouldn't have wanted it. Uh. It kind of came together piecemeal over the years, UM through a number of acts that UM managed what was done on those lands that nobody really owned, you know. That was kind of started with like the Mineral Leasing Act of nineteen twenty talking about how people could go, you know, to set mining claims in areas like that. The Tailor Grazing Act of nineteen thirty four, which started to put some constraints on what people did with their cattle and sheep and established a system for that and permitting process and grazing fees, the same grazing fees that a lot of these people like Penley like to rail about. Um, but it's BLM land is still the cheapest place to graze, graze your livestock in the country on I mean on it's like a tiny fraction of what it costs to graze on private land or state trust land by and large. But the BLM as we know it today was really founded in nineteen seventy six under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. UM. A lot of people like to call it flipma and that that's that's what really said. Flip Yeah, great, it sounds like a rapper rolls off the tope. I can see that as a wrapper flip must squad, maybe a wrestler. We'll keep that going, continue with the we need to think. I think the outro you should record is just a freestyle over flip flip flip mus squad that could we could do that continue That actually might make it more boring now that I think about it. You know, it's hard for me to like, this is very important information, but I've I've devolved so much in my podcast hosting that I just want to make jokes during this. That's all I can do anymore. That's what it's about your podcasts evolution. But please continue with the facts that are pertinent to the Yeah, yeah, and I'm almost I'm almost done. It's you know, it's the land that nobody wanted. It's often talked about as scab land, scrub land, bad lands, all sorts of nit pejorative names that you know, make it make it seem like, you know, the dogshit that the federal government shouldn't be paying for, shouldn't be managing that. It would be so much easier and so much more cost efficient, economically, um beneficial to sell those areas to private individuals and incorporations. But I'd like to point out, and I assume most people who are listening to this have at least some relation to hunting, that like, that's where most of the public land upland bird hunting in the Western United States happens, like, if you want to shoot a sharp tail grouse, you're doing it on BLM land. Like that's the bottom line. Tons of pheasant hunting, tons of the I mean anywhere you're talking about stage grouse all BLM and I mean I do a ton of muleteer hunting every year on BLM ground. Um. I'd like to mention that you know, it's it's thought of as as you know that it's it's a lot of it's in um, you know, checkerboarded landscapes. Some of its different, difficult to access. It's it's kind of scattered throughout the West, but there are giant port parcels of it and some really incredible stuff, including two and twenty one codified wilderness areas, and I believe hundreds more wilderness study areas that have kind of languished for forty years in between there. But there there's incredible l hunting on a lot of BLM land that's pronghorn central. Like therefore I've killed pronghorn in Wyoming on BLM land. Callahan and I were need to cite our rifles in the other day in Douglas, Wyoming, I was just like, well, there's some BLM land. Let's drive out there. Absolutely it's yeah, And and guess who's from Wyoming. Guess who was born there? William Berry Penley. I think I think it's difficult to overstate the importance of BLM land. Two hunters in the West, and that's just that's the thing. If we want to there are a lot of ways we can slice this. There are a lot of good reasons to talk about the benefits of b l M LAMB. But for our purposes here, I think we've got to say, as hunters, if we lose BLM land, we have lost a massive percentage of the land we get to hunt in the western part of the US. Next, I'm you're looking at your onyx maps and you're hunting public land or not, or just just zoom out to a state level, wherever you are in the West, or wherever you are in the country, and just start looking around at those chunks of BLM land. It's all the yellow stuff, all the yellows, and it's it's all the yellow stuff that surrounds the little portions of blue and green. Yeah. I think before we get to Penley, I think we should talk a little bit about I've heard a colleague of mine the other day talking about the public lands movement in general, I think led by b h A UM and and also TRCP, but but mostly led by b H A and talking about chiding the public lands movement for not being a movement of action, for being comparing the public lands movement to something a group like r M E F or D you what has b h A done for habitat? If I compare that to what Army F has done for habitat, I can I can honestly say ARMF has had a bigger impact. But when this move comes up, and one it becomes important is moments like right now is when we can be advocates for these lands and we can tell our government and the folks that run it that this is not okay. And this is where the power of the public land is really shined. Not that it doesn't do those other things, but this is where, you know, this is where this movement shines, and this is where we can really have an impact as voices within this community to say like this is not acceptable. And I think if we're going to talk about this in specifics, we need to go back a couple of months when the three of us sat in a different room and recorded a separate podcast about the passage of a public lands bill. Right, And so, what I think we need to recognize with this particular moment in this appointment of Pendley is that there has been a massive failure on the part of interests who would like to sell off public lands to do so through legislation, Like, because you and I and the folks who care about this stuff clearly told our lawmakers we don't support this, and our lawmakers heard that and said, I don't think we can support this in legislation. Excuse me either. So what what what's the next move? We appoint someone as the head of this whole department who wants to find ways to circumvent the will of us and keep our lawmakers from being held accountable for it, and get there in a different manner. And yet yet another podcast that Sam was a part of, Steve Ronnella, we were talking about public versus private in our community and how like those cultures have kind of clashed a bit within the hunting community. And we said, there the reason why we're so loud about public LANs because it is actively under attack this is actively under attack, and this is and we'll have laws where we feel real comfortable. And one of those main laws this year was was the laws I mean l l U double LS. One of those main times where we felt comfortable was you know, when that public lands package passed. We're very excited about this. We feel like the tide is turning, there's not an immediate threat, and then something like this happens. Is you remember why we're all advocates for this thing. You remember why we feel so strongly about public lands. And to tie this back to your point where you started. If we're going to look to a success of the organizations who are fighting for public lands, this is it. It may not you may not be able to see it in the same way that you can see habitat restoration, but this is just as real and just as significant to be able to keep all of us informed about what's going on in terms of legislation and other actions that are threatening our public lands and give us mechanisms through which we can show our opposition. Absolutely, and I think it's useful for people to look at the conservation movement UM and the groups, the different nonprofit in g o s within it as somewhat of a portfolio, you know, ELK Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited. They all have their mission and do great work within that um and are very narrowly focused on the on the specific species that's on the logo. It's obvious what they're supposed to do and that. But I think that's the great value of organizations like t R C, P and and b h A and others, is their their mission. It's like you guys seem to have the animals covered. Animal populations in the United States are generally doing fairly well right now, at least when we're talking about game, but they those organizations arose from concerns about these things like the sage brush rebellion um that we're talking about here, disposal BLM land and and and that's most needed right now in my mind, it's a it's a really critical problem, really something that needs to be resoundingly struck down. UM. So let's let's get to the situation we're in and we're just talking about this, Miles, can you take us quickly to or like, how did how did William Perry Penneley get to be the acting director of that questions get there. He got there through appointment. There was no oversight, there has there's no voting mechanism, there's no opportunity for public comment. An appointment simply means someone was just stuck there. Yeah, and during any other administration that wasn't the Trump administers, and this ship would be front page news. Absolutely, they shoehorned this dude into the BLM. No congressional appointments. I'd like to emphasize acting director because if he had been actually appointed, then he would have a Senate confirmation hearing in which he would be fried for advocating strongly against the the agency he would be leading suing the Department of Interior. He's dudes, an anti government, so crazy person. But before we before we get into hyperbole, I'm gonna I'm gonna give a little bit of before Ben starts screaming, I'm gonna give a little like I'll try and be quick, a few historical points from his resume that caused concern for me, and I think you know, there there's a lot of, like I said, a lot of hyperbole, a lot of vitriol on all sides of these issues. Let's as much as we can stick to the actual things that have happened that caused me to stay up at night wondering, am I going to get to hunt my favorite lands in ten years? Well, my son, how we're gonna do this? You'd be the force of reason. That's bad idea, but okay. So for for some context on on Penley, he worked for the Department of the Interior under Reagan uh and was dismissed from the Department of the Interior in the mid eighties. Why was he dismissed by the Reagan administration from the Department of the Interior. Well, he had a significant hand in the debacle that's known as the Powder River Basin coal lease sale. Any of us who who have hunted in that area of the Powder River Basin is just like this gold mine of habitat. It's just an amazing place. But it is also one of the epicenters of coal production in this country. And I'm not going to step into debate about the benefits or drawbacks of coal. That's not what's an issue here. The way that the lease sale went down under Penley was real sketchy, and he has been accused of finding ways to undercut the lid beasts. The bid lease prices so that the coal companies could get the best price possible, therefore taking away the value of our public lands and undermining it so that the coal companies could make more money. Because of what he did there, he was dismissed from Reagan's Department of the Interior. That to me is pretty significant and eroads what we would call public trust and an individual which should be required for something. Uh. It's it's just that that that is the primary one of the primary reasons from his history if we look at things he has actually done that I find to be very very problematic. Now let's jump ahead a little bit. He continues to be an advocate very publicly opposed to federal public lands, now in charge of more than a third of them. His Twitter handle is at sage brush Rebel. Someone should give some context on that. There. There's a there's a great article that I'd like to point people to, just to if you have any ounce of you know, curiosity in your mind, whether we're making any of this up, you should just go to the National Review dot com, you know, a large pop publication and searched by his name and find the the opinion column he wrote in January entitled the federal government should follow the Constitution and sell its western lands. He has also is this on his sleeve. He's continually this year come out on on his Twitter account multiple times saying we need to repeal the Antiquities acting. He said the founding fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold. So this is you know, we could continue kind of going on and on about this. I think the point has been made. There are plenty of examples of why this particular individual is a problematic choice to lead the BLM. If you are, like us, a fan of maintaining access to public lands BLM lands, Yes, this is and and again he was not we if listen, it's that we had less of a leg to stand on. We can still disagree, you know, with his his views, his worldview, but if he had been appointed by Congress, if he had gone through the proper confirmation hearing, then then we can at least say that there's less shady materials to be covered here. But here then we'd have some of course, died officials like who are supposed to supposed