00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey, I didn't tell anybody I was gonna do last time I would I say, oh hey, dude, Hey man, what's up? It's me? What's up? Hey, what's up? Man? It's th h C. Right Phil, I hope, I hope. We're not gonna We're gonna use this. Okay, that's my new intro, sup dude, It's th C Episode eight five in the House. Yikes. Episode eighty five includes Phil being hungover. That's a it's a he went out last night and he's just not as. He's not so sharp right now? Hey, good plug, Yeah, not so sharp. But anyways. Eighty five includes the great and powerful Sam Soholt of the public Land Van and Uh. It also includes the great and probably even more powerful as you'll find uh Clay Nukele from Bear Hunting Magazine and many other things. And we're gonna talk about bear baiting with Clay, with Sam, we're gonna talk about his stamp at four projects. We've got the contest and name fils Mustache, which is awesome. And then we got a couple of emails from you folks that rode into the hunt collective. Are you looking forward to the name your mustache? Contest. Phil, you know, I actually am you. Actually, it's been cathartic from exciting to you yell at people on Mike about how real they are very upset. Uh, it's so Sam's here. Sam, We're going on a rifle hunt for Elk here like tomorrow. Yeah, we are indeed tomorrow leaving tomorrow. Okay, Episode eighty five coming right at you, let's go. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pedal to the meadows. I always did what I've told until I found out that my brand new closed a game second hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up fast. I guess I grew up. I mean, they have a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't saying, and now I just wanted to real bad dreams of being in like I'm coming a part of the scenes. But thank you, Jack Daniel, Hey, everybody. Episode eighty five continues. I'm here with Sam, Soholt. It's good to be here. It hasn't been that long. Hasn't really been that long now we're here, not so long ago. Yeah, I can't remember what we talked about. I can't remember any we did. The top fives. Oh yeah, TC Top fives. That was fun. Yeah. I wish you would have published all the answers because I feel like I did well. You did well. No, no, yeah, actually, let's we could go back to that and say that last time Sam was on he he's I think swept the T A C Top fives, gave the best answers in every single one, and and it just happened to Phil got honorable mention on everyone as well. Wow, thanks Ben. Well. The thing is he didn't give people the option to vote for my any of my top five. Oh that was my bad. But you got honorable mention yet, which it's that's like a participation trophy. I am a millennial. So yeah, man, you did all right. But now it's uh, we're into we're almost in the November, and like we just said, we're getting ready to go try killing Elk with a riffle. Yes. Yeah, it's uh, it's crazy how fast this fall has gone. It seems like all I've been doing is driving around but which which isn't, which isn't far from the truth. Nobody would be surprised to hear that. All Yeah, No, I mean I bought a van and in September and I've already put over five thousand miles on it, so speaking, which, I need to get the oil changed in the van before we leave in the sun. Are we hunting out of the van? Yeah, the van will be in base camp alright, got a t P in the van, and yeah it'll be good. All right, we got a van and the TP were probably gonna be cold. Yep, they'll be elk everywhere. Probably gonna be lots of that. We were talking about last night briefly, Uh, grizzly bears. Yeah, but I just had a good conversation with Jared Fraser of two Percent, and he's been in that area before, and uh, he was saying the latest he had ever seen grizzly bears in that country is in early October. So with the cold weather and the snow and everything, we might they be gone. Yeah, they might be gone. We'll just you know, run smacked dab into a whole pack of a whole pack like these guys, right into a pack of grizzly I understand bears no traveling packs. But yeah, yeah, you never know, you never know this country. They might Phil's hungover, Hey, Phil, Yeah, what's up? You went out last night. Yeah, there was an on X event. We were all so that's that was only my first stop the night. Uh, and so yeah, I went to one more establishment. Your mouth is dry right now. Probably I've been drinking a lot of water. You got a headache, drading? You got a headache, have a headache. You're feeling It's not been a while since I felt this way, and I don't like it. All the synapses are firing quite. I left it like seven o'clock and went and put my children to bed, my child to bed and read them book and saying it a song. You were out running the town like a vagrant. Yeah, I too have children. Are you sure you don't need a beer? Oh? Yeah, we're drinking. We're drinking. What's this? I was trying to not make any eye contact with the beer and just pretend that it's not in the room right now. But thanks for bringing it up. My beer onto the mic. Um, Yeah, it's only eleven and twelve in the a M. Yeah, it's five o'clock. It's five o'clock somewhere, so we're in Europe. Um, speaking of that, we got a nice whiskey and ethics. Uh, segment coming up or we didn't drink whiskey because it was nine in the morning, but the whiskey was here. And we also made one uh it' said we have the little pairs with on our meat eat or straight bourbon whiskey. We made one that says has says pairs with bear bait in honor of our baiting conversation. So that's coming up with Clay Nucombe. But before we get there were a lot same We got a lot of important stuff. You won't have been a part of a lot of this, but we got a lot of important stuff to cover before we get to your this project that you you've embarked on. First one, I got I print out some paper again. Remember last time I print out paper fill? I like to make the sound yep, sounds official shufflinging with papers. Anyway, this is um the name Fills Mustache contest. And the winner of this contest is going to get a THHD hat. I didn't know that. You didn't know. I just made it up. People that wrote in didn't know what they were going to get, but now they do. Uh And so Sam, you're gonna help us select the winner. Okay, I love this. The first one name of Phil's mustache. Remember Phil's mustache. It's getting better. But when we recorded the plea for mustache names, it was not great. It was just like a dust upper lip dusting. Yeah, so it's filled in, but it's still you know, it's blonde. Doesn't look I can't wear a mustache. What are you thinking about it? Sam? It's coming in good, yeah, a little just from like we're talking about that last week. No, I did that in college. We grew every Yeah, every year we would grow conference mustaches for our indoor track and field conference meet. And I grew a horrendous mustache and never it didn't grow in the middle, had like a nice like like a super good gap. And then so yeah, we would do uh, just for men to darken them up a little bit. Maybe we can get them as a sponsor. It's so good. No one can tell Phil. It's just from men Jail, just from still got it. Hey, if anybody listen, it works at just from men Jael. We love you to sponsor this ongoing saying about fool most that I'd like to get. I think we should do touch of gray though, yea in the middle, Yeah, makes it look distinguished like I'm into that, all right. Well, we have five choices here, all right, And and I took this around the Mediator offices and they got a lot of votes and got some comments from our colleagues. But we're gonna make the decision here. Okay, ready, Phil, I'm ready. Let's hear. First one comes from Brian Nelson, just shuffling the papers around. Uh it's the ghost of Stash Past. The Ghost of Stash Past from Brian Nelson, Thanks for writing. Then in Brian Greg Morris wrote in Furry Terminator. Also he said Gary that was his like second one, So he was either one of those two wins. He wins. I gave him too because Gary was It was funny. Bade me laugh like Gary because it kind of looks like Gary. It could be a Gary. Yeah, but I think of Gary. I think of that mustache. Uh. This is from a person I said unknown because it was just their email and their email is weird. But this person wrote in seven seven am Shadow. Okay, that's pretty good one. Yeah, creative. Ryan Hutley wrote in Skimpy mcweek Stash a buddy, and Brian Gottfried wrote in Pecker Duster, And I threw that in there just as an homage to everyone who wrote in with offensive mustache names. So I threw pecker Duster in there just let you know that I've read your womb rooms and your other terrible names, and but I won't include him here. No, I'm withholding those from the contest. Any dusting my my I do is is not exclusive. I you know, I spread it and I spread around your equal opportunity, duster bombs or peggers. We have devolved. How much further do you think this podcast can actually devolved? Because it turns into like we have like a ridiculous conversation, then we get into some serious, like very deep conversation. See, I don't think yeah this, I'm sure since you have graciously invited me on the show every week, it is not he doesn't want to be he's getting it's not the same show. I'm sure you pitched to like the higher powers to like get this podcast off like made. And so I was like, I'll have this guy, he's never hunted before. It doesn't know anything about it, but he's got I'm gonna have mustache naming contests and you know the like top five lists. Well, I I choose Gary choose, but that like that comes that stems from a long line of liking to name things like random human names instead, you know, especially when it comes to like deer my James, my my my wife named our cat Kevin, so we have a cat named Kevin. They also have a dog named Mango. Mango. I like it, Thank you, Sam, I like it, Sames what they're saying that because I like the mustache and like, you know, I like everything. Hey, we should have Sam on more often. Sam's on your side. If I was feeling yesterday Philly, you were just a little bit dejected about your like what's going on? You were like, you're turning heel on me, You're just like it becoming a little upset about No, not at all. No, I just felt like maybe a vibe that you were just like, you're not You're not happy. No, I love I love doing this show every week. Okay, that was listen. I don't have the energy to not sound sarcastic. All right, Well, God, I don't know, is it is it? I I don't think the ghost of Stash past I don't. Yeah, I think it's sure, it's fine, it's worthy of being in the list. But it's not going to get there. Seven am shadow is in the sense one it's a good one, but it's just like not it doesn't make me laugh. No, and if if it were more realistic, it would actually be like it would be the five clack shadow. But but just that the next day or even a day later, it's actually worse than they think it is. Yeah, that's true. Uh Peckard Duster, we're going to write that off. So it's it's really furry terminator or also Gary and Skimpy mcweeks. Listen, I like, I can't be mad today. I like Skimpy mcweeks. That's pretty good. What kind of reminds me? Was it? Noah that they had a naming contest for their boat, like the Big Ocean. That's what botey mcboat face. For that reason, it actually won that reason. Phil, I'm gonna ask you to put some like sound effects in here, like drum roll, So please put a drum roll in wait for that. Skimpy mcweek stash is the winner. Ryan Hutley, congrats, you're gonna get a hat and all the affection that hungover? Phil? Can I hate that we're talking about my hangover? It's gonna be released into the world, you know, because I feel like I meant listen, I'm at work, I'm doing my job. I'm a responsible But also I feel like there's shame that comes along with the shame. I feel shame. Don't feel shame, Phil, don't feel shame at all. I think there's other things for be shameful about. This isn't one of them. The mustaches. Yeah, that'd be one that definitely be one. Alright, moving on, we've covered that. It's give me a Greek stash. I hope, I hope she stays around for for a while. Don't shave it off. See about that. Don't shave it off after Halloween? Keep it okay, we'll see keep it. You're like a young Tom Selleck. I don't like having it, and I don't like it's It's long enough now the point where I'm very aware of it. How about this, I'm making Sam see if you like this, I'll make a deal with you, Phil. Yes, if you keep the mustache, we'll do a segment well on the show that you can choose what we talk about and we'll call it Dr Phil m And you can do you can say whatever you want. You can have listeners, right, Yeah, this is your time. I make a deal with you. Do you accept my proposal? Tentatively? I really don't like this mustache. I don't even know if it's worth my own segment on the show, but I'll think about it. You don't turn down. I've never offered something like that before. I'd say it'll grow on you. But it's a terrible, terrible dad joke. Yeah, where's Remy when we need them? Remy? Honestly, honestly, Um, sorry, uh, Sam, we gotta turn this thing around. You're doing something really cool. And We've been talking about this for a while now, and I've been telling you how f and awesome it is for for some weeks here. Can you just explain to us what's going on. Yeah, So, uh, it's called the Stamp It Forward Project, and it uh, it's stemmed from way back really being growing up being like die hard waterfowl hunter. Um. And then you know, after transitioning into big game hunting and learning more about conservation and what people can do to give back, you start to learn about all of these conservation tools that are already in place, and one of the simplest, most effective conservation tools that exists is the federal duck Stamp program. And the cool thing about it is you don't have to have a hunting license, you don't have to have a hunter safety card, you don't have to be a member of any like conservation organization. Uh, you don't have to even think about hunting like it. You can literally either go to a sporting good store or post office or hop online and you can buy a stamp and buy law. Of the money from every stamp goes back to purchasing more wetland habitat or conservation easements. Basically, it all gets pumped back into creating more habitat and wildlife. And this is whether the US Fishing and Wildlife Service says on their website, they say, of the purchase price goes directly to help acquire and protect wetland habits at and purchase conservation easements for the National Wildlife Refuge System. Wetland acquired, wetlands acquired with duck stamp dollars help purify water, aid and flood control, all reduced soil erosion and sedimentation, and enhanced out recreation opportunities. Pretty damn simple. