00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey everyone, Episode ninety coming right at you from Bozemant and it's me and fill the Engineer here. In early January, we're gonna wind down the best of THHC. So thank you. I know there's a lot of people out there. Let's just be honest that when you see the best of show, you just don't listen. I do that sometimes, but I hope you listen to these last three and I hope you're listening to this one right now because we want to celebrate a little bit of what we've done in the last couple of years. And and and while we're doing that, we're sitting back here and planning for all the cool things we want to bring you, all the great guests, all the good topics. So hopefully we'll live up to your expectations in and as I said, I'm having a child, so kind of busy with that. We'll be back and better than ever very soon. But before we get to the show today, we gotta talk to you about the Meat Eater Off the Air live tour. Join Steve Ronnellay honest, but tell us Ryan Callahan and friends for an evening you won't see or here anywhere else And that just means it's not gonna be recorded. There's nowhere else you can get this entertainment than in the theater with these boys in eleven cities coming this year San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, d C, Pittsburgh, eleven cities all together. So if you want to get tickets, they go on sale Friday, January, but they are available exclusively to the mediator community beginning Tuesday, January fourteenth at ten am. Used the Perma code mugs wherever you're buying your tickets and you'll get them. There's also one more thing to know. There's exclusive meet and greet signing opportunities available for VIP ticket holders. There's only sixty five tickets per show to get on that a SAP if you want to meet the crew and greet the crew. Excited for that as a company, and we'll see you on the road now episode I guess. I grew up on an older road, a pedil 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, there are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen and now I just wanted to a real bad dream or being in like I'm coming a part of the seams. But thank you, Jack Daniel, everybody episode nine six coming at you. We are here and we're ready for the last best of Phil. I'm gonna ask you just one more time. How are you feeling, buddy? I'm I'm doing great. You got a cup of coffee. According a couple of podcast today, which is my job? Yeah? Um, so you know doing your job is what you're saying. Well, listen, I've been thinking a lot lately about uh, We've been thinking about twenty and what we're gonna do. How are we gonna be different? You know, as as a podcast, when you have to win, you're ah, your job is to do something every week. I personally stress a lot about what what we're gonna do, How are we gonna be different, are we gonna be better? How are we gonna push forward? And this is a great time for the show to do that. So before we get any further into what we're gonna do today, I want to tell you guys right into th HDT to meet eater dot com. Uh, this would be a nice time. Just tell us how you're feeling, how you're feeling about what we've done thus far, how you're feeling about what's the most pressing issue in your world. What do you want to see as cover, Who do you want us to talk to, Where do you want us to go? Because it's an open book right now, and this is the time to push this show in the direction you wanted to go. A lot of you guys right in. A lot of you guys leave reviews negative, positive, or whatever. We appreciate all of them. Oh, most all of them. Phil, we appreciate most all of them. I appreciate all of them. Phil likes all of them. Yeah, they all make him laugh. Um. But but it is important to us to get the feedback from you, so little brocket and tackling here th HD at the Medior dot com right in. Let us know what you're thinking, what you're burning on in We will do our best to tackle all of that here on the show. So we've been already been talking about this the last couple episodes. I am expecting a child now that I thought maybe the child would have come by now into the world, Phil, but the child has not, so we still have a couple of days we think before the event. So I wanted to just briefly touch on fatherhood and I think, um, what we're gonna do when my son is born. My dad is going to be in town. Where might come in this room right after he's born and just reflect a little bit more in depth from fatherhood because I think it's important part of my life, Phil, it's important part of your life. Fatherhood or motherhood or just being a parent is an important part of all of our lives. And so those of you that have children, uh, and those of you that want to have children. We got folks like Ryan Callahan who just is essentially a single man for life, as he's told us, and I'm happy for him. The man's living the dream a lot of ways, but being being the parents a lot of things. And I think for me, as I prepare to have my second child, it changes a lot of the ways that I think about my son, James, my wife, my family. Like where do you find your joy? Here's I'm gonna go. I'm gonna get deep on your Phil. You're ready for this I love it when you do this. It's like my Doctor Phil moment, like, where do you find your joy? Like I've I've I've traveled around, I've done a lot of amazing things my life, spent a lot of time, um doing things that not a lot of people get to do. And I find joy in those places outside. I mean, I've been to some of the the craziest mountain ranges in the world. I've hunted some of the weirdest and wildless animals you'd ever see at the end of the earth. And um, not to be too melochematic about where I've been, but I found joy in those wild places. But the coolest thing that I've ever done is find joy just with the people that I love and the people that really matter. And I think fatherhood then for me, becomes this singular joy because it doesn't it doesn't need to be far flung, it doesn't need to be wild and crazy and eventful. It can just be what it could be, that simple joy in your life. And if you can find um joy in the craziness that it is being a parent, white diapers and tantrums and all the things that Tyler's bringing to your life, if you find some joy in all of it, then you can find Yeah, that's simple. Pleasures become important for you. And so for me, at the end of the day, fatherhood is I prepare for number two is about putting the best of me into my into my family, into that part of my life. And it feels pretty good at the end of the day knowing that, while it's always a struggle, if you do good at that part, if you do good at that job, if you excel at that, then it's a it's a long lasting effect on our world. So if you're a parent, or if you want to be a parent, it's a good time to be thinking about that. I certainly am right now. You've got any parenting philosophies you want to throw out there, philm uh not really, I haven't. It's the stuff that I've thought about that I had never really put into words before. Um, but I think you did a did a pretty good job. It's kind of crazy how world shaking becoming a parent is. There really is never I used to look around at people that had kids when I didn't have kids, I'm like, well, how are you here right now? Yeah, don't you have somewhere else to be? How could you be here when that's going on? Uh? And for me, if I was being flat honest, prior to having a child, I never really thought it would happen for me. I just didn't know. I don't know if I didn't know if I earned it or if I deserved it. I didn't know if I would would be good at it. But now that I am in that situation, I very much relish the opportunity to succeed and fail and succeed and fail again at being apparent and just um. It keeps life interesting, that's for sure, and it's I think what's really important. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about that today and hopefully pretty soon you'll be seeing awesome a little content about the new little guy in my life and we'll be moving on to So thanks for sticking with me as we talk a little bit about fatherhood and where I am in life. And now we're going to get to the rest of episode and the reason why I think this is the perfect way to end the best of just because I think in a lot of ways, the three folks you're gonna hear from today, um are going to have those long lasting effects on our world and are the hunting community and all of the things that we love to do. All the pursuits were to take part in, Colonel Tom Kelly, Jim pose Wits, Hilarious Geist, all three of those those guys have had indelible stamps on hunting and the outdoors and nature and all those things. First up, you're gonna hear Jim Pozzwits. Jim is the author of Beyond Frere Chase. That's a book. If you haven't read it, go read it. And if you don't know anything about Jim Pozzles, please stick around and go listen to them. After you we're finished this episode, go listen to his full episode of The Hunting Collective. He's a legend. He's getting up there in years, but what he's done for hunting and how we think about it, how we reason it, how we value it, has been immeasurable. So I greatly respect that man. He actually shed a few tears in that episode Um when telling a story about generational hunting, and Valarious Geist shed some tears when talking about h a moose, pet pet mouse, and Colonel Tom Kelly shed some tears when talking about his late wife and so beyond posits we have, like like I just said, Colonel Tom Kelly, the Turkey Hunks poet laureate, a Southern genteel colonel that has so many things to say. I think it's been It's been a yard as they say as well. And then we're gonna end it with the legendary author of the North American model of wildlife conservation. His name is Valerious Geist, Dr. Vlarious Guise. He came in here and absolutely wowed us the jaw dropping person um full of energy as as his Colonel Kelly, as his Jim Pozzles. They wouldn't be to where they are in life without that just singular energy that they have. So I want you to enjoy these three people. Know that they have lived there getting up there in years. They've lived long, productive lives. And if I were to make a goal for for folks to emulate, these three gentlemen will be right up there are both professionally, personally and on and on. So without further ado, enjoy Mr Jim positively. I guess I grew up on an older road. Take us through why ethics for you? Why after all this time spending the hunting community cost race community, why ethics was important to you, while why fair chase was something that um was a pillar in your life and why you felt the need to address it at that point. Okay, I'm leaving fishing game in the in the eighties, lady, eighties, I'm wrapping things up kind of. That's when I had gone back to Washington, d C. That's when we were killing every buffalo that set foot outside of Yellowstone National Park, and that's when hunting was being vilified, uh, coast to coast. Yeah, this is kind of like the pinnacle of the hunting participation at at some level. Eighties when was really and I guess I was aware of the conservation side of what the hunters were sponsoring, and that story was not being told by anybody. And so I came back and we started the Governor's Symposium series on the North American hunting heritage under when Stan Stevens's first term as governor, and we started talking about, you know, what's wrong with us and what's right about us as hunters, and we held seven national conferences uh in the process. And of course that when you got a started inviting speakers and become a speaker and stuff, you have to start doing some study in do you remember, Like it strikes me that do you remember when you say that you want to what's right with us and what's wrong with us? Like that's that's a pretty heavy statement for me. Do you do you remember back in time to why that you you wanted to explore explore those things like particularly what's wrong with us? Well, what's wrong with us? Was? I guess the consummate thing was how we were treating the buffalo coming out of Yellowstone Park. Everyone setting foot in Montana was to be shot. And that was so alien to the conservation ethics that had restored while abundance of wildlife um clear across state of Montana that I stumbled into, you know, the middle of a dear recovery boom of the nineteen fifties. I was doing a great hunter. I mean that we're deer were everywhere. To start adding when you know things up and and just why a person is even inclined to go out in pursuit of whether it was a jack or a cotton tail rabbit, or a pheasant or a rough grouse. I mean, that was my total bag of as a hunter before coming to Montana. Was a couple of cotton tail rabbits in an apple orchard because the archard guy didn't like a nipping on the basis of his trees. They're probably pretty good things and rabbits exactly, although my mother was quite puzzled what to do with it. Did you did you ever? Did you find yourself to be unique in in the thoughts that you were having around um, the examining the y or the ethics. No, and uh here I tend to maybe make some stuff up because the competition for the hunter's attention had turned to you know, did you get your limit? How big was your buck? It's still persists. I'm glad I never measured any of my am just won't do it because it's just degrading. And then you realize, well, there's more here to that. And I had a consummate experience, you know, I mean, after all, the stuff is twenty five years with the Sinembur Foundation funding conservation, environmental protection, wildlife restoration, and then fifteen years with o'rien, and what that adds to the personal experience becomes over overwhelming, and a couple of seasons ago I'm stumbling up into We used to live eight miles south of town and just out the back door, did lots and lots of hunting. But I go to an all familiar place in the dark. Can I sit there because gals coming up to the other side. Yeah, and she's liable to, you know, start some elkout. So I'm sitting in one of the passes where they sometimes go as the hunters, as the hunter is known to do. So I'm sitting there in a pre dawn and I'm looking down the trail. I came in what looks like a father and two sons come walking up the trail and I'm just