to represent us, could have the opportunity to prevent this from happening. Just happening by FIAT right, and we could we could have recourse in the sense that we could tell those officials we really disagree with this choice and if you continue forward with this, we will not vote for you again. We do not have that opportunity here. And I'm gonna I'm gonna throw one more piece of evidence out because this is one that I think is near and dear to my heart. Uh. All the work in two thousand fifteen that went toward rehabilitating stage grouse habitat. If you guys are not aware of this, you should do a little reading. But it's one of the few examples we have of industry, hunters and anglers, conservation groups, and even environmentalists coming together to work on a problem to keep the sage grouse off the endangered species list so that we could continue utilizing those lands for development and hunt on them and protect the species. Yeah, he called the effort to protect sage grouse an imposition of draconian and illegal rule. So you're talking about one of the best examples we have of different user groups and cohorts coming together to try and actually get something done, and he's opposed to it. That that to me is just unthinkable. And so let's get to he's the acting director. What can he do, right? What can he do to affect the BLM past his tenure and during his tenure? I mean, there's a lot of things he can do. One of the things that's most concerning that he can do is he can hire in a point people that will last much longer than his tenure. Like, so he can affect the future of the BLM by hiring people and bring people into the fault that will take positions um within that group that can affect it further. And and that is maybe the most concerning to me. I mean, what else is there in you guys mind that this guy can do and probably will do, because he'll do anything he can. Is quite obviously that he wears us one. Yeah, and I think you know, one of the most important things we should be looking at here is that the Department of the Interior is undergoing a reorganization still that was started under former Secretary Zinky and um, and so he'll be overseeing that. He'll he'll be laying the bricks of the new building if you if you will, and I I mean, I just feel like that's just rife with opportunity for sabotage. I think he's going to try to make it smaller and less effective. Is it the the BLM they're moving. They're moving it out, the headquarters of the BLM to Colorado. Uh. And there's a lot of people who are really concerned about that. I I understand both sides of that. I think the BLM needs to be as connected as possible to the local landscapes, to the places it manages. I think it is more so currently than people give it credit for, because those lands are still managed by people who live there jen early local people, um and a lot of proud local I have tons of friends who work for the BLM, and so when people trash talking, I think about them. I don't think about the you know, two thousand miles away, the the the overlord of these lands, like some people like to describe it. And but some people worry that by moving the headquarters of the BLM to Colorado, as they're currently planning to do, it divorces that from the decision making center in Washington and may make it even less effective than it currently is, because those officials are two thousand miles away from the congressmen who are deciding upon their budgets and their directives. Um, So I'm I'm a little torn on that. But the fact of the matter is the acting director oversees all of this and and points and hires people who are doing the dirty work and may not be choosing the most boy scout of you know, of BLM rangers and um, you know, people who really have a dedication to serving the public and serving the the idea of multiple use under which the BLM in the Forest Service are managed where we where we extract resources, but we also recreate and those things are balanced equally. And so I'm concerned that that industry is going to be given higher degree of attention in this reorganization than will hunting. Yeah, and I think a lot of people think and I'm not sure what to think about this. Like I said, like you said, I could see it both ways that the move out to Colorado is a ploy to kind of drain the the BLM of a lot of the employees that are based in d C. Yeah, a lot of these people aren't going to make that trip. Absolutely, they're not going to make that move. It's almost a clean slate for him to rehire the entire organization. So there's a lot of people that think, Okay, what's the best way on to cover of you know, some really logical reasons to move it west. What's the best way to kind of strip this of what it currently is and remake it um and remake it for possibly longer than the current administration is in power or holds the office. Not to oversimplify things, but if you talk to people who work at the BLM field offices, and and to reiterate this point, many of the decisions and the actual management of these offices of these lands are done by the field offices that are right there, mostly in rural parts of the word. Go in one. They're gonna tell you where to go hunting. Oh, they're they're nice folks. They've got the best maps they do, And I love maps. I just have my my truck stuff full of BLM and Forest Service maps that I pick up for free at those places, and they're they're great because your phone does die. But if you go talk to those folks and you ask them what they need to to better manage those lands, it's not a reorganization or a move out west of their headquarters. It's more funding that's what thing and a reorganization, and to move out west is enormously expensive. And and the BLM has been held at funding levels that reflect those like from of the late seventies, not even accounting for inflation. It's anemic funding. And that's the problem with management, is that we can't have enough people on the ground and do what we need to do. And and so that's and and that's exactly a tactic of Perry Penley and this other sage brush rebellion folks, is to starve these public land management agencies of money so they can't do their jobs and then cry that they're not doing their jobs. It's it's hypocritical. And this this this reorganization is going to exacerbate that issue. Well, let's let's go a little bit further into this, because there's a guy that we should all know about. I mean, what we we talked about Secretary Interior Ryan Zinki when he was in that post. Now we have David Bernhardt. He has been he has outward. He said that he opposes land transfer. He said that he's been quoted in many many publications saying exactly that thing. I watched him on TV give an interview where that he repeated that over and over and over again. Now, who ordered pen Ley to be to be appointed here had to be Bernhard Bernhard. So now there was a quote from UM Senator Danes here in Montana saying, like, well, who appointed him? It was? It was Bernhard, and so it must be okay because Bernhardt is against land transfer. It's worth mentioning that Bernhard's previous job was as a oil industry lobbyist. And this is pretty fraught in the Trump administration. This isn't really about Trump, I don't think. I mean, it marries down to everything. I was feeling that that Trump's really paying attention to this whole thing. Right now, there's a there's there's bigger fish to fry, to be To be fair, I was listening to comedians saying the other day, like every every conversation leads to Trump. Unfortunately this one does. But it's not. I don't I don't know that. I think like I think the head of the snake is Bernhard in this case, and so that and actually, you know what, let's go even further. The head of the snake is oil and gas and other attractive industry money. Yeah, let's just be straight up about where where is this coming from. It's all about it's about money, and it's about extractive industry money. And if you if you believe that the extractive industries actually care about your hunting rights or habitat or wildlife, I don't think you've been paying Why Why would they haven't been following along? Because it's clear that's that's what's at opposition to these lands. I mean, that's what it is. It's always been that. Yeah, it's it's been that since we've had them correct and so that's not this isn't something new. But again, I mean to to circle it back. I think it's it's pertinent to say, listen, this has been going on. This is just another this this is a pretty egreging ample, but another example of you know, that faction within our government and without that is going to continue to push this. So here's let's let me move this a little bit. If I'm if I am breaking the fourth wall a little bit, if I am. You folks sitting there listening to this wondering, Okay, they've been talking about this for quite some time. I get it. What do I do? What recourse do do I have? What? What could I do about any of this. Do we have an answer for that person? You can write to your elected officials, that's for sure. You can show up at their's public speaking engagements like a lot of people did with Senator Steve Danes and hold signs to say no land transfers, no Penley. I mean, you can do that. You can let your voice be heard in those ways Danes. Danes has heard from me several times on this through several methods, right and and if I'm going to be perfectly honest right now, I have no idea if that has any impact. I don't know that Danes or any other senator has the ability to change this. However, That's about all I got, Like, I don't I don't know what else I can do. Senators do have a lot of power to change this, and I firmly believe in the power of calling them and telling them that. And if you you don't feel like calling them, if you don't feel like having that conversation, email does work. They do respond and try to, you know, often just rationalize away their behavior. But um, having been in d C and lobby senators their staffers say that that that that they they take note, like most Senate can congressional offices have whiteboards that they're tallying calls and emails and even social media commentary about about these things. And you know, while they still may be more beholden to certain special interests and in certain you know, wealthy people more so than the rank and file voters, it's the rank and file voters that continue you to allow them to have their their high level jobs, and they when when things reach such a like a cacophony, they do bend. And we've seen this numbers of times with the public land movement, that you can make the noise so unbearable for these congressmen that they do take notice and they do take action, and the Senate could fix this. So I think I think then the message to all of you who care about this and who would think you want to do something, is to get in touch with make a phone call, write an email, do both if you're willing to, and and let them know that you are concerned about this and you're very concerned about this particular individual being in this particular position. I think Sam's right. I mean, when you talk to people that are on staff for senators or on staff for congressmen and you talk to them about you know, or even state legislators. You know, we had just Johnson on and she's talked about Wyoming. One eat, watching at a state legislature meeting like one email, change a vote, like the state legislatures, sitting at the desk, the email comes in, she sees him reading it, she knows it just came, and he changes his vote during a session. And so that that doesn't always happen. That's a you know, that's probably a more rare case than we would like to believe, given that these are our elected officials. But I mean that that constant pressure we saw it with Jason Schaefitz, and and that constant pressure, when applied, will have results. We don't know exactly what those results might be from from in this case. I can't sit here and say this is the exact path to go forward, but I can say apply the f and pressure. Now agreed, and I agree that this is a little different because there is no vote here. Yeah, you can't. Just that's why it's different. And that's that's where my cynicism comes in. It's not a referendum, this this one, and that's why. But that's why it's so damn dastardly that that's I think it's it's done in this way, and you have I think one of the major victories of the public lands movement has been that in this state in other states, you have to get on the stump for public lands if you want to come to the table, like if you want to be considered Republican or Democrat, you've gotta comment say we're not gonna sell these lands. And I'm gonna throw one more thing in here, because I think we're it's important to mention this. We are hunting show, we're speaking to honey on. But I think that we are very very off base to assume that this is going to benefit ranchers in rural communities to lose these public lands, because the fact remains that many, many, many of the folks who graze their cattle on public on blm lands are small ranchers, and they're able to make their lives, their livelihood work because of those subsidized grazing fees. If those go away and that land gets sold off to private interests, they're not going to use their business. They're not going to be able to buy