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, and above and beyond just helping migratory bird species. It helps like I think the I watched the whole documentary on it and hows seven species overall, and just you know, what's good for birds is also good for that million dollar duck. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're not gonna we're not doing on this podcast, but we have um someone from the US Facial Life Service. We're gonna get on later in December to talk about the history of the duck stamp. Will probably have you back go on to kind of recap where you're where your project is. But let's get into exactly what's going on. So the project has evolved um really over the like almost the last year. It's kind of when I started thinking about it and it started. My original thought was, how do we just you know, use quote unquote influencers in the industry to just encourage people to go out and buy a duck stamp and start talking about how cool this conservation to will is. And it seemed like you might lose Um. It didn't seem like it would be powerful enough to like really push people over the top to go do it. And so instead it evolved into how do we collectively purchased as many stamps as possible, and then it would just be me would be the one going and doing all of the purchasing of the stamps, and so we can keep a complete tally of how many we buy, how much money is raised for conservation, and so on October seven, UM, I have made the first post about it. And what I did is through our company, Public Land Teas, we have a five dollars from every item we sell goes directly back to conservation, So we have a donation fund. And I took cash out of the donation fund and I drove around to post offices and different locations and purchased a hundred duck stamps, so basically donated directly to conservation. And then after I bought that hundred, I put together a post in a video encouraging people to send me money directly as a just a straight donation, as a way to pay it forward or stamp it forward for your fellow sportsmen and women. And with all of the money that I receive, I go out and buy additional Duck stamps. So the amount of people that jumped on board on this is unbelievable. Let me let me just say this, And I was telling you this the other day in a world where we as marketers, like if I'm being honest, like we when you're when you see a contest, when you see someone like hey, come hunt with me, or hey, that is because somebody wants something from you. You You gotta give your email, you gotta give you information. They're gonna use that information to market to you later. That's how it works. You didn't already know that, now you do in a world where like just to get someone's email, they're being trained to like want something, you know, when a truck when do you see this in a hunting world all the time, a day in and day out, everybody has these extravagant things to give you. Right, nothing is free in this world. So when when you're able to do you'll you'll give folks the number in a minute, when you're able to do what you're doing with no incentive, like the very little incentive over and then to pay forward this this incredible conservation idea and the function of what the duck stamp is, it's it's it's amazing to me. It's amazing. Yeah, And I I was honestly blown away with with how like how readily people jumped on board with the whole concept, and so, uh, we did the initial hundred, and then through the course of the last I guess two and a half weeks that it's been running um simply from straight donations. We've raised enough to buy an additional almost three hundred stamps from people just sending me money directly. And then I have four companies so far that have jumped on board to match my initial hundred stamp investment. Would you say it was Vortex, Vortex, Gerber, Savage Arms, and boss Shot Shells just jumped on yesterday. Thank you to those folks. That is again like, this is not this isn't who's sponsored by who or what company? I mean, this is if you give to this movement, you're just given a conservation and I don't give a ship. If you're sponsored or not, or you're involved or not. It is is a it's an act that is altruistic. Yeah, so we at this point we are close to uh having I mean I've purchased four hundreds so far, and then the other four hundred will come as soon as that money hits the bank. So yeah, up to almost eight hundred stamps. Man, and listen if you're listening to this and you have bucks give it to Sam, Like for a lot of reasons. Right, you could go out and buy your own stamp and give it to your neighbor. It doesn't really matter. But what really matters is the idea that we we're true to our word as hunters when we stand on top of conservation, like it's a platform. Well, if it's going to be a platform, we're gonna stand on top of it and we're gonna use it as a reason why we do what we do. We could give to something a little bit bigger than just twenty dollars, And that's what I think this is. It's bigger than just twenty five bucks. It's bigger than just giving a stamp to someone else. It's it's like a it's an understanding of that we can share this with other people. And thank god the federal government has has basically an act of attacks to allow us to kind of express what we believe. You know, that's what you're doing. Yeah, and you know, like the only people that are required to purchase federal duck stamp every year are people that waterfowl hunt. So obviously, growing up, every year I had bought a waterfowl stamp, and uh, but again it's something that every single person can do whatever, you know, regardless of you hunt or not. And I was reading some other stuff from the Fish Wide Serves. The federal duck stamp is also a free past to any national wildlife refuge that charges an entry fee. So that's a big thing that I didn't really ever realize that's a hunter, you just kind of it's a transaction of writing, right. Um. All duck stamp proceeds are used to can or habitat for for birds and other wildlife. So burgers, nature photographers out there, enthusiasts can buy stamps to go towards these things. But if you're a hunter, as we always tell it as hunters, you're buying this stamp and it's going to other things. It's helping habitat across the board. Sure it helps migratory birds and ducks that we hunt and geese that we hunt, but by god, it helps everyone, right, you know. And not to mention there's really cool stories about um, like the artists behind the duck stamp and the history of the duck stamp, and like I said, in the future podcast will cover those, But like the idea of this, it's the best conservation program going. Well, thank you, I think so. Yeah, no, I would agree, I think so. And if you're not listening, if you're not a wildlife biologist, and you're not out there working on conservation projects, and you want to call yourself a conservationist, there's other ways to be one. And that's what Same is doing. Like he's promoting the idea of conservation, the transactional idea of it, but also the in gender passion for donating to the cause. And the federal duck stamp is one of the like with a few taxes that is unanimously raised whenever they need it. Right, nobody's voting against the raising of the duck stamp tax. The folks that are being taxed, in fact, would probably all say give it a raise, we don't care. Bucks is fine. So then, on top of all the money we've raised, just to simply purchase stamps as a way to generate even more for conservation. Um, we are currently I don't know when this podcast will come out, but we'll still have stamps available. We are currently giving away a duck stamp with every single item purchased at public Land tees dot Com. So through that we've generated another chunk of money that we're gonna be able to donate directly back to conservation. Yeah. Man, go buy a T shirt. You can wear the T shirt, give that duck stamp to someone, but don't just give it to him. Tell them about what we're talking about right now. Educate somebody else, give it, you know, give it to anybody who wants, some stranger on the street. Just educate. I've been telling Sam. I'm like, just take them and like go places and given to people and explain what this is. Because what this is is is an example of what we talked about with our model of conservation the last you know, since ninety six, all these things that have built up over time that have been positive for wildlife conservation, and we will be donating a good chunk of them, uh, two different organizations for first time hunters or whatever it might be, just to kind of pay it forward that way. Yeah, I mean, and in the in the idea of pay it forward, Like if it was me, I'd wear the T shirt, I put the stamp in my wallet, and when someone came up to me and questioned me about hunting, I would take that stamp out. I would hand it to them and I would explain to them what's going on, and like, that's what this could be if we allow it to be right. You know, these things aren't just passes to any national wilife refuge. They're like a little piece of history that you can hand over and be like, hey, look here's what's up. Exactly tell these people that. And that's why you know, if you're listening to this, just go you just go to your your Instagram page, go to my Instagram page. It's all on there. I mean, I could tell him exactly how to send me money directly. If so, if you'd like to donate directly, you can either send me money either at PayPal, which is just public land Teas at gmail dot com, or my Venmo account, which is just at Sam Sulhol. So you're Venmo and a guy money, right, You're just gonna give him and he's gonna go buy stamps and he's gonna spread the word, right, So um, feel for you to spread it yourself, my god. But but um, if you let Sam do it for you, man, there's a lot of benefits as you'll just that we can all that will all see through this, and I've always thought that, you know, when I watched Million Dollar Duck for the first time, I was just struck by how much I didn't know about this thing that I always I gotta get my stamp right, and there's so much I didn't know. Similar with somewhere with the Endanger Species Act, Similar with Piven Robertson, Similar with all like the Lacy Acts. Somewhere with all of these legislations that have kind of mark the way that we do are what we love. Understand more about them, and you'll be empowered to spread the word. Exactly what do you think about that? Phil Amen? I like hungever, Phil, It's a simpler answer. It doesn't know, it doesn't know, so how much like what do you do you have? How much have you raised us far? So? Uh? Last night actually we cracked d raised so far so um, which is roughly seven sixty stamps. But I think I had another hundred fifty bucks roll in this morning on VENMO. So it just keeps kind of filing and people as more people share it, it just continues to grow. Do you have any plans to like do some I'm telling you, like, do some events, do some things where you just hand out duck stamps forever shows up. Yeah, I don't have any plans for that right now, but I definitely want to do some things like that, and whether it be this year that I do that, But this Stamp It Forward project is not going to stop this fall, like I have much larger plans for Yeah, I mean we have, uh, Susanne fellows or were scheduled. Of course, Susanne fellows here later this year, and she's works for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and she uh we talked to her briefly care in our podcast. Per talked to her briefly in her passion about the duck stamp was like coming through the phone. So I look forward to traveling to d C and talk to her. So we'll have you back on the bann or Susanne. I'm sorry, Susanne on to talk about it and we'll see where you are. But if you're listen to this, like you said, I've already kind of said my piece about this. But there's there's like an example that Sam is setting for everybody that is important, Like there isn't we all talk about conservation and it is that is kind of a ground swell within our world. We also all talk about public lands. We all talk about these concepts, you know that that are important to us. But here is a guy sitting across from me that is doing something about it. And it's it's it's not that you have to go pick up trash on public land. You could just like raise people's awareness for these important constructs of our our system. And Sam has done that with the public land bus and now the public Land van and now stamp it Forward. It's like, if if our world needed marketing, this is the kind of marketing that it needs and the kind of activism, in my opinion, that it needs. So thank you, Sam, Well, thank you, So go and do it. Go give s. If you don't want to give Sam twenty five, go buy a duck Stammages. Tell somebody what it means and what it is and why it's important and why No other country that I'm aware of has a system like that. Yeah, I guess I haven't done the research, but neither, but I'm just gonna say it. I think I think Canada does have a federal state whatever. That's not America, but you know, they fall under the North American model of conservation so it makes sense. Listen to the federal stamp image of this year's as a wood duck, right, wood duck in the foreground and then a decoy in the background. A guy named Scott Storm Painted did the painting, and uh, he was kind enough to actually send me a selfie video of him basically talking about the duck stamp and the importance of the duck stamp that I was able to post on my on my Instagram story. So, and here's another thing. When you do something like what Sam's doing, you don't know what it's going to actually do in the end, Like you're not sure what it's going to bring to you. Like, when you do something good like this, it brings all these weird ancillary things that you just didn't expect, all these connections with people and companies and things. Um. And so follow this man's example and go do something, do something impactful. Um. Even if you have a small file and it doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter. So it's important. Right, that's right, Phil, Let's give you a big week stays all right, that's it. Every we were good on that, Sam, We're good on that. We're gonna go elkhint, You're gonna come back later and you're gonna tell us I'm one. I want six figures out of the Son of a Bitch. I wanted to be a hundred thousand dollars in the bank by the time you come back in in late December. It would be amazing, that amazing. Help pass this forward. Go go to Sam's Instagram page and find out more than stamp it forward. Do it anyway. There's a lot of good things that we need to talk about. But before we get to Clay nucom in our conversational bear rating, we need to get to the third installment of work Sharps not So Sharp Moments. Phil play the jingle sharp not so Sharp poement so you