sitting there. Excuse me. The father sees me and he halts the boys, and they're like poster children out of Hunter Education magazine. I mean, they're control of their weapons, undivided attention, standing there quietly in the background. And the father tiptoes up to this old guy sitting in the woods, and the father says, we don't want to get ahead of you. He whispers it to me, and I look and I'm thinking, here, I'm sitting on the National Forest public lands in pursuit of a restored while life population that's available to anybody. And the first three guys I meet, want to defer to me. And I said that, you know, I'm thinking that Theodore Roosevelt talking about the generations within the womb of time is what he called us. Well, there were three generations right there, this old guy, me, the father, and two sons what I took to be two sons. And I look at the situation and I say back to the father, I think I know what I see here, and I want you ahead of me. And then he says, the youngest boy can shoot a cow if he sees one, and I give him a smile and the thumbs up, and the kids face lights up in the dark with excitement of that moment, and in his anticipation is an excitement. And just again I lean on Roosevelt. We do these things, uh, for the economic well being of the people, But there is more. They also add to the beauty of living and therefore the joy of life. And there I was looking at the joy of life shining in the dark. Yeah, and I thought, holy mackerel, well and all you've experienced in your life. Yeah, And then they walked up, and then you know, they walked ahead. I sat there and I bawled. I was so emotionally moved by how this all fits and when you see these are people didn't know any of this stuff, I don't think, but maybe they did, but probably not. But the two boys I know out in my book, Well, I think that your emotion there is built in what you've seen, in what in some ways you've shepherded in your life experience, do you know, And to say that Bucker is a big accomplishment, it's not true. Yeah, I mean, you're you're talking about a big part of and I think one thing that you've done in your career and that I hope to do and I'm sure Sam hopes as well, is to is to carry that torch. It is too understand the history of what came before us, and how miraculous the time that we've described in this podcast was for America, and how miraculous that it has lasted for these decades and throughout your life is even more miraculous that it's a it's amazing to have thought about. You know that you were one year old when when you know, the concerts, the early conservations were coming together to decide the future, and here we are in the future. And there was two boys there that learned something that they that they to them was likely an aid to their family, to the way of life, which wasn't always that way. Yeah, it wasn't the Royal Hunting Party. It was not he were the real Americans. And it's democratic nature. And what I think this spends well into I think ethics. I forgot that question. We'll get there. I got plenty of time. Have a drink, um, Well, I'll have a drink in in um elevating the conversation of ethics as you did, um, there was uh, and in your book there's the level of caring about To me, what struck me was the level of caring about the community of people that you were involved in, but the level of caring about right and wrong for them and that discussion. You know, and as you wrote that book, you know, what's your ultimate goal? Like, would you remember what's in your head? Is I'm going to achieve something from this writing or is it just the conversation that you had within it? Well, there's you know, there's things going on in a person's life, and in the context of this subject. I had been going to the shot show. Uh, we're getting ready to go to this shot show, right, And and here's the commercial extreme and they're just peddling their stuff and nothing matters, ah, other than to sell the commodity. And the fact that there is an animal involved. We're going to get shot out here. There's not ever across that border. And and that's the tragedy of the industry not seeing a more you know, a more powerful uh reality, and just the antler or the quantity or the locker full of dead fish or whatever it is. But all they're doing is promoting the commerce of it. And of course the commerce is what drove it to its knees to begin with the buffalo hight in other just the meat markets. And here we're going right back with this huge engine boid that a powerful notion like yeah, right, and so we're beyond frere chase to try to find another path. Came from the publisher of Falcon Press at the time, tossed a little copy of a book called The Ethics are the Style of Writing by Strunk and White Elements of Style or I forget exact title of it now, but it was a little tiny paperback book about writing. And he said, I want you to write a book just like this on the ethics of hunting. And I said, okay, I've never written anything articles, but never a book. So I sat down and I just wrote Beyond Fair Chase. One of the things I did right was it wasn't a list of thou shalt and thou shalt not because they're everywhere and they're nowhere. That the ethics. Yeah, and so you. I spawn five stories into the book on relationships between the hunter and the hunted, including that buck there and another set in my downstairs from the next year in the same same hillside. Basically but at any rate. Uh. I drafted it and uh there was very little editorial stuff. Oh and he wanted to call the Little Brown Book on Hunting because Chairman Mao had just come out with the Little Red Book, Little Round Book. I would have lasted as long. But well, idea. How what I did was I called, offered to buy a beer for about four or five members of the Rotten Gun Club that I was a member of, told them the dilemma that I needed a better title. At the price of a couple of beers, I got one of the guys, Mike Trevor uh said how about Beyond fair Chase? And that rang the bell And so that's where the title came from. And then I wrote the book and it has five stories um um. One about the wounded Bull, which is the one that comes back to me most often, some one personal story about when my son passes up and elk because he wants his father to confirm that everything is good as we all do. Yeah, and then the next season he gets an elk there and I thought, wow, it's all it's all fits. But at any rate, Uh, there's a ton of stories about stories coming back to me, but we'll take a lot, but at any right, That's where Beyond fair Chase came from. And then the breakthrough there was I had been meeting with with the International Association of Hunter Education Educators. They were having an annual convention in Des Moines, Iowa. And so I wrote the guy and I said, look, I've got this book and I'd like to tell about it at your convention. I'll take any place on your program that you might be able to fit it in. Uh somebody cancels or whatever, and he agrees. He said, okay, come on, and uh he gives me the award banquets speaking spot this. My wife Gail goes, she's on contract here with Falcon Press at the time to promote the book sell it, and one of the guys from his staff down down there at Falcon Press was along. We go to Des Moines. I read a speech and we get into the banquet room and Gail and Chris the other guy from Falcon, they set up a table to take orders on the outside of the banquet room. This is the Hotel Fort des Moines. And I get in here and here's all these oak walls and beautifully kept historic place. And it occurs to me, because I knew a little bit about conservation history, that elder Leopold Iowa and Ding Darling Iowan Ding was the first president of the National Wildlife Federation spoke in that same room. So I threw away my text and I talked about the echoes of their words that are held in these walls. And when that was over, they swamped our pre order table and Gale and Chris so so pre sold a hundred thousand copies. So and what'd you tell us before seven? About seven unbelievable seven? And Sam would like when you first read it, Uh, what would you think? Like? What the what was your reaction to what you'd read? What Wood? Mr? What Jim had put together well, I think, I think it started getting distributed two hunter education courses probably right after I was I went through that, so I didn't read it until just a couple of years ago in Lantani gave me a copy. But was that the one you started with the story of like killing a sparrow? Yeah, yeah, I remember, I remember that. I mean I definitely resonated with it and immediately, having grown up, you know, with a BB gun in hand forgotten mentioned yes, yeah, oh that was go ahead, I'm sorry, Oh please, please go ahead. Bill Schneider wanted to call it the Little Brown Book on Hunting. I wanted to call it The Sparrow and the Mammoth Hunter. That's a pretty good title. That's that's pretty good. I feel like a T shirt turned out to be beyond fair Chase. We like it. But yeah, this this book becomes a seminal project and I read it, I think about five years ago when I first I remember when I first started to I had been a professional in the industry for for years, and when I first started to examine my own actions, and I remember it was around a photo I took of Elk, one of the first elk I ever killed was in the Madison Valley and we took this photo. We took, we stood, we The hunt lasted an hour and the photo shot photo shoot lasted three hours with the different positions of this elk, and and I remember no one taking the photo of us cutting it up, or no one taking a photo of of of me packing the antlers out, no one taking a photo of me doing anything other than standing around with this dead elks first elk I've killed. And I just remember at some point in that and that hunt, just thinking I'm not sure what's going on here, Like I'm not sure why I'm doing this, because at that point I was a wasn't an editor, an editor for a hunting magazine, and companies would invite me out as you spoke about it hits home to me, and you spoke about like how we've turned hunting into a commodity. We use it to sell things, which which changes a lot of the motivation for some hunters in the industry. And I think that was part of what I was struggling with their It's like, why am I really doing this? Yeah, I'm eating it, Yeah, there's conservation, but what am I doing? Yeah? And that's that's kind of what I was struggling to get at been and and something. I think it really the you know, the ultimate revelation it provided me was it it's it's sometimes not enough just to follow the letter of the law, just what it doing what is legal does not completely satisfy our responsibility to this resource. And growing up, I for the most part followed the law. There definitely some um waverings there, but uh, you know, and and I and I feel like by the time I had read it, i'd I'd come to agree that game laws were there for a good reason and that I didn't like to give cops a reason to mess with me. But it really, it really um cemented I think ideas that I had already gathered from from other works and things that and I think that's the This is the great beauty of that title, as you to go beyond what's required of you as a hunter and and and make sure that your actions are defensible and beneficial to the resource, and that you do you do as much for that animal and those populations and those resources you know, as much or more than than they do for you, and that you you have that that responsibility that it's a that's a given to take. Yeah, do you think about um your effort too, and then just your own personal feelings and defining the relationship between the hunter and the hunted, like how we feel about animals. You know, how much how much time have you put into that and your own personal huntings? Well, it grows with time. I mean the first thing you wanted that I wanted to do with with that borrowed gun was to find a dead deer after I sent around that direction. Yeah, and then of course it became take care of it. That was kind of an autopilot. That's why I was there. Ah. But the more experiences you have and and the more you learn about where you're hunting and the history of the place, you know, the Rocky Mountain Front of course is a classic. But that first ranger up there Eiler's Coke. He spent thirty days in nineteen o five four services the first year, and thirty days in nineteen o six, and he described what's the Bob Marshall Great Bear Complex now, but it was described him by drainage and in thirty days das of hunting each year he saw he said, I never saw or got a shot at a single game animal except one mountain goat. I mean, you could trampled back there in sixty days. But that was the depth to which the slaughter had gone. And UH, he rides and he was a conservation oriented guy, and UH the front has got a very rich history of people popping up along the way. Sometimes they're in the agency. They made it a wilderness before there was a Wilderness Act, and uh Sun River Game Preserve was created, and I think it was only one dissenting vote in the Montana State legislature when that was passed through. Start protecting this stuff. And that was from the grassroots rancher from Shotto, or maybe it was a businessman I think from Shotto, but that we had to do better. Yeah, I had to do better. And you feel like we've done better. Yeah, certainly we've done better. And of course now the problem is again as well life became more abundant, are people are more interested in hunting and uh, commerce returns. And then when you've got the critter living private and public both you have those conflicts and those are the issues that your generation is going to have to come to. UH A management scheme and it is good for the good for the critter that was that was a question I've been I've had sitting on my my list for a while. That I mean, you're moving us in that direction anyway? That you know, the fairchase ethic rose around Leopold and Roosevelt and all of those, and by and large we have recovered a lot of our wildlife in this country. I was just curious to know, you know, from from you, from you, how do you approach some of these modern um issues of of fair chase and hunting ethics? Where where where do you start? When people are are talking about I know, like I