that stuff. Absolutely not, and and and that's one of the great fallacies here, that is that that these BLN lands are somehow gonna let go day in the local communities, that the ranchers who graze there are going to somehow just get them. They're they're missing the point pretty broadly there, because these lands are going to be sold, you know, in you know, an auction like free market style system, and there are a lot of people who have a lot more money than the cattle rancher who's grazing on that on that land, he's not gonna get He's going to lose there. And I'd also like to mention that you know, rural communities profit enormously off these lands in other ways to like BLM lands where most like off roading happens. That's that's generally a lot more reduced on forest service and park service. But there's like that's that's where you go and spend brodies and and shoot guns and blow up tanner, right, you know, those things are allowed for in in many places and written into management plans that there are places for people to go plinking on BLM land. It's it's like it's like what kids who grew up in the woods like me like should we love to love to go do that doesn't have anything to do with hunting or fishing. It's like destructive and I'm like not trying to advocate that, but I know a lot of people who don't listen to this are like have a have a dirt bike and want to go tear around in places sometimes within within the law. And I mean, b amlet, that's when we stand to lose places to go do that kind of stuff too. Yeah, it's broad reaching, and I don't like we don't often get directly on the stump for things here, and it may seem repetitive the public flans things, but we've already gone over why the repetition is necessary. You know, we know it's under attack. We understand these types of things. But there's if you if you google William Perry Penalley look at photos of him, it is it is. It's like shocking some of some of the different hairstyles and facial hair configuration to this man in in some like dies and bleaching. I'm like almost certain there's a photo here of him where he looks he looks a little bit like he just woke up from a seventeen year NAP. I saw somebody else online say he looked like a homeless man that has been cleaned up for court. I thought that was pretty I figured I would give you guys a chance to kind of describe his look and in the best in your best pros. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and say that that handlebar mustache has seen a little bit of Grecian formula over the years. Oh yeah, and and uh, you know, I I recognize that he's from from Wyoming, but if I saw that dude walking down the street, I'd I'd be going all hat and no cattle. Yeah, he looks like I think he looks like a tire changer for a NASCAR team. I think if I'm just getting like the prison warden like villains, yeah, showshank redemption because that's a what's his name? But you know, just that's that's the vibe I'm getting. I don't know why. Yeah, you're going failed nineteen seventies porn star who went to law school after he washed out the movie Born. That hair, the hair the blonde like the dyed blonde hair. He's been bleaching it since the seventies. It's clear. So anyway, if you want to write into THHC at the meeting to Colm with your descriptions of William Perry Panley. Please do because I find them to be He also appears incapable of smiling. I don't see a smile here. Oh, here's one. Is there one? Have you seen this one with where he's next to the flag blockers. Yeah, that's like he smiles like he's never done it before. Yeah, he smiles like what is this that I'm experiencing? Holy ship. That's definitely the first time he's taken a selfie. Yeah. Somebody on his staff is like, William, you're gonna need to start, sir. We see he probably asked somebody if they could take a selfie of him. Can you guys do a selfie? Oh, here's the one, worry, No, you do that yourself. Man, what what now? Can't you just do it for me? Yeah? He always kind of looks like he just fell down some stairs. He just couldn't make it. See. I just get like a disapproving, creepy principal look. Yeah. Yeah, like he's just disappointed in you all the time for anything you've ever done. Yeah. He's a defense lawyer on Law and Orders special he's all those things. That's William Perry Penley. Everybody, Uh, well, all we can tell you is agree or disagree with what we've said here there. You know, go look at the facts, Go read read his history, read his comments. He's written two books. I mean, there's plenty out there from this man to you know, put his views into the crosshairs and and go and and do that research for yourself and and find out what this man is all about, and then what power he has in his current seat, and and take action. I would say, if you love public lands, and if you ever hunted BLM lands or ever wish to hunt those yellow blocks scattered around the west, that you better do something here real quick, because he can make every day. This man can make changes to UM, the BLM, to how it acts, how quickly it acts, how slowly it acts, what it does in judicial situations. This is a guy that can can affect many, many things. And so it's worth standing up and saying we don't like that, we're not having that, especially in the way that he was appointed UM. So that will leave there any any final comments on on this gentleman take ten minutes. I mean it's I I just it's not that difficult. Write an email, make one phone call if you care about this, And if you don't, you know, that's your progative and I'm not gonna judge you for that. But if you do care about this, don't just be piste off. Take ten minutes. Yeah, and you know, take five minutes before that. If you don't believe us, like, don't take our word for it. Just read anything he's read and see if that aligns with your vision of what you want the West to look like in the outdoor recreational opportunities you would like to have in the future. All Right, to end this segment on William Perry Penley, we're gonna get, of course, to Brandon McDuff, Sorry brand for getting real political on you for for to the interview. Um, I'm gonna ask Miles and Nulte and his best voice to read some quotes from William Perry Penley esquire a man about town. Go ahead, Miles. Environmentalists don't believe in human beings. The founding Other's intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold. Westerners know that only getting titled too much of the land in the West will bring real change. My lord. I've said it before and I will say it again. Fracking is an energy, economic and environmental miracle. William Perry Penney's an enemy pertion of the show. Bye, I guess I grew up on an all day row brand. How's it going? Hey, thank you for having me. Yeah, welcome to shiny Montana, sunny Montana. You're here at a good time. I love it. I got all, I got all tan on the I did the red bus tour at Glacier. Oh, yeah, you're just a real tourist ship, you know it. Well done, me and the seven year olds? Yeah, would you learn? You learn anything? The glaciers are receiving. Yeah, glaciers are receding. It's real pretty. I just wanted to sit there and not have to do anything. Yeah, you know, because I could. I could have driven through Glacier, but I would have had to pay attention to driving. Yeah, well that's a good deal. I've never been on a red bus tour and I would go. Now, some big horn. Oh you did any other wildlife? Just some little ground squirrels really making a stink. So you went to the spectrum. You went ground squirrel too. It's a big horn. Yeah, well done. Well listen, I'm yeah, I fancy myself a groundbreaker. But we've had an animal rights activist song, we had a vegan on everybody like to talk about that. Now I'm scared I'm gonna be known for that. But this you're a theater major, so I just wanted to lead off by a Brooklyn based you know, So I'm gonna I'm gonna pigeonhole you, right, that's I'm good at that. You're a Brooklyn based theater major and maybe you know, maybe the first Hunting Podcast guest ever in the history of the world to be a theater major. So hopefully we'll do some sort of acting at near the end to really get your to really get you in. But some suggestions. So there's a lot of reasons why I thought it would be interesting to sit down and talk. But I think before we get into kind of what you do, and as we were talking about before, I think you where do you come from? And as as listeners will find out your story is is really interesting where you are today and how you got there. Um, this podcast is about finding people's why why you know? Why do you? Why are you interested in hunting? While you interested in natural history and in your case, tax jermy and other things, and collecting that perspective and bringing it back in and understanding what that means for all hunters and how we can all come to be interested in something that a lot of people in Brooklyn seems weird, archaic, gruesome to to to add some other adjectives to a So tell us where you're born and kind of give us a little bit of a seed of of your early life. So I was born in New York, actually on Long Island. Um, but I don't remember much of that. I grew up in southern Florida, like Palm Beach area, and I since I was teeny tiny, I've been crazy about animals, just really nuts about animals. And I would run around near where we lived and catch snakes and lizards. And I used to catch little green annoll lizards and I'd hold them up to my ear and then they'll bite onto your earlobe and then you can walk around with fashionable lizard earrings. Um. And yeah, always just preferred animals to anything else, and would always have my nose in a book about animals or was watching nature shows. Um, and any time I had the opportunity to do something outdoorsy, I did it. I was very lucky that my parents sent me to do cool things camps or whatever, you know, learned to say or learn to do whatever. My dad's a horseback rider, so I've been riding horses since I was a kid and I love that. And UM, I'm a whitewater rafting guide and a kayak instructor. So I've always I always wanted to be outside. UM. I always loved animals, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. UM. When I went to college outside of Chicago, and yeah, it was a theater major. Love theater, still do UM, and that actually, so I give I've always been a tour guide too, and gave tours of the South Carolina Aquarium, UM and my schools, and now I give tours at the American Museum of Natural History, and so the theater actually comes in handy quite a bit because I like talking to people and projecting in the Africa wing of the m and H is difficult, UM, but so I never was. I Also, I've got a lot of energy, and it's tough for me to focus on one thing. So you know, when I was a kid, was like, oh, maybe I want to be a vet or a zoologist or anything. And I just could never land on one thing. So, you know, today, if it's like you're on my website, it's like, oh text dremy classes and tours and lectures, and I want to be moving around, I want to be active, I want to be talking to people. And as a kid, I was always very I was always very skeptical of hunting. The I loved animals so much. The idea that someone would want to kill an animal just blew my mind. Yeah, this is what As you're talking, I'm thinking, that's the question I wanted. Why on earth or how on Earth in this case did you get to this? Okay, I'm getting there. I get there, so um yeah, so the idea that someone want to do it just kind of really blew my mind. But um, at the same time, I idolized guys like Teddy Roosevelt and um, you know, all of these sort of old timey adventure conservationists, and it was like, wow, I couldn't get past the hunting part. But I did really like the idea of running around in the woods and going on adventures and having my rifle with me and I. Uh My dad taught me how to shoot since I was young. We used to go sporting clays shooting all the time. I love shooting sporting clays, so guns were not a new or scary thing for me. Um. I have a nice little twenty eight cage I still do sporting clays with and um. Uh, so there was always sort of this um butting heads going on with me. Of of I liked taxidermy. I liked what I saw in them museums. I liked it when I went to a lodge and I saw big moose heads on the wall and uh. And I liked nature and I liked animals, and I couldn't always jive all of them together. Um, but I knew there was something about all of it that I liked. And yeah, it wasn't until much later. Um. It's funny getting into taxidermy first. Uh. But I was living in New York, and I loved the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History are the absolute best habitat wildlife dioramas in the entire world. Um and so I love talking about them, I love looking at them. I love the history behind the artists who made them, and um, Carl Aakley Um, who was responsible for the Africa Wing and all their stories. And I was working at a museum. I was also working on a museum called the Morbid Anatomy Museum, which is unfortunately no longer a physical museum, but they still have a website more of an anatomy. And it's about sort of history that gets lost through the cracks, things that were very common at one time, but maybe history has swept them under the rug, like the way you used to take a picture of someone after they