don't have to. Okay, we got a good not so sharp moment this time, Phil, and it's from a female listener. Her name is Kaylee Howard. That's good. Yeah, that's good. That's good. That's good. Before we get to Kayley, though, real quick honorable mention, Michael pop Posey wrote in a poem and I figured I'd read it. It's not Phil, and I decide it is not good enough to be a not so Sharp moment winner, but I should read it anyway. Yeah, we we appreciate the creativity. It's a winner in our hearts, but it's not in our minds. So here we go. Here we go, covered in camel with fresh Joe and my mug. The boats starts to sink. We forgot the plug. Half hour later, at the cold break of dawn, ducks came in. But my safety is on. Fix all of this and go take a p I forgot to pull the waiters all the weight to my knee. Frustrated and cold, I head back to the truck. A bad day of hunting is still fun as fuck. Bravo the end. Bravo rhyming the word truck with the word funk litted on a greeting card. That's always always good. Now, thank you Michael for writing in. If you guys wanna try to match his poetic genius there, please do. I like reading reading poems, I like rhymes. I'm a simple man, So right him in. But honorable mention goes to Michael Posey. But now, Kaylee Howard, the winner of a brand new work, sharp Field, Sharpener, And here's the beginning of the story. She says, Listen, boys, I know that subjects in this story might be a little uncomfortable for your main audience. But I am a female outdoorsman, and by golly, there isn't enough literature or coverage of female hunters. But I follow the media your company with a passion because you all try your very very best to include women of all backgrounds and professions, and for that, I think and congratulate you all. That being said, in a roundabout way, I feel obligated to share this story so your female followers can laugh themselves into rib cramps. I'm excited. I have not heard this all right, enjoy it my not your sharp moment, and try not and try to think how funny this would be even this happened to your wives. For the men out there, I grew up on a farm and ranch in the Panhandle of Texas. Imagine a girl with no siblings and a father who likes to hunt. Think of a girl whose favorite pastime was to get out of sports practice, drive home, grab her youth addition twent engage Minnelli and see what she could get into. Well. This particular story starts on a Wednesday, September one, to be exact, Texas is opening day of dove season, the first bird season of the year. I was about it, enthralled as a girl can get. Because my dad ran cattle, we naturally had barbedier fences all over the ranch. I had noticed that the dove naturally, that the dove on the ranch naturally congregated on the fence where this seed milo was I was going to It was gonna be easy pickings. I played volleyball at the time, so when my coach left out practice, I didn't even change my clothes. I e volleyball spandex of sports brawl and a workout tank top. I ran home, grabbed my cowboy boots, a box of shells, and my shotgun. The field was only a quarter of a mile from the house, so I decided to just walk it. Now, Phil, can you picture what we're doing here. We're walking through a field. We got spandex on on the way to a fence. On the way to a fence, you see where this might be going shooting fish in a barrel barbedire fence. So you're scratch that. I sprinted to the fence line. Earlier that day, I had a morning workout consisted of of my max of squats and dead lips. So, needless to say, my legs were worn out. To start with a little humble brag, I like it. When I got to the fence line, I thought to myself, I'm an athlete. I'm just gonna climb that fence without sending my gun down or holding onto a post. Yeah. M well, that was all fine until I fell while swinging my second leg over and my legs strength gave out. I had tried to jump and the wire had slipped out from under my boot. I lifted my gun above my head and spun in mid air to save the shotgun from the barbed wire below my chest head made contact with the wires. I spun. No, you all know how Stephen Rinella loves a good nipple ripping story? Was that where this is going? When I landed, I was on my back on the ground. I inspected my shotgun into my relief, didn't have a scratch on it. Then I realized just tied warm liquid running down my stomach. I looked down and saw that the barbed wire had caught me and sliced into my tank top brawl and smack dab through the middle of my boob. My cut was about a half a centimeter deep, running about three inches long I fainted. It hit the ground like a ton of bricks. When I came to my senses, I laid on the ground and cried like a wounded animal for god knows how long. A teenage girl is quite sensitive as subjects such as these. After what was probably an unacceptable amount of time, I slowly made my way back to the house. In my haste to get to the field, I left my cell phone and couldn't contact anyone to come and save me. When I got back to the house, I found my mother cooking dinner, and mid sentence, she broke off with a scream of terror. That was fast, Kaylee, did you already run out of Oh? That sounds written. I will never forget that scream. She called my dad and explained basically that I was going to be un it for marriage and and that she was taking me to the only hospital in the county. I begged her to take me anywhere besides the medical facility that I knew everyone where I knew everyone, but she insisted that I had lost blood and there was no time to waste. When we arrived in the air in my hometown, I was draped in a towel and stood horrified as my mother explained the predicament to the receptionist, nurses and the doctrine called that night, which, to my sheer delight, just so happened to be my best friend's dad. He he had me take off my ripped clothing, he cleaned the wound, and stitched my poor maimed breast back together. I don't think I will ever be as embarrassed again in my entire life. The next day I had to explain to my coach while I couldn't practice. Slowly, ever so slowly, the story of little girl Hunter who defiled her body spread around my town. At any m I had a teacher asked if I was in too much pain, I need to go home. I had the ass of my school asked if I was going to enter the rifle competition in the Paraplegic Olympics. It was a joyous day. Let's fast forward to tonight, when my now husband and I decided to get frisky for the first time. Phil, all right, you've into it. Yeah, this is the whole reason I came onto this podcasts for stories like these. You know this is getting all right, let's let's get hot. I was terrified for him to see the carnage that was under my clothes with careful inspection and grace in his voice. He said, I will call that one scarface. M hmm. That's when I read better than skimpemic weeks week boob. Sorry, that's when I knew I would marry that man. I've never hand a dove again, and I don't think I ever will. But my shotgun is still in mint condition. That's what matters. The end. Great job play the jingle not so sharp moment? You don't do, boy, Phil, it's not good? Whoa You know? The funny thing about these work sharp not so sharp moments is that most of them are actually turned out to be I have some sharp elements. Yeah, this one did. Yes, it did a lot of a lot of interesting visuals throughout that tale. So thank you, Kayley. Work Sharp is probably gonna send to you a brand new work sharp field sharpener, So enjoy that and keep sending in You're not so sharp moments. This one is so far my favorite. It's gonna be hard to top it, but th HC at the mediaor dot com you send your own, you can top Kaylee could win. All right, here we go. We got Clay nucom and we're gonna talk about bears and baiting. You know, we didn't really drink much whiskey, but we'll call it whiskey and ethics because I like the name, right, Phil, and do what I want. It's good. You know, you could have it was nine am. It was you could have had, you could have imbibed, and I had a little beer like yeah, I call yeah, yeah, but I had responsible Yes, it was responsible bear baiting, baiting in general. With a pretty interesting fellow, Clay knwcom coming up right now. Enjoy. I guess I grew up on an all the road Clay. Hello, Ben, you were just telling me that you every time recently, every time that you have I had a thought about bears, you wrote it down on your phone. That's right, And I'm looking at that list right now. So long. That's a that's a long list, man. Yeah, no, just as we as we were going to talk about the topic at hand. Yes, just the last ten days or so, I've been formalizing some thoughts like that. It's all things that are not new to me. But sometimes when you write it down as a writer, when you write something it it formulates itself and comes sharper and more clear. It's the best way to codify something I find and the things that I know the most about and actually learned and can repeat our thing articles I've written, you know, because you spend all this time craft in these words and then you remember them and so oft Oftentimes somebody's like, we'll tell me about this, I'll know the most about a subject. You go, well, let me get my phone, let me get part I'll read you my article. Well that we're gonna talk about bears for sure, because you know, you listen to some we were just talking about you listen to the Barry Gilbert episode, so you know that this is You're probably gonna threaten to leave pretty soon. I don't have anything to slam. Yeah, what, Well, we can give you a book if you want to throw it at me about halfway through. But we're also I want to talk about baiting. I think that's a there's a larger topic in baiting, but I think baiting in in general A lot of times in many many states baiting is illegal for for white tails and other other animals. Um, but bear baiting has a culture going back to nineteenth century UM, And so I think that's the best. If you're gonna talk about the ethical connotations of baiting, it's it would be it's proper to do it around bears, just for the many reasons that if you're gonna pick, just like we did a whiskey ethics on gripping grans, you're gonna pick kind of the most topical and maybe controversial piece of the puzzle when it comes to these uh, these issues. And so that's why I think bear baiting kind of lands in a good in a good spot in that regardless it's a it's it definitely would be. It's the it's the easiest thing to misunderstand really in hunting. Yeah, it really is. You know, I was doing a little bit of my own research yesterday looking at this now, and if you go to bear baiting on Wikipedia, which if you google bearbaiting, that's the first thing that comes up. The line that describes it is this bear baiting is a blood sport involving the worrying or tour mating in in quotation marks baiting of bears, and may involve pitting a bear against another animal. That's what bear baiting wow refers to. Now, I think I don't even I can't even understand. I don't even have a place to understand what they're talking about. Yeah, and this is there's a historical context to that. But still for the layman, bear baiting in the modern sense is not the nineteenth century or even in this case, seventeenth century version of bear baiting. So even in historical context, it's a little bit confused. It's a little bit confused. So can you just give give folks your your history, I mean, what you do now and you're a little bit of your history with with bear hunting in particular. Well, so what I do for a living then, as I published Bear Hunting magazine, So Barony Magazine has been in print for twenty years and I've I have run Bear Hunting Magazine for the last seven years and so, but that didn't spend from a place of uh, just a it's not just a vocation. I mean I have been bear hunting a long time and a passionate about bear hunting and and it's a massively misunderstood part of the hunting the hunting space, it truly is. And uh, and I have some thoughts as we as we go on, I don't want to dive into the depth of my notes here right off the bat, but give us your give us the notes. But you know, I think in some ways hunters have have given in. There's been like a shifting baseline for us to kind of give in to some of the emotional propaganda surrounding hunting, charismatic charismatic megafauna. You know these bears and uh and so, Yeah, is that a good description benefits history? I mean, it wasn't that great. Yeah, that's a good description. And I think that you were on the Mediator podcast recently and you did a really good job of kind of articulating some of these perspectives. And and folks have listened to this have heard me talk about fair chase and ethics a lot, and I think it I think it bears repeating that. You know, the Boode and Crockett has a fair chase ethics statement on baiting, which they updated recently um to be a little bit more accepting of the practice. And it's one of the more when you think about it, it's one, to me, the one of the more conflicting issues within our space, because there are legitimate consequences of the unnatural collection of animals, but there's also ethical like advantages to collecting those animals so you can judge them and be closer to them and more ethical. And so when I describe this, I'm always much like other issues or just kind of have to be flat honest. My my opinion is always that I would say that it's conflicting for me. When I think of my own personal ethics, I think of baiting as a tool to be a more ethical hunter. When I think of like the culture and the way it's looked at, I think, I'm not sure overall if this is something that we can carry into the future. But that's I would just be honest in saying that it's it's a confliction within me. You know. Here's here's the baseline position that I start on when we talk about baiting. Baiting is a management tool for wildlife managers who have the best interests of wildlife, who have the best entrances of bears, who want bear populations to thrive and coexist with massive human populations and massive human intrusion in these places that were formerly wild bear habitat. So baiting is a management tool for managers to be able to extract like a surgeon extracting something out of a human body. I mean they they there's a measured amount that these people need to take out. And then in let's just say, eighty percent of North America spotting stock or or bear hunting without the use of any hounds rebait just would not be able to achieve those management goals. To me, that's the that's the biggest point that people need to understand. So because I think people tend to think that where baiting is legal, it's like the game and fish agencies are just like, hey, let's give these old fat guys an easy way to shoot a bear. Yeah, that's not it at all. Like in Arkansas, like I did a I Myron Means, the bear coordinator for