00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wire to Hunt podcast. I am your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode three and fifty three. Today in the show, I am joined by Hale Herring to explore what it means to be and even how to be a conservationist in a post pandemic world. All right, welcome to the Wire dhun podcast, brought to you by on X Today. My guest is Hal Herring, and Hall was on the podcast five or six months ago, but it was a very different scenario because Hale was actually interviewing me. This time, I'm flipping the tables and I'm back in the interview seat. He is the guest, and if you're not familiar, Hell is the host of at Country, Hunters and Anglers, their podcast and Blast. He is a tremendous conservationist and advocate for wild places and wild animals. He is a writer for Field and Stream and a number of other outlets, and he's just become one of the one of the voices and leaders that I have turned to and pointed back to and learned from. So much in my own journey as um. You know someone who wants to be an effective conservationist and advocate and I'm learning and growing and trying to make some kind of positive impact. Well, Hell is someone who's been able to do that. And I thought today we could pick his brain about where he thinks we're going now that we are heading towards some kind of new normal. The world has changed. We all know what I'm talking about. The last few months have been strange, scary, different, um, just different, and I gotta believe that means things are gonna be different moving forward when it comes to advocacy, when it comes to sticking up for the environment and the conservation of wildlife and public lands and all these different things. So this is a this is a a different kind of conversation that we kind of go all over the place. We discuss. You know, some of the things inspired Hal to try to become someone who could advocate for these things. We talk about ways he's tried to funnel his frustration or anger or disappointment, discouragement, all these different things. How do you take those emotions? How do you use that for good? How can you filter all the stuff out there? How can you listen to what one person says and then the different idea from another person and then try to fare out what's true. How do you realize or learn what issues we should fight for and which ones maybe we step step back from. How do we write effective letters or make phone calls to actually make a difference. How do we make a difference? It seems sometimes like I post something on Facebook, excite this petition? Does that do any good at all? Does anything that we as individuals do make a difference, Especially now that this whole ship storm of a pandemic has hit us across the country, and it seems like everyone's so focused on on that, on health and the economy. Is there even time and energy and oxygen left in the room to talk about conservation public lands. That is what we talk about with Hail today. I think if you listen to this podcast, you are a hunter. If you're a hunter and you listen to this podcast, you care about these things. You care about deer, you care about wild places, You care about wilderness, You care about water and air and dirt and critters, and you want to keep these things around. And the way we are going to do that is by figuring out how to be a conservationist, and now we need to fare out how to do that in this weird pandemic and hopefully post pandemic world. That's our conversation today. I hope you will listen in. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you learn something from it or become inspired by it. Um. I certainly was, and I'm ready to get out there and kick some tale. So without further ado, thank you all for listening, and let's get right to it with Hall Haring. All right, I am very excited to have hell Heiring with me on the podcast. Hell welcome to the show. Thanks Mark here Man. Yeah, you know, you had me on your podcast a few months ago, so it just seemed only right that I should return the favor and have you on mine. So it's it's nice to have the control again. I'm back at the driver's seat. We're some used to, Yeah, I was. It was when we did down there in Boman. Yeah, which was cool that you were in in uh within shouting distance where I could come down there and do that. That worked out great and I had a lot of fun too, and h man, it was it was really it was fun for me to have this reversal of roles where someone's asking me about my perspective on some of these conservation or public land related topics. Um. But the whole time we were talking, I found myself wanting to keep asking you questions. And so so now now I've got I've got all these questions, I'm gonna push it you a lot of different things I want to talk about. It's a it's a weird time right now in the spring of as you know, of course. Um, yeah, you're right there. We're in the same boat on that. You know, how how how are you handling things? How? How has this changed your typical spring activities, lifestyle anything like that. Well, at first it was kind of, Um, I was pretty relaxed about it because for one, I had more time to put in like a bigger garden. Um. And I was kind of obsessively pushing the fishing season here. I got. I got into fishing real early, and I was almost it wasn't like a vacation, but it was a time out of time sort of. And then um, and then it as as the drag owned of that came in, I realized I had to get back to work and I had to get lots of work done, and that was pretty hard. Um. You know, my kids were home. My daughter it's fine, she's working, baby sitting on a ranch. My son is is cowboy and on the broken old ranch west of town. But both of them were home, you know. And um, and then my wife was working at the library and keeping it open, but nobody could come in and so it was just sort of Um, it's as if the carpet underneath you was constantly shifting. It's a good way to put it. Which is hard. It's distracted, it is it is you. Uh, you've been hard at work, though still on on some some projects related to a lot of the stuff writing about public lands and whatnot as well too, right I am. I'm I'm working on a on a book length project on the public lands. Um. Hopefully it will be almost as good it is yours, certainly, ra I've certainly been ransacking yours to see what what new things I had to offer it. Uh, but um, it's yeah, I'm working on that. And I was super lucky to have that project underway before the shutdown. Um. I did a fielding screen story that I turned in like right the first of March, and I came back from the Shot Show, which was by all rights should that Las Vegas should have been the epicenter of of the COVID virus because it was the Year of the Rat and and it was on the same day that Hubei Province was shut down that the Shot Show and the Year of the Rat celebrations launched in in Las Vegas. And one of the mysteries here is it's not an epicenter of the epdym of the pandemic, so nobody knows anything. And that's that's something we could talk about questions. We have great scientists, we have great science, but the world, including viruses, are a mystery to us. And maybe there's a lesson there. I don't know. I feel I feel like those questions, asking those things, wonder about those things. That's probably what makes you such an interesting and helpful writer. I mean, that's that's what makes any of us a writer probably are creators. Is being curious today is being curious for sure, like and and one and there and then and then there's another element of that because no, I don't really know about the motivation of viruses. I don't know what they're doing, but I do know, like if you take care of and I'm not doing a soapbox here, but if you go and do a restoration project on a trout stream or on a on a tributary to your favorite catfish river, that you can throw a stone and have a real effect that you can see. And so there's this balance between the things that we cannot know, the the all the huge world of mystery and peril, and the things that we can actually address, which not surprisingly might help you get through the things you can't understand or can't see coming. It's it's funny you bring this up, and this is this is exactly one of the things that I want to talk to you about, which is this whole idea of like the things you can control or the things you can maybe have an impact on. Uh. As someone who at a young age just fell in love with the outdoor world, it wasn't until I got into my twenties when I started thinking about, you know, what my impact was on this natural world I love so much? Um And then once I started thinking about that, it was this massive kind of cascade of different questions and answers and well, what does this mean then? Or what should I do about that? Given this, Um, When when did that happen for you? Like when did you realize that you had an