00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. 00:00:19 Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. 00:00:22 Speaker 3: This week, I'm chatting with Erica Hauser, author of the Age of Deer, to discuss with her exactly what she means with that book title and what her experience was like diving into the world of deer and deer hunting for the first time. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Moultrie. Today we are chatting with Erica Hauser, the author of the very interesting, very relevant, and possibly surprising book for many of you, The Age of Deer, Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors. This was a book that I saw come out a year or two ago, and obviously, with it being about deer, I knew I should check it out, but I was a little bit nervous to read it. You know, when there's something that comes out about a topic that's so near and dear to your heart, it can almost sometimes be risky to dive into it because you just know you're going to be disappointed, either the book or you know, this could be a film or any other kind of project, but in this case a book, you know it's likely to disappoint. It's either going to be lousy, or they're not going to treat you and your subject matter fairly or whatever it might be. Or you know more than this person, so you're not going to enjoy it, whatever it might be. But in this case, I was pleasantly surprised on all fronts. This book was eye opening, surprising, challenging, and a whole lot of other things for me as a deer hunter to read. The way I would describe this book and why I think you should listen to this conversation is because it was a little bit like introducing a stranger into your home and giving them free rein to walk around, to look in your fridge, to take a look at your bedroom, to go and check out your dirty laundry, and then to come and report back on all of it and what they thought about all of this stuff. That's kind of what happened here with this book. Because Rika Hauser is not a deer hunter, she had not come from the deer hunting world that we all do, and she went and. 00:02:32 Speaker 2: Explored it all. 00:02:33 Speaker 3: She explored the history of deer in our country, the mythology and the legends and the storytelling around them, the management and conservation struggles related to them, the ecological things going on right now, and then the whole culture of deer hunting and how we talk about deer hunting and present it and all of that. And then she actually even went so far as to try it herself, to go along on several hunts to immerse herself in this and many other aspects of the deer world. And the end result is a book that I have found to be really fascinating. Even though I, as many of you, have surrounded ourselves with deer related content in books and podcasts and YouTube videos and all that, sometimes I think like, how could I possibly read another thing about deer? But this one is different because this is an analysis, a review. 00:03:27 Speaker 2: This is a deep dive. 00:03:28 Speaker 3: Into the world of deer and deer hunting from an outside perspective, and that has been very interesting. 00:03:34 Speaker 2: What would someone think if they. 00:03:36 Speaker 3: Were dropped in the middle of what we do here and took a look at it for the first time. That's what you get with this book, and that's what I wanted to chat with Erica about here today, both what her experience was like exploring these things, and then what she learned along the way, what she learned about deer's role in the ecosystem today, about the problem sometimes of too many deer, about the ways that we manage deer, about you know, the ways that deer interestingly fit and are so adaptable in our modern day and age. And then we spend a lot of time talking about how she experienced deer hunting culture and media, and yeah, so much that probably rather than me trying to rant and ramble about it right now, I should just let you listen to yourself. 00:04:31 Speaker 2: Long story short, This one was very interesting. 00:04:34 Speaker 3: I think Erica presented things in a very fair and interesting way the deer hunters would do well to pay attention to to learn from. I'll say, there's some things that I've read in this book, and even some things that Erica said that made me uncomfortable that I wish sometimes weren't the way the rest of the world sees what we do and how we do things. But nevertheless, perception is reality for people, and so I think for that reason this is useful to dig into because what we're doing here is deer hunters in America is a privilege. We are a minority in this nation, and we are dependent on the acceptance of the majority, the ninety five percent of the rest of the country, who allow us to continue doing this. So we better be aware of and thinking about how the rest of the world is seeing us. So that is part of this conversation, that's part of this book. I found it very fascinating. 00:05:25 Speaker 2: I hope you will too. 00:05:27 Speaker 3: And now I will let you get to my chat with Erica Hauser on the age of deer. All right, joining me now on the line is Erica Hauser. 00:05:42 Speaker 2: Welcome to the show. 00:05:43 Speaker 4: Erica, thank you so much, Mark, thanks for having me. 00:05:47 Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm excited for this chat. 00:05:50 Speaker 3: It's going to be a little bit different than the typical that I get to have on this podcast, which which I'm excited about. We sometimes in our community get in an echoach. We are surrounded by other people who come from similar backgrounds, who have similar perspectives and life experiences. So I think that anytime we get to kind of zoom out beyond that, it's it's both interesting and useful. So for those reasons, I'm particularly excited for this and I'd love to dive right into the deep end by asking you to explain for me this idea of the age of deer and if you do truly believe we live in the age of deer, what does that mean and what are the implications of that? 00:06:40 Speaker 4: Yeah, that is the deep end. Okay, here we go. Well, the title of the book grew out of, you know, the research that I did really brought me to a much deeper appreciation of the the role that deer play in our world, in our culture, in American history. And one of the things that I hadn't known about deer that really became much more clear to me in the process of researching was this whole story that I know you've talked about before on your show, the kind of overhunting story and then the conservation story, so that big you know, I always think of the graph of deer populations and how it just dives down like a v and gets to this very low point in the early twentieth century, and then conservation comes in and kind of you know, brings that back up, and so you know, those of us who are alive now are kind of living in a time when that graph has climbed way back up, and even since my childhood, you know, deer populations have changed. They were at a certain point when I was born, they grew, They probably topped out around the year two thousand somewhere around there, and they've declined a bit since then. So it really impressed upon me how, first of all, these things are always changing, they're always dynamic, and that it's very hard to say what normal is or what the baseline is. But we have lived through and we are living through a time of higher deer populations compared with our grandparents and their parents. You know that things were very very different in those days. And deer, you know, are such adaptable animals, and one thing that's super unusual about them, of course, is that they're very good at living in cities and towns and suburbs. We really associate them with the forest, but they're not actually deep forest animals as much as they are edge creatures, as hunters know. And so that adaptability and that you know, they're they're becoming the overall bulk of the deer population is becoming more urban and less rural, so that is fascinating to me because that says, just like you know, raccoons or certain types of songbirds, they're very good at living with people, and they're figuring out how to thrive in our spaces or the spaces that we think are ours, and so that makes them you know, I think in the book, I call them like, you know, masters of disguise or mash up makers. You know, they're very they're very much of our moment. They're really good at sort of reinventing themselves and taking on a new face and just adapting to the the world that's changed, you know, in their terms, the world has changed so quickly. They've been here