feel like bear baiting is very much in the modern debate. Some people would say that by putting out bait, you're creating an unnatural situation two to chase an animal that may not be fair. Other people would respond that by hunting bears over bait, you have the opportunity to properly sex the bear, make sure you're taking a boar, preferably mature bore, and you will have an opportunity to take a good, clean standing shot. Um And and this is something I struggle with, and I'm just curious, like you know, having being the guy who wrote the book on fair case? What what's square? What square one? What? Where? Where do you start when trying to parse these difficult discussions, Well, you kind of start at midpoint on a spectrum, and that that midpoint is where you accept responsibility both for the taking of that animal that is equal to your responsibility to see to it that that animal was even there. In other words, if you've got to realize that you're just not a freeloader. And I think there's kind of a middle point in the hunter's career where when I borrowed that gun and shot that dough, I had really I didn't even know why she was out there or why the bland was public. And as that awareness grows, and you don't have to have that all for your first start out of the shoot, but when you when you decide you're going to be a hunter, I think it would really be well, it's I know, it's to your advantage to start viewing it and it's the full context of why this is going to even happen, and uh that enriches it. My best hunt was when I ran into those three guys south of town. I didn't even fire a shot or tag anything, or I didn't have to drag anything out, but I hadn't experienced that added to the beauty of living in the joy of life, as Roosevelt called it. I guess I grew upon an older all right. That's Jim posits for you. Folks. Really in joyed that conversation. If you go back and search that episode, you can find the entire thing. It's a couple of a couple more hours in there that you didn't get to hear. But the story about that Jim tells about running into the father and son on the trail and seeing the passage of time and that interaction and seeing kind of what he has meant to hunting in the eyes of that father and that son has been powerful. He even shed a little tear there during that conversation. So uh, I really just wants you to make sure that if you haven't read his work, if you haven't read Beyond for a Chase, go and do that. Speaking of a book you need to read. We got the next guy coming up here, Colonel Tom Kelly. It's gonna be I don't know if it's my favorite podcast, but he's definitely my favorite guest of all time. Colonel Tom Kelly's a legend. I read his book The Tenth Legion before every hunting season, every spring turkey season. So I'm gonna make Phil read it the spring turkey season. When you go in your first hunt homework, read The Tenth Legion. Yeah, it's a good homework. You'll like it. Um just a little, a little brief bit on what Tom Kelly means to me. Um. People call him turkey huntings poet laureate, and for good reason. It's a man that can um strike at the heart of what a turkey hunter is, who a turkey hunter is, and why they do what they do. And that's it's interesting to me as anything. And when I traveled to um Bethesda, Maryland to meet with the guy, it struck me that this part of his life, you know, it's ninety three years old. He lives on the eleventh floor of a high rise in Bethesda, Maryland. Outside of his apartment, strip malls, chain restaurants, traffic jams, all the stuff that a hunter doesn't like. And his life there seemed you know, small, a little bit hollow, as a man whose whose years have have kind of watched go by his wife. His beloved wife has passed away two years prior Tom moved from his longtime Alabama home up to Maryland where I met him. And so there's a little bit of sadness in the room for a man that has done so much in his life, a man that has done so many things along impact all of us. But there's also a beauty in it because there's a quote that that Tom has in his in his book The Tenth Legion. He says, you have to pay for every turkey you kill, and the coin you used to pay for them is time. And so at this point when we drop into this conversation with Tom, he has paid. He has paid time, He's paid with time, He's used all his coins. It was obvious to me during this conversation that he's he's reaching the end of his days, the end of his days outside in his days where he can can be free. And now he'll he'll soon probably be in a nursing home, soon probably be cared for by a nurse, and and only be able to leave the room when someone helps him do it. And so but he still has his patience, this determination. You know, he moves like he moved like smoke, almost to the apartment. I remember writing that after I met him. He's so deliberate in the way that he moved, because it takes a lot of work to get across the room in your nine And so I have a lot of feelings and thoughts looking back on this conversation. But you can get just as much about the man by listening to him speak. So enjoy this little bit with Colonel Tom Kelly. Mr Kelly, how are you today? Colonel? Thanks for thanks for joining me and having me into your home here in Bethesda. Uh. There's a lot of things I want to talk to you about, um, but the first one is why do you think turkeys was the thing that you at famous for writing about? The thing that is I think really triggered me into it. With my wife. Uh, we were going someplace and she said something to me, and she said, you know, I hear you telling all these told stories to people about this. You might order write that down and maybe somebody would want to would want to listen to it. And I had no idea about about doing anything like that. And I said, all right, I'll try that. And I had been at that time, I had been writing. I had been setting an occasional story to feel and stream and outdoor life. And I used to sell something to uh uh till one, sports illustrating. I used to selling them sports illustrating before they fell out of a little with killing things, you know, and uh, and so I did that and I started doing it, and then that triggered the whole damn thing. That that triggered to me, I'm not at all interested in big a one. I mean, I do not want to when I hunt something. And this may be cowardice, but when I hunt something, if I lose, I want to lose. I don't want to lose some arms and legs or get my head knawed off. I don't want to hunt elephants. Who I would be trampled by the damn elephant if I if I do something wrong. I'm a hun not a sufferer. And and that really is what triggered the whole thing. Won't anything else, And and then once it started, Uh, the police book I did was tenth of Legion. The tenth Legion is oh Jesus, tenth Legion must be and it's I don't know why I don't walk how many editions? I just don't know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And then of course that triggered it and then and then when that triggered it, and then and what you just meet a while with nice folks, you really do you meet a lot? It? I agree? I agree, yeah, yeah. And then because I think the question what people love about that book, what I love about that book is the way you articulated the motivation of the turkey hunter, our our relationship with the turkey, and our interactions with Yeah, well, if somebody, if somebody would, to god, I don't look, I don't have any goddamn idea how many turks I've killed. I mean, I've been hunting on s nine and and and and uh, when I was getting to kill took his family regulart. I wish to god I had keptable. Oh John, Yeah, I mean, if it was normal, then hooted here and hooded dawn, hooded is and did this and did that and did the other thing. But oh, okay, So if I've been hunting took here for fifty years, more than that, more than that, say, almost year. If I've been hunting turkis for seven the years, and and if I've killed four or five turkeys a year, that's whatever four or five times seventy is something like, yeah, three fifty turkeys like that, three D fifty D turkeys in your life, if you if we were to round up to it. Yeah, that's a lot of interactions with one animal. Yeah, and and and and and The thing about it is, I don't care how how much you've done it, and I don't care how good you get at it. Every damn year, one of them is gonna do something to you, and you're gonna think and they, hell, could I have been that? Damn dum. It never gets old. It never never ever gets old. You feel and you feel that all turkey hunters have. You have a hubris, have a confidence that you get to a point where you think a bird is gonna do something you think you haven't figured out. Like why do we continue to return to this confidence? Because we don't because he he will destroy it. If you get that much confidence, he's gonna break your neck with Uh. It's one of the one of the marvelous things about about doing it. If if if you told me that I could never kill another turkey, I could still enjoy taking people because you can take somebody in and I took his got one characteristic. He cannot hear a whisper. If you talk like this, you can hear, and you can sit. When I take somebody hunting, I sit right here behind him. Yeah, well I can look over his shoulder that way. If he choose me with the shot gun, he's gonna turn it around and take off his boot and pull a trigger with his toll. So and I ain't gonna sit there and wait for him to do that. But if you can, you can wait, and you can whisper him all the way to the gun. Yeah, you can say, hey, comes, he comes. They didn't give bhind that tree. I don't do anything, And you can talk him all the way up there and do it, and you can hear them. If you told me I could never kill another turkey, I've killed him off. I like to eat him. But if you told me, if I could double kill another turkey, I could get a pile of enjoinment out of taking other people took him. Now, as long as I'm as long as I can get about like this and this, this can't go on. I mean, you know I've moved it along. I've moved along, but I ain't gonna last to a hundred and eight or a hundred sixteen, And so the end is out. There and and just hopefully it will come quick. Listen, the first time you heard a turkey gobble? The first time I heard it took a gobble. I didn't know what it was. My my I had an uncle who waited the shipyarded Pasca Google, and he had a friend named Kennedy. And the Kennedys had they had three boys. They had a boy younger than me, and a boy older than me, and a boy who was my age, Pete and Pete sort of well, their daddy awoke from my uncle, and their daddy lived just north of Pasca Google, Besshippi and I lived in Bobile, and I had gone over there to visit my uncle, and Pete and I hit it off together and he started taking me with him. And that's what that's the first take. Yeahhood gobbel was Pete and I thought it was a dog pocket it's you know, and he said, no, that's a turkey, and and that that triggered it. And from then on out take his take his turkeys all the wie. What about the first time that you made a turkey gobble with your calling abilities? Uh? The first time? Well what what? I what? What? I fell into the trip of doing. I got one of these, one of these box y'all punchers, and uh uh and I and I i'd hear you hear tucky gobble, and you I try to get pretty close. And then and then, uh, the first time I heard one gobble, I knew what it was. I knew it was him. It's a it's a you when when you don't know nothing. And when it was my uncle didn't know the first damn thing about turkey hunt. He'd kill some turkeys on deer drives. You said, I tell what you shot gun on deer drives? And when the when the when the dogs are running the dead past the standards. I'd sit there on the first gun I had was a single barrel. You sit there with a single barrel, and I'd have uh a buckshot into single barrel, but i'd have uh number six shot in my hand, and you could trigger the gun when you do it didn't come in if it weren't a deal. If you thought it was a turkey, you could trigger the gun and put to think it and shoot him by pigeons. You have me out of locks. Whatever it is? What is it about that when you're a kid, that you just just want something menu and you want to say I've done it. You're right, and that's it's universal for all childres right, you've got grandchildren now, ship he got little things. You know, you're a hunter gatherer gather at that age much anything you hunt them down and kill them. Uh, our things ain't much and claws ain't buds. We have shotgun we got shotguns though, we got shotguns. Well, I think, I man, I got so many questions for you, but I think it's it's it makes sense to kind of try to get your perspective on where we are as a modern turkey hunter now and where you began. I mean you have you have lived through the age of turkey hunting. And before we hit recorded, we were talking. We were talking about that, I think, and I think this is a natural thing that a lot of people that hunt turkeys today feel because they're so abundant that it might have always been that way. It may have the way it is now, might be the way that it has been. It was a friend of mine named Jim Andrews. He's dead now like most of my friends, but Jim Andrews were one of these guys. And if you went to someplace Jim Andrews was gonna find a damn twicky and if they were in there two, he's gonna be killed one. Jim Andrews was gonna kill it. And he couldn't doably explain what you've written about him in the past. I've read it. I've read many passes about where he was buried and what direction he might be traveling. Yeah, tell me about him your relationship. Then you talked about him being I've read that that he just was a turkey magnet. He was, he was. I said that he couldn't explain it either. He couldn't explain it. Hi, his daddy was not a turkey hunter. None of his uncle's was a turkey hunter. His brother, his brother Henry, was a fight apart and and and his brother Henry was a great shot, but he was a shifty turkey up. It's just that, well, I think the principal characteristic his patients. It's a big bud. It's big enough to be you. You you created important, send the boom it yourself. Uh, and that's what that's what pictures. It's Yeah, and guys like Jim, I mean, you've written about this too, Like the friendships that we