impact or that you had or that or that you could make a di friends or anything. When when did you realize that you wanted to do what you're doing now, which is writing about and advocating for uh, wild places and wild animals and things like that. Well, I don't think I had a choice so much, um, like when I was where I grew up in North Alabama, and that the development there is double, triple, quadruple what it was when I was born, um, And so like from an early age my parents were they they bought a farm outside of Huntsville and we all we we lived out there. Um. But from an early age they were like, isn't that beautiful? You know, wouldn't it be? Isn't it sad that they've channelized the creek you know, where we all fished. And so I was steeped in that kind of idea early. I mean that the idea of natural beauty and and like my parents were very religious and so like that like God and and not so much steward ship, but just the mystery of creation. Right, I was always there, So it was really deep, deep and grained in me um, and then it was doubled down because you could go out there and snag red horse in the spring, these beautiful, huge suckers and that would run up this creek and you would bring them home and eat them, you know, and they were bony. Or you could shoot a rabbit and have it for supper, and like like you spend just like all of your time immersed in this thing, and so later on, I don't think it was quid bro quoa. I think it was just like, you know what, Mark, One of the things I saw was like, holy smokes, you could fix that, you know. I remember when I got into the game. Farming stories is one of the very first big investigative journalism thing I ever did. And I was like, whoa, they just built a huge game proof fence across the wild mule deer migration path, you know, and so now what are the legal and ethic the ramifications of that? Right, all these builders showed up on the highway down at Derby and got run over. I mean, it's not funny, but you know what I mean. I was like, damn, you could take that fence down and make it better. Um. But somebody owns that fence, So how do we deal with that? You know? What? Were the almost like it's it's almost like it's fairly simple, right, But but it's not though, because it's it's not easier said than done, I think, for right, which is incredibly interesting. Who when did you realize that you could do it? Though? Or was there I don't know, was there a person, was there something you read? Was there was there some kick in the ass that went from oh, there's something you could do to damn it, I have to be the one to do it. Well it No, there was a but I did read Ted Williams a lot um and in my twenties, like in my late twenties, and Ted Williams was doing what I it auto bond. He had a column called Insight, and um, I read that one up in that about game farm and one of the ones I found because I was getting interested in this. But uh, you know, I worked as a laboring person and a kind of a I did all kind of weird labor jobs, and so I never made a lot of money. And so to sell a story about something that I was already like really passionate about, um and get a check for sake, six hundred bucks or twelve bucks, you're like, a, whoa, this is something maybe I can do. Um. That's pretty much how I got into it. I did not ever I would. I had a lot of fury about like like ecological devastation, but I didn't really do much with it. And I was lucky to meet people. I worked on trail crew for a guy who was very important. He he said, you know, anger is not really uh, that's not really substantive way to address things that bother you unfocused anger. Are you that ranting on Facebook or Twitter is not a productive use of my time? Hill, I don't know, but I share your guilt. It's funny, though, because these days, with social media, it is so easy to have that fury and put out there in the world. And there's some, at least for some people, there's some uh I don't know, a little bit of therapeutic effect to doing that. But you're not really doing anything. Yeah, there's some catharsis there, but you're not really doing anything. You're getting almost the illusion of accomplishment, but it's not it's not really impacting things in a substantial way other than annoying whoever follows you on social media, so it's dangerous and that you lose friends over it that wouldn't wouldn't otherwise know that you had these ideas. You know, Yeah, it gets It can get real toxic and nasty, that's for sure. I've I've strongly thought about just getting off of Facebook totally because I've just gotten sick of a lot of stuff I've seen there. But at the same time, I find myself having some fury too, and I wish, you know, there's times I want to just yell at the world. How do you channel how do you channel that? How do you how do you do how do you figure out what to do or how to do something with that these days? Because you know, when you and I were sitting there together in Bowsman a couple of months ago, we talked about Ed Abbey. Edward Abbey, he was this guy who had a whole lot of piston vinegar. He had some fury, and you know, he he found some positive ways to use that fury to impact change, and maybe he talked to us some things that we wouldn't condone too. But how do we channel the good part of that fury and do good with it? How do you think about that, well, I would say there's several things in there. One thing Abby came from was a place of incredibly deep love for that place where he found himself in the desert. Um, like behind the anger, behind the polemicist, there's a person who is unbelievably happy to walk through the desert for miles and miles and just look at stuff and pull it all in. Um. And so that's different than a person who's just walking around in a in a fury. Uh does that make sense? Yeah, it's got The foundation is strong. The foundation is is like irrefutable, like like this guy really loves this, you know. One of the quotes was like, you know, let's love America. Let's save some of it. Yeah yeah, and um, and I just you know, I got introduced to his work really early because my father loved that movie. Um it's called The Brave Cowboys and it was made with Kurt Douglas Lonely or The Brave and um, he was really interested in that movie, which is strange. I mean he was a lawyer and wasn't particularly into anarchist theory and stuff. But uh, that so we had that book and then years later I saw like desert, solitary and all the all those other stuff. Um, but I think that that's part of it is you gotta be you gotta love stuff first, you know. Um. And then the other part of it is that really cool thing about journalism, which is it's not always practiced, for sure, but where you really and truly insist own abandoning your own biases, your own expectations and your own hopes for what something might be, and you just sit there and go off and take it in and let the chips fall, the truth chips fall where they may. You're you're looking for truth, whether it's uncomfortable, whether you hate what you find. And that's a really cool, like spiritual discipline, a positive thing probably for people to do, whether their journalists or not. Exactly and and incredibly difficult, and um, I definitely don't expect everybody to do that anymore than I expect somebody to go to a zen monastery or you know, walk do the snow leopard trail into bed or whatever. You know, it's more fun to crush the beer can on your head and said that guy, Yeah, yeah, I mean it's way more fun and more liberating and all. But but it doesn't really lead anywhere right now. It raises a good question, just in generally, how to how to filter all the stuff out there right now? Because you could take any particular issue that's relevant to this conversation, whether it be some new regulation or deregulation of something in the energy industry, or it could be privatization of public lands or something, and there's gonna be people on all sides of the issue telling you this is right, this is wrong, believe me, don't believe for him, so on and so forth. Um, and it's so easy now to get the truth lost. You wrote something last year a couple of years ago on Field and Stream was something like, how do you write in a post truth era? Or something on those lives? How do you I don't know if I don't know if we are in a post truth erab, but how do you go about filtering everything given just the confusion of everything these days? Well, in that essay I wrote, you know, if you believe in a post truth error, then you should pull on a pair of tennis shoes without your socks and go for a jog and the Bob Marshall Wilderness when it's twenty three below and get we wei out there where you know you can't get home by dark, and then tell me about post truth um, so relative of them, you know, the idea that nothing can truly be be defined. It's not something that hunters and fishermen and real outdoorsman um will ever gonna