Arkansas, talk to him just a few weeks ago, and um, you know, they made a decision in two thousand and one that the way they wanted to manage bears in Arkansas was overbait and with the use of bow hunters in the early season. That was a strategic decision that they made. And so uh and and to to to quantify or to qualify the statement about eight percent of North America spotting stock hunting couldn't achieve those goals, is that you much of North American continent is the eastern decisious forest, in the boreal forest, which is thick, thick vegetation um and so those places, I mean, if you're going to harvest bears through hunting, then bait is a is a very good way to do it. And like in Arkansas, we can't bait on public land. We can only bait on private land. So private land is where bear conflict happens. That's where people are having trouble. So they're like, hey, let's give these private landowners a way to manage these bears. And so that's the way we roll now out here. You can in many places you can you can bait on public land, and it's kind of a different ordeal. So to me, that's the baseline. Like if if anybody wants to have a conversation about the ethics of bear hunting, to me, that's where it starts, is that this is a management tool. This is not just a slob hunter's way to hunt. And and I've never heard anybody that has actually baited bears themselves. I'm not talking about going on an outfitted hunt, which I got no problem with that and do it myself, but I've never heard anybody that has baited bears themselves put in the work, the strategy, understood it, studied it, ever come away thinking, Man, that was easy. Man, that was that was kind of just put the corner out, they come walking right in. Yeah, it's it's much more in depth than that, And especially if your own personal ethics are at a level where you're you know, you're well, I find ways to limit myself in uh, in other ways when I hunt over bait. I really do. Yeah, it's part of the reason I used traditional archery when I hunt over bait. I was gonna say exactly that. I mean, in my and and not this wouldn't be for anybody. I could I shoot him with a gun over bait, But for me that's why, I mean, it's kind of like a give and take. It's like, yeah, and it's interesting to see like that. I was just reading as you're talking a little bit of the position that the Boone and Crocket came out with recently. That was was an update of their fare Chase position, and they said baiting can increase hunter success by helping them to locate game, especially nocturnal species and game that inhabits a continuous, dense understory that makes successful harvest numbers difficult to achieve. Baiting allows a hunter to be more selective, as it permits them to conduct the closer inspection of an animal to determine its age and sex prior to harvest. This is particularly important when it is discouraged or legal to take young animals or females with young of a species such as black or grizzly bear, where the sex and age is not as easily discernible as with other species. It's a pretty cogent and well thought out way to look at that. The advantage is here. And when we look at this, there's sometimes, like you said, we get in the trap of something doesn't feel right. You know, if I would, if I was to play Devil's advocate, I think lot of hunters would say, like, what doesn't feel right? Yeah, well funck that like that. At the end of the day, we have to be we very much have to be pragmatic in the way we view these things. It might not feel right for you, that's okay, then don't do it. But as a practice of management, as a tool for wildlife managers, is very hard to to look at the facts with baiting in certain situations to say it's no good. I mean, it just isn't for me. Well, the other thing is that you are what a big argument is people say that it's unnatural, like you're you're altering this animals habits, you're doing, You're you're you're in putting some resource that's making him do something different than he would do if you hadn't done it. Well, I see that, but it's not entirely true. Because a black bear in Arkansas, he utilizes a wide oak ridge the exact same way that he utilizes de bait site. He is designed to gather twelve months worth of groceries in eight months. He so, I mean, he is designed to eat. He's got a huge gut, he's got a huge mouth, he's got big tea. I mean, like everything about him is designed to to input resource. And uh so when you put out bait, you're you're capitalizing on something that he's already doing, which is utilizing the resource until it's gone, you know. And so you know, and Ronnella said that as well. You know, he talked about you know, like if there's a whale on you know, washed up on the beach in Alaska and you shoot a brown bear over that whale, you know, you know, is that is that natural? You know, You're you're capitalizing up on something that that bear is already doing. And uh, just a that's that's just a well, you know a lot of a lot of states, a lot of states are against baiting. And I was reading about in the Alabama's Wildlife thing and what they were kind of questions about baiting, and they said, well why do they not? Why are they against baiting but not supplemental feeding. When I started reading this, I'm like, wow, Okay. Baiting significantly elevates the chance of disease transmission in two ways compared to deer feeding and food plots. And this is specifically for deering. Baiting causes deer to feed in a very small area where they are and frequent and direct contact with each other. Even when deer do not feed nose to nose at bay piles or stations, Baiting causes them to feed in virtually the exact same place or deer have fed previously. Um. And then another thing I think that matters that within the bear baiting or a question for you is you see deer coming to to bear bait sites very very rarely. I mean you'd get the odd picture of a deer just passing through, but not at all. I mean, you're not knowing any food there that they're interested and you're you know, there's so much. Yeah, maybe somebody would be baiting with corn or something that deer might be interested in, but there's so much other foreign smell there that I mean, I've never had a deer walk up. And you know, talking about the conversation between baiting and bear and baiting deer, I mean, there could be some commonality if we were just talking about the overarching topic of baiting, but really they're very different. I mean, you know, there are concerns now with congregating deer um also habitat concerns with baiting deer year round in them, you know, hammering down on the on the native plant species that are most palatable to them. So I mean, you know, you have a spot that you're baiting for ten years, and which people do for sure, you know, like man, in two years, everywhere within a quarter mile of that spot, all the good stuff is gonna the natural brows is gonna be depleted. The stuff they don't want to eat is going to increase. You quit baiting, then all of a sudden, you've got this. You know, you've got habitat that's not great for it. I mean, there's there's other concerns and stuff that which don't really play over inside a bear. Bear baiting is typically a very short lived thing. Like in Arkansas we can bait for thirty days before season. Most people are baiting for a very short time, you know. So it's not like this animal is becoming dependent upon this or it's changing them that dramatically. Yeah, And I think that's a it's a good thing to think of. And and a lot of state game departments will well. And while the fans will talk about supplemental feeding, you know, for an ungle, it like a deer versus and that supplemental feeding could be a food plot. It could be somehow you've changed the landscape to add more food for that animal. Right, so you've mostly what they'll say is a food plot, right, A food plot is in quote unquote in their in their minds, supplemental feeding. I don't know that when we're managing wildlife, we can be so finite like supplemental feeding. You're changing and both of these instances, whether you're putting out you know, grain or or syrup or doughnuts or whatever for bears, or you're putting out a polycorn for deer, or you're planning soybeans, or you're planning some sort of seasonal food plot for deer. You're changing the landscape in such a way that is going to change every everything that a deer does. Really, you're manipulating the landscape to manipulate the animal. And it would it be that baiting them is just a lazier way to do it. Maybe if if you're if you're switching it to deer, but it it's certainly beyond the deer disease transmission argument. Things just start to fall apart with baiting, especially with bears. Man, And so do you have you thought about like when you bring your kids up doing this, like you explain this to them, how do you talk to them about? Man? I talked very candidly and openly with my kids about why we bait because I kind of live in two different worlds because I love to bait bear. I mean, to me, it's it's the way to well let me let me even back up. I'm gonna get to my kids. The When I was growing up, we hunted public land for white tails, and we were constantly looking for that hot spot, which for us was a wide oak acorn treat rain and acorns with deer coming into it. You use this this hot spot. I mean, you know, like five times when I was a kid, my dad would have I mean very rarely would we really find what we were looking for, and it was a hot spot. When we started baiting bear when I was younger, it was like, man, we're making our own hot spot, which you know, I mean plays into the ethics thing maybe, but that's why it became so exciting and fun. So I I love to bait bears because you are creating an opportunity. You are I'm I'm talking about how I live in two different worlds. I live in that world, but I also love and probably my favorite type of hunting is what I call slip hunting or spot and stock hunting. I mean, just bear hunting in national forests without the use of baitter hounds. I call it the sheep hunt of the South in Arkansas. It's the toughest hunt that I know of, for real, in terms of actual success. You turn a hundred hunters loose in Arkansas and say, how many of you are gonna be able to kill a bear with a bow? Just go go hunt them. You know, very low odds of success versus really almost any hunt in North America. I mean, so it's a it's a tough hunt. I love that hunt. So my kids have grown up with this. You know, these two things that I do that I've been very clear with them about one of my sons, my older son, he's he'll be fourteen. We made a decision four years ago when his siblings were killing bear over bait. I drew him aside and I said, tell you what, how about you not hunt over bait, and how about you set a goal that in the next eight years you'll kill a bear in national forest just hunting with me like I do. And I mean, his eyes lit up and it was like he he got it because he knew that it was harder, it was more difficult, and in our family add more value to a hunt that is is like that. At the same time we celebrate hunting bear over bait. We just my daughter killed a big, a very nice bear, uh just uh, three or four weeks ago after passing eleven bears that most grown men would have shot. I mean, I'm telling you that she passed eleven bears over two years. And uh and and I limited, you know, she limited herself. I was like, if we're gonna hunt over bait, we're gonna we're gonna wait for the right bear, you know. And so they get it. They get these nuanced things that we do. And I don't know if that answers your question, but but they know it's not like we're just it does. It does. And I think it's that there's very important respective in that because I've had a lot of hunters in here, a lot of people um with perspective that are outside both our country and our model of conservation. You know, that can talk about in other cultures historically, and then you know European cultures and hunters are revered because of their selectivity. They're revered because they have to have knowledge of the outdoors. They have to have knowledge of the natural world. If the knowledge of the game that they're pursuing, if they don't have that knowledge, they couldn't accurately select the proper animal to remove. You know, it's the it's a natural resource, right, It's it's this is what we're doing. And so when you're talking about that, that brings true to me that your kids are learning about the animal, They're learning about where it lives, what it does, how to be selective around the taking of one, is it a male or female? How old is it? Why does it have to be old as opposed to young? All those things I think are paramount to to what hunting is at a core level of conservation, because you can't really be part of conservation if you're not understanding the removal of you know, one animal or another. And so when you talk about that, it strikes to me very similar to We had a guy do shuns tona in here I've said there's probably a lot, but he talked about he grew up in Checklist Faki, and he talked about the hunter being so revered for their knowledge of the natural world and what could see the So the situation with my daughter, she's sixteen now, and she killed bear overbait when she was thirteen, and then we hunted two years in a very difficult location where we had to pack in bait on our mules and do a bunch of stuff that was just difficult, and she saw more she had more. If I could use the word intimate interaction with bear, then most people will have in a lifetime. She really did. I mean we watched bears for eight hours a day. I mean, this place where we were hunting was it was, it was great. We we watched bear interactions, we watched sALS with cubs, we saw older age class boars. And that experience that she had there over bait, it's something that you would never have gotten in decades of hunting in the National forest. And so the experience that she got, and she was highly selective took an older age mail that she eventually took, you know, it was it was a win for conservation, it was a win for us. And the amount of you know, she had to exercise a lot of restraint inside of that, which is I think a good character discipline. And uh. Likewise, my other son, who honestly I chose him to give this proposition to him because I saw in him a real burning fire for what I perceived to be. You know, it's like, yeah, he's got he doesn't need to be gratified too quick and um anyway, he so he has not killed a bear, even though his both the siblings have and um, so you know, there's there's different ways to regulate these things in terms of limiting yourself. Man, I started to realize that these things that that on it on their faces don't seem you know, we're fair. We always use the term fair in terms of hunting. I don't. I'm growing