died, because maybe you could only afford one photograph at the time, and if someone died young, that was going to end up being their photographs and things like that, or like the history of taxidermy, and so I got to learn more and more about the history. And about ten or eleven years ago I took an introductory taxidermy class and after that I was like, oh, I can do this. I'm not I'm not squeamish um. And I like, and you you were approaching as like an art craft, something that would connect you to animals, not necessarily you can't wait heal a big buck and yeah, exactly um and the yeah. So it was sort of coming at it from a backwards angle of getting into the taxidermy, the art of it, the history of it, and text for me is really a great representation of the history of global exploration because you go back to this time where you had these cabinets of curiosity, which was really at a time where people were able to afford to travel the whole world. They would travel somewhere and they wanted to bring back souvenirs or like, look at this weird thing and bring it back and show it to their friends. So tax termy became kind of a necessity of like, well, if I want to show off this weird animal, I have to figure out how to preserve it. So in earnest, that's sort of where it started in terms of how accurately can I represent this animal? And it took a long time to get it right, but um uh, it wasn't until much later that I and I think it's sort of part of the You know, everyone in New York is very conscious of going to the farmers market to get their food, and um uh, there's a lot of pride in that you know of where you get your food and you know what you spend on meat, um and uh, I think, you know, I started reading these articles in the New York Times, in the Wall Street Journal and uh Q d m A has there field to fork movement, And you know, just looking into that, it really it's not hard to see the natural progression of farm to table, uh to field to fork. And if you are really, really, really concerned about where your food comes from, you know, why don't you go get it yourself right out of the woods? Right? And I remember, it's been a decade I've been in hunting media, and remember the first time I read like the New York Times headline hipsters or hunters, and they've been recycling that recycling, recycling. I think they'd love to go back to that old trope. That's old to me now, but it's still relevant. I mean, is the reason that's being continued written about because there's iterations of what I think is is a genuine movement, or at least in pockets, could be called the movement. So like, I mean, you're living in a place where not only is there you can't walk out to your back forty and go scout for white tails. You can't. I mean the effort that you have to put into actually doing the act of hunting is much more than someone that sits here in Bozeman or is this somewhere else, some more rural areas. So you have that barrier to entry. Your other barried entry is there's no community around you supporting you to do it. And then I'm sure that's probably even more important than the actual physical going and doing it. But somehow you've kind of you knocked all these barriers down. So to describe to people what that is, because a lot of hunters like me, who my dad taught me on thing, I've never known much anything other than that activity, it's hard for me to think of those barriers as real. But they are for you, or were for you. Yeah, So being one of those sort of like new hunters. Yeah, especially in New York, it's real difficult. Um, the even if you are very interested and you have put in the amount of time and research and work that I have, that does not necessarily make it any easier. Um, just getting out of the city is difficult for any purpose. Most people do not have cars. I was gonna say a lot of folks don't have cars. Yeah, you don't have a car, So it's like, okay, well, where am I going, how am I getting there? And what am I gonna do? Bring a deer back on the train with me? Like what do I what's the And then of course it's like mentorship, like okay, who teaches you how to? You know? Obviously I took my hunter safety course, which incidentally, I'm absolutely signing up to be an instructor because there's maybe just a couple of them in the city. And tell me where where did you take? In Queens? There are two places offering classes and one was like a really long, one full day and I wanted to do that one because it was close to my house and it was a one and done day and then I couldn't sign up in time and it filled it filled up, uh, And so I had to take this one in Queens, which took me like it was like three days long or four days long or something. And it's not really about you know this class. I don't know the last time you took that class. But it's not really about hunting. It's just about outdoor safety, gun safety. Um, you gotta learn the rules and regulations, and I think that's also another thing. So in one of the lectures that I give, I give a couple of lectures that I travel around with and one of them is about the economic and environmental value of hunting in America, specifically in America UM and people. One of the parts of that is, Okay, if you're talking to young people, city people about hunting and maybe they're interested, there's still a skepticism about guns. So, uh, even if you're skeptical of guns, you tell someone, Okay, well, in order to get a hunting license, you have to take it's something like twenty hours of you know, it's like ten hours of ten hours of online class and then another ten or twelve hours of in person class. And that's what you have to do to get a hunting license. Now, to buy a gun, you don't. You don't have to do any of that. But to get a hunting license, yes you do. And so I think that a little bit of that changes people's minds, like okay, yeah, the responsible gun ownership and because that's definitely a part of it for people. And I think that's also a part of the rise in uh, you know, crossbows things like that, people who want to air on the side of bow so that if they have problems with guns. UM. I try to steer people away from that because my concern is, even as a would be hunter, my concern is for the animal. So I want what I consider to be the most effective method of killing an animal. Yeah, I've said that recently on this podcast and and for for years that that I look at efficacy is is a big part of when I get to the actual killing the animal. I'm now thinking about the animal, not thinking anymore about myself and what's fair chase or all those other all those other concepts that we have. But it's interesting to hear you say it that way, and I think most people I would think that. And if you're a new hunter, you've never seen anything die, taking a crossbow out and sticking and sticking a deer in the guts is I'm sure would turn you away just as quickly as you know some some unsafe action with the firearm. So, I mean there's a lot of elements to it, you know that. That Again, guys like me who've been hunting my whole life, I rarely have to think about unless I run into a new hunter quote unquote. And so I also was just thinking, as you're talking a reality show about a hunter safety course in Queens would be that it was absolutely Yeah, it was that I felt like recording the whole thing. Um was it mostly just brand like guys like yourself and I'd say maybe, I'd say maybe, I'd say maybe one guy and like myself, and then there were a couple younger kids and then a lot of older people. Um. And from a total mix of it was mostly men, but definitely some women, um and a couple of younger girls um. But definitely a huge range of ethnicity and um, yeah, I'd say it was a pretty big age range. Yeah, that's that's interesting. Mean there's some dichotomy there that that's lost on those of us that that are here in Bozeman, and you know across the country that there's such a that there might be a need for this in the in the inner city, and we I often talk about urbanization being one of the threats to hunting. But you know why I was interested to talk to you. I want to get to the history at tax term, because I think that's gonna be if that is interesting in anything, But it is thinking about like the environment that you know, every time I go to New York City up in there many times, but I just look around like this is so wholly different than than many other places in this world, let alone in this country. The perspectives that come out in the world views that come out of living in a place like this or so so varied from from what we see, you know here in Montana, where other places I've lived on daily basis, And so it's interesting to come out of kind of that you know, melting pot and into the hunting world. And you know how you think of it, that's and that's I'm not necessarily thinking I'm gonna with these lectures educational seminars that I'm going to turn people into hunters necessary only, but I do want them to walk away with a different perspective. And it's mostly just a knowledge of the system. The system in America is so effective, and it's just this perfectly closed circle of where the money comes from and where the money goes. And uh, it is really really beautiful the way it works. And once I tell people that, it's always a positive response. Um, you describe how you know, describe those interactions because you you just like you said, travel and you give lectures, amen for for looking at the structure of it. We often talk about that here is the structure of it's so beautiful, so long lasting. It's a century old some of this stuff, um and and it still works today within the modern construct of our government, our legislation. I'd say it's the most effective system in our government because it's completely closed. Um. Yeah, it's really so, I'd say the most honestly, the the the biggest responses I get are when I'm talking to my friends about this, because they trust me as an animal nut and an animal lover. So um. But I had a friend who was very skeptical of hunt, just couldn't didn't like the idea of it at all. And she told me, you know, the horror stories about her dad and um or her family members coming home from a white tail hunt and her being upset at the dead deer hanging in the backyard and them teasing her about like killing Bambi and stuff like that, and it's like, that's that's what'll do it, you know, and teasing a small child about a yeah, right, that'll do it. That'll do it, um i. And because of that, I have a whole section in my lecture, so it towards the end it's like, yeah, what about guns? And then I go into that, and what about jerks? And I have a whole what about jerks? And it's like, yeah, there's jerks out there, just like there are jerks everywhere. But you know, you can look at how the money has spent, how the system works, and yeah, the point I always make is, whether you're a jerk or not, you still have to pay into the system. You know, if you're just you're going out there to shoot a shoot a buck and take the backstraps and you know, throw the antlers in a bucket and you're and you go about the entire process of hunting as a jerk or a dick, you still are paying. You're still paying your way. You still are bound by the laws, you know, much like, uh, if there's a camper and that campers littering, that does I mean that's just a jerk, that's a dick. That's a person that doesn't belong in the greater subset of like outdoor recreationalists. So it's you know, I'm sure of coming from where you are. That's that's the view. The view is, let's let's focus on the very small number of these individuals that are going hunting that just for lack of a better term or assholes. Yeah, well, because that's what you see in heroes, especially in the media or anywhere you hear about the jerks, you know. Um so I think, but I think we're at a time where I know you've spoken to the Pace brothers and um the tailor sharp from modern Tyler Sharp from modern Huntsman, and I'm a I'm a huge fan of that publication and what they're doing because that that publication, specifically this most recent issue on conservation, that is what will change minds. It's that type of media that might reach people who don't normally see that kind of stuff. And again it's like, okay, well you've got to get that into someone's hands first. And there's and there's there's pockets in the hunting world that just don't like that. They don't like the reskinning of hunting. They don't like approaching it that way. They feel like that's changing the core of what hind is supposed to be and what the culture of our community is. They feel like, you know, there's some insular points within it, and there's parts of that that I see. But to your point, the reason why I had Tyler on and why I love the pace brothers and why I pursued these things because I want to see a varied look at what hunting is. It's so it's different to so many people. Modern huntsman Is is a fine example of someone. This is something like through the prism of which Tyler sees hunting. He's a different dude. He's spent a lot of time in Africa. He has a worldly sensibility. He's not just thinking about the white sail in his back. He already's thinking about the entire conservation landscape. And there's great value in that. Yeah, sure it's not the not the way hunting has been portrayed