embrace. Not not no, I mean, I mean you don't put the plug in the john bo to your going down? Are your futable? Yeah? They are? And the and the plug is a very simple thing to put in there, you know what I mean. It's like so there, but human perceptions of of that truth all are are in conflict. And the nature of a democratic republic like ours is to let the best argument win if it's presented in a way that people will listen to it. And I keep coming back to this. It's like the freedom of public lands, restoring floodplains and fisheries, removing unnecessary dams, having effective and clear regulations about air and clean water, and then incentives to get people to follow those rather than trying to dodge them. I mean, those are things we can actually do. And I promise you that the truth of say the Des Moines Water District, where they cannot purify that water enough to to meet safe drinking water standards. That's not post truth, that's just real. You drink that, it's not gonna be good for you. You take you you restore those wet lands upstreamed, You incentivize those farmers upstream to stop putting that fertilizer in there. And I'm talking about regulation and incentive. I'm not talking about taking people's profits, because we all we're all on the edge with money in this country because things are so expensive in our life that's very We have a lot of expectation. So you incentivize you can clean that up. This is something we could all agree on. The question though, then becomes for a lot of people it's it's it's those things like the idea sounds really good. I certainly agree with it, but then there's gonna be someone who's gonna come at you with this. Others say, well, know they're taking away personal freedoms of private property rights, or their de incentivizing business, or they're making it harder for people to keep jobs. There's always these there's so many of these different angles that it's hard to part. So I think from a really practical standpoint, for like an average person, a guy or girl out there listening who they've got their job. They don't work in this space, but they love the outdoors. They love hunting and fishing in wild places. And they're trying to make sense of all this stuff that's coming in. And some of this stuff they're here in you or me saying, hey, pay attention to this. Some of this stuff they're seeing on the news. Some of this stuff they're wondering, Okay, is this important? Is this not important? Is this a good thing or is this actually bad? How do you go about like truth checking or verifying? How do you how do you bs check all these different environmental issues or regulations? Um? Because maybe there are some things that are an overreach, maybe not, Like what's the process, the actual nuts and bolts process you go through to learn about, say, for example, the waters of the U S rule, Like, how do you go about and figure out? Okay, how do I get a an informed, clear perspective on this that can help me decide whether I want to advocate for it or not? Um? How can an average person a great question? And so, as a journalist, what I'm gonna do? One thing? I am coming that something from an assumption though that clean water is better than like polluted water. Um that that that is a bias. I have people share that, you know, you know what I'm saying. Most people share that. So how do we get that? And was the orders of the US rule a effective way to achieve that goal? And the answer to that for me was I spent I spent years and nobody in the in if you're a roof and contractor or um or or a financial reporter or whatever, nobody's gonna do this. So that this is my job. I got paid to do it. You know. Um, you talk to everybody on all sides of that, and you're really careful with Like when in that one with the Farm Bureau, who was really against the orders of the US rule? Um? I found people on both sides of that who are so for it or so against it to be less trustworthy than those who simply wanted the goal of clean water? Does that make sense? And so you really get away from the advocates, the the the the die hard advocates, and you go to people who have a more objective view. And again, my biases for clean water versus balluted water. So how do we achieve that? And in my opinion, after writing all of those for so long. The Waters of the US Act was a very well written very you took into account private property rights and eventualities and all but one of the things it required. There's two things that were wrong with it. One they knew they couldn't get through Congress because the farmers, developers and some of the mining interests did not want it, and they had more clout in Congress than the people who just wanted to try to make this Clean Water Act it you know, expanded, and so they wrote it as a rule for the e p A. I can tell you there's a problem with that, because we, the people in our congressional representatives, didn't get to look at that. Impassive rules are very dangerous when put into place for bi federal agencies because they are the province of unelected And I don't like the word bureaucrats because I know people who serve in those positions with incredible integrity and honor. But they are they they are now in charge of imposing this rule on the people. It's not a law. My opinion is we should put the Waters of the US Act through Congress, let everybody fight over it, and let's pass something however we can that that will approximate it. But as it was, there were too many people who were convinced that it was over. It was stepping on people's property rights. Back to back to the every man who's looking at this, what are some of the resources that maybe, like if if I'm a listener and I'm wondering to myself, Okay, I'm gonna be trying to pay attention to some of these top level issues when they come down the line. I want to try to listen to different sources. I want to try to get a informed opinion. Do you have any recommended resources or types of people or types of websites or I don't know anything that you would recommend people turned to to try to get a clear understanding of these different pieces of legislation or rules or issues that impact conservations. I got it. So I'm gonna say, if you're a hunter and a fisherman, and and you you really care about the environment that you hunt in fishing that you pass under your kids, um, I don't think it's the bad thing to go to an advocacy organization like Trout Unlimited and get their policy directs and say and then and then look at those with the traditional grain of salt. You know, this is their job. They're an advocate for the clean water. So but I do think that back country Hunters and Anglers and National Wildlife Federation and Trout Unlimited are in good faith and they will give you a rundown on what they think is important to to protect clean water, air, white public lands, whatever. And so these organizations are very they're very important. Now that said, you go, if you have worries, you you ask them, and then you go and you read. And one of the things that happened in the the Tyson chicken spill on the Mulberry Fork of the Black Warrior in Alabama, which is last like last winter. Local coverage of that thing was great and it was not biased, and people were furious at Tyson and they they asked Tyson why they did it. And the local coverage was very, very good. And so you gotta read. You gotta get off the internet and get a local paper whatever danger there in. I was building a fire this morning and reading the hell of an independent record, which I don't get anymore because we don't deliver it here. And I was learning things about my community, my county that I would never get in a million years reading on the internet because it's not local news. And that's a pair. That's a peril we're in as a democratic republic that depends on the First Amendment, the freedom of speech and the press. I mean, we need local news, good local news. I wonder about this often, just whether it be the local news or is the larger, the larger top level designation of news or resources that you can trust. I think trust is the thing these days that is exceedingly hard to pin down. Y can I can we go back? Guess Rerecords said the Waters of the US Act, it required that the American people have some level of trust in that environmental protection agency and and buy extrapolation the federal government the Waters of the US Act in order for it to work the rule, it meant that we had to trust the federal government not to overreach on our private properties and the and the end result was it was it was a huge propaganda campaign against it, yes, but the end result was that the American people decided that they didn't trust the federal government that much. And that's fine. I think not to trust is good. Like the old Arabic proverb to trust is wonderful. Not to trust is better. Uh, I think that's good, but that comes