make the connections. We may then see Jim and I worked together. Yeah, and in fact about the fact Jim worked for me, uh, except what he came to Turkey and then I worked for Jim. What what is it? What is it about turkey hunting that makes that like if not makes friendships like that enhances them and makes it this is the people? Well if it may be like all appreciation, A guy falls in love with Payton and then I don't care who he's talking to, he wants to talk about painting and paints and how they did this or sculpture and sculpted in that. Uh. And and you know there's all kinds of thing that that that that hossil or that Yeah, that black hole, I did that horse, I did this. Uh, there's this crap around here that I did. Uh did did you know? You just I don't know. You asked me why? And to hell with a guy waste his damn time making a fake unicorn when they go such a thing as a real unicorn, And I can't answer the question. It just felt like time to make a guy damn unicorn. So I'm Mabel, that's fantastic. But yeah, I mean I think that you're right. I mean, as a as a hunter, as someone who appreciates this, you want to surround yourself with people that have equal passions. And for somebody like you, your passion is unequal. It's hard to find people that that can that come to it like you. Then you end up around exceptional folks like Jim andrews Um talk about I mean you you've written about burying him, you know, or being you know where he was buried, and trying to figure out kind of and going to church and trying to figure out in the past. You're talking about which direction he might have traveled in the afterlife. And you had an experience with some turkeys that you called in. Do you remember that experience? We talk about that. Yeah, yeah, here's your mama. I knew if we get when he introduced to his mama. We he lived in Camden, which is in off it's it's uh, it's it. It junkes you into the Alabama and it don't baby rubles updown. And he hunted up around that. And when Jim, when Jim got out of school, he went into cow business and went broke, and and then he had he he had to go to work for us for market tumber for people, and he would just scratching around making a living any damn way he could make a living. And he uh he but he never he never, he never lost. He never got mad at the world because he would he was. He didn't have any money. And he had five kids, four four four girls and a boy. And I still carresfied with some of the kids. They they that we still write a little bit back and forth. But he was. He was just one of those guys that everybody likes. You meet one every once in a while. They ain't many, but you meet one everyone. Jim was just one of those guys. And I guess I guess took he is just liked him the same to him when they wouldn't go to anybody. You tell a story about when you went turkey hunting after you died, and there was five, I think five gobblers that gobbled on the roost and gobbled and gobbled and gobbled, and they flew down out of the tree and there you were with your call, and they would gobble at anything. They've got little tweeted bird and they would gobblet one another. They would gobble at anything, but they ignored you and anything like you were, you did not exist. You know what it was if if if it was Jim was Jim Andrews probably been friend alway, you'd probably been friend and you felt that those turkeys gobbling and ignoring you, or maybe maybe a song for him. Imation you wish it was that way, but you don't know that you wish it was his eulogy that way, those that those turkeys were giving you one last chance to to see which direction he might have traveled. Yeah, yeah, Well, the Tenth Legion is I think the thing that most people. It's the thing that I've I read it before every turkey season. I know a lot of the folks that I work with do the same thing. And it's inspired since it was published in nineteen seventy three, I mean, it's it's inspired many many turkey hunters. And I remember and I remember reading so the Tenth Legion was was published in nineteen seventy three, and it has inspired me to be a turkey more more involved turkey hunter and inspired many people to go and try it. I think we were and of course got it in my partner. We we It's a new edition coming out, Yeah, dish coming out in the new book is, well, the new book is. I have it here. It's called uh, you're still writing books at ninety three. It's called infinite varieties that creative And he says title comes from Shakespeare's play Anthony and Cleopatrick. I am probably one of the last few Shakespeare readers, especially in the Turkey anty community. Age cannot wither her nor coat, no sale her infinite Every time you go out there, he's gonna teach you something. Every time you go out there, he's going to out small chy in some fresh way you never thought of. And it's it's never gonna get old. It's magical magic. It's magic, absolute magic when you write that. When you write I have some quotes here from from the Tenth Leagion, not that you need need me to quote it. But when you're you've inspired a lot of people. People call you the poet laurea turkey hunting You like that title sales books, but that it does sales book to meet it. The tenth Leads is not a book. Really, what's an explanation of Turkey hunters? It's it's a it's axlanation of a thought process. Absolutely, it is. Yeah, and it's it's called the tenth Legion because you felt like Caesar's to Yeah, Caesar's tenth Legion. And the members the members of the Turkey Hunting Army are are uh you have said, like exhibit dogged determination, much like the army, And that's why that's titled so and they all a hell of a lot of people would exactly a little thought process, would They wouldn't be that many folks in the National Wild Turkey Federation. Well, I remember when you said when you began hunting, there was only you know, you remember writing this book and thinking maybe a hundred fifty people in the world might care. Yeah, because when I figured I could here, remember what I paid to God to write it, they seem, uh theold ghost on songs in in in New York. And it seems to me I did five hundred copies, and I think I paid him fourteen hundred and fifty dollars or some such thing as that. And I figured it did there'd be at least some guys I knew they didn't know I could read and write. They'd buy one around of curiosity, and they would be and and and if he quit right there, I would probably have gotten my money back and if not, then I had a lifetime supply. Cris turned out to be a little bit, a good, good deal better than that. Well, I think many, like many people regarded as not only just it's it's about people, right, It's about people people, it's not it's not about right about two it I write about people and what they do. We had one specific line. Yeah, so it's not tips in tactics. If anybody hasn't read it, shame on you. But if you haven't, it's not You're not gonna get the tips and tactics. There's I'm in there plenty in there. A lot of people going to read it and say, what what this guy's talking about you? Well, there's there's the thing you said that many people who hunt turkeys do so with an intention to detail, a regard for strategy, tax and operations, and disregard for personal comfort and convenient that ranks second only to war. Said out there and frees your butt off into cold rain, you know, hoping a turkey might come. You gotta be a little bit twisted. I'm pretty twisted. Okay, welcome to the live You still you still believe at the age of ninety three you have have that same passion. I mean, oh yeah, it ain't a bit of chang. Ain't a bit of chang. Never gonna leave. Uh d No, I've already accepted an invitation or two to go next to you. I mean you can. You can sit in that damn thing right there. You can fool that up and put her to the back of a pickup truck. If somebody can take me out in the woods the way they who had won gobble and dumped me off and say I'll come back and get you a nine footy and I can hunt. I can hunt up and down the rule over there. You can, I can, I can get out. I can walk. I walk. I walk probably a mile mile of day. I walked the phone with the calls down and back and down and getting down and back. I got an exercise lady that comes by and uh she comes three days of a week and and does things like breathing exercises and balance exercises and all this kind of stuff. She's real good. She's an english woman. She is a matter of fact. She uh yeah, she she she has just been home to England. I mean up in one got children and and does this as a living and yeah, so I and I get around great. I mean, uh and you know, to get out there to be able to now, I don't try. I sold my car and and and uh uh but and it was better. It was I didn't really want to leave home, but my wife didn't. I realize she was dying and really expected to be at home. And then with her gone and my daughter word about how I was doing and what I was doing and when I was doing it, it was just more comfortable for her to me move up here where she she can drive here in thirty minutes and find out what I'm doing and and and and make sure I'm taking my best. Yeah. Well, you got a little furniture building furniture up here in this this parent know most of this I built for I got here. I can do some stuff you and I've done a little, um, not much since I've been here, but I can. And as soon as I get through with with my with my souls and hammers and things old at it I got, I can't. I can go back. I gotta chair. I need canan, I cane that chair fush and and I'll go back to doing. But between writing and reading and canan chairs and uh I stay pretty busy. You are busy. Yeah, Well, I'm gonna just want to like in my head as I as I'm turkey hunting, you are the narrator. Like you when I'm turkey hunting. I've read your books so many times that some of the things that you've written become and the turkey's coming in. I'm thinking about the words of that book. And I think that's probably true for a lot of people. So I have I have people say that to me all the time. Well, you know, you never know what another guy's thinking. But I mean enough people have said the same thing. Enough people well know of people at the at the convention when I'm sitting now, A lot of folks who buy books, and we we sell books that we have a book. We have a booth every year David talking out together have a book. We sell books and our side books and talk to kids and a lot of people. A lot of people won't be to they take a picture of a kid sitting on my knee when they take a picture of beholding a kid, and and and uh, I think I don't know. I think maybe they think if they do it, and if they talk about it, and if they meet me. I think I think it forms a society, and I think that's why they do it, because god knows, I ain't pretty well you've been working with that that lady that comes and get you to which bright Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Well, I woman marries who she married. Anyway, I don't want my wife to figure that out of you. I think I do think that one of the things that is important to me is that when you have an idea or like an appreciation for something and someone else is able to articulate or explain your feeling for that thing in a way that you never could, which is what you were able to do for so many people for turkey hunting, I feel like it develops a relationship. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I mean, and I cause because a lot of folks, a lot of folks when I signed stuff on, we want me to put something on it about this and that and this and that and this and that and this and that, and you can really I mean, if a guy comes in and it's fine, it's right tone Kelly all bes wishes or good luck, Nick Shea, But if he if he wants so h an intellectual dissertation of why he and I think alike, Yeah, I can't write that. I just can't do yeah, because people, and a lot of folks would want that. I mean, they'll do this, and they'll do that, and they want something for their son, and then they'll want something for the other son. And they want me to say one thing for one son. And some of them pull out a piece of paper and started reading what they want me to write. I love it. I love do you do you? Did you ever foresee that you would be signing books and that people would think of you in the way that something due No, I felt like, well, you know, it's like I said, I I went into it with no sense of with no sense of anything. I like it and I like to tell people what I like to do. When you when you go to the football game, you gotta you got a special team? Did you like to win? Because you remember bought star here? Remember uh the Green Bay Packers back when they used to be the Green Bay Packers. So time that you feel what do you what do you think? He said? Your wife really is is one of the main reasons why you started writing, Oh yeah, how do what did she think about your your success and fame. She my wife worked for the FBI, and uh, well, when I when I got out of school. My wife was born in a sawmill or town, born in a song town. Her daddy worked for the sawmill. And her daddy his name was Leon Bosley, and he was one of those kind of guys did everybody liked him. There was no way not to likely on Boseley. I don't give a damp who you would. There was no way to not to likely on board for instance, he was I would us uh uh we Helen was she was up to teaching school and and uh at the at the high school and Century, which is just across the line just insoid the Florida Panhall that it's just across the line from Alabama. She was up there teaching school and I went to wake up there for the sawmill, and we met and we started dating. And then uh she uh when uh she knew I was, She knew I was. She knew I was connected by connection with the with the service and that and when the Korean War started that I was gonna have to go back. But she she left Century and went to work for the FBI. Had Bo Bill as a as a as a secretary at the FBI, and uh, we we got along great, We we got along great. I I cannot remember ever having across the wood water from the time I met her until the day should die. Not one time. And that's that's that's unusual. And I was not. And this was in the days when you know, without the cell phones, when you leave working scattered over the area that I was scattered