and for most of the last two decades. But I think it's it's valuable. It's the good to hear you say that, Like in the places where hunting just doesn't have the right representation, that could be a new way to do it, which is is value. I see only value in that. I don't see any detracting from what we have right well, because I think that so the people that are going to continue who already hunt and are going to continue hunting, or the people who come from a family of hunters here young father Wren. So there's those people are going to continue hunting and continue hunting in their family already. But if truly the number of hunters is declining, then you need to bring on new people. And the reason the new people don't come on is because they either have these negative connotations or you know. And then the more difficult thing is how do you get people who are willing, um and interested involved in you know, a world that you know that kind of stuff is not so easy and it's very expensive. Yeah, did you did you run into that? Jumping into hunting like you did? Did you run into any I always say because it's not about me, But I always think of like I want to build a bridge. I want there to be a place where people can come and feel like they're They don't have to think a certain way or look a certain way to be a hunter. They can just be. They can just pursue it for the reasons that they want to. Sometimes the honey community is not real good at like saying come over here, but you gotta think this. If not, we're gonna kick you out. I have I have huge problem with that. So as you kind of jumped into this, I mean you're given lectures you um, there's a lot of parts of your professional life. They're inclusion in hunting. If you run into any any points where you're just like, man, this this sucks. You mean from just from opposition, just from a hunter standpoint, where you just didn't feel you feel like if if you you had to be a certain way to fit in or you know. I'm a little conscious of that when I'm meeting with people who are long time, like old school hunters, um I, and I think it's kind of like you, I'm interested in listening to their viewpoint because that's very important for me to absorb where all these other people are coming from, especially when I'm relaying that to a group of you know, would be new hunters or people that I'm trying to convince hunting is good for the environment. I've been lucky that I haven't I haven't bumped into any negative negative vibes from anyone yet. Um And but but I I haven't put it past anyone. I've been. I've been looking enough, and I've been in situations where I can talk to someone long enough that they can listen to they can listen to everything. I was at a last the last place I spoke at was a a Science and Skepticism Uh Nexus Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism. That's a brave that's a brave man to walk into the skepticism department like, hey, here's what here's my view point. It was It was perfect because a lot of people have spoken the whole weekend about the anti anti vax movement, and they're like, Okay, we're a room full of medical scientists, and what do we do about this anti vaccination movement? We have all of this information and all the numbers and the science all adds up, and what do we do about people's perception? Why can't you Why is it so difficult to prove things with facts? And so then I come out there and I immediately talk about like it's good to hunt if you care about the environment, and it kind of blew people's minds. And but then you just lay that that same logic on them, like you don't take my word for it. Go look into the system, look at how it works. Look where the money comes from, Look where the money goes um And you know, the government will get money from somewhere and it might as well be from people who want to keep wild lands wild. And you know, Yeah. We were just talking about that in the last podcast, about how it is a closed loop. To your point, it is you have a constituency that is willingly paying this this exercise tax, willingly paying these tag fees and and oftentimes arguing for them to be The duck stamp is one of the only federal legislations that that we're arguing raise it. The constitutions are like, great, we don't care raise it. So you have a willing constituency paying into a system that benefits them been fit's the wild life that they pursue and benefits the place at the wild places they'd like to go. This is like on this on this massive scale, over decades and decades, going back to you know, Pittman Robertson and the Lacy Act and all these things that we're that are eighty ninety years old that are still to this day effective on a federal and and sometimes on a state level. So I mean, it's it's amazing. That's how every one of my lectures ends is me telling people to buy duck stamps. You don't have to be a hunter, you don't have to hunt, just buy a duck stamp, because that is stamp on your notebook. Yes, exactly, do whatever you want. But it's the most direct money directly goes right there. You don't have to question where does this go? You know, it's like nine point five per like scents some every dollar or something. Yeah. It's also I find myself, you know, thinking a lot the same way you do. It's like we have this this really good example of how to manage a resource that we all value. I mean we all hold the same but people in Brooklyn that value animals and want them to to thrive and live and be there and appreciate them, they think the same way I think. I want them to thrive and live and be there and I appreciate them. So you know, we have that in common. And what we also have in common is like one of the best systems of funding for for management and conservation that there is that I know of, that I've ever heard of. So there's that common ground. It's good to see you going out there and highlight that common ground with folks. And and I don't imagine you've ever had somebody stand up say I don't agree with that, because it's not pretty infallible in the way that's set up. That's what it's good to know. But I think we should get to the history of tax m I heard you telling one Ryan Callahan out there, the guy with the mustache, that one time I would you pick up a pigeon you were in Uh yeah, it was a morning dove of morning dove. So I think this is probably a good way to illustrate your love for animals and then also how it spends in tax term. So tell us a story about the time you picked up the morning dove on the street took it home. Um, maybe it was, but yeah, I was I was going to the movies and uh, I was walking to the theater and I walked past this, uh pigeon that had flown into a window, and uh, I always keep a plastic bag with me, so I do the old Cooper Scooper method and just picked him right up off the ground and stuck him in my backpack and then just kept going to the movie theater. So watched the movie and then had to take the train home at the end, and yeah, the the inside of my freezer is so you went, Nie, you watched the movie with the Dead Yeah, with the Dead burden? Yeah, okay, says a lot about I'm concerned but also intrigued. And so you just you went home and then you Yeah, he's been in my freezer for a while. I had to do a little bit of a freezer clean out a while ago because I was getting packed in there with roadkill and somebody's got to do it, man. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing, you know. I live in Brooklyn, so I don't come across a lot of moose. Um so a lot weird if Yeah. Yeah, So I tell people I'll tax on me anything that will fit in my freezer in Brooklyn. It's good. Hey, Stevenell lived like that for a long time. It works. It works. So you give a lecture called the History of tax Remy. We're not gonna we don't want to blow the whole the whole thing here for everybody. Um, they certainly go to your website and find out where you are. I'm sure, yeah, Um. But the history at tax Dmy, I know for my reason things that I know. It gets. It goes so many places culturally, and it gets into like anthropology and zoology and just the history of our relationship with animals. And as you're speaking about earlier, so when you when you talk about the history at Taccidenty, where do you start? What's the first thing you said? So that Yeah, what what you just said is a great encapsulation. That's why I like the history of tax Urmy as a history subject so much because it does cover so many bases. And I love animals, so it's all about animals, but you are also getting so much of global exploration and the history of people's and then think is much the same way, right, I mean, yeah, you learned the history of hunting. You kind of learned there's these spider webs and and you know cracks in the foundation that leads you in these other places about that. So that's cool. Um yeah, So I always um, I throw up a slide up there of the ancient Egyptians and immediately say, we are not talking about them. What the ancient Egyptians did was momification. That is very different from taxes or me. But what they did know was how to preserve stuff, and we have great examples of that. Um. So they understood the importance of drying and really taxed me is about extremely controlled drying. If you can clean something and dry it well enough, it'll last a very long time. So the ancient Egyptians understood that. And then so then you get into a period from like fifteen hundreds on and you get these cabinets of curiosity where now people have enough money that they've got their own ships and they want to explore the world, and because of that, they want to bring back souvenirs. So it's like, what are you going to bring back? And how can you bring it back if you don't preserve it properly. So most things were not preserved properly. They just looked like garbage or they fall apart or whatever. But um, they would have these rooms that are really the precursors to the modern day museum. So you had a room in your house, like a very large like a study or a den, but it had all of these artifacts all over the walls, of stuff that you had collected on your travels, and um, that sort of turned into our modern day museums. And uh, the first, the first museum in America was in Philadelphia, and uh, these early museums, it was still sort of cabinet of curiosity asque things weren't labeled in catalog didn Uh, they were just kind of stuff thrown up on the walls for you to look at, and they would have a vague um information of like where it came from or something like that. But uh, when you had the the the earliest ones that actually practiced Lenaean taxonomy and actually listing things and organizing species, and then you sort of get into these modern day museums that were able to showcase the the animals more in tax nomy is getting a little better at this point, is it? Is it safe to say like at this early stage, like the Museum of Oddities approaches more where tax nomy sat prior to the more kind of well intellectual precisions. So it was definitely it was a private thing. So if you, um, if you had the money, then you would have if you were it was it was a popular Victorian era hobby, not just for hunters but um uh to preserve things and get better at preserving things. It was sort of this mix of it was really about collecting, so people would be really obsessed with birds and they might try to get every particular species of seabird that lived near where they lived or something, or bird eggs or what have you. Um, But it was a lot of it was about collecting and um sort of showing off your collection. Hunting was a big part of that UM once you had the money to start traveling and bringing back the animals that you had hunted. UM. There was definitely that element to it, UM preserving, uh, preserving specimens from your own hunts. But there was also the museum aspect really was about showing off animals to people who didn't normally get a chance to see these things. You know, there's no TV, there's no so it was when you went to the museum and you could see all these different species from all over the globe. UM, there's a this is earlier, UM, earlier in the history of taxes. I mean, one character who I really like talk about is Martha and Maxwell. She's very cool lady who um she and her husband, Uh, we're moving out to I can't remember. It's Colorado, Colorado and yeah, they called her the Colorado Huntress. And her husband's like, yeah, I want to go pan for gold. And so they get this house and she wants to He's like, you take care of the house. I gotta go pan for gold. And she goes to the house and there's some guy living in it, and uh, she's like, you have the house, and so they go back and forth, and she eventually is able to lock him out of the house so she can get back into it, because she's like, this is the house we bought. And she goes inside and there's a bunch of like half finished tax remy projects and she's like whoa uh, and but she's kind of into it. And then just from those pieces being in the place, she picked it up and taught herself and finished the pieces and eventually was the representative from the state of Colorado to this huge Philadelphia like World exposition where all the states were very proudly showing off the best of their state, and she represented the entire state of Colorado with just her tax in jermy. That was what Colorado