to to not like using the term fair, especially fair chase. I feel like it just just doesn't quite have the right connotation. What I'm learning is all these things are kind of in the hands of the particular hunter. Like baiting in your hands, hands of somebody who used thoughtful, ethical, knowledgeable about about where you're living and what you're doing. In your hands, baiting is like a wonderful tool to not only teach, but to manage populations and to better understand the animal that dies at the end of the day. In the hands of a lazy asshole, baiting might be just a way to dump a bunch of corn on the ground and shoot that bluck that you haven't been able to get after. So it's it's an interesting all of these things, especially when it comes as a fair chase, and you can see it in Buona Crocckett's recent position came out in August that I was just reading from. It's kind of like they're just they go back and forth, so you know, they talk about it. All of this kind of depends on how you were raised and what tradition in which you were raised, and how you view this this uh ridiculously variable thing that we do call it hunting. The other thing I was thinking of the last time we did uh an ethical conversational Whiskey ethics, we talked about gripping grins, and I said, I was telling Steve right now that I and Miles Nulte that I feel like, for me, I'm just gonna like take gripping greens and put him aside, like not do them. I'm willing to give that up because I know that there's been instances where it's it's not been the greatest for hunting. Now, I could probably say the same thing about baiting, and I could probably also say the same thing about other ethical you know, hounds for example, I could say, oh, well, hounds people don't like it, so we're not gonna do it. Baiting people don't like it, so we're not gonna do it. Um And I see that whole sliding scale argument when it comes to those kind of limiting points of view, which mine was for gripping kings. But when I look at this, I say, like, we have to be able to separate all that stuff and say like bear baiting in the hands of a really good practitioner is a is a really good thing, you know, And that's that's just being pragmatic, you know. I think the I think the issue is even bigger than that, though, ben So, I think a lot of people would just say, hey, why don't we just not bait? I mean, it's kind of like, you know, you got your family circle, and then there's those cousins that are just like kind of a little bit on the outside of the circle, and it's like, how about we just not invite them to the party given us a bad name. It's not that simple. It's it's really not that simple, because only in the last fifty years has have humans decided that using hounds was unethical. I was reading last night. They believe the first dogs were domesticated fifteen thousand years ago, pretty much one for the use of hunting and protection. And I mean, and dogs have even evolved to be this animal that has the most emotional connection to humans of any other animal because of you know, the dogs that were connected to their master were more likely to be fed and more likely to be bread. And I mean so like part of being a modern human is to have a connection with a with a with a dog really is. And and for people all of a sudden to say, hey, what you've been doing for the last fifteen thousand years that has built mankind, you shouldn't do that anymore because it's bad. It's really pretty bizarre in a lot of ways. And we can talk about hounds. I would, I would love to. And so there's this shifting baseline, and I think there's there's a place where hunters like I am all for what I see happening in the hunting community, where we're becoming better at pr I mean, I'm there. It's like we have to show ourselves as as as thoughtful and as conservationist. But there's also this place where we can't be given into the trends of modern society that does is not congruent with who we are as humans. And so here Ben, this is this is Most of my notes on my phone are about this phrase called guard the Gate, which to me, so bear hunting is easily the lowest rung on the ladder for the anti hunting community or for the non anti hunting community, the people that don't know anything that's a oh, you're baiting bears, well that you know, they don't understand it. Bear hunting is is the lowest rung on the ladder. Bear hunting is the gate for the anti hunting community to come into our space. So a lot of people would say, well, let's just not do that. Well, we know that the and to hunting strategy is incrementalism. And if in twenty five years there is no place left debit bears in North America and they've outlawed hound hunting, they will be after elk hunting with with calls. I mean, your kids will will be fighting against guys that say, man, they go out in the woods witholk calls. They use plastic these tubes and they blow and it sounds just like an elk, and the elk come running and they kill them barbarians, I mean, like and it's it's hard to think like that, but it's true. And so that's why to me, for us as a hunting community to gather around something that's a little bit uncomfortable, but is massively a part of our humanity that we can't give. We can't be trendy about this, like, uh, you know, I've got I've got dark framed glasses, I'm wearing a cool hat. We can't be trendy though about bear hunting. I mean, and I think think you're pent right, and I think looking at the history of some of these things and like what they mean to our culture and kind of like the way things are being peeled back. That's where I come off. And Steve and I have talked about this even after we record that gripping your past. I'm like, well, gripp and grins aren't an old like there there they go back to say, t yeah, they it's this old practice that's been changed so much by the modern like the modern technology of social media, that it's been changed and moreph to a point where it's not what it was and it never will be again. But bear baiting is not that Like bear baiting again, I'll go back to in the hands of of of of somebody that values it and uses as a tool is a good thing. Right, It's a good thing and it can always be that. Right, But if you look at the state of California. They are basically you hold them up as they're pretty analogous to what folks on the other side might want hunting to be. Eventually, don't hunt predators, can't trap them, they can't run hounds for him, You can't bait for him, don't. I mean, they'll be after bears before long. There, you effectively shut down bear hunting in in most places if you eliminate baiting hounds. There's there's really very few places where spotting stock hunting can achieve management goals. So I mean, basically, by taking that out, you're taking the knees out of bear hunting. Um, You're just you're you're totally taking the knees out. And I think I think these you know, I bring up because I think these things are all analogous, they're all the they're kind of all in the same thing. As you say, guard the gate. You know, there's two ways to guard the gate, right, There's one guard the gate to to say we're all we're gonna stand up for the things we've always done right. And the other way to guard the gate would be we're gonna change and shift with the culture in appropriate ways. Right, We'll trim the fat in our hunting culture. And that's what I think, That's what I'm trying to do is is let's why don't we have this very a very strong narrative that's on the lips of everybody. And what I see inside of people is that even hardcore hunters that are in our space and on our side are almost like shamed in some way to talk about you know, like hunting a barrel overbait or using hounds. And I mean, especially on social media, it's like there's this there's this underlying thing like is this okay? And and that's where I feel like we're pandering to a false argument and false propaganda. You know, we're giving into it. And I'm not saying we gotta put it in people's face. I'm really not. I mean, if you know me, you know that's not what I do. But I feel like the hunting world is giving into it. And I think the baseline is shifting and we're moving. We're paralleling it in a lot of ways. We're paralleling that shift, like, well, you know what baitan bears is kind of you know, it is kind of this, or it is kind of that, are using hounds, it's kind of this or that, And that's why I like, hopefully there's many people that will listen to this can understand we had I had a Buddy Semi article that he wrote recently about is social media dividing hunters? Was like the hypothesis of this article, and I'm like, well, no, it's not dividing hunters. Hunters are always divided, all is it. All is it doing is giving us access to the perspective of people that are in different places in our country. Hunting in the South was always divided from hunting in the West. Always the cultures are different than people are different, the perspectives are different. Social media and this, this new way of connecting each other is only amplifying our understanding of those perspectives. That's all it's doing. It's not dividing us, right, And so when you say when you're talking about kind of moving with the baseline, I think it all depends where you are, you know. For me, I've been part of this podcast and just what I want to do better is understand different perspectives from different areas and be able to have a collective, right, have a collective of perspectives that informs what I think rather than I live in Montana where I grew up in Maryland, and this is how we do it, and this is the way that it's done, and it's only done this way, and if someone else does it differently, than they are wrong. That's kind of what fair chase has become, rather than are be being fair to the animal in a way that's respectful of the resource and of the individual. And so when we talk about that baseline, we we've really got to understand, like everybody's baseline is different from the beginning, even if even if it's an intrinsic baseline, if you eliminate the extrinsic cultural, shitty like urban baseline that we have to always battle against, so it's different, I think. So it's important for you to stay in here and say, in in my family, in my community, in the woods where I live, this is a thing that is good and that is in and of itself, you know. Well, the the thing that that we are heralding is that the hunting community, for the betterment of all hunting, for the betterment of elk hunting, for the future sustainability of mule deer hunting, hunters need to gather around and just just just support, I mean whatever that means to them, support all legal methods of hunting in twenty nineteen, I mean, really that that's we've got nothing left to give. I mean, society has trimmed and chopped, and here we are in twenty nineteen. In modern times. The North American mole of wildlife conservation has been the most successful animal husbandry event of humankind. It's working. Wild places are being saved. You know, there's a lot of bad stuff happening too, but for the for the sake of that, And I think that's the that's the kind of the thing that I don't think people see or understanding, and they wouldn't. But from from over here, I'm saying, Hey, even if you're not a bear hunter, even if you don't like hound hunters, you probably might know when you don't like well, guess what This world is bigger than your dislike of that thing. Look at it from the macro perspective, just like we look at you know, yeah, you kill an individual animal, but your perspective is about the macro, the macro population. Well, that's our thing, is that man rally around all legal methods of hunting in these days. I mean and I'm specifically talking about baiting hounds, you know, because effectively if they if they get those, then then everything is you know, we've we've lost, we've lost, honey. I was thinking about just today we released this video about my daughter yesterday, her killing in in Uh. The the thing that's you know, if my daughter and her children and her children's children would could in fifty years wake up in Arkansas and look at the mountains that I currently hunt and not be able to go hunt those mountains, I think really that would make them something very different from what I am. Like, it really would. I think that's the that's the the fear that we have, that fear I have a fear. I think it would be. It's it's kind of you could compare it to in a strange sense, you can compare it to if you took wolves and predators off a landscape. What elk turned into right, changes them, It changes them. They don't they're not elk anymore. You know. You can look at Yellowstone and they took wolves off of Yellowstone. They became something different. Right when they reintroduced wolves. The wolves just killed them at nausea because the elk didn't anymore know what to do with that predation. And I think it's the same thing. We change in the same ways if we eliminate these things. And so I think those cultural things are important. Um, but that's where all these all, that's where the conflict and the interesting like where where bear baiting becomes interesting or where hound hunting becomes interesting because and and we said this in the last Whiskey and Ethics, like we we tend to talk out of both sides of our mouth in a lot of ways. We want to say that we know without a doubt that people that don't hunt have to understand it, and they have to accept it, because if they don't, they're going to vote at the hell out they've done it. They've done it, or they'll vote in politicians that are gonna get rid of it. Done in New Jersey, done in California, they've done it in British Columbia. Those are those are not like those are not singular instances that won't be repeated. That's not that they are the beginning of kind of a cultural fission or a fissure, I believe. But like, so you have those things, like where do you have you need knowledge and acceptance from people that don't do what we do. But at the same time, if you're just gonna pander to that lack of knowledge and the limit and it's shaving off things that they don't agree with, eventually you'll get to where you where you explained earlier about like you're using plastic calls that's unfair. And so I think that's where these two things bashed together, Like we need to stand our ground on certain things things, but we also need to understand that there's a non hunting public that has to get it somehow. So what the hell do we do? That's man. I think we've just got to keep telling our story, Ben, And you know, people when people see that we are just normal humans with families that love our kids, that we're we're just we're not barbarians, but we're actually good people that pay our taxes and our good citizens and our respectful humans, like they