with a penalty, and your lack of trust in the government that you have can can wind up being running you towards a failed state model. Do you do you trust our government? I think that the government should be recognized as we the people of and foreign by, and it should be checked at every turn and asked if this is the right way. That's an exhaustion process. But I think that the institutions are sound, you know, I think that the ideas are sound, but it's it is. It may be a government of laws and not men, but men are administered in those laws, and men, as we all know, and women and children are foul mm hm. So within that context, understanding that we live in this world where there's all these things that are happening that are impacting the resources we care about, and we have a fallible government that is built on strong foundations in many cases, but does have people, imperfect people at different times in different ways. That a yes, as we all are. So they are you know, enforcing or implementing these decisions that impact the thing we love. Let me ask you this, and this is a very high level loaded question. Um, but it's it's like the questions so many people are trying to answer for themselves I think right now, Um, which is how to be a conservationist or how to be an advocate? You know, there's a lot of people have gotten Instagram profile these days, and you know it's asked for your title or whatever these things you are, and people will say, I'm a hunter, I'm a conservationist. Um, how do you become a conservation he or what are the things that you should be doing or can be doing, or should be doing a better job of to truly be that participant, that citizen participant that impacts these things we love so much. There's the generic stuff I know, like make your voice heard. I know that you should participate, But what's the nuts and bolts, real stuff we can do? I tell you, Um, there's a guy and I've never personally met him. His name is Justin Schaff, who lives out in Glasgow, Montana, and they were working with Black Country owners and anglers to remove these old decrepit fences throughout all this analoge corridors out there in eastern Montana north of Fort pick And I would love I didn't. I was working. I've got other stuff. But I think that's the kind of thing clean up days. I see it through B A J A lot. But Um, there's that gun works um down in Utah and they do those range cleanups on public land. I think that's the fundamental. That's a that's the eight hundred foot level stuff and that And one of the things we had when we achieved the greatest successes in conservation in wildlife in American history, in world history, is we had all of these strange sportsman's clubs all over the United States, and people went there and they drank coffee and they discussed. The Valley County Sportsman in Montana was this huge engine of change for good. Um. We have them all over We still have them, but the average agent there is like sixty six, you know. Um, And I don't know if we'll ever have that again, but we do need to join with people who have like goals and like passions and remove fence, Romuntalo range, clean up the Black Warrior River for trash day. Um. And then those people brainstorm, as citizens in the United States of America uniquely do, and they say, what do you think the next big thing? We should work on, is what do you think about the nuts and bolts of some of the the influence buttons we can press. So we can do on the groundwork, and then the next thing we can probably do is try to influence decision makers. And so if I'm thinking to myself, what are my mediums of influence? While I can show up at someone's office, I can write a letter, I can place a phone call, I can sign a petition, I can post a rant on Facebook. Maybe those are the five I can think about the top of my head. Um, what of those do you think are most effective? And then secondly, how do you make one of those more effective? Like there's the you can send an email that's like the pre written email that b H already put together for you, or you can write a whole custom letter. Does that make a difference? What's you're taking on that make a difference for sure? But we don't all have time to do that. I mean, you gotta new baby in the house. Um. And so the other is say eight percent as effective, and so that's one hill of a lot better than zero. Um. And here's the thing I noticed, I have UM and I do not really have a political bias. I've never fit in a party, you know, But I do think that politicians who do not listen, say congressmen who you write the letter and nothing happens. Are people all show up at the public meeting and the policies could coming out of that office don't change that. You know, people that it's time for America's just to to vote. That those people out because the people you're gonna get in that do listen. They're not necessarily like like I know people who do single issue voting on on guns in particular, you know, And um, I I share the Second Amendment reverence, and I'm a Second Amendment absolutist ephen which is uncomfortable around more liberal people. But that's a perfect example of where we've voted a single issue and let these these politicians go wild all around it. I mean, I mean, why does the GOP, why does the Republican Party the United States have a privatization of public lands paragraph in its platform? I mean, how many of us want that, you know? I mean, I just I just think that should be there should be pressure there until that is removed from the platform. And I get emails and and communicate contact all the time from people that listen to the podcast and they're they're very conservative, and they just go, you know what, We've come to the end of this idea that because I vote Republican, that I'm gonna put up with water pollution and privatization of public lands. I'm done with that. What are they gonna do? Yeah, that's the question. So what do you do? It's we've got to We've got an election coming up here in a matter of months. Uh, what do you actually do to change that? It seems daunting. Well, Tim Fox is running for governor here in Montana, and he came out with a whole I haven't haven't read all of yet. He came out with a whole policy direct his own conservation, extream access public lands. So that's gonna be like, why why don't all of them have that? And so if they don't have that, you're gonna say, well, dude, I don't know if I can vote for you. What do you you know? What do you what do you want? What do you want? What? What are you trying to make of my country? What are you doing up there? But if you want to privatize public lands, how else what are you representing? Do you think me, do you think it comes down to just the critical mass of people reaching out to these So, for example, you have Republican candidates in Montana that are coming out in support of public lands and conservation issues because they realize in Montana enough people are raising the ruckus that they better. But maybe in I don't know, South Carolina or something, maybe they're not. And so Republicans they're feel like they don't need to worry about that part of things because no one's given a hard time. Is it as simple as that? I think it's as as simple as that. And I think that one of the things we we've done in this country is we've been so we've been so successful with the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the restoration while like Pittman Robertson, you know, Landing War Conservation Fund, that a lot of people have been able to deprioritize those things in their own like political life, for their own own owned, their own daily life, because somebody somewhere is taking care of that. But in a democratic republic, which requires on the participation of the citizenry, when you don't take you you think of what else has taken care of it? A lot of times the bridge collapse, you know, like you go, Wow, I hope those engineers know what they're doing. That bridge looks like it's kind of off. Yeah, it comes out that that trust again. Yeah, yes, And and I guess if we lose the trust that we can make a difference, we're in big trouble. And I don't think I don't think we're there anywhere near that yet. You wrote, you wrote though, uh in February of two thousand nine, you wrote that you were worried that to some degree America's hunters and anglers had lost their stomach for a fight because of some of the things that we're going on. A year ago, there was the shutdown, there was the expiration of the l wcf UH, all sorts of other things that we're aware of going on with deregulation of environmental policies. Still some people poking at the public lands privatization issue. Um. Now it's a year later, some things have changed, But I'm curious do you still feel that way? I tell you what's happened was that the fight that we're talking about, the fight for public land and wildlife and