picked to represent. So it's like that was a big deal. Um, what years are So this is like this is eighteen hundreds, let's see early early eighteen hundreds. Um, I can't I don't have all my notes in front of me, Like I'm not gonna remember I'm always I'm always missing out on dates and data. Um. But but basically two so two guys who we consider kind of the fathers of modern day taxidermy. Oh yeah, she's bad ass. Yeah, she's she's great. They named an owl after her. She's very cool. Yeah, look her up and Martha and Maxwell, she's a cool lady. And yeah. So like we consider like William T. Hornaday or Carl Alakeley, these like fathers of modern day taxidermy, and you know, they were just kids when Martha was doing all this stuff. Um now, they were much better at it than she was. But she was completely self taught. And at the time, no one had seen stuff like that. No one had thought to put, yeah, that's her, that's her exposition. So so so the fact that she had animals in natural poses amongst trees and their natural environment, that was like a new thing. Normally, you would just put a head on a wall, or you just had sort of this static animal standing in the middle of a room. But these were leaping deer, and uh so it was revolutionary. Eighteen seventy six, it says that her there's a stereographic picture of her Rocky Mountain display, and it just it is. It shows a care as an elk kind of running through a meadow. There's a prong horn, there's a leaping mule deer that is running away from a mountain. Lion. This is all, you know, like a nature scape surrounding it. So, like you said, I think there's looks like a bear two in there. So it's yeah, it's like an early wildlife dirama. Now all of those things wouldn't be happening in that space, but you know she wanted to really show it off. Maybe it was just that many many around um, but that's it's really to me. I mean, looking at something from eighteen seventy six, you're starting to see what you see today, you know, a real appreciation of the natural interaction of animals and depicting that through through taxidentary. It's pretty cool. Yeah, And I think there's say, uh, people don't really understand what goes into a good taxidermy amount and I think they just see taxidermy as its own separate thing, as opposed to an art form, and it really really people need to respect it as an art form. I can't tell you how many times I've had to answer the question, and you maybe just being an expert in taxidermy and living in in the city, how many times people have asked me, is that to realize is that the real tongue? Is it the real animal? Under there like, and just the the lack of understanding of of those things. And when I would go, you know, be on a immediate trip or something, I would go to a real fancy ranch house, never be a bunch of like guests touring the west and out in Colorado, and they would look at a giant elkin. At first, they would kind of you know, tense up and and take a few steps back and then ask the questions that it's like, is that was that? Is that the real animal? Is that what's under the hair? Yeah? Yeah, when you look at it, when you look at a piece like that, and it's almost it's kind of fun when they can't tell if that's the real nose or the real eyes. From the point exactly, it's kind of the point and if you've really, really, really done your job, then you shouldn't be able to tell much of a difference. Um. But yeah, to understand so those early tech Now now you can buy a form already made form, and you can to a certain extent, slip the skin right on top of it. Now you do have to make you do have to make adjustments based on the size of your animal. But up after that, exactly make it real pretty. But what's Martha and Maxwell doing exactly? So these are people who had to build their their forms, their mannequins from scratch, and in order to do that, you must be a sculptor. When uh, when the tag service for the American Museum of Natural History, when they're making all of those forms, those are all hand sculpted. If you cannot perfectly sculpt the musculature of a Kodiak beard, it's not gonna it's not gonna when you put that skin back on, it's not gonna look right. Um, it all had to be hand sculpted in or somebody like that living in the middle of uh, seemingly nowhere getting I mean, is it? How are the sculpting? Yeah? So that well, so the sculptures came a little bit later. What what earlier taxidermists were doing was a form of what's called rapping. And so you might use the skeleton to help you get an idea of how to build a little armature out of wood or something. And then once you have that really really basic armature on top of that, you start literally wrapping over and over and over again twine or some kind of twine string, and what you're doing is mimicking the muscle strands in your body. So you are one after another, over and over and over again. You are creating the musculature of that animal over this very simple rudimentary uh mannequin, but you have to sculpt it with twine um. And then later on we get more advanced techniques where you use again you use the skeleton to help you build a rudimentary armature, and then after that you are sculpting with clay the all the musculature of the animal. And then after that you make a mold and then that mold is lighter and more stable for the for the long term. But yeah, that's when you get into the sculpture. And now you can still do that if you're real serious about making something from scratch. But they're also you know, taxidermy catalogs and you can you can get your pre made. In the turn of the center, tanning hides was very common common thing, so there's no no bury entry there. It's more to the art of the form and how do you how do you create a lifelike version of that tan hide over there? Right? And the it was because taxidermy was so popular in the late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, especially with everybody going on these early safaris to Africa and the early nineteen hundreds, Um, there was this huge boom in taxidermy. I mean there were some towns that had eighteen taxidermists in the town. Um, it was massive, and there were Uh an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History walked down I believe it was Fifth Avenue in New York once and he counted something like two hundred different species of birds on women's hats in one day. So it was and this was before we had all these protection regulations. So it was part of that, um, the sort of the bad, all the bad that led to the good. So you know, you get like the extinction of the passenger pigeon because you know, no one knew what there was no bag what's a bag limit, you know, and there were so many of them. They'd say that you could look up and you wouldn't be able to see the sky. There were so many passenger pigeons, and so people would just shoot the hell out of them and then they'd sell them in the market as meat or anything. So and uh, feathers from different wild birds were extremely popular as something that you would put as part of a hat or an outfit in the Victorian era, and this led to just huge markets for wild animal pelts and feathers. When you kind of the lead or take away the regulation from the equation, taxidermy becomes a whole different thing, you know, a whole different thing. It's serving a whole different, whole different audience at that point, um and then in stern essentially how connected what's taxi army too? You know what we'll call kind of the raping and pillaging of of our wildlife resource because because I think of it as I don't know this, hopefully we can get to it. I think of it as certainly when you know, refrigeration and the railroads starting to poke westward, and then then the urban centers could kind of connect to the western landscapes and even into the Midwestern landscapes and say, hey, we need meat, we need pelts, we need hides, and now you know, now we can put it in a fridge and put it on a railroad car and send it back. And so that's that connective tissue is really more tangible at that at this juncture, taxi army certainly I'm sure enjoyed a boom from that from those times. Yeah. Um yeah, it's funny that you bring up the the railroads, I mean refrigeration and you know that's how uh So the modern idea of what a of like preserving a person after they die for funeral viewing, like if you're gonna get embalmed. The whole reason for embalming was just during the Civil War people people used to die at home and you would have people in the parlor and they would lay there and you could come and pay respects. And during the Civil War people were dying so far from home, it was like what do we how do we get them back home? And that was sort of the whole invention of embalmbing. You know today it's almost like, oh, yeah, you have someone embalmed and you put them in a casket and that's just what's normal. But it's like, no, there's no cultural history behind. We just needed to get dead bodies from here to there. And um uh But yeah, so with the animals, I mean, so Carl Lakeley was in Africa and if he was getting elephants for a museum, everything had to be done in the field, and that is I mean that's just great. You're out in the middle of with the sun baking down on you and you have to completely skin and you have I mean it was gutting and skinning elephants and gutting and skilling skinning elephants. Not only that, but once the skin is off, you had to take the most precise measurements of every single part of that body because you would have to replicate it once you got back to the museum. So it's it's all of the all of the gutting and skinning plus all these measurements plus you know, you got it. Now you gotta get this giant heavy skin bac somewhere and the I mean these guys are doing it just you know, with a small crew. Um. But yeah, that all had to be done in the field, preserved to an extent that they could get it back to New York and then do everything else in the in the museum there. Um, you know, the museum doesn't have tax enermists on staff anymore. We pretty much have all the all the taxidermy. Yeah, but they do, Um, they will contract out if if things need to be repaired. Um, there's a guy named George Dante and he's awesome. He has an awesome tax ermist. He he built The National Geographic did a cover story on it once of a it's a fake elephant tusk that was made to put a transporter chip in so that this elephant tusk could be introduced into the black market ivory trade and we could follow its progression through the black market. And he made that. Um and he does the so much of the museum tax ermy and text remy repair. Um uh. But yeah, I mean there's some really phenomenal artist. It's not there. I mean, if you can look up the World Taxidermy Championships, I mean, the stuff that is that comes in and out of that show is unbelieving. There is Yeah, I've never seen that. But I mean I go to Sfari Club International shows and you go there and you just see, you know, animal art, taxidermy and some of these other really big shops that that really they're not. It's just they're not the way I think if tax ermys like I killed something, remake it. Yeah, there's that. That's not how they're thinking of it. You know. It really is a study in kind of the interaction of animals and the natural world. I mean, it's you know, whether the whether they think about that way or not, that's the way it seems to me. Either way, you have to know your ship. Um. There's a story of at the at the M and h Um, some one of the one of the bird halls was under construction and there's some I can't some guys like, you know, hanging a goose or something from the from the ceiling and two guys walked by and they start laughing and pointing and they go with the gooses they're flying the wrong way, and you know, you look around, you're like, what you know, what do you mean their flying don't? You're inside a diorama and it's like, oh, okay. Because of where the light is and because of the direction the goose is flying, they could tell what time of year it was and the direction that the goose was going. And they're like, Nope, that's the wrong way, and they'd redo the entire diorama. It's like all these podcast listeners that are like, hey, here's what you should have done. Damn, Yeah, the geese were flying the wrong way on that podcast. There's always somebody yep, and that's when did you know? I think if you jump forward a tax jeremy now kind of what it is from the listener what listeners to this podcast see it as because it's connected. It's connected to hunting in a huge, huge way. Um, they're intertwined and in almost every almost every case, how did we get there? Because we get to a point where we're very curious and what's out there. We you know, tax jermy and other preservation methods have a lot of value in society. Then you know, we start to get into the Industrial Revolution, We start to move into a time where we're preserving well places and now we're putting game regulations on. So what's house taxes are only changing during those those times. Yeah, it's funny that there are two such Um they seem like opposite sides of taxes there mean sort of the museum side, uh and the hunting side. But you know it's a lot of the same people doing the same work. Uh. But the when I like, I have taxed me at home, it's nothing, nothing that I've shot. Um