over when we when as I got up, we moved back to a town. It was just about a mile and a half from the town she was brought up in, so she was there. She had a mother said on her system, still there. But uh it was, uh, you go you you went out in the woods in the morning, and and she might and as late as as far as I had to go out, as much as I had to do, it might be simp thirty eight o'clock I eight thirty before I got back. Never any never, never, just to smooth us in all ever that plane. That's just what you ever hunt with you once or twice. And she she went and she said, this is fine. But from now on out, if anybody asked me what I like to go, tuck you and I would tell him, thank you, But I've already been My wife and I have similar separation the church and state. I yea yeah. I mean you know, I wasn't not chasing girls or getting drunk, or or losing money or wrecking cars. And as long as I did that and brought home enough of a paycheck to feed the hondy kid, that was it. Um. I want to just read some of your like some of the quotes from tent Legion, and just talked through someone with you, because I think it I've been wanting to do that for a long time since I first read your book. UM. I think to to the title, there's a quote in there that's while fall hunting is all about beauty, spring hunting is warm. Spring hunting well, spring hunting, you're trying to kill him. Fall hunting is you you you you know the woods at the woods in the fall, that's when the woods are pretty. I mean the leaves are colored. The uh, the bud migration is on. Uh. Everything out there is is bright and colorful. It ain't hot anymore. Uh. It's a lovely place to be if you don't do anything but go out there and wander around. Uh. I used to when I even after, even after I was working, even after I was managing that track of timber for the sawmill, I carried lunch with me, and uh, there would be it would be a lot of places that I would deliberately not eat lunch until I got close on to go eat lunch there, because they were just something into and around the end of the world that soothed you, and it made you feel at home. It made you feel comfortable. Just uh uh it's a you become at one with the Wobard's and uh it would have it would have been to me, it would have been pretty grim to to go to a restaurant every day to eat lunch and go to the lunch room every day to eat lunch or the United You did that when you were there, but when when you were on your own, and there was there was there were three four places. There was a place on the other side of the had more prison farm here, it was rolling to rain, great big damn timber, and uh, a lot of poles, a lot of polo, and a lot of solos, a lot of everything. And I a lot of times make arrangements to be close enough to eat where I could go there and eat it. Was a couple of places in Choctaw County the same way up on up on some high Jacktawk County changes from the flat lands to the to the the combination of upland and bottom land with a hell of a lot more hardwood, and it will place us up there that we're just comforting to be in. And then the fact that in those kind of places that were comforting to be in with all that variety of tumble, but there were more turks. Did you feel a long in your life that there is a medicinal quality to turkey hunting? Like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, uh, but what a lot of folks is just did I kill sixty? You know? Did I kill six with me? It's a hell of a lot molder that's always been a moldering there, always been like and it I I often have this, especially in the machine every time you out ice you know it. I think in the springtime, when I go out, it's like you spent your inside all winter, or you're mostly inside if you ski or ice fish or whatever, you can get out. Uh, spring is just like it's new, it's new. And then any any build up of anxiety or stretch you might have had during the winter months when you couldn't get out as much. It can be a race during that time. You experienced that through your your life, I imagine. Yeah, well, let's see what else we got here. The bird possesses a remarkable ability to turn arrogance into hopelessness, which we've kind of covered. But you think I got it there now and you get out there and yeah, every time we talked, we talked about uh, my friend Steven Ronnella talks about how it is that we return to that arrogance having been beaten so many times. Well, yeah, but well, of course, uh, there there will be areas where nobody I don't they have some there have some books that show the normal Turkey ranges and in and and and and it might cover the whole section and a half thousand acres acres, and they they will range across that fift acres fairly regularly. They'll they'll handle one part of it in the spring and when the hens are nesting, and they'll do another part of it when uh well when when when when the acres get ripe, They would not be right at one time of the year, and they and they and and they cover that area pretty pretty comfortable, and and I think it's, uh, you get it to me working working in the woods and being in the woods, especially when I was balking timber for the sawmill. The lower coastal plain is dull because you've got pine and nothing but pine, and you've got mokey bottomed hardwood bottoms and nothing but that. You get a little bit in off of that, and you begin to get this absolute tremendous variety of species, tremendous variety of tumb of types, tremendous variety of different areas, data, data, data, turkey or any other animal will work in. And it's just it's just more fun than it is down into flat woods. It is it is. I think i've in my life when I think about turkey hunting, and I try to think, if you say that your friend Jim Andrews could just think how a turkey thinks, I feel like that's the skill I'm developing. I feel like that's you're probably at all. Probably it's like the one I want to develop. It. You probably if I can think where he wants to be or think where he's going, you know, since the going the air COEs, I never see anything over there. But if I go over here, I see him all the time. I'm going every damn time. And I've recently moved to the move to the west where you have these big expanses of public land or you this year I did it a couple of times where you roll into a place you know, you don't know anything about the landscape, anything about the birds. And the thing is now it's so easy to find out. You got you got to You got the Resource Planning Act, which cruise every acre in the United States is recruised every ten years. And you got maps, you got you got, you got Google. You can call up a map. You can call up a map on Google. Look, I could call I can call up a map. You call up a map on Google, and you can see and and and they update the damn thing all along. And if you'll call always balked in your front Yaddacincy. It seems to call that does see you can goddamn need to read the license tame. Yeah, we have a mapping system now on your phone. You can Yeah, you can see. It's called on X. You can see pretty much. You can look at a ridge, you can see the topographical features. Absolutely a turkey would definitely go there, and then you're gonna find it and maybe you're right, maybe wrong, but you do have a leg up. Yeah, that's for sure. This is probably I don't know. Of all the quotes I like, this is maybe my favorite. You have to pay for every bird you kill, and the coin you used to pay for them is time. Right. You cannot hurry. You can't say I got thirty minutes. I'm gonna run out to section fourteen. They kill a turkey and run right back. You can't say it to your wife. Okay, Thanksgivings coming and then laws are coming down here. I'll kill a turkey to saft dudey to drop it office yard so you can be cooking it tomorrow. One schedules you can't do. Another one you said is you don't hunt turkeys because you want to. You hunt turkeys. You have to imagine a man that's been doing it for eighty years. It's pretty stuck. Here's another one when you there's a long one. But will you talk about what happens when you're a turkey hunter and how you explain to other people? You say, he also knows that when he comes back at home empty handed as he will do regularly. He will have no satisfactory explanation. He is well aware, for he has met dozens of them, of the numbers of people that will approach him on street corners and in bars, and that parties who open each conversation with, well, did you get him? When he answers no, they will be off and running. They will tell him in delighted tones, and in the clearest detail the story, or even friend of theirs who has a feeble minded nephew, of how this nephew is occasionally allowed home on leave from the state funny farm, how that the last time this poor defective creature was home week before the last, he went out in the woods just behind the house, sat on the log with a turkey yelper that was given away as a souvenir by a typewriter company nineteen thirty seven. He yelped twice and killed a turkey that way twenty three pounds. The exclamation of it, and that that story, right, yeah, And it explains why it's so magical, because you can never ever, you never mastered, you can never get good at you, You will never get good at you. You can get good at it, you will know a mastery will do. And every time you feel you have the mastery that that crazy horble you you look like Hi and hill good, I have been so goddamn don't you really and truly are another one. My This is the one that I'll close with because I think this is the one that most people that's at the end of the tenth legion, and I think it it really encapsulates everything perfectly. The first turkey that I ever came to be on the ground did it a long time ago. I sat there with my hands shaking, my breath short, my heart hammering so hard. I could not understand why he cannot hear it. The last turkey that came to me last spring had exactly the same effect. And the day that this does not happen to me is the day that I quit. I don't think I'll quit that. I think that will be the day that they close a little bit coffin that that final thump you won't hear. Yeah, I mean, you've done this for so long, You've you've put so much into it, you know, it defines a lot of your professional and personal life. And then and then, of course, God knows God, I've gotten some money back. That's that's the marvelous thing. And I didn't get into it. I didn't sit down and say, I believe I was stalled writing about turkeys and make up pile of money. Colonel Kelly, is there something you would say to turkey hunters of the future kind of about your experience at the turkey hunter and what you've been able to do. We need, we need to we need to work well. I don't know, I don't know how you could do it, but we need to because we are really and truly losing turkey hunters. We're losing hunters every year. Every year, every state I think shows a diminution in the number of licenses, and there's a pile of things cruel to the animals. Uh, why do you shoot towards polar illness of things? Why this? Why that? Why that? Why do you take all that trouble? Why don't you spend home and we spend some time at home what your kids instead of it up down to goddamn road. Uh? That that we've got to get. I think we make him do it in time, but we gotta get the world to understand that there are different kind of hobbies and your hobby is simply one of thousands and thousands and thousands of hobbies. Uh and and then the fact that you can eat what you is a there's an added thing, but that we we got, we gotta. If we don't do that, uh, well they're gonna be I don't know how long it's gonna be, but we could come to the point where, well, you like, for instance, now I think in Australia you can't own a weapon of any kind. Now, there's places in this country where you know they've taken they've taken all deadly weapons away from any they way, except pocket knives and stuff like that. But they they they they're getting it well. And and and the move a riot. The strata needs to be like this, It needs to be that thick. Well you can play in any in any part of it you want to play and stay out of jail. Right about that, I think the last question I have for you is if you could speak to say the last third he'll ever kill, and you could have a conversation with that Turkey, what would you what would you say? I wish there was one move behind you. I wish you wasn't the least one. I guess I grew up on an older all right. That was Colonel Tom Kelly, legend in the Outdoor Space. He's on the anniversary edition of the Tenth Legion. So go buy the Tenth Legion, go read it and remember this good man. He's not dead, but remember him anyway, remember his work. Can you talk about old people like they're dead. That's not true. Tom still alive and kick And I talked to him not long ago, and so you know, he might get out in the woods this season. Even man, maybe I'll take him. Hopefully I can hook up and get him out in the woods for turkeys. Let him hit a box call calling in for us. That'd be great. So that's one of my life goals. But we're gonna get out to the next one. The next one was was it PP? This is PP? Right? Phil? You were around for Valarious Geist? Yes, I was around. You were in the room right when he did the recordinglarious, hilarious guys. Um talk about presence, Phil, talk about a man that comes in the room and commands the presence. Yeah, and it's not like he's boisterous or anything. He just has kind of this uh this air about him. Everything from what he wore, to how he spoke, to how he told the story. I remember he walked in the room, yeah here in the main area of the meat eater offices, and immediately everybody was just drawn to him, moths still flame as it were. People started to realize who that was, and this is, you know, a pretty unique place where everybody might know who that guy is. But after we aired this podcast, I realized not a lot of people knew who Vilarious Guist was. And that's pretty sad because Vlarious Guist is one of the most important figures of our time and hunting, so that for me, it felt like an honor to sit down with him. But after we recorded and I saw all of your reaction, I felt even more lucky to help bring this man to you, his story, his story of life, and most like Jim Pozzle has cried during his episode, Tom Kelly