for millions of years, and just in the last few decades or a few centuries, they've had to just adapt to this parade of changes, you know, just one thing after another, and they've managed to do it. So that's one of the reasons why I would say we're in an age of deer. The other big one is that for a lot of people in this country, especially in the East, deer are the only large wild animal that we normally get to see on any kind of regular basis. There are so many other large animals that used to be here, Like where I live in Virginia, we used to have elk, we used to have bison, mountain lions, wolves, and of course all those animals are missing. We do still have black bears, but I don't get to see bears all the time, right, It's kind of rare and exciting to see a bear, whereas deer are just part of our neighborhoods. They are our neighbors. That's why I have the word neighbor in the subtitle of the book, because we really do relate to them in that kind of everyday way. And I think there's something really important about having an animal around that is as big as we are, and that we get to see a lot. I think it just kind of keeps us, keeps us in our place in a way. I don't think we'd want to live in a world where we're the only large animals around. So those are some of the reasons why I chose that title. 00:11:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, I certainly think it's fitting. And as you just alluded to, right, I think there is a way in which deer are an animal of our time in how they are, you know, actually suited to the moment and can survive within this moment, but also, you know, you made the case within the book that not only are they, you know, practically capable or representative of survival in this moment, but also symbolic you said, you said that they may also be the species that perfectly symbolizes the way we live with nature now and the way we'll carry on into whatever weird paradoxical future awaits. When it comes to the symbolism, what do you mean by that? Can you impact that a little bit more? How do they symbolize who we are and how we live with nature now and possibly in the future. 00:12:36 Speaker 4: Yeah, well, this gets into you know, some of the history with them. One example I would give is that, as we said, you know that conservation movement in the early twentieth century started to bring them back. And I never knew this before I started researching the book. And I don't know if it's necessarily, you know, widely known, but one of the strategies of those conservation folks was to restock deer, so moving them around. I'm sure you know all about this, but you know, moving them around from one state to another or within a state, and that happened, and I think about thirty states and Virginia, where I live, is one of those. So when I'm walking around near my house and I'm seeing deer, sometimes I think to myself that deer is here because of people. Now, it's a native animal. It's been here forever, not forever, but for a very long time, since long before us, and it evolved here. It absolutely deeply belongs here. But the presence of that deer that I am seeing is part of a human effort to bring them back. And so, you know, that to me is so interesting and intriguing to think about how deeply we are able to affect our environment, wildlife, which species are here, which species are missing? And so I think that's a really great example of the sort of human hand in the world that we're living with in so many different ways. So symbolically, you know, deer have played throughout time. They've played some other very important symbolic roles in mythologies and stories over thousands of years. But for our time, I think that's kind of where the symbolic energy is. Is kind of like there are species that we have really intertwined ourselves with, We're very involved with them. 00:15:00 Speaker 3: Yeah, And and something else you've written about was how they do represent a certain degree of wildness. They're one of those key touchstones for people to connect with this wild other but also still familiar. And so they represent this this other, this wild this this other species. But also at the same time, as you mentioned, they're not fully wild and that we have interacted with them, we have. There's all this management that you write about and that we know about. There's there's all these different ways that we're intertwined, which maybe speaks to this broader idea, which is that we're not actually none of us are really separated from from nature. We are part of nature. We always have been a part of nature. We are an animal. 00:15:45 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:15:45 Speaker 3: We have simply produced this kind of uh move, manufactured a gap over these centuries. But but in some ways with deer, you can see that closeness maybe better with you know, than many other animals. It's really interesting to think about, and not often do we do that when for you know, people in my community, when we're just so close to it all the time, rarely do we ever step outside of that and think about it in this kind of way. But another thing, another way in which we don't often think about deer is as a problem. I think within my world, we're constantly thinking about deer, but typically we are looking at deer as Hey, they're great, we'd like to see more of them, Let's have more of them. 00:16:33 Speaker 2: How do we get that? 00:16:34 Speaker 3: And interestingly, compared to most other wildlife in America right now, where wildlife problems are typically because of a lack of or of it declines scarcity with white tails, much of the rest of the world, the non hunting world, looks at white tails as a problem of abundance, and I think that's something that oftentimes deer hunters have a hard time wrapping our head around. 00:17:00 Speaker 2: Curious to hear from your research. 00:17:02 Speaker 3: From the time you spent in the field chatting with folks, you know, if you could speak to that, because that's one arena in which deer hunters oftentimes maybe even willingly choose not to dive into that side of the things because it's not as advantageous to the things that we that we love and enjoy. Could you speak a little bit more about how you know, the rest of the world sometimes sees deer and the challenges that they might bring from a cultural standpoint, safety standpoint, ecological standpoint. I think that's always something that we can easily stick our heads in the sand and forget about. 00:17:39 Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, there's a few areas, you know, as you implied, where the abundance of deer is seen to create problems, and some of those are really human problems. Like, for example, deer in the road is a problem. Right, we're driving around, we're trying not to hit them. We're seeing deer that have been hit, and that's you know, upsetting to a lot of people, or it's just you know, gross, it's a disposal problem. It's expensive for localities to deal with those carcasses. And then there's kind of I write in the book about a composting program here in Virginia. That's one way that it's kind of a pilot program. It's not it's not how most of them get disposed of, but it's one very interesting approach to dealing with those bodies. But all of this stuff costs money, and it costs you know, takes time. And so you know, if you talk to like car insurance people, that this is a this is a big issue in their world. So that's one area where folks who let's say have to you know, commute home at dusk in the fall are are wishing maybe there could be fewer of these, you know, large animals trying to cross the road. That could definitely, you know, cause a really terrible accident if something goes wrong. Another thing that comes up for people is ticks and tickborn disease. And this is a This is an interesting one to me because a lot of there's sort of an easy or a go to answer that people will express, which is, you know, well, if we had fewer deer, there'd be fewer ticks, and they're for our risk of getting lime disease, for example, would go down. And it's not clear that that's true, so, you know, without getting two in the weeds here, the life cycle of the tick involves not just the deer, but some other creatures as well, rodents. Usually it's the white footed mouse, So you can't just take away deer and solve your tick problem. You'd also have to deal with the other posts that the ticks live on at other points in their lives, and you'd have to address the fact that ticks, just like deer, are edge creatures and they like being in those kind of edge environments