for me, it's like, well, you know, these animals they die anyway eventually, and it's like I have no problem with preservation. Like if we want to start tax dmain more people to hey find by me, like, if something's gonna go, might as well preserve it if it's and um uh, but the the text ermists, who you know, depending on where you are, certainly you're gonna see a lot of similar things in the shop. You know, maybe you're in real whitetail country and that's the majority of ye what's coming in and out. And I think I think there certainly is some misconception about oh, well, you've got all these heads on the wall. You know, it's that the only reason you did it. And I don't. I don't see how it has to be a separate thing. I know there are a lot of um, maybe people who won't have an animal taxidermied because maybe they didn't think it's disrespectful to the animal. I couldn't disagree more. I mean, it's a beautiful animal, and if you're going to shoot it for food anyway, why not keep it around? And where where? Let's you should explore that because I mean, it's it's too obvious not to explore, like the idea of I feel that way a little bit. I wouldn't say that I'm opposed to shoulder mounts or opposed to that kind of taxidermy or even full body tax or. I'm not opposed to it. I think it looks nice in certain places. I don't feature in my home, But I don't know that I'm not doing that because just because of the folks who come in and what their reaction might be, and I'm just not saving myself the trouble and just like rather put a skull on the wall and not have to and not to have people go, oh, trophies, I maybe rather have that. I don't know if that's why I'm doing I haven't really set and thought about it, but I to me somehow, I just I prefer a nice clean skull in the European mount That's just my preference. But that's that's kind of embedded in the hunting culture for us to defend taxidermy, defend why we're doing it. We speak about that all the time. How did that come? How did that come to be? You know? I think that often the word yeah, the word trophies. Certainly, there's so many different ways to unpack trophies, the trophy hunting and a weaponized word. UM so I'm slay of European mounts to um, I like just a little skull cap, but I like it covered in in hair. Um. But and I do have a few full full tax red remy pieces. Um, yeah, I I don't. I don't have a problem with it. I've never seen obviously, I don't have a problem with it. Um. I think it's funny because in New York there are so many people who I teach an introduction to taxidermy class, and uh so people aren't necessarily opposed to it. I think also it seems weird to me that someone might come in and see a set of antlers and not have a problem with it, but then would have a problem with seeing a full shoulder mount you see that. That's where that's the question I'm asking, Like, I don't, I can't. I understand the trophy thing. I understand that that it could be somehow compared to some kind of egotistical wanting. I get that. I understand that's where we are, But how the fund did we get there? I couldn't answer that question. I don't know. I think it is a part of this whole conversation where people they want to think that they are doing that they are on like the most ethical side of whatever it is. But ethics and morality and whatever there the minute you explain I think it's the same thing that the minute you explain that North American model of conservation and how that system works, the fact that you are paying into a system that ultimately does benefit wildlife and wild spaces at the end of the day, then who cares what happens to the head? Yeah, well, wouldn't you want us to not get rid of that? Wouldn't you want us to do something with it? Isn't Yeah, isn't it more interesting to preserve and honor in this way that it's like, well, yeah, this is here forever now, and it's always like I think it just comes down to a measurement and motivation. People want to try to like they want to determine what's your real motivation, and they feel like if the end result is a man many things but also includes quote unquote trophy on your wall, then that colors your motivation in some way. And when you're like, listen, I'll be honest. I I just moved into a new house. We built a house inre Montana. I've got way more tax germy than I could ever I'm a lucky man, Like I got more tax dermany at thirty three than I would ever hope to gain in my whole life. And and it's almost annoying, Like it's just like, I love this stuff. It does represent a lot of great memories, but now it's just a thing. It's just a thing now and and I have a connection to it, but it's not I wouldn't if you eliminated this from the equation, I would keep hunting and enjoy just as much. So it's different than the meat. But I see the art in it. I understand it. I want it there um and I appreciate it. But I for someone to to come to my house and be like, look at that double shoulder mount of two black tail box, you bastard, you know, instead of saying and I've had people do that, you know, and oh yeah, absolutely, Like oh you're proud of yourself. Huh, Like what what you know? You're proud of your deer, real proud of your dear. We wanted to make sure I saw them. Oh but you don't live here. I want to make them. That's my answer is I wanted to make sure that I saw them. And thanks for bringing it up. Let me tell you the story. You know, that that kind of thing, and so there's some frustration that I don't I'm sure we could never kind of get to an answer on that question. But it is a question like the trophy mentality, the way that kind of has spun up in our culture, as as taking taxary down a couple of notches. Yeah, I think if it's the if, well, first of all, if it opens up a conversation, then I'm happy for it. Um, if you are someone who can articulate, that's what I was just gonna say. If it opens up one you're like, yeah, man, I like drop times. I hear that a lot. I like a kicker. You know that's not gonna dissuade people, right, So yeah, if you can have a conversation, um, then great. Uh yeah. And I think this that idea has has recently come into at least an our little company here, come into you know, favor that that we're talking about this like it's a it's an artifact. Yeah, you know, it will be passed down. It's a physical artifact of something I went and did. And then let's say I get hit by a bus tomorrow and my son decides I'm gonna keep all I'm not gonna chunk all these uh amounts he'll have. He'll learn things about me that maybe he wouldn't have known through those who'll have to ask question, what where do you get that? And then it's just like pathway into some something I did. And so it's an artifact in my life. It's a little more interesting than just a photograph or yea, and yeah, they're beautiful. I mean I was just the last couple of days I've been here in Montana. I was at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Wild Sheep Foundation, and man have they got some stuff. And I mean you walk in there here like wow, because these are just like the most insane specimens and uh, you know you don't get that close to them. Other when was the last time you were that? When when were you so close you could touch a you know, a big horn sheep. I always think about that. There's like this weird can actually Yellowstone Park in taxim me, it's like what if Mother nature is like listen, I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to tolerate some stuff. One thing I'm willing to tolerate is if if you guys want to like have an area where you just calm and play like you're in nature and like you can see the animals and you can appreciate them. And but every once in a while a buffalo is gonna kill one of you. Yeah, that's that's that's the penance you must. I would prefer you have a natural history am than this living one. But you can have and I'm gonna let you have it. We're just gonna take out like three of you a year. But that's that's kind of Yellowstone is this vestige of like what it Here's the natural world kind of you know, microwave down to something you can take in from the road, and and it's become like a zoo because of that, Like you can because people are so removed from nature now that they drive through Yellowstone and it becomes like a I don't know, it becomes like lion country, Safario. We were just looking at that little girl that got whacked by the buffalo and just and then reading the listening to the park official saying we stay seventy five ft away from all these ants. Like seventy five ft away is nothing, it's twenty five yards. I'm not good at math. I think that's twenty five yards something and it's close like a buffalo can cover twenty five yards and no, no problem, as evidenced by a young lady. So yeah, there's this that like that's just kind of like a representative of the natural world. People can go and see it, they can enterally pay the y I'm glad it's there. Serves a great purpose, But that's kind of like that that's a step down from the real experience, and then a step down from that is you know, a stationary foaming wrapped in wrapped in. It's still it still has that. It's crazy to see kids at the museum though, because as many really really awesome nature shows that there are now, you know, like of all the planet earths and things like that, and the crazy filming that they're capable of doing, they're awesome. But when you are in the museum and you are right there next to them, you see how big they are, and there's so many things that you see in those dioramas that you can't see on the TV because you're just not your body isn't that close to them. And you still see kids just an absolute wonder at the signs to the look of this animal just well just try and like I've experienced things like hunting moose in British Columbia and having a big bull moose walked ten feet behind me grunting and knocking over trees, and just like it's sometimes crossed my mind. I live on the same earth as this thing. Yeah, and so it's it's there's that amazement in that wonder in those but that's a rare thing. Like there's very few people that have been in that situation or especially regularly. So you you kind of you can look to tax to me as a guide to the natural world. This is like, this is what's out there. Look how big it is. When my son sees a t rex skeleton that the old the Museum of the Rockies here in town, he doesn't just go, well, yeah, another one of those, Like he now sees that the toys in his room aren't you know, that's not a dinosaur. That's a dinosaur. So there's a connection there that I like, Yeah, it's it is cool to have those life size representations. As much as the the shows are awesome, and I mean there's just there's so much information out there, but to see one right in front of you that close it really it does something to people still. Do you have like a piece of taxi ermy that you've seen that just completely has always stuck with the anology than something, whether it's whether it's a it's this timeliness in nature, or just like it's art. I I really am so lucky to be in the American Museum of Natural History as often as I am. That's why because right because I I mean I remember seeing those as a kid and then seeing them as an adult. You just have a greater appreciation for all the work that went in because it's not just the taxes. I mean, the tax for me itself is an unbelievable amount of work and it is the best, but so much goes into those dioramas. The background art is also the best background art in the world. And that's its own crazy skill because you have to be dealing with the the depth, the depth perception of someone standing in front of a wolf and then okay, how do you make this this? Uh, how do you create that distance and the sky and how do you make it all look right? And that's very difficult to do. And all of the plants that you see in front of you all at four ground art. Those are every single one of those leaves was handmade by someone, like out of wax from a real I mean, it's crazy. The So there's one uh one downstairs the North American Hall. That's the most recent hall. It was completed in the forties forty five something like that, and um, it was actually renovated relatively recently in h two thousand and twelve because the lights, you know, the lights that used to be used in there, uh, they've bleached out a lot of the fur, so you get a lot of you know, Kodiak bears that are kind of blonde, and so the glass had to come down. You can only enter the dioramas from the front, so the glass has to come down. You have to build something to stand on while you're airbrushing the bears back to their natural brown. Um. But all of those dioramas, they're really really, really unbelievable. There's one diorama of these two moose fighting and it's incredibly um what's the word. There's just so much motion and action in it. And the background art is very cool, but it's a little bit different than the rest of the background art, and it looks slightly impressionistic and so uh, this my favorite still to this day, my favorite wildlife artist. This guy Carl Rung just he um, he was known as like the wildlife Artist, and um, the this donor was like, I really want Carl Runes to do the background art on the Moose on the Moose Um diorama. And they're like, well, if you can get him, be my guest. And