are much more endeared to our cause. Now, how do I mean? I think Meters are doing that through what they're doing. I mean, and and I'm talking about the the show and different things. I mean, I think that's what we're doing through you know, the videos that we're making, is that we're showing people that we're we're human. We're endearing them to them, and we're endearing them just to us as humans because I've never I've yet to meet anybody, and I have a lot of interactions with non hunting people I live. We live out in the country, but we're in a very urbani is part of Arkansas, kind of the most affluent part of Arkansas, northwest Arkansas, where Walmart is and all this stuff, and so a lot of people from all over the world. Just this week, my son has been in a betting battle with a boy from overseas that goes to our school. And uh, he asked Bear. My son's name is Bear, He asked, Barry said, he said, why do y'all hunt? And Bear said, man, we hunt. We we we eat everything we're harvesting, we're taking. And he said, you don't eat the stuff. And Bear said, I bet you a dollar will have some type of wild game tonight. And he didn't know. And when he came home, well, we were having bear chili. So he came back to school the next day won the bet with a boy and the boy said, I bet you two dollars you don't have meet again. Tonight and Bear said, I bet you anyway, point being, the boy finally realized that, I mean, Bear has been talking to him, and he like, he like understands that these people really are they're eating this stuff. It's healthy, it's this is a this is a this is a family culture. And I think that I think the kids getting He's a good kid. The other other kid, he's one of our family friends. But point me and I think we gotta tell our story. Ben, Yeah, they'll tell it for us. I mean that's that's what I If we don't tell our story, they'll tell it for us. Because I had a conflict, I said it to Ronella, had a conflict when I first started putting my bear hunts up on YouTube, and in five years ago, I probably wasn't as intentional as I am now. Um, but you know, I had a video that went viral and got massive amounts of hate. I mean kind of changed my life in some ways, my perspective on people. Uh, And I was like should I put this up? I mean like I really wrestled with that a lot, talked to a lot of people like I mean, should I not put this on YouTube? And in my conclusion is is that you know, if I don't tell the story, somebody else will. And here Here's the other thing is that people need the words. I think what we do in in in in media as we give people the words to say. I mean we we we we craft mind frames and ideology that somebody can go yeah. I mean I say stuff that that I hear. You know, you guys say here at meat eat, I mean you know that have helped me fine tune my narrative. Um. I also think that humans, the one thing that humans have always been able to do is to discern when someone is authentic. And if you are a jack wagon, and you know you're a jackwagon, if you're playing tennis, you're given tennis a bad name by being a jackwagon. You're also given hunting a bad name by being a jackwagon. I think if we're passionate about something that that is has so much influence on our life, it ought to make us a better human because of hunting. I ought to be a better husband, a better father, a better businessman, ought to be more honest, ought to have more integrity. And it's like I rep present something that is bigger than me, and that's what I want people. I want people to I mean, and and that's the truth. I think people ought to be able to see a hunter and just I think that's what it used to be. I think it's like, man, that guy is an honorable man. He he is. He's full of restraint, he's disciplined, he's physically disciplined. He's a craftsman. And his weapon, you know, with the with the weapon that he chooses, he's skilled. He he knows how to butcher an animal. He's this is a renaissance man. I mean, it's like hunting used to be something much bigger. And and so I say that to say the way to save hunting is to become a better human. Yeah, everybody, just take a break and rewind and listen to that ship again. That was awesome. And I can't say that you've changed how I think about things, But god damn if if you're not listening to what Clay just said and thinking harder about how you speak and what you think and what you're willing to tolerate and what you're not willing to tolerate, then you're full. Because I mean, they're are. There are many things that we do online as hunters that just don't that that take away from the words that you just said. You know that are not not the videos that you put up that calls controversy just by the mere fact that there might be a bear coming into a bait. But there there are things out there that just aren't what you just describe. You know that they aren't articulations of the love and respect and the feelings that we have for it. They just aren't, you know, And we can't let people. We have to let people like you speak, and we have to let people that have their perspectives. You know, there's there's plenty of hounds been out there that can come sit right next to you and talk with as much passionate about hounds as you can do about bait. There just is, and those are the people as a hunting community that we need to hear from before we make our decisions about whether we want to personally do something or not, or whether we want to help promote that or not, or help people understand it or not. So well done on your you weren't even reading off your notes that Yeah, that wouldn't even then write write that down, Phil, write that down. I think going back to back to baiting for a quick moment there it is. It is, it has become inside the community, outside community, kind of the front lines of the things that we're arguing about, the things we don't agree on. We can list those out. It's always around. It seems to always be around predators for lots lots of reasons, um and it seems to be always around ethical issues. Now, when I've said this before in this podcast, I think a fair chase in my own mind now today, like I have to be in the moment that I decided to kill the animal, and it becomes about the animal. Maybe prior to that, it may be that, And this is evolving for me, I would be very honest about this. It maybe prior to the killing of the animal, it can be about me a little bit. It can be about adventure, it can be about learning, it can be about being with my family. But at the moment that I draw my bow or shoulder my rifle, I must now start thinking about the animal. But there's more than that. I gotta think about the animal even before I've done that, to make sure I'm in a situation where I could be ethical and killing. So how do you think about that? When do you start thinking about like in the in the hunting sense, in the conceptual hunting sense, when you start thinking about the animal, you know, that's a good question to me. To me, it's I don't see it probably is distinctly segmented. Like you're saying. I'm not saying I disagree with what you're saying. Just I see it as more of a total package of just let me let me clarify. Clarify. I think I'm talking about like what I have to do right, Like I have choices up until the point, but there's no I have no choice other than too when I draw my bow, I gotta be thinking about if I send this arrow, is it going to hit its mark? What's the probability that's gonna hit its mark? If I send this bullet, what's the probability is going to hit its mark? Is that the right animal is at the right time? Is it ethical? I have no choice of than to do that at that point. Leading up to that point, there's there's choices you can make. But when when it's time to kill the animal, I have to be thinking about the animal that there's there's no I I give myself no choice. So when I draw my bow, if it's the biggest buck of my life. But he's standing at seventy yards. I have to tell myself this. I haven't always been this way, but nowadays I tell myself, like, is it right? Is it true? You know? So you know, I think I think fair chase and just functional kind of ground roots hunting meet someplace, and that I've had bad experiences where I made bad decisions as a young hunter and wish that I hadn't made those decisions, and those instances branded me so strongly that I'm not I can't say I'm consciously thinking about fair chase and ethics. When I pass ass on a shot with my traditional bow at a bear at twenty eight yards, it's like it's like, you know, there's this seamless thing of it is ethics. That's the reason I've passed. But it's also the bad experiences I've had in the past that branded me. My dad. I always talking about my dad. My dad, seventy two man. He pounded pounded into me before it was cool. He He used the term slob hunters a lot, and he talked about guys talking about slinging air like there were things that I could not say, like we'd go to the bow shop and we would walk out and he would say, don't ever say that you slung an air at an animal. Don't ever say that you stuck an animal, because you walk in there and guy says, I stuck one yesterday. It couldn't find, you know, like he like, I mean I'm talking like when I'm like eight, you know. And so I had this really strong sense of man, you better take a good shot. And and when I was young, the first day ever shot, we didn't recover and it was it was almost like, uh, actually hit the animal. R Wara's aiming said, circumstances we didn't find it. Um, it was most kids probably would have quit hunting for what I went through trying to recover that animal. And the kind of my dad didn't discipline me, but he in his own way without intil you know, it's like it branded me deep. And I think that's what a lot of people are missing, is they don't have that deep respect. Um. You know it certainly that answers your question, does it does? And I think it certainly could be that if you start with that branding, all the all the other decisions you make are are are grounded in that idea. Right, So any any decision you make, whether it's to be too bay to bear or two spot and stock one or two um, to pass a shot, to take a shot, they're all grounded in that idea of value. Like, so if you start with that idea of value, the rest of the stuff that you do is informed by that, and you general become a better hunter, right, because what you're talking about is is a hunter. And again, I've seen this, and I'll be flat honest, I've seen it, and I've seen it recently and I've been a part of it, and I've had to kind of like look around and go, what what am I doing? Uh? Antelope out west? People fling arrows at antalope shooting long dis long distances that they wouldn't do other places, Like they're they're just things we accepted hunters, and things I've accepted in the past. And I'm not I'm not like charging against anyone here. I'm saying that this is something I've been a part of and sometime I've had a you know, questions on my own activities. Um that that to me was like whoa, Okay, whoa, whoa what's going on here? Like? Why is this happening. Why am I accepting of this? What are we doing here? There's there really are different standards for different people. And I think ultimately fair chases inside of a man really, I mean, like if we could say that because you know, you know your own capabilities, you know what you're stacked up against, you know how well you can shoot, you know your experience. I mean, and a new hunter shouldn't do the same thing as another guy. And that's where we get in trouble, I think, is that there's some guys that legitimately can kill Elcott or kill an Loop at seventy yards with a compound bow. I mean, there are guys that can do that. There are guys that absolutely should not be doing that. And so that's where the fair chase, if we're just righting out the tenants of fair chase, you just can't. I mean. And and it goes back to, you know, goes back to even what I was talking about before, is that fair chase really is designed to be an internal position of personal ethics, that kind of trust is involved. It's kind of like I'm going hunting with you, I trust that you have fair chase inside of you. And I mean that it's kind of a you know, it's hard to gauge that, but it's but it's it's almost at odds and a lot of the ways that we are as humans, right because we want rules, yeah, and we yeah, we want someone to say like that, okay, it's not okay. Well, hunting is often you're often alone or you're often with with very few people, so there's not that's collective like I do. You're it's all of a sudden, You're like, it's you and your own personal choices set against death to you and the things that you decided to do in that moment, set against the maiming death some some life altering situation for that credit or that animal that's standing there. You know, So you're often left with just a personal decision because there's nobody else around. If you're sitting in a tree standing, a deer walks under and he's just he's at forty five yards, he's behind a tree, and all you can see is his guts and his liver and a little bit of his lungs. You're like, I gotta take the shot. He's a giant buck, and he shoot him in the guts and you never find him and he's eaten by coyotes. Like what was involved there? What was the emotion that you let drive it? Lust? Like what like when you're talking about I think we've just got to learn from that stuff, Like people have to be attentive enough. And that's what I was saying about my upbringing. It's like, man, I don't not take bad shots now because as I want to be more fair Chase, I don't take bad shots now because of the bad experiences that impacted me deeply over the years. So it's like again fair chases inside of a man. Yeah, you're in tune, like some people take those bad shots and slough them off and continue like you're in tune to like this is and me too, I've had so I had like nightmares about bad shots I've taken and dumb shit I've done, and and like it, this whole conversation becomes just the measure of of what who you are, how you can adapt and and I think that maybe flips back because we I was saying within the gripping grin conversation, like we do things different to try to solve for issues that we have not with our not with society, but within ourselves, right, we do. People have started doing the solemn gripping grin to solve an issue, right, And I think it's both, like I said earlier, intrinsic and extrinsic, that that issue is internal and external. Externally, people don't want to see you smiling and celebrate omver something that died internally you really maybe don't want to do that either. Like there there's a little bit of both happening at the same time. I'm kind of into the smile, but no direct contact with the camera. That's where I'm at right now. But like that, But I I would say that