which humans create a lot of, and they're also tick populations are growing with climate change, So there's a lot of things people are doing that are supporting ticks. It's not just about deer numbers. And then I think the other biggest area where people complain about deer is that they eat plants. And sometimes that means, you know, they eat your garden, and people get very annoyed by that. And I've spoken with several groups of gardeners and sort of gardener you know, or native plant communities, and they, I mean, the emotion, the amount of emotion and feeling that they have about their plants being eaten by deer is just palpable. And I understand it because I too am a gardener and I get it, you know, I get that feeling of kind of like, hey, you took something that was mine, and the frustration that comes with that on a more and it's a little bit easy to sort of just put that one in a box of like, well, people need to get over themselves. Your garden is not the most important thing in this ecosystem, you know, just let it go. But then when you're talking about native plants that are in the wild and that are part of a community of native plants that also supports native insects. Therefore native songbirds that eat the insects. You know, this whole web of creatures in a habitat, A heavy deer presence really does seem to affect that strongly. And there are many many places in our country where those native plant populations and tree regeneration really is being affected by a high deer population. And so folks who are you know, conservation biologists or ecologists who are concerned about that whole web of life in that community are often pretty focused on deer numbers as a kind of you know, this is what we need to do to conserve this habitat is reduce the number of deer. So those are some of the main complaints that people have about them. 00:22:40 Speaker 3: Yeah, so where did you land after all of these experiences, after all of this research, chatting with so many folks, kind of seeing all sides of this will eventually get to some of your experiences, you know, with the hunting side of things. 00:22:55 Speaker 2: But would you say that after all this that you view deer or. 00:23:00 Speaker 3: As an asset or a burden, after contemplating all these different ways that people experience them and interact with them. 00:23:09 Speaker 4: Yeah, So I hope this doesn't sound like a cop out. But where I landed was that I just can't land, you know, with deer. I started this project with kind of a hunch that they'd be a rich topic with a lot to dig into. And it's one of those things where you have a hunch, but you don't know how right you are until you really get into the project. And you know, I knew I was going to be researching all these different avenues like deer on the road, deer in the forest, you know, deer and lime disease, and it was like all every one of those roads. The further down the road I went, the more complicated things became, and the less I felt like I could land on a easy cli your answer. It was always sort of like, wow, I can really see this side, and I could see that side, and I can appreciate the whole complexity and the nuance of this debate that happened in a number of different areas of the research. So that was really you know, to me, that's great as a writer, that tells me I've got a really juicy topic. But you know, I would say the thing that happened for me overall was much more of a connection to deer and an appreciation that they're here, given the history that they have and just the sheer importance of the roles that they've played in human life for thousands of years. So, you know, I I'm glad they're here. I appreciate that in great numbers, they can cause some effects, you know, that that people are concerned about, and I think those concerns are valid. But I'm not really an advocate for just a simple reduction of numbers. You know, I don't really think that's a complete solution to anything. You know, I think there's there are changes that I wish people could make kind of on our side as well. And yeah, I just grew into more of a connection with them and more of a sense of love for them, you know, just just glad they're here and appreciating what they bring to human life. 00:25:57 Speaker 3: So this is just kind of came to me. But I'm curious if I imagine you've spoke to a number of different folks and different types of audiences since publishing this book, and I imagine we're speaking to one unique audience right now, which is hunters. Deer hunters who have a lot of personal experience with deer and who bring to this conversation a certain set of context. But when you've been speaking about this book to non hunters, two people that only know deer by driving by them on the side of the road, or by worrying about hitting them on the road, or by their gardens or whatever, have you found yourself with some kind of a what's the word I'm looking for here, like an agenda? When you were speaking, Did did you find yourself wanting to convince them of something? Or did you find yourself in conflict in any way with people and their initial reactions to this. 00:26:54 Speaker 2: Book or or deer in general. 00:26:57 Speaker 3: And I guess yeah, I'll leave it at that. I'm curious if you've found when talking to non hunters where you found things going and where you ended up hoping to open eyes or advocate. We'll get to the hunting side of things here in a second, but I'm curious about with that group of people, where do things tend to go and what did you want them to see? 00:27:17 Speaker 4: M H. That's a great question, you know. I think the most frequent thing that I encounter with non hunters is that kind of well, the deer are a real problem, you know, That's the attitude that I hear people expressing, and I think a lot of times they if they haven't read the book yet, or they maybe read it in a hurry. They they are expecting me to just sort of agree that deer are a problem. You know. They want me to talk about how our states should be doing more or our community should be doing more to reduce those populations. So I do find myself pushing back on that a little bit, not because I'm you know, across the board opposed to those kinds of programs, but just because, if anything, I am an advocate for appreciating the complexity of all of this and having some humility about it. You know, we don't have all the answers even though deer. You know, this is another thing I didn't know before I started the project, but deer are one of the most heavily studied animals in the world, so there is a huge amount of research out there about them. And you know, I attended several of these conferences where ecologists and biologists are getting together to share their current research about deer, and over and over again, you know, no matter what the person was presenting on, and of course they have their you know, feriment design and it's all very intricate, But the overall, the overarching message that I would take from those days of listening to presentations was we don't know. It's very complicated, you know, whether they're trying to figure out how deer move around, or when the deer sleep, or exactly what they're eating, or why they're reproducing in the numbers that they are, it's always this overarching uncertainty, and it almost seems like the more research we have, the less certain we are. So, you know, when somebody who lives in a community that has you know, let's say it's a sort of housing development which has a lot of deer, and the HOA is trying to decide should we hire somebody to come in here at night in the wintertime and call some of these animals? Would that be a good thing to do for our you know, our forests and our kind of human convenience here. I sometimes those folks sort of want me to say, yeah, the deer are a big problem, you should do it, and I don't because I just think it's I'm glad that I'm not in a position to make those decisions, because I don't think i'd be very good at it. I'm much too aware of, you know, all the there's always another side to those issues. 00:30:26 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned, you know, going to these conferences where all these different scientists, where we're speaking about there many many studies and the fact that there's there's more, almost more studies for deer, white tail deer especially than almost any other species out there. And my assumption is that and from what I understand that this is to a large degree, because there's such a large, very interested, very invested audience of people that are that are wanting to understand more about deer, that are putting dollars into research because of all of that, Because there's this massive community, massive economy, massive set of traditions all around this animal that is constantly demanding this knowledge, which then leads to the trickle down effect to funding and so on. 00:31:13 Speaker 2: And so forth. 