all it has become. Um, we have got to take that out of the polarities we we as as a people, all of us Democrats, Republicans, the independence, we have to remove the goals that we have. What is what is that thing? We can we can disagree on methods, but we can agree on goals or whatever. So we have to. Uh. My friend David Lidford, who's a biologists in Kentucky, UM, we did a podcast with him and and he off, he has this kind of thing you'll say, says, what is it that you want? He's particularly an ornithologist. He's a big rowity like Kentucky guy who who loves birds and hunting and elk hunting and stuff. And uh I met him because he worked at the Elk Foundation a long time ago. He's gone back to Kentucky. But he's fond of saying what is it that you want? Because on these these uh reclaim and coal mines lands where he works, they can plant the plants and and make sure they live that will support migratory say warblers. Okay, and he said, but but people tend to look look at it landscape and go I just wanted to be driving and healthy. I want everything I want. I want a lot of things here and he goes, you gotta have goals, and one of the things you could say was would you rather have clean water or polluted water? Will argue about the methods, but we're going to hold onto that goal. And I'll tell you what. If you have a politician who doesn't care about whether you get polluted water in your will, and there are these politicians out there, buddy or not, that guy needs to get voted out. I mean that Elk River coal, that cold washing spill that they happened in West West Virginia. One of the reasons that was so devastating to the water intakes for people downstream was that their wells had already been contaminated for generations and couldn't be used. Now. Somebody's not voting their best interests there, And yeah, I mean, I mean, we've got to decide what it is we want. And I often asked um people on the far right, especially, I say, what would it look like if you had your way completely? And you know that most people don't really have They don't They can't really, they can't answer that question. They know what they're against, but they don't know what they're for. And I go back to my Childhood's like I always knew what I was for. It was like to take my kids down to the creek and catch brim and shell crackers and see a freaking deer or a or a water snake or or a queen snake, which were really rare go by, you know, mm hmm. It's funny to experience creation. It's funny, though, is that so true? But at the same time, if you look at in history, if history is an indicator, more often it seems like it's only the threat of danger or crisis that gets people off their asses and doing something, which which isn't always true, but it seems like in many cases it is. I think that's evolutionary biology for us as a species. You know, like when the matt when the when the dire Wolf is not outside the circle of fire, people saying and they I was thinking about that year zero or whatever that is with the Jack Black, Yeah, I haven't seen that long, you know. With he's in love with that that whatever that gal is dancing. Then he tell her to hit her on the head with the club and on he hits through and he's like real week, It's he's like out. But like when they're not being attacked, people tend to go into like like neutral, which is you know normal, Well, it's it's funny even it's funny though, are are we though? Because I feel for so take this example, uh, Quality Deer Management Association is representative of deer hunters across the country. It is the most highly participated in type of big game hunting. There's more deer hunters out there than anything else. Um. But when you compare membership to that organization to something like d you Ducks Unlimited um or Pheasants Forever, they have a dramatically higher membership of those other species. Now, one of the theories is that deer hunters are kind of resting on their laurels because we're in the glory days of deer. Deer hunting is great. We don't have a wolf at the door, while ducks are. Pheasants had more recent concerns, and so there's this urgency. Um. So I don't know about that. Remember, um, Howard Vincent told me, who's the head up Pheasants forever? He said, the one of the Bob st Pierre might said. He said, the one of the biggest problems is like when when up when game birds are up and everybody's got the dogs and they're having the time of their lives hunting. They let their membership laughs. Yeah, and she said, he said, it's amazing how you can chart this. Like when times are good, everybody's like it's gonna be good forever. And then when times they're terrible, they, you know, they're all like, we gotta do something. I think I'll join up. Well, the same things, same things true of the Second Amendment, right you look at that's exactly the same correlation with gun sales and administrations and are a membership. I'm sure it's tied to are you worried about losing your right or not? Yeah? For sure? And we don't. Can't you all relate dog to that? You know, you're like, you know, like, OK, that's one less thing I gotta worry about, you know. I mean, I can't remember how much these tires I put on this, these twelve flight tires I put on the Forerunner. After we had a series of flats, I was like, who those things are? You know, I don't know how much they are? There so much money. I couldn't believe it. I gotta worry about that right now. And so I get it. Um. But you know, I don't think we have such a good trek record mark Um. I mean really up until up until now. And maybe it's just because we I'm paying attention. This is my time, You're paying attention, this is your time, especially you've got younger children than I do. But like we have such a good track record. Like I was thinking, when this meat it's not a meat shortage, but when the COVID nineteen got the meat processors and you realize that like a quarter of all the meat is processes in these five plans, Like that's a big national security food security problem. Like how come we let all of our local slaughterhouse processing facilities go belly up one by one over the course of my life. I mean, that wasn't very smart. And but every every time I opened up the computer, now there's somebody writing about local food security, and there's there's I was reading a piece from the Food and Environment Reporting Network. I was reading one from Civil Eats, which is not my fallow there, and it's like they're people are buying more seeds, they're they're they're talking about local food security. So we're kind we are a problem solving a bunch of folks for better or worse. We damned up all our rivers. We know, we like we we got rid of the biathling in like thirty years and none. Then we brought them back like like we're's we're the like the best in the world that wrecking stuff and then fix them. It's a good way to put it. Yeah, Um, we really are, though. I mean, you look at Europe and it's just kind of moribund compared to here. I mean, I mean it's just like like here, it's just like there's just vibrancy. And I think part of it is the conflict, and I think we're too polarized now, but it's the conflicting visions for our country that are like two turbines, you know, those magnets that make electricity pushing that's it, yeah, pushing and pulling, and and like there's just this like blue fire right in the middle of that. Obviously, I'm a kind of an uber patriot or whatever. You got the most interesting place I've ever been, Well, it's interesting. You gotta that fire is either what you harness in it runs the turbine or it destroys it and explodes them exactly. It blows the roof off the building, kills everybody out there. Yep, that's exactly you. How do you see what's going on right now with COVID nineteen and all the ripple effects. How do you see that impacting the future of our conservation battles? Once again, I think we're on a wobbly place where, um one, I'm I'm extremely concerned about the amount of money that I don't know where it comes from, that's flowing out to everybody from from the the poorest to the richest. I don't know where all that money is coming from. But I do think that we're gonna see a consequence in federal land management and the privatization movement as a result of this deficit that we're running up. Okay, so you're saying, and a couple of years from now, the bill is gonna come do and people are gonna look to our public lands to pay it probably, and they're also going to if we if we let them, then we're going to see like people go, well, we just can't a forward to do. The equip Environmental Quality and Center program, which is a fantastic program, by the way, by the by the NRCS to protect and buffer watersheds. We just can't afford that anymore. And I'm like going, whoa wait a minute, buddy, how much is it gonna cost when the Moines is flooded or St. Louis is flooded out