cried during his episode, and Vlarious Guist cried a little bit during his episode and it was about it. He was talking about a pet moose when he cried a little strange, but I liked it. So a lot of these guys are are telling stories of their past, and I think that's another kind of through line for this best of these guys are are reliving their path, talking about their great works and enjoying what a story can do for all your listeners. And so we're gonna get to another one of my favorite podcasts of all time. Definitely one of my favorite people and are really really, really life changing conversation that I had with Dr Hilarious Geist enjoy. I guess I grew up on an older There's no way to really transition to the North American model from this conversation, but we're gonna do it anyway. So this is what I spent two winters. Yeah, this spas easy studying stone sheep and mountain goats and uh of course catebou and moos and everything else, but had studied moose before that, and moose is one of my favorites. It's a great great speaking with high regard about most I mean, I think you, oh, I love them. Of all the things that we've talked about thus far, like your love your love of Moses, absolutely very apparent. Well, they are all tay. Moose are incredible, incredible animals. You see if my my book Deer of the World, I wrote quite extensively about moose and because I'm a German, I was able to get the experience from Europe into the English language, and there was quite a bit of that. You see. The moose was quite a cultural animal in Europe. For instance, in Sweden it was used for postal service in winter. Yeah, I was going to say that, And it was an attempt was made by one of the Swedish kings to put a whole regiment of dragoons on top of moose because they make a superlative and I mean it, a superlative mount. And had that succeeded, I can just see this miracle weapon because when horses for the first time confront moose, they see a ghost and they spook. So if that cavalry regiment of dragoons would have run into another, there would have been horses scattered from here up and down picturing this. That's right. But it's failed because moose are very fickle in feeding, and that's the difficulty. They make a fantastic mount, so fantastically. Yes, throughout history, Yes, this is this is common, this is history. I'm not I'm not putting anything onto you. I don't think you are. It's very excited about this idea and in Russia. Yeah, when the Conqueresce of severe began, they they discovered that anybody mounted on moose could out around the Cossacks because the moose will run much faster and much more better over uneven terrain. Yeah. Now, if you take a tame moose and trained him to carry a pack, you put on the pack. And the Russians have done that, by the way, they packed these moves with very delicate instruments, because that moose will carry that pack without the slightest movement of anything through swamp. He will swim through raging rivers with that, he will crawl underneath dead faults, he will slither over top of dead faults. In the evening he will deliver you that pack undisturbed. That tame moots, that's right. How they so easy? Oh, there's such babies, some of the cute things. Oh they're they're they're wonderful. They're very very they're very curious. Yeah, they're very sweet, and they follow you around about it. They are sweet and they have such a lovely song. You just make a few they can't. Yeah. So for instance, one baby moots, it was a little bull had learned that with mud defeat he can't get into the house, so he would call lift his legs, wait till they were cleaned, and then he went in and let darl sat down beside the fireplace. That was sort of the typical thing. They're very curious. They will follow you around. They put that big nose into everything that you have, and so on so forth. And to give you some examples, a forester raised one female and she loved to go hunting. I love to go hunting with him. If she heard a gun going off in the distance, she would take off. And the foresters in East Germany were very surprised how accurate she could track with her nose. Yeah, they said, she's as good as the best tracking blood track moose. Oh yeah, they can track lost it. This is the best. Oh god, now it gets even better because this forester um So when he took the shotgun, the moose was right there and they went out. But moose also have the habit, and they don't kick that habit of suddenly up and they're gone for a little walk hundred thirty miles away, I mean that. Yeah, So the moose was gone for a while and the forester happened to be in a boat and one of the canals and he's poor link down and suddenly there the moose shows up. And the moose recognizes the foresters that's mother, and she jumps turns over the boat. There you are. I can listen to moose stories like this one, this one, this one, Yeah, this one is a bit tragic one. Last one. It's a bit tragic because she was a pest, now is about it. And when the forester was transferred to another district that quite long distance away, they thought the moose would stay. She didn't. She found them or a long distance and they decided at this point, no, we do not want you. Now you remember that every moose experienced that in his lifetime. There comes a point when there's a calf, the female says no more, and that moose understood. And what happened next Briggs tears to buy eyes. She appeared frequently at night standing under the window. Oh you see, I'm still moved by that. This is what moose are. They are like a six foot dog. They're sweet, absolutely sweet. Oh, they make wonderful mounts and even the biggest bulls. Yeah, during the rut, that's a bit awkward at that time, But then I see pictures of a nice bull moose with anderss flared being tame around the house and the three year old kid being placed on his back and he runs around. I feel do you feel with moose? These are there with every animal that can be labeled as gregarious. Well, I'll tell you the following when by the time I finished in bamp National Park with my big horns, the females physically try to keep me in the group, physically block my way, deliberately pushed me back in, and when they broke, they tried to follow me, and they followed me everywhere, and the males attacked me. Some people might ask, given your relationship to you've studied goats, you studied mountain goats, you studied wild sheep, you've studied moose, you studied how do you still could be a hunter? I would not ask that, but some mindy, how do you answer that question? How do you still a moose knowing that it brings you to tears? The point the point of the matter is hunting is provision. You're bringing food. Yes, I will keep the antlers of the moose that I kill. It's a treasured member of one. I have no difficulties say that is food, and the only obligation I have is to kill that animal as quickly as possible. That's my only obligation in this regard. And the other obligation is not to waste. Uh. It's like overwhelmingly pragmatic. The vast deer that I killed was a mule, your dough I brought back. Of course, Grandma and I were great pals, to say the very least. She took the head and she made head chees out of it. Now, how many people will take the head of a mule they make hetchees out of it? Not many, not many. It's delicious head cheese. To this day, when I kill a buck, and I do all the cutting myself and so on, the last thing that I do is I skinned the head and I carefully with a very very sharp scalpel remove the edible meat. And that makes a magnificent stew, magnificent as one of the best tasting stews you can head. It's only once a year or twice a year, depending on many bucks I killed. Now I kill one or two bucks a year. That's that's it, or nothing, depends on the circumstances. But and I don't waste the bones. The bones are so wonderful in stock. In fact, I am almost fanatical about bone stock. I boiled two big parts of bone stock a week. For the first thing I'll do when I get home is I'll be doing just that bone stock. Of course, you add a few more things like chicken feet. Chicken gives us and so on. Pigfoot is a good thing so that you have a very gelatinous result. Of course, gin ummer and well all all other goodies into it as well. But usually there are three species of animals and seven eight species of plants which go into my stock. As such, it's very very healthy, and it has kept me free of especially colds and influences. Haven't had a cold enough for three years. Yeah, it's that. That's that's kind of let's talk about kind of the ethos of of our company and what we do and the reason I joined this, yes, and I'm in Bozeman, and that we were sitting here is very much what you're talking about, the idea that we can be pragmatic but also feel an emotion for this animal betaking up and we can go a step further. And you are aware that I'm writing my second book on human evolution. Yes, So one of the things that I'm very much aware of is that we have biochemical pathways which evolved only because we eat meat. The first biochemical pathway, for instance, is will that justest the digestion of elastin, which is found in muscle fibers and only in animals. And you and I share the same enzyme elastez, which suggested that tells you something. Yeah, the one that I really like, the one that I really like. Other trans fats, well, if you take trans fats in margarine or trans fats in oils, they are awful. They are very very bad for your health. Never eat the bloody things. But take a peek at what you find in male milk, or in cheese or in butter. That are trans fats and cheese and butter and milk. You know where they come from from natural hydrogenation in the room of the cow or the sheep of whatever it is, and you know what your body does with them. You have an enzyme specifically to pick up those trans fats and change them into conjugated lino lake acid, which you need for brain development. Now that tells me that we've been eating the fat of ruminants for a very very long time. And you need you need, by the way, meat very much for brain development. That cannot be overstated. And we've talked about that here on this podcast with a Professor Willia von hippel Than and Queens when we talked about human evolutionary biology and kind of philosophy of and not only are those pathways created through that, but are our social structure, how we communicate with each other, how we set up our societies was often driven by no. No. Hunting was vitally, vitally important right from the outset in human evolution. The moment we became humans, we were killers. Were such efficient killers that we dramatically changed the bow diversity of Africa and continued to chase to change it. I have written the whole chapter on that. I'm going to read it. Let's get that. We gotta get it before we go here. The North American model a while left conservation because I would I would say that I believe most people will know your name from that h in the in in the sense of our audience, and then just in the general sense, because it is in my mind, the most important set of principles that we have in wildlife and conservation and in any model across the world which you have vast experience, north American model is. Yeah, it's a model, and it is a real wonderful creation of North American society. It is a gift, a cult shill gift to the world. Absolutely absolutely. Now when you we have we've had we've just we've heard from Shane here he called us earlier. We've had Shane on this podcast before to talk about the origins of North American Model, his role in marketing it. For lack of God, thanks God, thanks Without Shane, it wouldn't have flown. You know what a voice he was, Yes, he wasn't. Also John Oregon was another one of them. But those those people, it would have failed because I was condemned when I first published that model. Not yeah, when I first published the completensive model. The world of society wouldn't review the book. Yeah, they took Shane and other and took of them on the road, and when they did basically that difference to conference, right, they did talk about these things I in debt forever, but that Yeah, so let's talk about the you know, the origins of of the model, where it came from. And then then get to because some of the hardships you had pushing it for well, let me put it this way. I was interested in the early early nine in the nineties and seventies about how to make wildlife, um well pay for itself or it's a bad way of putting it, but how do I make wild that more valuable? And in my innocence in those days, I thought that maybe game farming would be a way to go. And I had God, thanks a bit of money, and I organized the conference where game farmers from South Africa, from Texas, from Alberta, places like England and son came and where we had a wonderful set of papers and discussions, and that was published by the i u C And in two volumes, and I was the editor. Fritz Walta, my dear friend, was the editor as well. And as I was editing this, I suddenly realized, Oh my God, to push that is an absolute idiocy in North America because what it does it would destroy your system of wild of conservation. Now you you didn't know that you have a system of wild of conservation. I was just gonna say that, like we weren't aware that, in fact that the stimulus to write it down came from a discussion I had with two senior colleagues of the Canadian Wildlife Service. They were pushing game farming and I said to them, for heaven's sake, what are you doing. Don't you realize that you're destroying your system of wildlife conservation? And they both shot back to me, we have no system of WORLDLFE conservation. I said, you damn rights you have. When I'll write it down for you, take a break. We need to take a brief moment to think about that statement. And this is after many of the like the key legislation of our time, that that built our models right in other ways, what I did was I summarized that existing model the genius had. The model is not I, it's you. Yeah, not me, Well no, it has been. You see all the principles that model have gone through the heart school of democ cractic debate. They survived. There is not a person that this world who has the wisdom to construct that model. It could only have happened culturally over time. And you reverse and if your