00:31:14 Speaker 3: Yeah, and at these conferences, if I remember, right, I think I remember you noting that many of these people were wearing camouflage or were hunters themselves. 00:31:25 Speaker 2: Right. 00:31:25 Speaker 3: The deer research community is very very hunting centric from my experience. I mean, I know many of the you know, prominent deer researchers, and they're diehard deer hunters mostly. Many of these people came to this because of that interaction with hunting. So this then naturally leads to where I imagine a lot of your interesting experiences within this book came from. And one of the most interesting portions of the book for me, which was your kind of immersion and education and experience with deer hunters and the deer hunting community and culture. And and yeah, we'll get to how it felt for me to read your book. 00:32:11 Speaker 2: Which was very interesting as I was doing it. 00:32:13 Speaker 3: But I'm curious about how you felt before your first hand contact with deer hunters. What were your preconceived notions about deer hunters or deer hunting before this project was what was your starting point? I'm curious where you started, and then I'll be curious eventually to understand where you got to. 00:32:32 Speaker 2: But where did we begin? 00:32:35 Speaker 4: Well, it was it was a journey, it was a change, So yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. Well, where I started was I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh, which is a place that is deer hunting is big there. It's a big part of the culture. And my parents are not deer hunt they're not hunters of anything, but some of our relatives are, especially on my mom's side of the family. And we also had some family friends nearby who the husband of that family was a deer hunter, and I spent a lot of time in that house as a kid, and so I have these memories of seeing, you know, his trophy heads on the wall and his guns in the corner, probably not stored in a super safe way looking back on it in the eighties, And to be frank, you know, my my associations with all of that were not all that positive. I felt, without having been kind of in it or really part of it, it was always a little bit over there. I felt afraid of it, and it seems dark to me. There was kind of a darkness about it. And I do describe in the book that same guy that I mentioned, friend's dad. He and another one of my earliest memories of deer is seeing him and another guy drag a deer out of the woods during honeymoon and just you know, as a young girl, just feeling frightened and put off by that, and you know, certainly wasn't invited into it in any kind of a way. So and I think that probably that impression that mood probably did not change very much at all until I started on this project. And so if I had not written this book, I think I'd probably still be in that kind of a place of feeling like, well, this is for somebody else, this is not something I would ever get close to. And it seems a bit scary and violent to me. And that's kind of about as far as it went until I started the book. 00:35:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, what I enjoyed the most about your book, eh, I'm not sure if that's there. One of the things I enjoyed the most about the book Erica, was this very uncomfortable position that it put me in as the reader, as a deer hunter myself. And I mentioned this too before we started recording, but I'll mention it again. 00:35:32 Speaker 2: I was struggling. 00:35:33 Speaker 3: I was sitting there in bed thinking about like why do I feel this way? And the only way I could describe the experience was that it felt like I had just invited a stranger into my home and gave them permission to look through my home. Open up the refrigerator, see what's in there, walk through my rooms, walk through the bedroom, peer underneath the covers, look in my dirty laundry and take a look at all that, examine it, and then report back to me on their experience and some. 00:36:00 Speaker 2: What they thought about it. 00:36:01 Speaker 3: That was a little bit what it felt like with someone who you know, was coming from an outside perspective and then diving headfirst into the deer hunting community and world that I've grown up around and that I experience from that kind of insider perspective. 00:36:18 Speaker 2: But many times. 00:36:21 Speaker 3: Forget to think about how the rest of the world sees it, or thinks about it, or experiences it. And that's the case with any kind of group, right any community. We have a sense of insolarity. We develop customs and ways of talking to each other, and you know, we understand each other. We have a built in context, and you all of a sudden forget that there's another world out there that might think that what you're doing is bizarre or strange or fascinating or repulsive. And so as I read that, I had a myriad of different kind of reactions. Sometimes I was like, Oh, yeah, she's getting it, and other times I was like, Oh no, what a horrible thing for her to have to experience in that kind of way. Or I'm embarrassed by this moment, or I wish that she'd seen it differently or heard from someone differently, or all these different kinds of things, like, for example, you went and got to go walk through a deer hunting convention, like one of these you know, big buck contests and things like that that I've grown around, grown up around, and they're all good and interesting and fun for someone who's a deer hunter who lives in that world. But you know, your experience as someone who's not been in that world seemed like it was uncomfortable in many different ways. So I guess before I ramble any further, I have a lot of questions about your thoughts and experiences during those events, But maybe walk me through some of those early stages when you were showing up at some of these events, and you know, showing up that deer hunting convention for example, and being kind of thrown headfirst into the deep end of the die hard deer hunting community. 00:37:59 Speaker 2: What was that like? 00:38:01 Speaker 3: What were some of your first reactions to all of that as you as you kind of waded through those waters and met people and spoke with people that were deep within this kind of insular community that we that we have sometimes well. 00:38:17 Speaker 4: I appreciate Mark the honesty of your reaction there, and I think, you know, there's something really great about this kind of dialogue where we can acknowledge that we come from two different worlds and that we might speak two different languages in a way. But you know, I think it's deer hunting is a really and deer in general are really right place for people to have this kind of open dialogue, which I think we need more of, you know, in our in our world right now for sure. So yeah, my the the I will say, the order that things appear in the book is not necessarily the order in which I experienced them. So I'm trying to think where that fell kind of in my calendar. When I went to that hunting and fishing expo, I believe I had already been hunting by that point, though it probably doesn't appear that way in the book, which is good because the impression that I got at that show, which I'm sure will not really surprise anybody, is that the deer hunting world seemed on that you know, in that place, seemed extremely focused on trophies to me. You know, there was not a female deer to be seen in the building, right. It was all bucks, all big bucks, and lots of other animals too, I describe, you know, there's a whole big taxidermy display with you know, animals from Africa, the animals that kind of make deer look boring. You know, there was a giraffe, there were you know, bison, there were all these other really really iconic charismatic animals and you know, zebra skins, you know, helping somebody advertise their African safari offerings, and just definitely overall, this kind of minds that of hunting as a way of possessing things, right, like getting getting a trophy to bring home to show off, to prove something. And I think, you know, for I think my reaction was probably pretty similar to the way a lot of non hunters would feel and that kind of environment, which is this is off putting. You know, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. This