so he has this dinner party. Says hey, Carl, look, come come, come do this background art. And Carl's like, I don't know if I you know, that's that's a different thing than what I normally do. That's kind of a tricky, tricky type of art that I'm not used to. He was working working on just you know, canvas, flat canvas. And the guy's like, you know what, I'm gonna have a dinner party out at my estate on Long Island. I'll invite the taxidermist, I'll invite the foreground artist. Just come out, chat, hang out. And so Carl agrees. But he's no dummy. He knows he's going to get like wined and dined and talked to doing this. So throughout the whole night, um, everybody's drinking and having a good time and Carl is pouring his wine into a planter behind him the whole night, so everyone's getting lit. And by the end of the night, he had arranged to be paid to do the one background more money than was paid to the A. M and H staff background artist gets paid in an entire year. It was like three thousands something. It was like more than his entire year salary. Goes to this one guy for one piece of background art and uh. So he's painting the background and eventually they're like, okay, well we gotta do some foreground stuff. And then he's like, great, well it's moose season, so I gotta go hunting. And so he leaves and they're like, great, we'll be in touch, you know, we'll figure out, you know, we'll finish this up later. And then they try to get in touch with him to finish it, and they never hear back from him ever. He's not dead, but he just never responded them ever again. And to this day, nobody knows if that piece of background art is finished or not. And so some people are like, yeah, it's finished, because uh that's kind of his impressionist style that, you know, we know what his art looks like. That's that's where it is. And some people are like, I don't know, I don't think it's finished, and they're like, you know, maybe you know his wife did die. Maybe he's just sad and he didn't want to go back, or or maybe you know, he was he was so nervous about his work, not standing up to the other work. That's the that's the art world. That's like the impression painer is like, yes, I did that, so you would have all these questions and explore my splore my purpose, and do this, come on, broath, color in the sky. Let's get let's get moving on. But it's interesting to say, like the impressionist art is interesting to me because that's that's generally the tax nm is not Impressionist. Is the recreation of of something, of some exact thing. That's That's what makes that one particular dioramas stand out to me so much is that the moose are unbelievable and the plants everything, it's an unbelievable diorama. And then the background art is just a little bit it doesn't look all, but it's just a little bit more of this impressionist style, which is so different from the ultra realistic backgrounds of all the others and so all those components kind of that. And I love the kodiacs. They're just so huge. I've seen them in person. Oh boy, oh boy. I'm not Yeah, I'm not a big fan of bears. I've had a lot of bear attack victims on the podcast, and it's been a lot of them talking about bear attacks, and I'm just not can't do it. Um if you were to, you know, closing out here, you know, you've you have a lot of you have a lot of knowledge of the history of of conservation. You know where hunting is today. You live in this melting bottle places, and you know, there's people listen podcasts all over the country and I hear from all the time. And I think one thing I've learned from this podcast is is you can say one sentence and and a thousand people can take it a different way. You know, some people can be inspired by it and informed by it. Other people can be offended by it. Is the same kind of way. So I think everyone in hunting that does it does it for different reasons with a different perspective, but all of of us, all of them want to articulate it better I haven't run in anybody that's like, I would like to articulate it, like in a in a more base fashion, So like with all with all the things that you do and all the things that you know, like where do you lie on that? How how does somebody in North Carolina that collins bears and white tails, and how does that person communicate with somebody that comes from from Brooklyn that's you know, asking them these questions. Yeah, it's um it is tricky for sure. UM I My number one concern is always for the animals and always for the environment, and I would not be you know, I feel like we've touched on so many things just a tiny bit, like you know, tip of the iceberg of taxidermy and what taxidermy means to world history, and um hunting and this sort of new generation of would be hunters or how to get this? How to get this new generation of would be hunters? And I really think if you if you assume that someone is anti hunting because they are pro animal, okay, but that doesn't you can be both. And this understanding the system in America has been absolutely, without question, the most effective tool in my toolbox. Once if you're able to explain how the system works in America. I have yet to get a negative reaction from that because it's it's honestly, people don't know. And at the end of the day, they may still not um agree with hunting or the idea of killing an animal. They may not understand how someone is able to kill an animal, but if they understand the system, they may not be so actively antagonistic towards it. And then the other question is, um, do they eat meat? And that's a real show stopper. If you eat meat, man, I can tear you to shreds real quick, because your meat is going to come from one of three places. A factory farm and no one likes that. Um, or your cutesie mom and pop farm where everyone's so proud to buy their meat at the farmer's market, or you can take it right out of the field yourself. Now, most people agree factory farming is bad. Um. Some people don't have a choice because meat is expensive and they want to continue eating meat. And that's a whole different bag of worms. Um. But then if you've got people spending money on your on your nice little farm farm, uh, family farm meat great, h But when you buy that meat. You're still paying the farmer to make more meat. It's a proxy, that's it. That farmers a proxy, and that somebody's killing it and someone's killing it someone. That's that's the thing about And even with I think it's even a more intense concept. When you think about agriculture. You know that you're not killing you're not You could say, well, there's no suffering within this this corner of the cop Oh they're suffering. Yeah, oh, there is suffering. And if you understand ecosystems and habitat, you understand that, and it's totality. Yeah, and if if you're concerned about suffering, I mean, i'd say, I like the idea that if you shoot a deer, the deer doesn't even know you're there. When you've got a pig that's taken to slaughter, I mean, if it's at a factory farm, that's a real horrific scene and that animal is stressed out and freaked out. And then if you're even on a small farm, you know, those those small farms, they're not allowed to do their own slaughtering. They still have to outsource that, and that's still a stressful thing for the animal. You know. Um, I like that the animal doesn't know what hit them. And when you pay money to bring home venison from the field, you are again paying into that system that keeps the trees there and keeps the forests there. Yeah. I mean that My whole life has just become this talking about and doing and analyzing and feeling some kind of weird you know, backwards philosopher and thinking about it. But I mean it. The biggest confounding thing for me is that it all makes sense so clearly when you look at it. If it didn't make sense to me, I'd walk away. I don't give a ship about if it didn't make sense but it didn't do something for my life, if it wasn't a good thing for society, I gotta walk away from it and be just fine, you know. But I look at it like, Wow, this is a pretty special thing that we've been doing for you know, millions of years um or over a million years, and and the fact that we're moving away from it, and it's it's become such a weird concept for some people, is is troubling. I I see, I can looking at a big picture. I can see that. But that'll be your most difficult way to to bring it up to new people because they don't care how long it's been going on. Oh that's how I always started. Like, you can never argue any any time you're trying if it's way, you can't be like, you know, we used to do it this way. Well, boy, we used to do it a lot of and we see a lot of things. There's a few words I like said. Spending my time in Berkeley, I heard a lot about well what about slavery. It's like the easiest thing, the easiest thing to try it out. Yeah, but it's interesting. But so you can is there any way people can they have to come see you? Or can they learn about the history at tax Germany? Or they had to come to New York and take your class. She was like, everybody come that listens to this, get on the plane and go to Brooklyn would be lazy. I'll plug my website. Yeah, it's plug it up Immortal Animals, dot com um and uh so I travel for these lectures. So I travel for the lectures, and uh I travel for the tax dermy classes. So I teach introductory taxidermy to people who want to learn. And it's just we used expired frozen feeder mouse mice. So if you've got like, uh, you know, like people who have pet snakes and lizards, they feed them these little frozen mouse sickles. So we just use those, and um, I have I have at this point, I have a strict no b y O roadkill. That was my next question. How does that work? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I I provide everything. But yeah, so I travel for lectures and for classes. Um, if you want a tour of the Natural History Museum, then yeah, you gotta come to New York. But man, if you are interested in history or animals or dioramas or whatever, then you got you gotta come to New York at some point because those those dioramas are just unbelievable. Well, i'll tell you what. You know, it's a good podcast. When it's over and it's been a long time even talking and you feel like we didn't cover much, that's how you know it's a good conversation. So thank you, Brand, I appreciate you. Kemping, I guess that's it. That's all the books. Thanks to Brand McDuff, thanks to Miles Nulty, and thanks to Sam Longern No thanks to William Perry, Penley, and so just to return to that for a minute before we go, we we made some some very you know, serious remarks um in fact filed discussion on it, and then made a little fun of the guy at the end. But this is a very serious topic and something that we should all remain both pragmatic about but passionate about. I feel very strongly about this. The other gentleman in the room with me when we recorded the opening segment felt the same. But again, I think the point of this podcast is to examine people's perspectives and worldviews and then then then move to help them inform what you think, but also inform how you can go and do more research, you know, to better construct your opinions in your worldviews. So I believe strongly in public lands. The gentleman, most of the gentlemen of all of them and ladies that work here at the media to believe in public lands. But that does not mean you should blindly believe what we believe. You should go get the facts, understand the situation, try to separate the bullshit pandering that goes on in politics from the reality of the situation, which can be extremely difficult in this day and age and make the best decision that you can on these these real critical topics. And William Perry Penley, the BLM, the Secretary of the Interior, the Department of the Interior, all of these things affect us directly. Many of the things in the political sphere don't defect affect meat directly in my daily life. If I were to lose the opportunity to hunt on BLM lands, it would affect me, and I think it would affect all hunters. In fact, I know it would affect all hunters. And that's what this show is about. So please do your research, take action if you feel that it's warranted, but just be educated on these issues because they are very important. And this land can go away, the access to this land can go away, and if if folks like William Perry Penley have their way, we're gonna lose it. We'll lose access to it. So that's it. That's all that I can say anymore. I'm not gonna do any little uh advertising or anything like that. I will say thank you for listening to this podcast episodes. It's not a huge benchmark, but each one of these is a benchmark to me. I'm glad that you all listen. Please right in to tach C at the media dot Com again th h C at the media dot Com. Tell us what you think, tell us what we can do better. Send us your audio clips. Will be running those continually during the fall. And good luck out there. If you're headed out for Antelope or if you're headed out for early season white tail, good luck, enjoy the honey season. It is upon us. See it long because I can't go a week without doing run, oh without run, drinking out and rue wrong, drinking in, don't sit and at the bostle would start the row route being there again. Hold on out, barrosshoes down my