like with with with those kind of practices were changing them because we're we're changing, and the world is changing, and all this all this stimuli and all these inputs are changing us as people have changed our hunting culture, and it's hard to recognize that. Sometimes it's hard to recognize who we were and who we are, who we're gonna be, And so all these ethical conversations become way more broad. Baiting becomes way more broad than just baiting, because it's not just the idea of putting out an unnatural food source for him to come in and eat. It's more about what you said earlier, and more about what we're talking about. You know, then I've got to two thoughts, and I want to say both of them so that I don't forget. I have a hard time, you know, my extensive notes here. Maybe I should start taking phil You think I should start taking notes so I know what I'm saying. I think I think it's more fun when you don't say I've got to I've got two thoughts I want to I want to talk about animal death. Number one and number two I want to talk about I want to talk about spotting stock hunting, which oftentimes is viewed as the most natural, kind of elite way to hunt. So can you help me remember those, Philip. Here's here's the thing on animal death that I think people don't understand. People see a bear, they see this majestic black bear, and they see a hunter kill that bear, and they think, how could you have killed that bear? Well, the truth is is that do you think that bear is gonna live forever? I mean the cycle any animal that you see. And I've never heard really anybody say this quite like this, but but it's true that majestic bull elk on the mountain bugling out there. Now he will die. There's my Pointinite he is going, he's he's gonna die. And nature nature is by essence quite cruel if you talk about human ethics, I mean, you know, like I had a guy the other day, I mean, the architecture of the world we live in involves death that brings back life. I mean, this thing is fueled by death. And so I think part of our the anti hunting sentiment and even sometimes what we give into a little bit even as hunters. And that's where I'm careful. I want to be massively, massively and authentically respectful of taking an animal's life. At the same time, I don't. I don't want to have a shifting baseline, you know, in that if I hadn't killed that bear, he would have died a very difficult death, much more difficult than a sharp blade between two lungs and him living eight seconds and just going to slip after crashing through a thicket. I mean, I'm just being honest. Like he he would have died from old age teeth, you know, couldn't chew up acorns and so died starvation. He probably died in the din in the winter. I mean like you really think about stuff like that. In in taking out an animal, it kind of puts it in perspective. And I think that's something that hunters we don't think about sometimes, is that every animal is gonna die and and and that's not a massively strong point, but that is something that I think something to remember. And like what you're talking about, I was thinking of, like what's natural death? Right? We talked about like a natural death. And if you think of like how nature is constituted unconstructed, death is violent. So a natural death. And many times if you're talking about just the word natural death, a natural death is predatory, it's violent. Nature has no problem with death. Nature is death, Nature is pain, nature is violence. All those things are together in this primordial soup that is the natural world. We have just removed ourselves from the violence and the death and and and those the natural processes in which these things happen. So, Honey, is in some sense inserting yourself back into this into something that we've been in since forever. And we always relied upon being a part of this very violent circle, this very unnatural like this very natural like pain and suffering and all those things that are kind of just intrinsic in the in the world of nature, like that ship gets ripped apart. I was watching a video other day. That's why nature is metal as a thing, because because some there's some part of us that needs to remind ourselves that this ship is bad. Like it, nature will rip you apart and it doesn't care. That's what people don't understand. But I'm reading a book right now called Sapiens. That's a good book. Have you read it? Okay? The guy in the first first part of it, the guy was talking about, um, how almost brought it in today because I thought we might use it as a quote. But he talked about how basically we're these like we're hunters that are trapped inside of this civilized society, and there's so much of who we are, even from a biological standpoint that I mean, there's there's this conflict in us right now living in civilized society, but with this gazillion years of development that we were hunters, you know. I mean that's kind of a yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thought. We're different than we used to be, and we'll be different in the future. I mean, this gets deep, and maybe we should be like taking mushrooms to talk about this, but there's uh, there's a there's an idea that we will be in the future. Yeah, more Lacroix. We got a little we got the also put a picture up. We got the mediator straight bourbon whiskey. Here it was on the table. We were able to to write pairs with bear bait. I convinced our guys to did you know, are you serious? And we're gonna wow. So it does PA pairs of bear bait, right, Phil, I haven't tried bear bait, but I'm sure it's just like bear Bait's good, like this is doughnuts and ship down sometimes. But I think I guess to finish the point of like, we're not what we were, right, We're not We're we've only not been what we were for a very short, very very short period of time. We're not what we were, and we won't be what we are in the future. Right, we will evolve. Um. And there's often when I've talked to anti hunters and Animal Rights actis, they'll often bring up and I've thought about this a lot since I don't have these conversations, they'll often bring up things like, well, we can't just do it because we've always done it, right, if we if we always did it, because we've always done it, we'd have slaves, and we've had racism, and we've had all these things, and and I'd like, I can't just no one can disagree with that point that is, That point is is well made. I get it. But hunting, eating meat is who we are, Like, you have to separate it from like cultural changes, in societal changes that have happened in like blinks of an eye. This is millions of years of evolution. And you know, if you're believing in in that story, which I do, that that has brought us to this point. Now we were moving away. Every day we're moving further away from what we were. But it's a different story to say, like we can't we can't have slavery anymore because we know it's bad. Well, we can't have hunting because we know it's bad. Not in the same category, not in the span of time and the span of who we are. It's just not in the same category. Uh, in comparison, In comparison to hunting, slavery is but a blip on the timeline, a shitty, terrible, horrible mistake of a blip, but a blip nonetheless, and so our cultural revolution around hunting that started a hundred years ago or last even is a blip. Like, you know, we had this thing, we changed it, we fucked it up, and then we brought it back. Yeah, that's where we are today. And so I don't know where this all goes back to baiting. But okay, listen, I've added another thing to my list. So I've already done number one. Now I've got two and now three. Just thinking about why in twenty nineteen are we talking about baiting. Why are we talking about bears? Um, the whatever is happening ecologically in North America has been highly beneficial, specifically to black bears, and that's what we'll I'll say, that would be my statement. Highly black bear populations are thriving all across North America. It's unbelievable. There there is no place where they're like, man, they're really bad. So take that a step further back. The North American model of wildlife conservation, whatever it is and whatever it has done, it's got to be a part of this as well. And so all of a sudden there is a need on the planet for bear hunters more than ever there really is. I mean, like because if these if these animals are not managed, if our culture doesn't a lot for hunters to be the management tool, then there's gonna be other measures to take out bears, because that's the that's the way it works. There's only so much habitat. Bears expand by ten percent per year in a normal population, and a lot of populations even more than that. And so I mean, bears are expanding their range. And Arkansas, Arkansas is an incredible picture of what's happening. There was a reintroduction into Arkansas in the nineteen fifties and sixties and two fifty four bears basically into a blank canvas that was once totally inhabited by bears. Today in our region there's estimates of around ten thousand bears between southern Missouri, Arkansas, Southeast Oklahoma, northern Louisiana, and western Mississippi. And it's like these bears from this one place to just and are going into places they hadn't been in a hundred years. So it's like, whatever's happening, it's good for black bear. We need bear hunters. Takes me into my third point, which is spotting stalk hunting, which, man, I it's kind of funny to me that I'm like the spokesman for baiting bears. You know, I told my wife, I was like, I never meant for it to be this way. I got a lot of that too, I tell my time, I never really meant to be that. Like I drank a white claw and then yeah, well I love spot stock hunting. I truly do. Spot Stock hunting is the least selective way to hunt bear. Like for some of these people that are just really wrestling with the ethics of bear hunting, the spotting stock hunting is by far the least selective way to hunt bear. When I spot in stock hunting, and my life is a perfect example of it. I'll sit over a bear bait then in Arkansas and will pass bears that most people would never pass. I mean, I'll pass incredible animals waiting for really what I'm after. That's my way to limit myself. Three weeks ago a national forest in Arkansas, I killed every ounce of an average bear and thought that I had just, I mean done the greatest feat of any hunter on the planet, and I was ecstatic. I would have never harvested that bear over bait um and and so it's and in some ways knocking my spot in stock hunt, you know. And so like when I was in Montana this spring, took my meals up to Montana and hunted. I mean, you know, we saw six bears. The first one, you know, I missed two bears. But you know, I mean, like I wouldn't be in selective. It was after an adult bear. And so that's a really strong point, because people, that's incredibly strong point. Its incredible. It's the point I think that maybe Trump's all others here, and I think it's maybe articulated in my mind like this, if I post a picture, I don't, but if someone posts a picture this happened. Actually, this happened on First Light's social media recently, where they posted a picture of a guy group I'm gonna have a guy in a in a pretty small bear, and people wrecked him for it. They wrecked him for it. Now I'm pretty sure he was spotting in stalking from the photo. I don't know the guy Adah satn stalking, right, So people wrecked him for shooting a small bear. Here's what we're talking about. We're willing at one moment to wreck a guy for shooting a small bear at that same moment, I'm sure there's people in that same crowd that would wreck him for bit hunting over bait and being selected and being selective. Now, if we're gonna have and we're gonna be against something, we better damn we'll get our ship together and understand what it is that we're actually talking about. What are we talking about? Are we talking about trophy hunting? Are we talking about is a big, mature adult bear to the thing we're after? Well, if that's what we're after, I've seen we were hunting turkeys in in the National Forest in the Idaho this last year. There was bait sites out there that guys had set up. Um. I didn't look at those and be like, oh, what what are those assholes? I'm like, Oh, that's cool. The way I always say it as I say, who's the conservation hero? Yeah, I took a little bit of flak for this statement, but who's the conservation hero? The guy that kills? And it's kind of in relation to baiting and and even what I think you would call trophy hunting maybe, which that's another thing we've talked about um, But who's the conservation hero The guy that non selectively takes a juvenile or female uh in whatever type of hunt, or the guy that passes ten bears and takes an older age class mail. You know, the one thing that we that we do preach a lot is that older age class males most of the time and most management situations are the best animals that they're their target animal, They've contributed to the gene pool, they are their target animal. And so you know, like who's the conservation hero the spot and stalk guy me Clay Knucomb that went to Montana and killed an average bear, or the Clay Knucom that last year hunted in Oklahoma and killed afty pound bear over bait. Uh. I would not have shot anything less than that bear. I mean a lot of people would look at that and say you are trophy hunting sucker, And I'd say, well, who's the conservation hero? Me taking out that old bear has contributed to the gene pool, lived a happy, full life in a wild place in southeast Oklahoma. Or the guy that you know, yeah shot the first one that he saw, yeah, and the and that that just goes back to like what we're talking about before, about the pursuit and your personal feelings, your personal ethics, and the situational ethics, and wins it about the animal, wins it about I would say, and we'll start this by saying, we're gonna eliminate all the assholes from the conversation. Say like we're we're thinking of this conversation like a responsible practitioner, of of a hunting style that values the animal they're hunting. Just start with that. We'll start with that. Because if there's somebody's an asshole, they can do either one of these two things. They give tennis a bad name. They played tennis. So if somebody's an asshole, they could spot and stalk like one, and they could like one. But if you're if you're a valuable if you're value a hunter, I would say that. And I've been around my handah just for one bear season, and I would say that within within the community here, there's less there's there really is truly less of a of an idea that of being selected around spot and stalk. You're looking for a nice mature bear. But it's not like you're you're and you wanted to be a boar. You don't want to be a South