doesn't feel like love for the animals, which I had read enough and experienced enough by the time I walked in there, luckily to know that that's not the whole story, and that a lot of hunters have extremely deep love for the animals and a real connection to them and a real respect for them, and that, you know, the other side of the equation besides trophies is food, Right, Like, the idea of getting food was really not represented by that event at all. It was all about the trophies. And I think this is just such a key thing that a lot of non hunters don't take the time to think about, is that food is half the equation or more right, It's so important to so many people. It's important to my family. I'm really lucky that I got to go on these family hunts which were really primarily about getting meat, because that perspective makes sense to me in a way that the trophy side of things, I'm not sure is ever really going to make sense to me. 00:42:25 Speaker 3: Yeah, so, okay, that's helpful to understand. I would imagine a lot of people we had these conversations. I think we are trying to have these conversations more often within our community, being thoughtful about how we not only how we present these things or talk about these things within our own community, but then also how the rest of the world sees these things and understands these things. 00:42:56 Speaker 2: Because I think a lot of the. 00:42:59 Speaker 3: A lot of what the world sees and interprets as trophy hunting or obsession, you know, stems from this much more complex, complicated relationship. And all of these things are tied together. Meat is this massive part of it. But then too, there's there's all of the process and the experience and the story that goes along with it. And then what someone might call a trophy is then representative of that larger experience, right that that that weekend you spent with your dad and your son and this incredible moment that happened or whatever it might be. There's, as you talk about in the book, there's so much symbolism wrapped up in in deer and the same goes with with any physical memento tied to these experiences, which could be a deer hide, which could be deer antlers, which is also the meat. 00:43:50 Speaker 2: Which might be a photograph. 00:43:51 Speaker 3: All of those things have these deep connections and and and resonate with so much more. 00:43:57 Speaker 2: And and you know, from reading your. 00:43:58 Speaker 3: Book, I found that you you were starting to see and experience that both hearing from people and your family or you yourself. And I want to read an excerpt that came from the book and really resonated with me, and I thought that maybe in that moment that you might be experiencing a little bit of what I'm describing here now. And I'll read this if I can find my little section. This is towards the end of the book, when you had a neighbor who had shot a deer and it had gone onto your property, and then you had gone to help him track and recover that deer, And I want to read a little bit here. 00:44:36 Speaker 2: You're right. 00:44:37 Speaker 3: I caught up and saw him in Crystal and Tommy standing over a big, big buck, a prone body, vivid in three dimensions, a brown form and vibrato on the plane brown ground. His head, with a generous set of antlers, was toward me, and his eyes were open. It was astonishing to take in his presence. He was sleek and perfect, and seemed more alive than I was. But there was a gaping wound in his side, six inches wide, through which his ribs looked back at us. Michael was in tears. Oh my god, he's gorgeous. He knelt and touched and examined the buck. One hand came up covered with blood, and he said, he blessed me. It was a reunion of two beings that had met hours before in a fateful instant. All night they'd been separated, one dying, one grieving. Now I could almost see Michael's heart reaching out of his body towards this animal. He put his hand on the buck's flank. Sorry, buddy, he whispered, thank you, I'm sorry. And there it was what Ian had called remorse, mixed indelibly with gratitude, and there was tremendous relief and pride. I felt in that moment, as I was reading that, that I had experienced all those same things myself. I had been there on a hunt, and I had felt this overwhelming cocktail of emotions of pride and sadness and excitement and and remorse and respect and reverence and everything all at once. And and that massive eruption of emotions that these moments contain, inevitably in my experience, have led to for me and I think many other people, all of these kind of adjacent ways. We talk about it and represent it and and get excited about deer beyond just just filling the plate today. But then it becomes everything else. It becomes the broader experience, It becomes a lifestyle, It becomes an obsession, it becomes a community, it becomes you know, all of these things, the photographs, the antler is behind me on the bookshelf, And for someone who comes into it without any of that context, without that lived experience that you got. 00:46:53 Speaker 2: A glimpse of there, it would seem absurd. It would seem. 00:46:59 Speaker 3: You know, prideful, it would seem the many many things that non hunters without that context always see. And I'm curious if, as you move through this process, if you were able to better understand that and that paradox where someone could kill but also love that same being and appreciate it while also possessing it in some way and incorporating it. Did some of this start to make a little bit of sense to you as you progressed, is what I'm saying? Making any sense? 00:47:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, it's making a lot of sense. And I think all of this, you know, I love a good paradox, and hunting almost seems like the ultimate paradox to me. I do feel like I moved a lot closer without you know, I'm still not a hunter myself, so I know there's a level where I can't go unless I actually, you know, take this up with my own hands. But I do feel like I got as close as I could to it, you know, standing right right next to it. And that moment that you read is one of those times which I this was so incredibly lucky. I wasn't even looking for this one, but this man, you know, I'm right in the middle of my research for this book and this man knocks on my door. I've never seen him before, and you know, here's this opportunity to be with somebody in this tremendous moment where they you know, I really did think of it as this reunion of you know, these two beings that were almost had a faded interaction with each other. He was very upset, you know, that he had lost this animal the night before and really just stayed up all night worrying about it, is what he told me. And you know, he was really a you know, hard on the sleeve kind of person, so I could see everything, you know, that was pouring out of him in that moment. It was very very meaningful to be there for that. And then other conversations that I've had with people who are hunters and they're very, very thoughtful about it. And I will also say that, you know, researching some of the mythology and the old stories around hunting, I think really points in the same direction, you know, the etiquette that a lot of traditional or indigenous groups have around hunting, where there's this whole code of behavior about gratitude towards the animal and proper ways to treat the body, and kind of rituals that you do in order to to show your thankfulness and kind of invite the animals of that kind to sort of keep coming to you, keep offering their bodies to you so that you can continue to have life. You know that seeing that those kinds of stories are part of humanity for thousands of years helped me realize that, you know, killing animals is part of the human story, and it's something that we've always had this mix of emotions about. It's always been kind of glorious and difficult and sad and full of pride and all of these things all at once. And I think the stories and myths and artwork are part of how we've tried to get our minds around all of that and kind of, you know, teach each other, you know, how do you behave in these situations? What's the right way to look at this? How do we conduct ourselves as humans who depend on other animals to survive, which you know we still do even in the twenty first century. It's just that we're not usually looking at it that closely. If we're just buying our meat at the grocery store, we're not part of that killing process and we can look away from it. And so I really grew into a lot of respect for hunting as a