again? You know? Um, So we're gonna have to insist on a more rational environmentally based economics and budgets or else the low hanging fruit is gonna be everything that we love and that that concerns me, big problem. Yeah, you know, it's funny. Another one of the things, and that makes a lot of sense. Another one of the things that I've been wondering about is we have this this storm of current that's going on related to the pandemic and the pandemic response and the economic impacts, etcetera. And it's all consuming. It's it's like a hurricane that's all around us, and it's all you can see, it's all you can hear. You walk outside and get slapped in the face by the rain and the lightning, and underneath all that, though other things are still happening, there are this There's been a slew relative slew of different policies being put into place or environmental protection is being removed or different rules being put in place that are impacting our wild places that are very much still flying under the radar right now because I can, and I've been reading stories how some people are kind of racing to get certain things done underneath the cover of COVID darkness. I can get away with this stuff while nobody can really put much energy towards it. Is that something you're seeing, Is that something you're worrying about? Is there any truth to that? I think there's some truth to it. I'm not worried about it. And here is why the the initial private paradigm, the the American people have said that they don't trust the federal government. They they got they bought into this Ronald Reagan view that says the government is not the solution, the government is the problem. What are the twelve scariest words in American In in English, I'm from the government and I'm here to help you. We we bought that, okay, in Dick this, we bought that in spite of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and all of the billion millions of bureaucrats who have done their jobs and made things good in America. We bought that ideal, We bought that narrative. Ronald Reagan was the first to articulated um and somehow now we've said, all of this deregulation that the Trump administration is doing is nothing different than what the Republican Party has been saying all of my adult life. They wanted. And so do I worry about it. I do not, because you get what you demand, you get what you say you will stand for. And if the states now they say tenth Amendment, the state's rights are gonna do it, well, you know where I grew up states rights with a rallying cry for Jim Crow Law and all that stuff which which obviously needed to change, right, But I do think the Tenth Amendment is an important thing. My my belief, my hope is that the people of the United States will get get away from this hatred of the federal government while they get the mail and drive on the interstate highway system and do all the things and enjoy all the benefits of having a function in federal government, but that they will hold the states more accountable for managing the environment, air, you know what I mean? Like that this could be a positive thing. While we recognize the benefits of what we had pre Ronald Reagan. And I'm not saying Ronald Reagan was bad or anything, but this was just something that came up in the eighties that has now achieved kind of a nuclear success amongst American Yeah, so here's an interesting example of something that's relevant to what you described. How About something who kind of came of age of of sorts ideologically at least during that era, who's now having an impact and who's sliding under the radar in certain ways, which is William Perry Penley, the acting director of the BLM, who just like a rule that was not put in front of Congress and didn't have to be voted on, He's been named an acting director of the BLM, but not made the real director of the BLM, so he doesn't have to go through the exactly, so he doesn't have to go through the confirmation. This is obviously a piece of skullduggery that the American people are, you know they I just can't believe. There's just not enough of us that no know what's an issue there, I guess. So we've got a guy who's publicly stated he is anti public land that is now in charge of the agency that administers I believe the largest percentage of our public lands in the country. Um, and that still happened, has been going on for a year or something like that now. Uh, and again he just got re upped and no one's talking about it. What do you think about that kind of thing? I think that that if if I were looking for an example of why I did not trust an administration, that example would be a photo of William Parker Pendley. Yeah. And I'll tell you another thing is if if American hunters and fishermen and women are going to put up with an administration who appoints I would ask your listeners to do this. Look up pacifics States Legal Foundation and Mountain States Legal Foundation, which is where Pendley came from, which is where Gail Norton came from under George Bush forty three, and where uh James Watt was an originator who was under Reagan, who you know did all that outlandish stuff on public lands against the public lands. UM. Look up Mountain States Legal Foundation, look up a Pacific States Legal Foundation, and and just judge for yourself whether representatives from those organizations should be in control of American public policy. And I'm not saying that those people may not perform a valuable service as gadflies and watch dogs and law and lawyers in the private sector, But ask yourself whether those representatives from those firms should be in public policy over with power over things that you believe in and that you want. So here's the here's the dilemma though. Hell is, someone can be you know, hunter Angler out there trying to pay attention to this stuff, trying to say what's going on in our government right now that's good for environment, for hunting and fishing, and what's going on that's not so good? And they see something like this with Penley, and they go and do the research you just told them to do, and they see that, Hey, okay, this is this is an issue. This is not a good thing. This is an indication of people doing something that is is not going to help us out in the long run. So that might put an X in the column of Hey, these guys aren't doing very good when it comes to these things. And when I go to the voters box this November, I'm thinking about that. But look on the flip side, how about I don't know, a month or two ago they came out with the new hunting access increases for wildlife refugees and they're increasing access to a whole bunch of different pieces of public lands across the country. That seems like a pretty good yeah, So how does someone make sense of that? Like, Hey, there, here's a really good thing they're doing. Well, what did it call slie? Okay, So Randy Newburgh has that wonderful saying conservation is not convenient and when you do large scale restoration of say the Mississippi River watersheds, there are winners and losers, is no doubt. So so what did it cost them to re establish some access? And I'm not saying it's it's it's not important to the wildlife refugees versus having William Parker Penley in control of of um that interior, right um? Like like like what was the convenient thing? And I'm not saying it's throw us a bone, because it is throwing us a bone and we all know that is. But it's a good bone. You don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth completely, right, No, But you can you can accept that and still say that Parker William Parker Penley or that that ridiculous leasing orgy that they went on on oil and gas in the migration corridors and stuff like that. I mean, yeah, and and that the reason that's a problem is one the state of Women did not stand up and push back against that lease. And even though their fishing game, they didn't feel that they had the power to push back. That's a problem. Okay. The other problem is those leases imply a right to drill, and you can easily use those leases as hostage leases in the future and you could say, you know, you're gonna have to pay me, or I'm gonna take the knife of the mona Lisa here going to you know. And so those leases should have been considered and debated and discussed for a long time. It's not analysis paralysis to try to find out what that right answer is. And when you see people doing fire sales of public assets, people should be paying attention and say whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Lord, Nelly, let's just let's hold on. And then you say, holy smokes, look at whose conducting this by ourselves? They are an anti public lens activist, So do we really so? Then you you you write your letters, I guess. But in the end you're gonna have to change the paradigm that says that these people are allowed to auction off our assets, or