reverse time, and listener to this podcast will well know we talked about this often. You reverse time, you think about in six and thirty seven the first National Wildlife Conference that together, right, But no American could have written that model. No, you're Americans who wrote about that had a totally different thing. And you can look at Aldo Leopold's book Game Management. Yeah, and take a look at Larry hans John's introduction where he speaks about this. It's a totally different way of looking at it. Yeah. Well, I was. I'm European, as you know, and the I was very familiar with the hunting, very deeply familiar with the hunting in Europe. And when I wrote that model, basically when I started it, I contrasted it what you do in North America comparing what you do in Europe. Yeah, and wrote that down. So, for instance, you have the wildlife large wildlife largely except for for in the well Ford also in the public domain, but you don't have that in Europe, although by law it should be reality is while that is privately controlled. Yeah. So it was one step after the other. And I first wrote out a model with four steps, then I thought about it, eventually developed it to seven steps, which are found in my book which I published in McTaggart Cowan together, and there I had the most detailed in some regards that still as one of the most details accounts of the North American system. While of conservation, it had, by the way, a review of chronic wasting disease. It had a review of the tuberculosis outbreaks. And there this is you know, that's right, that's right, that's right, because most of your chronic basics is basically spread by game farms. But somebody said in the United States, nicely, c WD is spread by trucks very much. But well, and when you quarify this morale in a way, the fact that it's driven by like your study, you know, your studies and game farms. And then well I probably expended to papers yeah on it. So and the very last one that by that was quite accepted I presented at an international conference in Ireland because one of the gentleman who invited me had studied and he said, this is the best model we know in the world, and why don't you expound on it? And I emphasized there its role in public health because most of the human diseases we have come from wildlife or tame animals or domestic animals. Yeah, and the best thing you can do from a perspective public health. The best thing we could have ever done is to keep all our wild life wild, not in That's what c WG comes from. And today we are faced with an enormous dilemma. No one was talking about CWD. Well I had the first review of that. You can read it. And once I have at the behest of Shane Mahoney, you're talking about you predicting. When you read it, you're like, well, this this is ten fifteen years before this thing at polifer Fort, and here are here's someone calling to to bear what CD can that I first warned about the disease in in my book l Country, page hundred sixty nine. Please read. In those days the disease was it was not even known as chronic wasting disease. It was called some kind of a scrapy. Yeah see, and I had done my homework on the German side. See that is the advantage of having another language at times. Yeah, the Germans had been very much concerned with the t s S. I realized, oh my god, what is coming our way? And I warned in that. I was told later on that a game farm but who loved my writing came to that spot. Read burst out into red face and ripped the book apart. Too bad. Yeah, I mean TSCs. It's something that TSCs we now very much understand. But but i'm, you know, having but eight years old, but we're not ten years old. Whatever. But to think that back that far, that these kind of things bore the you know, for you to codify that that model came from an understanding of game farms, understanding of disease like CWD, and then this is what's driving this is incredibly it's remarkable to me. But at the same time, it was still futile, you see, because we still have not controlled the the s blod pre onto spreading, the spreading and the dangers are so acute to our economy because Norway has already banned all products from straw and hay from areas with contaminated with CWD two enter Norway. So that's your a big hint with a telephone pole. I believe you me. That's that's that's going to be a spider world. That's going to be something. Yeah, and basically you have to blame now the politicians. They were very well informed, but of course game farmers thought, oh forget this stupid professor we know better. You know that always happens always, and there's there's you know, CWD funding mechanisms in in I know, in appropriation in Congress right now that are sitting in committee, they're probably likely will knock it out. And this is just asking for more funding to do research well, and that's the wrong thing to do. This is the wrong thing to do. We don't need any more research right now. We need action. We need implementing policies. And I have written that I'm chief author in fact on a polity a document which you produced, which, by the way, your leading scientists acknowledged, agreed with, incorporated with us. They realize what we were doing. When you write a policy document, you write it in, you spread out the understanding that you have and feed in the understanding from various places so that you can come out with several principles what do you have to do to stop the disease. And the first one is that you stop the transport of all animals and parts and so on, and that means like like it on the commercial side. Yeah, that's the first step, and that's I think that's something where within the hunting community it's accepted that this is something that we should do. The hunting community is coming along, that's right, But you had you must you know that we have so much knowledge and headed for decades that we should have acted then. And I am horrified at the potential consequences of this. Yeah, but I'm sorry. I was not able to convince the people, and they threatened me in court and threatened my wife with death and god knows what else. Well, let's see that. I don't want to go over too many of these types of things. But you had there was a lot of pushback to the North American model when you first presented, correct, and I think it's important to examine that pushback to kind of in its place and time. Why it happened, Well, it was based on misunderstanding. But the misunderstanding that rose was because I spoke of this model of wild like being in the public domain. Uh, this was considered to be politically socialism, and they accused me of of that. Well, of course, I am a great fan of courageous wildlife and and environmental action on private land. In fact, one of the great things about North America, your country, is that we do have a large amount of land in private hand outside the public domain, because on these lands we have some of the most brilliant examples of what to do in order to rectify problems on public land. You see, I am enthusiastic about this. I am a great defender of private property precisely because here we can have actions that mitigate We can learn so much in the value it creates, A tremendous value stains private I want the opposite. I am enthusiastically in favor of it. And at the time when you read, when you read like wildlife as a public trust resource, elimination of markets for game, these are things that are capitalist. Probably not digging too much well, you see, don't accuse of capitalists. Most capitalists have a brain. If I have a chance to talk to the capitalists, why we should have no markets in game when he sees the consequences of having illegal markets, like the wonderful work by Terry Gross, who used to be your in the West, your Head Haunt show in wildlife, but with the Wildlife Service in wildlife law enforcement, and he was very much involved in getting the Ashland Laboratory up and running. A great man. In his retirement, he wrote fantastic books. I mean it, and each chapter dealt with an episode, and there you learn just how big an underground of illegal activities you have. No capitalist that I can think who had a brain would disagree. Do you remember any any moments of where you harely had to defend the model that you felt were seminal? They were they were cute, really really cute. One of the most outracious things that happened was in Texas. My friend Fritz Walter, very very dear friend. He was a mythologist, the great antelope expert, have retired Texas and m and the student put on a very nice seminar for him, and they asked me to be the keynote speaker. Fritz Walda and I were close friends for decades. That's I don't hear anything anymore. One day, I think it's getting close. Note to that. Let's give them a call. And I called, and the poor students said, dr guys, we were told that if we were divite you all our conference funding would be taken away. Oh boy, Well, I called Fritz and sad and he said, look, if you don't come, I won't come. So I came and I gave one of the most innocent papers I've ever given my lifetime. I explained the reason why the Irish elk had these enormous antlers. We were in a uh auditorium and the high school, I think it was, And that's itself an interesting thing, why Irish evolved these enormous antlus. Yeah, and as I was going off the stage, out of the curtain stepped a text and colleagues grab hold of my hands, says well, we're all with you, but I cannot be seen with you. You're an anti hero. Well today I'm a hero in Texas because I also published how to um Grow Trophy antless baby, how it was done in Europe, because I knew that intimately for a long time, and some Texas ranchers in the South of Texas read it. I thought it was very sensible, tried and of course it looks like a child. We should we should get into this story. Can't leave this on the table because it involves herman Gary, involve the Nazis, can take us into the take us into this one. Well, yeah, that's right. But first of all, I was telling Will to do the following. Um. These ranches are using the thought patterns and so on, not from the past, but also from our own and from our own observations. And the result is the ranch that I've seen, it's beautiful natural vegetation, magnificent deer growing on it. And one week I saw three bucks that would break the world under the record. It would enter the record book of Boone Crockett Club. And if you in your lifetime see one, you've been kissed by the gods. I saw three in one week. And right now you have all over the United States the score bune crackety club scores of white tail endless dropping. Except on those Texas ranches. They're going up and up, and they will go up. I know because we are now discussing things that we're introducing other measures. And you have wonderfully healthy populations. Yeah, and this is all because of buck to their ratio. Not quite, not quite, it is, it's it's a little bit more than that. It is really the first The first thing is that you condition the landscape in such a fashion that you have rich, rich food all the time. You must make sure you had big, big farms growing good mother screw those. You have to reduce the density, and you have to look after the landscape to make it rich and productive. That's number one. Number two is you eliminate some of the things that are poor performers that you take out. And the next thing is that you don't kill your big breeding bucks. What the Germans did was and that it became law when they realized that you could. They they had a system of class one and class two. The class one and class two were split into A and B. Class one A were the trophy stags that were breeders. You never touched them. They were off limits. You could only kill one B or under certain circumstances, harvest stag was allowed. That's one A. Then you could never kill a two A. That's was a tag for the future. You could kill it to be. When I was last hunting in Wyoming for Elk, I had the chance to shoot a young bull with enormously long, thin antlers. I wouldn't hang such a thing on my wall. I would turn around in shame. That bull had a future he had to live. Of course, it didn't shoot it and his progeny as well, but his children others. Yes, this was a bowl that had not yet bread. But he was a big, big, magnificent ball. Yeah, but he was a satellite bull. He was not even with the writing group. Yeah, he was just entering it. That's not an animal you kill, that's an animal you allowed to live of I killed a bull ten minutes later. Who I was so happy to have was an old ball. It was a grass antlet bull. See this means something to me. This means almost nothing to most people. To me, this was the joy of joys. See. Grass antlet bulls live during the antler growing period on sedges and grasses which are very which are which have no toxins in that young and that means that he was living on some of the better grasslands created by the forest fires that you had. He was hog hog fat, but he didn't have a main short as a protein. The antless were relatively short, and because there were no toxins in that food, they were perfectly symmetrical. And that's the sign of a grass antlet bull. I have it on hanging my ball. Now that's what I wanted. I've got it. We had to wait for fifteen minutes for the sun to rise before I could take the photographs. Was that quick? See? I called the ball in. But that's another big story. Because the German counts in the nine eighties and the Great Hunters um found themselves in the dilemma. They couldn't hunt the magnificent stags of the Carpathian Mountains or the Danube Delta because in the thickets the animal wouldn't visible, and you could hunt and puts your foot as much as you want to do, you'd never see them. You never killed them. But these were noblemen, educated people, which were wonderful authors. Yeah, they began to understand that if I play ball successfully, I can walk in on that thing or it will run you over, as a matter of fact, and that's exactly what happens. Now. These writings are marvelous. I internalized them early on when I had a chance to try it out an Elk. It worked like a charm. It is you have to watch out that you realize that you kill the bull in the thicket, you go into the thicket. And the greatst fun of all is if you convince the females that you are a beautiful stranger