way to take responsibility for the meat that one eats. 00:51:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, if. 00:51:45 Speaker 3: If you were to sit down with and maybe you had conversations like this with your brother or other family members, but if you were to sit down with some deer hunters who have lived in this world for a long time, and you could share with them what you wish they knew about how their media and their photographs and their social media, and their TV shows and their get togethers, how all of that looks to the rest of the world. Is there anything you would want deer hunters to know about how we are portraying ourselves in our community and how that is you know, uh, received, You've alluded to a lot of this, but I'm curious if you could, you know, choose a handful of things that you wish you could get across to that community and say, hey, this is how this looks, so, this is how this feels, or this these are the questions of this race. 00:52:32 Speaker 2: For me. 00:52:32 Speaker 3: When I saw this, I've always thought that that is a particularly important thing for us to better understand, and I'd love to hear from you. 00:52:43 Speaker 4: Well, you know, I wonder how often most non hunters even enter that world, you know, even from the media side. You know, I think a lot of folks, as I used to, you know, just sort of thought of that. As you know, I don't play golf, so I don't look at golf magazines. 00:53:05 Speaker 3: You know. 00:53:05 Speaker 4: It's it's kind of like what you know, that's not for me, you know, As I said, my impression when I started for research purposes started to dive into that world was sometimes, Wow, there's a lot of emphasis on trophies here, there's a lot of emphasis on size. I noticed that sometimes when reading, you know, stories, articles about especially during hunting season, everything sort of gets dialed up to ten, I guess, but stories and articles about folks who have had success with the hunt, you know, these kind of headlines about you know, so and so bags of you know, fourteen point monster. You know, there's some likeguage in that kind of writing. That is it's very brash. It's sometimes I think I use this word in the book, it sounds a little bit like bullying. You know. It's kind of like the way if you want to be mean to another person, you think of a name to call them. You know. Sometimes it kind of has that edge to it, which surprised me. I thought, this feels odd, you know, it just to me as somebody coming from outside that world. It just strikes me in an odd way. And I don't want to make a blanket statement about all of hunting media, you know, because clearly that's a big world. There's a lot of different styles and approaches within that. But that is something I noticed in some of the things that I saw and read. 00:54:56 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I noticed, you know, you you shared some examples of that within the book, and I remember from from your viewpoint, it came off as disrespectful, as brash, as bullying, as all the things as those things. 00:55:25 Speaker 4: Uh. 00:55:25 Speaker 3: And then as I was reading these things, I was I was thinking like, oh, no, that is many of these words. I don't think I ever have read anything in modern day deer hunting media that is intending to be disrespectful or demeaning of the animal, or in any way position positioning the hunter as dominating this evil thing or dominating this thing that was not worthy. It's it's what I realized though, in looking at this stuff, is that when you are in it in such a way that it is how do I say this what seems in our moment as casual jargon, as familiar you know, kind of shorthand, as like fun ways that we'll be talking about an animal like I've heard people, you know, you mentioned stink pig or megatode, like silly, weird little things like that that when people are using them around other hunting buddies, it's like using admiration. 00:56:27 Speaker 2: It's like, oh my. 00:56:28 Speaker 3: Gosh, this thing was a mega toe, like such an incredible animal. I've never seen anything so incredible. So in their view, they're using it in the in a sense of awe and have we've kind of come up with our own strange set of nomenclature that helps us describe this awe in a very unrefined way. But I have been guilty of that myself. But I but I can then see how someone from the outside would read this stuff and think, ah. 00:56:55 Speaker 2: They're they're demeaning the animal. 00:56:56 Speaker 3: They they think it's this this, you know, this thing that they're just beating up on, punching down on. So so it was very eye opening in a great reminder of that for me and I think others. 00:57:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, another thing was good, Well, I. 00:57:17 Speaker 4: Just wanted to say, you know, as you said, the whole question of like what's the subculture, what are the rules inside the subculture? So interesting to me. And there was a hunter I was talking to one time who told me that if he's hunting alone and he kills a buck, he'll or any deer. I guess he'll he'll go and just sit with the animal for you know, a long time. He said, maybe half an hour an hour, just sit quietly, appreciate, maybe talk to the animal, and have this kind of one on one like encounter. And he said, but if I with my friends, I will not do that. Instead, we will stand around and we'll have like a whole different kind of language among us and how we talk, and of course we're still talking about the deer, but it's in a totally different way. And I just thought that was such a cool thing for him to tell me, And like, what an interesting difference right between like what we do when we're in our subculture versus what we do when there isn't a culture because we're alone. And you know, it's not that one thing is like more real than the other. It's just sort of like, that's so interesting to notice that they're different. 00:58:44 Speaker 3: I can one thousand percent relate. That's my exact experience. I have a totally different experience when it was just myself, and I have sometimes lamented the fact that I love being able to share, you know, these experiences with friends and family, but it is a totally different thing, say social, more celebratory kind of thing, when it's just yourself. It's it's quiet, it's reverential, it is you're more reflective, and yeah, I've sometimes wished, like, oh gosh, I wish I had been able to somehow separate myself from the group and just have my own alone time to really think about what happened here and experience that. Oftentimes, when I'm with a group, it's it's not until the momentum of the day is done and I lay down in bed at night that I'm able to finally actually process and think about it, because in the moment you're you're celebrating with your friends, and then as you experienced, then there's the great amount of work that has to get done after recovering an animal, and hours and hours and hours of everything that follows that. So, yeah, it's really interesting and and I and I ask all of these questions. I bring all this up because I think there's there's two I guess lines of thinking here that are important to the future for for deer and deer hunting and deer hunters, I think, and most of it ties to the fact that, you know, we are a small minority within the broader American public right and what we do, the way we engage with the natural world, our opportunity to hunt deer is a privilege here, and it is dependent upon the acceptance of the non hunting. 01:00:20 Speaker 2: World, which is the vast majority of the population. 01:00:23 Speaker 3: And whether or not they see what we do is valuable as acceptable as a respectful way of operating in today's society. And so how that rest of the world sees what we do and how we do it that matters practically. 01:00:38 Speaker 2: I know there's some people who don't like that. 01:00:40 Speaker 3: I think anywhere like anyone as an individual, at times will get a little cranky when they have to deal with some other person's perspective on what you are or do, or where or say right. Sometimes that's irritating. But as a hunter in twenty twenty six, we simply have to be thinking about that because it's going to be reflective of the future we may or may not be able to enjoy. So for that reason, I've always thought that we need to be really thoughtful about how we talk about these things, how we introduce other people to these things, how we showcase how we do these things and what we do and why we do them, so that you know, so that Erica's in the future, or Bob's or Bills or whoever might be getting a glimpse of this subculture in this world, can see the value of it, can understand it to some degree, maybe be interested in checking it out for themselves, or if nothing else, be willing to simply accept it as Hey, that's an interesting thing that Mark's doing over there, and I can respect his choice to do it in that kind of way and to get his meat in that way, and to experience nature in that kind of way. But this is a long winded way of me wanting to really get to something that you've only been able to touch a little bit on, which is just what it was actually like for you to be on that hunt. 01:02:06 Speaker 2: You you mentioned being with somebody. 