cubs. But there isn't the same structure around that as when you're sitting over bait and you're looking at uh animals as you did in Oklahoma. There just isn't the same structure. It's a different structure. It's also just a different type of pursuit altogether. You're still looking for a big, mature boar. But I have bear hunted and made I've made mistakes myself around bears, spotting stalk and thinking well, that's a nice boar, and then he's happened to be standing by a weird looking thing a brush. And I guarantee there's you know, plenty of hunters that have pulled the trigger on a spot in stock hunt with a rifle and walked over and been very disappointed as to what they say. That argument, that statement is really just made to this idea which I think is pretty alive in that, you know, spotting stock hunting, it's kind of the elite, like the right way to hunt. I feel, and I may have a kind of a persecution mentality and happy with that. I have done bait baited hunting, I've done spot and stock hunting. I've done all that stuff as you have. There was a point in time where I thought, I'm not gonna bait hunever bait anymore personally. It just doesn't give me the value. And then I started to think of, Okay, why am I saying that? What What am I? What am I saying that for? And and then I was like, well, you know what, Maybe it's because when I travel, like a lot of times i'm bear hunting. Before I moved to Montana, I would have to travel to hunt, right. So when I travel to hunt, I want to see country. I want to see I want to see animals. I want to be out in it. I don't want to be sitting in a box blind looking at a barrel, right. And so I started then I started thinking, well, it's not baiting that I don't necessarily I'm not going, Yeah, it's it's it's a situation I was in the totality of the hunt. Yeah, And so what baiting provide doesn't provide the things I'm looking for. And that's where me talking about I kind of live in two different worlds, two totally different mind frames. When we're baiting bears and stuff. It's with the kids and it's it's like, I don't know, it's it's it's a totally different animal than when I go on a spot in stock hunt in Montana or in Arkansas. And and that's okay for me. Yeah, that can be thatmplex and that's that's to me. It's like when but when I moved to Montana. Now I'm like, wait, I have this. I can go out in my back door and hunt bears. I can do it right now. I gotta bear taking my pocket. I could walk out there and go try to find a bear that's getting ready for hibern nation and whackle um as long as he was black. Uh, I could do that. That's so that changes my whole view of bear. Now bear hunting is a local phenomenon for me. I don't have When I was living in Texas, I couldn't go on a black bear. And so it's it just changed that that in and of itself changes the way that I see all these things. Right, and so the fact that you can it's legal for you to bait bears on private property where you live, you can go and do that. It changes the way you see other bear hunting. I'm sure. So I think I had to just realize that it wasn't. I wasn't so I wasn't so against baiting. It wasn't like sitting by a bait was the worst thing in the world. I enjoyed it a lot, a hunted bait with some guys up in Alberta, where we would be standing sitting there with a bow in my hand and there are fourteen black bears within fifty yards of me. What, let me ask you this, what other hunting experience would be anything remotely like that? It was? It was other world. I was sitting there with Cam Cam Hagnes, I'm sitting with Campaigns. He's an insane person. He he had already killed his bear. He was there with a knife and he was just like, bears are walking five yards from us and he's sitting there with a knife. I'm like, this guy's he's insane. I love him, but it's like that. That for me was it was a great experience. And every night we went out and sat in Alberta, we there was there were a bunch of bears. We got to watch them. I got to see how they acted. They get to learn about him. So look, there's there's a ton of value in that and I travel to go and do that. So there's a ton of value in that um And so I would just say, as people are thinking about this, think about kind of what what you're really after and whether baiting is just kind of like shifting your the hunting narrative for you on a particular hunt. And the thing is is people, not everybody has to hunt bear ever bait. And I think that's there's the complex human gymnastics that people have to do, which is a joke. But to think that you could support something that you may never do for the sake of something much bigger, But that man, that's the That's what we're saying, is that man, this is way bigger than just I don't want to hunt bear every baiter I do we need? And that's the unification point that can we talked about earlier, is that man, everybody needs to gather around all forms of legal hunting. I mean, and I really believe that. I mean, you know you can still well I won't go into that there. There's there's very few like archaic like hunting laws or regulations. None I have. I have none personally that I just look at and go like, man, they shouldn't be doing that. I mean maybe a hundred years ago. Yeah, I mean market hunting or you know what, I don't whatever. Just man, that's that's the that's the statement. And and don't give in to the propaganda, the emotional propaganda that a bear is any different than the deer. He is not. He you know, uh, he does not have the ability to reason. He does not have the ability to have his feelings hurt because he thinks that someone's baiting him into kill him. I read a book called evidence based Horsemanship. It actually helped me in my hunting. This whole thing of inside of training horses and mules and different things. People, people are massively uh, they assign human characteristics to animals big time inside of training, Like that horse likes me, That horse doesn't like me, That horse doesn't like it when I do this, that horse thinks this that in you know, like humans have this developed frontal lobe. Animals don't have a place in their mind too to have their feelings hurt. That that that may seem disconnected from what we're talking about, but I think from when you start talking about baiting bears, when we start talking about charismatic megafana, when you start talking about an animal that has been so uh, what's the word I'm looking for, anthromorph anthropomorphized that you start thinking that this animal is different than other things. He's not. And that's why the words that's why the word charismatic is more important there. Like animals, a lot of animals exhibit different forms of sentience, different forms of charisma, right, different forms. A lot of them treat their young different a lot of them treat their mates differently. I mean, there's a lot of examples of what we would discern is emotion in the animal world. But as you said, it's not. But even if there was, even if we like we could just say, oh, there definitely is, then the natural world doesn't give a fuck about it. It doesn't care. It just doesn't care. I mean, like, if that grizzly bear really loves it's two cubs, that's not going to stop the natural world from ripping them apart if it has to, right, It's not gonna stop some other predator or some male grizzly bearer from ripping those cubs apart to bring that south back into heat so he can get what he wants. It's a regard even if you know I think you're right. I think animals don't have the emotions. They do display characteristics of emotion, but I don't think they have the capability for the depth of emotion that we assigned to them. And so here we are left with this. Even if even if what I just said was flat wrong, and there are some there's you know, dolphins and other creators that have have more sentence than others, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Does killer well doesn't care if that dolphin uh likes you or hates you or it doesn't matter. And so we have the capacity to to reason all these things and understand them. But our capacity to reason doesn't, like you just said, change what's happening outside with these in the natural world. It just doesn't. In wild places, our reasoning doesn't change anything. And you know, inside of hunting, I mean, the baseline human architecture that has that has scripted the last thousands and thousands of years is that human life is different than animal life. I mean, like we've as hunters, we've got to say that, uh, you know, like the you know, every predator makes a decision that his life is actually more valuable than the life of the animal that he's taken. Yeah, well, let me let me ask you this because I think about this often. Maybe end with this be a good one, then with um, it's a chicken or the egg situation. Do we think this way because we're hunters? Or are we hunters because we think this way? Because very much of what I try to avoid my life is having this like set of ideologies and reasonings that are built by what like what I want the world to be. I love hunting. Do I think about animals this way because I love hunting? Or do or at the same time, do I hunt because I think about animals this way? And I think that's when you talk to animal rights folks, you start to have to answer that question for yourself. I think lots of animal rights folks don't look at that question. Do I think do I love animals because I or do I not hunt because I love animals? Or do I love animals because I don't kill them? And I think for most of my interaction with rights folks and anti hunters that have been very genuine, I find that they are applying their worldview to what they see, rather than building their worldview off of what is real. And so we want to ask ourselves the same thing. So yeah, well I think you said it. Well, So I mean, do you think like and that it's just a good way to kind of self actualize a little bit and be like, Am I saying all this because I want I like to bear like to to bait bears. Am I just trying to reason my way into some sh it I like? Or is it really what I say it is? You know, I don't know that I have a really good rebuttal to that other than that, and I'm not I'm not charging you with that. Well no, no. I said this the other day as I listened to Your Your Your podcast with the other guy Berry very gay Gilbert. You know, some of the things he said. I think he had a point. And all I know is that the way that we view hunting and this the way that we navigate it is so legitimate that there's no way that it's wrong. It doesn't mean it's the only way. Like when I listened to Berry, like, I had this thought, like, I mean, maybe there's some there's a there's a there's a space for saying I'm not legitimizing everything at all. Any A lot of the stuff, A few things he said. I was like, well, that's his thought. I guess he has the right to think that. UM, good for you. But the we are our our way of doing things is it's legitimate, it makes sense, it's rational, it's congruent with our humanity, it's working, it's sustainable, it's uh yeah, So I mean I think I think it makes sense. Does everybody need debate bears? No? Does everybody need to hunt like me and you hunt? No? Probably not. They won't. UM, But I don't think we're building a narrative to just fit our lives. I think it's too it's too congruent with what's happened for the last fifteen thousand years. And I'm I I realize these things in my own life because I'm able to articulate to other people and make them understand them. And like, I have family members that don't hunt, if they want to, if they come and ask me questions, I can articulate what I'm talking about and they understand it almost immediately and get what I get. And so that's my proof. My proof is that I can explain this, and other people that don't hold my same value system is gonna be like I get what you're saying. So as long as I'm able to do that. The question I just pose is like an unanswerable question. You know, you're not really sure, like why you're doing what you're doing. A lot of times, like you said, like you we're always not. We we end up really connecting to something and then out understanding how far we carry it, you know, and how much we carry within ourselves. So that may be a little too deep for morning podcast, but I think it's it's worth it's worth asking because I've found it to be the biggest criticism and why I think the animal rights thing will just eventually shrivel up and die. Um, it's just because it's not unless the whole and less and I just don't think our entire society will will devolve into people that are applying what we think to the world rather than That's why our voice has to just get so much stronger. It really does, because in a world of chaos and craziness and in congruency with the architecture of this planet like we are, voice has to become strong. I mean, and uh, because it's just the most simple principle is that man, we've been hunting for a long time. We've got to gather meet for our families. It's ancient and honorable, it's sustainable. If there were no black bears, I would have no right to stand in here and say, let's bait him and kill him. None. But black bears just happened to be thriving right now, not in spite of hunting, but because of hunting, and baiting is a part of that. Baiting is a massive part of it. Beautiful, well said, thank you. I guess I grew up. That's it. That's all another episode of hunting Collectives in the books. Thanks to Sam Soholt. Stamp it forward. Go to Sam's instagram at same sohol venmo that's Sam Soholt, and and participate and stamp before it's twenty five. That's what it costs you, and it goes to a bigger cause than you probably realize. So go and do that right now. Also thanks to Clay Newcome go check out his YouTube page. Go check out Bear Hunting Magazine. Think about the concepts that we talked about on baiting. It's very important, um Fiel, that that kind of went. It went off of baiting for much of the conversation. Did it not a little bit, but I think to the benefit of the conversation. Conversation, so I'm not gonna it's a great podcast. I'm not gonna end with any other Please to you all. The only thing that I want to say is, UM, shoot me an email. TC demediate dot com should be a message whenever you send something to Sam. I just want to hear about it. Um. I want to know that you did it, and it's important to me that you do. So if you ever did anything I ever asked of you, do this one thing. All right, We'll see you next time when the hunty collected. Bye long. Because I can't go a week without doing run oh withoubsolute run, bringing out, run wrong, drinking in and don't sitting at the possible would start this row whole root, feling lagging, hold on out, barrosh shoes all down. That one

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