and they break away from the harem and they run towards you, and they had him a good hitting bullets behind them. Yes, it's fun. I never thought we'd get Elk tips out of this podcast, but very much enjoying that well. I mean, I got so we could do this for gosh, I knew it was going to be like this. I knew I was gonna say nothing and be speechless a lot and one another five hours with you. Ah, I think we must return to the North American amount of for a second. Please do because it's hard for me to explain it's importance, and it's not something that is ingrained enough in in our hunting public right now. It is not when you buy a license, it is not listed as part of your is part of the game laws. It's not it's not right there. I mean, people that listen to this podcast will will know a lot about it. Certainly, there's a lot of resources and you you're working on something now with Shane uh to learn more about it. But why do you feel because it's it's such an astounding, long lasting model, even before you codified it, why do you believe that it's not You know, you don't get your game regulations book in Montana, Wyoming. Why is it not on the front back cover. Actually that's a very good question, and I count answer that. Uh. I do know that it is being um written up occasionally, it is being rewritten incorrectly by the way to fulfill secret wishes in pot But it is something that I feel school children should know about because it returned life and biodiversity and beauty to your land. And that is what wildlife management should be all about. It's a hands on way of generating more diversity rather than less diversity. If you let the wolves go through the landscape, you will suffer tremendous loss in biodiversity. If you're on the underhand, play God, and you have to. That is your responsibility today in landscape because there are no natural landscapes in North America. There haven't been for twelve thousand years. Your landscapes are artifacts of human activity. The way you put that is striking that these that you're looking at an artifact that has been manipulated, will continue to be manipulated, right, And it was manipulated very very cleverly up to the time of the discovery of North America by the Europeans. See, because when they entered they never realized that they were entering a highly, highly civilized landscape, by which I mean that the landscapes had been manipulated in favor of human wants and needs and conditions. Yeah, they were artifacts that served humanity, and those people that entered had not a clue about it. Now we do. What a lesson to learn from that model and from you is that you must understand your place and time, like you must understand when you look at the landscape, how it got to be that one. That's right. There's no way you can understand being in it, being a part of it if you don't understand how it got to be. But let's go. If you follow our unfortunately now misguided environmentalism, yeah, you're going to create forest fire conditions like you wouldn't believe. Yeah, a landscape of natural biodiversity which has the large mammals in it, yet is an open landscape in which the annual production of plant material is largely consumed when the forest fires occurred. They're small, they're cool. You don't have these enormous conflagrations that you now have. Yeah. You see, when human beings came to this continent about fifteen to seventy thousand years ago, they came into a continent that was hit hard by about sixty genera of large mammals, and they hit the continents so hard that the vegetation most of the continent was so low that you evolved here like the progerinan antelope, a species of animal that is the highest speed runner in the world. You can only evolve high speed running in wide open landscapes. Yeah. The Texas deer that I talked about, the fan tails, Texas white tail, and the Texas white tail is a deal that evolved in open landscapes. And its orbits, yeah, are shaped in such a fashion that they would have been able to click up very simply because in those days you had enormous predatory and carrion feeding birds around. Yeah, the same thing with golden eagles. Golden eagles will kill deer and pronger and antelope of course. Oh yeah, absolutely. And so this was an open country species which had eyes. Your Texas white tail has eyes as big as a big horn ship. Yeah, and it was able to so you had a wide open landscape. When people came and were confronted by these mega cardbivo county boards, these huge bears, lions and so on, they began burning the landscape where they could burn it, and then they settled there because on burnt landscape they were safe from the predators and by the way, they lived a miserable life for a thousand, five hundred years. After that, they developed a miracle weapon which was the um well, which was a sharp cutting blade mounted on a detached will spear. You put poison on it, very severe poison. They were killing mammoth on the spot several at the time. They were very, very very similar. That's the Clovis culture. Also, the Hastat culture is another one that they've produced unbelievable cutting tools. The hasket cultures thin long knives that were obviously drenched in um poison most likely a knitum, and that were used. Later on, you had the Foalsome culture, which was also something very similar to the Clovis and the fish Tale culture in South America. And by the way, with these miracle weapons, they killed out the large founder within five years completely. But you know what happens now, the vegetation grows and you have conflagrations, you have huge fires, you have to counterbird, you have to learn how to handle vegetation so it's safe for you. And the North American Indians and the South American Indians became great experts, and so they burned in order to make the vegetation subservient to human needs. They became some of the greatest horticulturists and great agriculturists. These are bright, bright people that were doing this. Yet, and by the time Columbus came to North America, you had a continent completely under human control. It was civilized, but it was also overpopulated, and wildlife was very, very very scarce. The reason you had so much more wildlife was, of course the Great Tragedy because already in fifteen nine with the Disorder Expedition UH, they brought diseases and they began to spread diseases instantly, and native people became aware of it very very quickly, and they fled just to get away from any contact with these Europeans. Imagine driving five pigs in front of you. That's what the sort was doing. Because the preceding expedition and um T seven by Kabezza Debaka, who wasn't second in command, and he reported back one of the problems they had was getting enough food. In the first expedition here people were dying of hunger. So the second expedition thought they were going to fulfill that. They had five hundred pigs moving along with them at any one time, and they spread that as zasus like you wouldn't believe it. The minimum is that fifty six million American natives died. The more likely figures at hundred twenty billion died and wildlife exploded as a consequence. Buffalo, the real beginning is about six and their maximum extent they reached about sevent certainly in Pennsylvania. That is then they began to shrink already. But maximux this is the image of the landscape full of wildlife, full of buffalo, full of passenger pigeons, is a consequence of the death of North American natives by the millions. So, for instance, the passenger pigeon you had. The best explanation is that once the nut gardens, the fruit trees and everything else. Your eastern hardwood forest is a nut garden. Yeah, once they became available, the pigeons got into it. And your genetics tells us that this was a very rapid expansion, and they expanded into the billions. And so basically, what was the biomass that once walked as native people on Earth became passenger pigeons in the sky. Horrible. Yes, the passenger pigeons is one of those species that everybody understand. You see the passenger pigeon was a rare bird at the time Columbus landed in North America. It's a rare bird in the food archeological sites. Yeah, very very rare bird. If it had been as common as that, it would have been everyone. No, it wasn't. But understanding these ebbs and flows, understanding that's world. That's right. And it gets even better because one of the papers thinks that the release on the vegetation that happened was so massive that because now but the natives had suppressed it was so massive that it sucked out a lot of C. O two out of the air and caused the little ice age. That's not my theory. That's one theory I cannot defend or explained. But this is one theory out there. Yeah, it could very well be true. They were trying to make the point that this was, in fact, the first example of man caused climatic change. Nothing to fool around with the little ice Age. The understatement, i'd say, of the century, but longer than that's right. But you see, you should read because it's so funny. The Alvaris Noonba Devaka was a nobleman and a Spanish officer, very successful, and he was a falconer, and they emperor that he reported to Charles the Fifth was a passionate falconer and a hunter, and so of course the Emperor was interested what he saw. Naturally. Now Kaba Devaka begins in Florida, goes all the way to eight years to Mexico. He doesn't see a single alligator. He doesn't see a single coyote or wolf. He doesn't see any grizzly bear. He knows about black bear and puma, he doesn't see any. They sees no elk he sees no hevelina. When the natives in Florida, he describes when hunting deer, they took along water and wood because where there was water and wood, there were no dear. Can you imagine, as a hunter of what that means, how rare dear were yet, Cabezza Devaka says there are three kinds of deer in Florida, and his hundred percent correct. They still are there to be different deer. Quite hells you, that's how keen an observer he was, You say so. He now describes, for the benett of the king all the hunt herble birds like the blue heron, the egrets and so ons of forth. But it doesn't mention the eagle ones. With a huge population of people on the land, every eagle has its feathers torn out. He doesn't see a single eagle, he doesn't see a single vulture. Well, if you have deer in such small populations and only dear nothing else. When you don't find a single turkey in Florida, it's a disorder. Expedition that meets the first turkey in Louisiana. That was the continent you looked at. It was very very well used by people, and that matches the archeological data. Okay, and these vast changes over changes that right, disease that then sweeps over this. That's right, that's right. Change For twelve thousand years, people change the continent until the Europeans came and then in rapid fire fashion, you whiplashed the whole continent. There is no natural ecosystem anywhere left in North America because of that. Sobering to wrap up on the on the North American model doesn't need to change well for the next years. You asked a good question. Um, I think what you've been doing in the past is good and it would continue as long as you accept socially that wildlife can be in the service of human beings, that it can be consumed, that it is a product and a harvest of the land. As long as you have that, and as long as you think that it's right and proper to treat everybody in our democracy as an equal, so that every citizen who is no longer not a criminal, et ceter can get wildlife for their own use. It will remain entertain sustainable use. And as long as you have wildlife, your Second Amendment will stay. But if you lose your wildlife, it isn't worth the paper thriaten on well, trying to gather the words to summarize our time here. I feel, um, I feel like I want to come back number one or I'm coming to you. Yes, you can, we should, I should. Do you realize that the Germans have sent the TV crews to film me, Yeah, because I've taken such a strong stands with the wolf issue and I'm gonna yeah, I'm coming to you and we're gonna hunt. I want to thank you for a life that was dedicated to to these ideas, to pursuing them, to articulating them, and for coming here and doing both of those things, because I think this is an incredibly important conversation. I think your ideas are generalation, not only important for for your generation, but for every single one that comes after it. So, UM, I don't think thank you quite enough, but that's all I have for right now. But thank you and thank you for this opportunity. I loved it. Thank you, thank you. That's it. That's all Episode ninety six in the books. Thank you too, Jim, Colonel Tom, and Valerious for Grace and us with your President the podcast. Those are three gentlemen I never thought i'd get to sit down with and uh put those in a time capsule for myself and hopefully for you to go back and listen to if you ever need a little inspiration, well what you might want to do with your career, with your life outdoors. So thank you for again sticking through all four volumes of th HD's best of We're gonna get back to the regular show. Phil excited about that. I'm excited to see what you have planned. Yeah, you don't even know yet, do you know? I've been Um. I had a whole word document full of guest ideas and topic ideas and segment ideas and all these crazy things for you know this this we joke that we were. We were just the substitute teacher putting the movie on. But while while we were taking a bit of a break from our normal show, we're getting down to work. Want to bring you the best podcast possibly can in you. So in the meantime, hit us up on iTunes wherever you listen, give us a five star review and a good written review that really helps the show. Um, and do anything else you can to let people know about what we do here at THHD. In the meantime, we'll be working our asses off to make it better for you, make it entertaining, make it informational. So we'll see you in the brand new year next week. By because I can't go a week without doing run oh without run out right drinking in don't sit in at the boss would stop the growing roots, feeling lagging all on our barras shoes all tell me what is it that I shoes

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