01:02:07 Speaker 3: For a recovery, but you yourself did go on several hunts that you were counted in the book. 01:02:13 Speaker 2: You spent some time with your. 01:02:14 Speaker 3: Brother out there, and you actually saw a you know, a successful hunt, a kill was made right there with you. You were up close and personal to all of that. And in the book, you kind of did an interesting perspective shift. You you shifted the. 01:02:28 Speaker 2: Timing a little bit. 01:02:29 Speaker 3: Everything had been kind of real time, and then when the when that hunt happened, you then pivoted to like a flashback. You fast forward to like being in the car later thinking back on the day, and you kind of dropped in these different moments, And I wondered if that was just kind of how your writing process happened, or if you chose to explicitly position it in that kind of way. Because of the experience itself and what actually happened and how you actually processed it, it seemed like that was a powerful moment I'd love to hear more about it. 01:03:00 Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I was so lucky that my brother Ian allowed me to come along with him on these different hunts. And I don't think I fully appreciated when I asked him if I could come, I sort of didn't realize what a big ask that actually is. So he was really gracious to, you know, let me tag along, including on some solo would have been solo bow hunting, where you know, it's so important to be quiet and all of that. So that was generous of him. And the bow hunting was a wonderful day, but not a successful day in terms of deer. We only saw deer once and they were kind of far away. But we had a great time together. It was a lovely day. And then he said, you know, you really should come to the family hunt where we do these, because then you're going to see some action. And I was. I was a little reluctant. I had had such a good time just sitting in a tree stand with him, and I kind of thought, you know, maybe it's kind of poetic that we went deer hunting and we didn't really you know, get a chance to even take a shot, and you know, maybe I'm maybe I'm good with that, but he he convinced me to do it, and I'm really glad he did, because, you know, hunting in that group. This was my brother, some of our cousins and uncle, and then some other folks who are friends of theirs. They have been doing deer drives in the same small area around their town for many, many years, and they really know what they're doing. And you know, it really was this experience of cooperative hunting for meat, which I think is very cool in a way because that is that's kind of the old way to do it, right, That's that's what people have been doing for thousands of years, is getting together in groups to hunt large animals to feed themselves, and so this was a modern day example of that. I know, it's kind of not the not the style of hunting that is, you know, trending right now, but I'm glad I got to see that. And it also was kind of an overwhelming day for me in certain ways because you know, a lot of new sights and sounds and experiences that I had never encountered before in my life. And so I told it in that flashback way because while it was happening I was just well, first of all, I was taking notes and trying to like see everything and hear everything and write everything down, and I everything was happening so fast that I almost couldn't process it until later. So that's why it was like on that drive home, had a couple hours in the car just to think back over everything and sort of you know, the day. The day had these very action packed, exciting moments. It had these kind of long stretches of just waiting. Of course, it had conversations, it had meals, It had all these different people. 01:06:28 Speaker 2: It was. 01:06:29 Speaker 4: It was kind of a it wasn't a tidy plot. So I thought that this would be a better way to tell the story as just sort of a collection of moments, which is which is how it felt. You know, it was just a lot packed into a single day. 01:06:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that I can. 01:06:48 Speaker 3: I can relate to that kind of way of recalling days like that myself. 01:06:54 Speaker 2: How about And I don't know if an assumption of mine might be that. 01:07:02 Speaker 3: The climactic conclusion of your desire to see a hunt might have been when your brother actually shot I think too deer. 01:07:13 Speaker 2: There with you? What was that like? Was that what you expected? 01:07:18 Speaker 3: At to be like, I have to assume that that was something you were thinking about leading up to it, maybe worried about, maybe had some trepidation around seeing that, seeing an animal die, being up close to an animal like that. After you were there firsthand, was that like what you expected different? How did how did you kind of process all that? 01:07:40 Speaker 4: Yeah? You know, I wasn't exactly afraid of seeing it, and I do think I have, especially when I'm in kind of reporting mode, I have the ability to like pull back a little bit emotionally and just observe and concentrate on taking good notes. You know, if I hadn't been doing that, I'm not really sure how it would have felt, you know, if I just went just to go. I think it was kind of a there was a surreal feeling to it for me. It was almost like being in a dream. And I think I put this in the writing about it, that after he took those shots, I didn't cry, but my eyes and nose just started to water, like an involuntary kind of physical reaction to something very intense happening. And I wasn't I truly wasn't crying, but it was like, I don't know, my body was crying for me. I don't know, it's a strange. I've never experienced that. I don't that I recall. And then, you know, I think some people would have a really hard time with the cleaning. I that doesn't bother me at all, and in fact, I just find it totally fascinating. My husband and I have raised chickens for meat here at our house, so and I've been the one usually to clean the chickens. So I was just kind of really interested in, you know, well, how does this compare to a chicken. It's really very similar. The hardest part for me, I think has been, you know, several times I've been on these hunts and seen animals that take a little while to die. That's tough, and that kind of stays with me in a in a way that's uncomfortable, and I've I've kind of realized I think that for all the you know, when you read about how to hunt deer, it it always sounds like, well, this is the kind of shot you should take, and if you do that, it's going to work out nicely. It's going to be a nice, clean kill, it's going to be very quick. And so you think, as a non hunter Okay, well, I guess that's how it goes. But then in the field it seems that the reality is not always like that, and you know that's that's tough, that's tough to. 01:10:31 Speaker 3: Think about, yeah, and that that does not go away the discomfort of ever having to be a part of that and see that. And I think that's why the emotions are so high for a hunter in those moments and afterwards, as you experienced with your neighbor Michael. The emotional rollercoaster of wanting to do everything just right to ensure that it is quick and clean and is ethical and and fast as possible is is why you know, the vast majority of hunters spend an immense amount of time practicing and trying to make sure they're competent. But then it is such a pressure failed emotional moment in that you know, consequential second, when it all happens that, yeah, mistakes do sometimes happen, or just things happen, animals move, or you might do everything just right and still it. 01:11:25 Speaker 2: Doesn't go quite right to your point. 