privatize our public lands, or enable other people to profit by polluting our water. That's the paradigm that we haven't gotten there yet. We we we never have gotten there. I think that's so in the COVID nineteen thing, these are the questions that are being asked. What is a healthy environment that will prove that'll that'll make people strong and healthy and resilient in the face of pandemics, local food security, clean water, places to do do disperse, recreation another question that all this has got me asking. When it it's it's right in line with some of the things you describe there. You identify something like a fire sale. You see an issue that hey, this is there's something going on here. We need to do something about it. So there's the wolf at the door or the flip side. We'll see, Hey, here's an opportunity, here's something that was proposed. It's a great idea, it just needs our energy behind it. So you've got one of those two kinds of things. And then we as a at home conservationist that wants to make a difference. We now know. Okay, I can call email whatever. My big question is, during this time with the coronavirus consuming so much of the oxygen in the room, are we are we blowing what's the way I'm looking for here? Are wasting our time trying to honk the hornet that stuff right now because there just isn't any oxygen in the room. Like, when's the timing? Right? When do you think that we can start pushing on these things and have the politicians actually be able to pay attention. Um, I'm just worried, like right now it seems like no one can focus on anything else because of the crisis. They can't and and that's true, But but now is the time for people like listening to this podcast to start saying, like, okay, let's let's again Americans. I think as a as a nation, we're greatest problem solver in the world. You know. And there may be some hunter gatherer band somewhere and in the Cala harry or something is better than us, you know, the day to day, but as a nation, we're the best. So what are the things that we need to solve? What are the things that have the cold light has been cast upon them by the COVID nineteen pandemic and by the government's response to it. Okay, I mean one of the things that voy we could we could go the forever, and I know we can't. So one of the things that's very disturbing to me is that we had government directives powers that left the home depot and some of these huge businesses open while local businesses were forced to close. One of the things that really bothered me is that that we have entered into a regulatory state that discourages uh, small farmers and small meat producers from supplying local communities while the larger entities have taken over all the markets with predictable results. By the way, like like important beef from other countries and and paying our guys are people less, you know, um, illegal labor in the in the in the in the process, and plants where people are getting hurt and they're not they don't know about OSHA, and they don't know about the rights they have as Americans. I mean, the largest entities are grabbing stuff. But and and that's true, and it's terrible. But the thing it's bad for our national security, But in the long term, we weren't noticing that before COVID nineteen and so now is the time to start paying attention and perhaps listing to things that you, as an American citizen, see that obviously a million of us, millions of us could do this, This would be incredibly valuable. Did you use that state park to take your kids out during the pandemic? And where would you have gone if you hadn't had it? And wasn't it paid for by lunder Water Conservation Fund? Yes? It was, you know, did you take them down to go fishing? Like I was catfishing my mind out this spring? Like I wanted fish. I wanted to get a bunch of fish. I felt food insecure. I had six deer in the freezer, but didn't get an elk. I called a local ranchard about getting a cow. It was available. I relaxed on that. You know, they probably were a lot of people though, turning to some of these outdoor resources, whether it's food security or recreation, and it has shine a light on some of these things for some people that maybe wouldn't have normally paid attention as much. I saw everywhere I just like I in fact, I mean, there was days where I was I was really kind of ecstatic because of all the things I was seeing, people questioning and pointing out holy smokes, Like God, we got that. I mean everywhere I went, and by the way, we I know, there's a lot down in quarantine all but there's like enormous numbers of people around where I live enjoying their public lands. They were making me nervous. But it was one of those times when I really wished I lived closer to public lands. I always wish and appreciate it, but this is one of those times. It was visceral. Where you know, we weren't supposed to travel long distances. We weren't such a cross state, your lines, weren't do all these different things. And I'm stuck in a place right now where there's not any public land. We couldn't go hiking, there wasn't good fishing, uh you know, I couldn't go find black bears or anything like that. I was suck wishing I lived where you live. Hell and um much of there a lot of other people that are in big cities or in similar circumstances wishing man. Maybe there's something to be said about some of these places and some of these resources that we have. Uh. I think it's very possible that that this represents somewhat of a of a a seismic weather change in American consciousness about that very thing right there, and whether that means that land in Missouri is going to be more expensive as people like rush out to try to become food secure, you know, which would I mean, I don't, I don't know what's positive and that rural America has been in freefall for the last like thirty years. You know, maybe we could use a resurgence of people moving to rural America. Yeah, I wonder and I hope that if if this thing keeps tracking in a hopefully better direction, and we're able to get our politicians to have their enter g dispersed a little bit differently, I'm hoping that this can be an opportunity to get something like the Great American Outdoors Act done, because that's such a clear there. There seems to be such a clear connection between Hey, you appreciated that state park, your city park was that one place you could go and and enjoy yourself safely, um and or the national parks that are reopening now that's somewhere you can safely go, hopefully safely go. And I hope that we can have the energy and the tension to push something like that through. UM. So there's that opportunity. But then I worry about the thing you mentioned earlier, which is the bills you out of. How do you pay the bills after we just printed all this money. Here's here's the thing is those things are not gonna be negotiable. You know, you're not gonna be able to suck out the Land and Water Conservation Fund. You're not. These things are not negotiable. These are It's it's kind of like a family budget, right. You're when you're gonna pay for your house, You're gonna pay that mortgage, and you're gonna pay that water bill because you need water. Booze bills are not negotiable. And that the idea somehow that our freedom to roam on public lands or to have a state park to take your kids, or to swim in the creek or catch fish for dinner, the ideas that both are the low hanging fruit that people can just slap with a freaking stick whenever they want. That's what we've gotta change. These are inalienable natural rights of the American people not to have somebody poison my will because they don't want to pay the haul off that Gallandroma used tall you wing right, that's not negotiable, Unfortunately, I'll just say it out of mind for a lot of people, though it is, and by the time it comes into sight, it's it's awful hard to get back. And that's a that's a big I would uh, I mean, that's one that I Here's here's a I've been throwing this to every body lately. But this is Frederick Douglas, and I just read his John biography, which is John talking Frederick Douglas Turner Frontier thesis. Yeah, yeah, No. Frederick Douglas the slave. He was the famous abolitionist, and he was actually a slave for all those years and he bought his bought his way out and then became like the firebrand, you know. But he was also a very complicated, incredibly complicated person who I have come to see as a person who understands more about power, oppression, natural rights and stuff than than anybody that I've ever read about. And this is what Frederick Douglas, who had been an actual slave, said, power conceived nothing without demand. It never has and it never will. You show me the exact amount of wrong and injustices that are visited upon a person, and I will show you the exact Oh Lord, Eedmercy, I've got it. I've got the wrong quote. But