01:11:28 Speaker 3: And so I think that's why you see, like the outburst of emotion that Michael had there with you, I've certainly felt that way. 01:11:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, that is. 01:11:38 Speaker 3: That is not easy to see or to bear the burden of knowing you were part of that. But at the same time, as you write really beautifully in the book about hunting, is one way in which we can take responsibility for that and look the reality in the eye of the fact that if you were going to eat meat, it means something has to die, and there's something to be said at least, I think in being willing to take that burden upon yourself and say, Okay, this is the reality of life, this is the reality of eating meat, and I will accept that reality and own that and everything that comes with that, the emotional burden, the physical burden, the work that is incumbent on all of that, And I think there's there's something to be said for that. It's not for everyone, of course, but this leads me to me asking if, given everything you've learned and experienced and done on this journey, if you have gone hunting since with your brother as as a spectator again, or if you've ever thought about maybe someday trying it actually yourself, you did right in the end of the book that you felt you began to feel some sense of a desire of a craving of some kind of connection to this human this human experience that you were kind of getting around the edges of have you or will you ever try it again? 01:13:06 Speaker 4: Well, I still don't know. It's just a it's it's a mystery to me. I have gone hunting, uh, you know, after finishing the book, I've I've gone back with my brother a couple of times, and I enjoy that for the specifically I've gone to those you know, family group hunts, So I really enjoy being part of that ritual. You know, I've come to see it as a kind of family ritual that's very seasonal, it's very connected to the land. It's very much of that location and kind of knowledge over generations of you know, this specific patch of woods, this field, you know, behind this house. I'm really into that because I I totally appreciate and have for many years, you know, participated in local food in other ways. You know, I grow a big garden, My husband and I grow a lot of food here, including raising chickens, and so this, you know, deer hunting definitely feels to me like another aspect of that. But whether I'll ever get to the point where I want to be the one holding the weapon. I don't know. The interesting thing about those group hunts is that I can participate even without being a shooter, right, Like being a person who's walking through the woods is participating, it's helping. And I kind of like doing that. I like being part of the crew in that way. And you know, one of the things that they do not usually use are the hides. And at some point I said, you know, I'd be interested in bringing home one or two of these hides if you're just gonna you know, if you're not going to use them. And so that's been a way that I also, you know, have something physical to bring home from these experiences. And then you know, I learned, I tried to learn. I'm certainly not great at it, but I've tried to learn how to brain tan these hides. And you know, the physical work of doing that, spending all the time with the hide, going through all the steps, it's so it's so fascinating, it's so earthy, it's so physical, and to me that that's like a really compelling thing is to get to know that animal in that way, you know, individually, you really you see kind of stories on that hide you see individual quirks of this deer's body, and so that's that's where I'm at with it right now. I'm not sure if I'll ever get to the point where I want to be the one to go out and make the kill, but I'm not ruling it out. Could happen. 01:16:04 Speaker 2: Well. 01:16:04 Speaker 3: I love that you have been able to have this fascinating journey and glimpse into this world, and that you were willing to share it with us and with readers all over. And I'd like to throw one one more at you. If we're in the age of deer right now, I'm curious what you think is next. You know, where do you see our relationship with deer headed in this country or anything along those lines. 01:16:34 Speaker 2: I'm just curious. 01:16:35 Speaker 3: You spent a lot of time looking back at where we came from and where we are now. I have to believe maybe at some point you dared to look forward into the future and where this all might beheaded. 01:16:47 Speaker 2: What do you think? 01:16:49 Speaker 4: Well, I think we're in an interesting moment with you know, very very rapid environmental change. We did talk about how great deer are at adapting, but I do think they are facing some challenges right now that are pretty serious, chronic wasting disease being one of those, climate change being another. I mean, climate change is kind of you know, it's unclear exactly how that's going to affect them, but at least in certain ways, I think they will be challenged by that. At the same time, we continue to you know, make more and more of these edges as we keep developing more and more land, So in that way, we are creating more habitat for them. They're great at living in our suburbs, and we just keep building more suburbs and you know, kind of extending our towns further and further out. So in a sense, we're we're inviting them to move in with us, and we're probably going to keep on like annoying each other and getting in each other's ways, you know, as as neighbors do. But I think I feel like and I hope that our culture is moving in this direction of more acknowledgement of animals as beings that have their own stories. Right, They're not just here for us to use, but they are living their own stories. They have agency, they have intelligence that is their own type of intelligence, right, It's different from ours. And I think we're sort of getting there to realizing that and understanding that in a new way, after a long time of our culture just kind of seeing animals as resources or as it's sort of driven only by instinct and not fully conscious. I think we're figuring out that they are fully conscious, and so you know, I don't know how that's going to affect let's say, dear management policy or things like that, but I just think that we're we're kind of getting smarter about those things and more more aware of those things, and so maybe that will lead to a more collaborative kind of relationship to them rather than this kind of management paradigm. 01:19:29 Speaker 3: Well, if nothing else, there will certainly be no shortage of opportunities for questions to be asked and for answers to be sought, and for books and podcasts and articles and speeches and conferences to continue being had about these perpetually fascinating animals that seem to catch so many of us in their web. And I just I want to thank you Erica for having this conversation, and also you know, for dedicating what I know is likely years of your life to this process and to this study of this topic and this animal and uh and also you know for for writing about the deer hunting community in a way that I think. 01:20:15 Speaker 2: You were. You were quite fair. You were quite uh. 01:20:20 Speaker 3: Willing to explore and and to dive into things that maybe made you uncomfortable. And you know, you were open and honest about your perspective and your experience and in ways that sometimes made me uncomfortable reading it and hearing. But uh, you were pretty darn fair and accurate and how you represented things. And it was eye opening and interesting and I think useful, and I think a lot of other folks will find it to be so as well. 01:20:46 Speaker 2: So thank you for that. 01:20:47 Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much for your careful reading and your great questions, and thanks for giving me the chance to speak with a deer hunting audience. I love doing that. 01:21:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. Thanks again, Erica, Thanks mart take care. 01:21:07 Speaker 3: All right, and that's gonna do it for us today. Thanks again for joining me. As I'm sure you could pick up from this conversation. I'd really recommend this book. It's different, it's fascinating. You're gonna learn a lot, you're gonna review a lot of things that you knew already, but you're going to see it from a new viewpoint, and it might challenge you at times, it might make you uncomfortable at times. You might not like all of it, But I think there's gonna be a lot that will resonate and then we can learn from there's a value in that. Hopefully you saw that in our chat here today, So thanks for tuning in. Pick up a copy of the Age of Deer if you are interested, and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.