he said, you show me the amount of wrong and injustice that they will endure, and I will show you the amount that will be opposed upon them. So if you think public lands are negotiable because other things are more important to you, you should ask what those other things are? Does that make sense? It does? It does? How do you How do you implement that into your daily life? How does that become a part of what we hunters and anglers do today? Though? The first thing is to make time to enjoy all that stuff, So you know what you're talking about. Remember Edward Abbey said, be a half hearted fanatic. Yes, and if you do that, you'll outlive the bastards. Yeah. And in this case, though, the bastards may win unless you're willing to go to the map for those things that that you're out there enjoying. What what? What do you think about some of these other ideas that have been floated recently? Um, to to kind of pair these two things together so derive some kind of public land or conservation benefit while also addressing some of the pandemic issues. For example, I've seen some people proposing, you know, trying to lump a bunch of public land and recreation related infrastructure work into a future stimulus bill or another idea of being what about bringing the conservation coreback and bringing some of these people that don't have jobs right now back to work in some of these places. Yeah, any thoughts on that is that something like an incredible idea. And I think that, Um I thought for a long time I didn't serve in the army or the military, although I mean that was always one of my plans and I never did. I do think that national service of some sort is a good idea in the future. I think we've become too abstracted from our our system of governance, you know, not just civics class, but like like actual part it's a patient as a citizen, and so I'd love to see something like a c C C. You know, my grandfather was a super conservative guy in the depression. Um he'd been in World War One and gotten mustard gas and all and stuff. And he hated like the w p A that we poke around, you know, and all that stuff. But in in long term, you know, those things were good ideas. And I understand that, like like some people are gonna object to that and hate them because their government program or whatever. But in the long term they proved out a lot of things did, like the Taylor Grayson Act, you know, to address over graysing on the public ranges in America. Those things proved out no matter how many naysayers there were at the time. So I think those things are incredible. I guess we're gonna be able to fund them, like if we're gonna be giving people money anyway, you know. I just I imagine this, this infrastructure project, especially as addressed bloods in America, which are increasingly disastrous to our budget, our economy because the federal flood insurance, and to our water quality and to our fisheries. I can imagine these enormous restoration projects that put people to work doing something incredibly positive. And we balance that out with the private the private land owners, um what they want to right because a lot of these tributaries around private land, and I could just imagine I would I can imagine in America that works better than it ever has because of the knowledge we have right now, and you could just you could step forward into a future that we all want to live in. And it's not that it's not that complicated. We already know how to do it. We just not sure how to get there. When this whole thing clears up, when hopefully whatever normal is, whatever the new meals I guess is now. Whenever that is, we're able to get back at it. And hunters and anglers we're out there doing our things. If I gave you a magic wand hell, and I said that you could have two wishes that you could make, two things that we will do differently, or two actions we will take, or you've got these two wishes, and hunters and anglers to help address some of the things we talked about today, to help us become better conservations for the future, to make that new, brighter future reality. What are those two things you're going to ask for? Holy smokes, they're gonna be boring. One is is reform of federal flood insurance and a emphasis owned restoring functioning watersheds across America, both for economic and other reasons. And I wrote a piece at Field and Stream called let It Flood. How we can create a fish. You can clean the waters and create a honey and fishing save the economy, clean the waters to great a hunting and fishing paradise. Now with like or something. But during the research of that, I became convinced that this is one of the main things. So it would be reform of federal flood insurance and an emphasis on the restoration of of America's water ships. And the next one is that we as a people would agree that the American public land six d forty million acres. And that doesn't mean all of them. We're gonna have to solve the checkerboard and all that stuff, but we are. We have we hold this as an asset in common, and we're going to use this asset to the priority to prioritize this asset to build ecological and social resilience into a future that we can't imagine. And those two things right there will not solve all our problems by any means, but they'll solve one sector of them. And in that ecological resilience building and access and and c C C operations and tree planting and and eerusion control. We're gonna see an economic boom in rural jobs and man disguised the limit on the positive here, I'm gonna give you one more, one more wish because I like where your heads at hell and I want to give you more opportunities for good and give you. Give you one more. And that's for me or for someone listening to Bob, Joe, Jill, whoever is listening. You're gonna give us one to do item one thing you want us to do when we get off this podcast. Okay, what are we doing? We are going first thing I would say, we're gonna go fishing or hunting women. Good idea, but I'll throw you a thousand and put her. We're gonna change a political paradigm in the United States that says that our environment are the health of our children, and our freedom to rome, hunt, fish, enjoy the American landscape is not negotiable by any political party. And and and if you believe that these things are not important, you belong out of public service and back at Mountain States Legal, or at your roof in business or trade real estate in Dallas or whatever. If you believe those things are negotiable, and that you somehow can deprive to ortize those things. You're not gonna be elected office. And it's on us to make sure that our politicians and are accountable for that. Huh, they're accountable for it, and that they know we wanted. There's a great one of the politicians said. It was somebody in Montana. I can't remember who it was. They said, WHOA, this is a great idea. Now make me do it. Yeah, that's it right there. Make him do it, yeah, because he you know, he's got to listen to everybody, and there's other people saying things that aren't good ideas. But if they say I'm louder and they say I'm more often, then he gets it. There's a let me throw your lun last off Frederick Douglas It. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They won't rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. MHM. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be opposed upon them. And these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppressed. That good stuff right there, it is, it's called It's eighty seven. Frederick douglas Is speech called it. There is no struggle, there is no progress. Well, well, I think that's that's that's appropriate, appropriate marching orders for us to for us to leave on and know that we uh, we cannot allow ourselves to be oppressed in our natural world and our wildlife and wild places. If we want those things protected, if we want our public lands to remain available and healthy for ourselves, our kids, our grandkids, it's on us. And we're not going to stand for those things to be to be ignored or they're not negotiable, no negotiable. I like it. Well, I think what I'm gonna do then, hell with that set of orders is I'm going to just place a phone call, leave a voicemail with my senators saying us that just saying, hey, you know what this isn't you can't have either, or you can't be good on this thing and not so good on the other. I need you to, uh to support this stuff. And if if a whole lot of people did that, we'll find somebody that will. I mean, Florida is a great, great example, you know, like like they're they're due. They have a disaster in the Edbardlades have a disaster south alake Okee Chobi. It's it's a huge mess and everybody's conflicting and throwing rocks and stuff like that, but they are actually working and it's not a political thing. It used to be, but now it's like you said, it's insight right, it's not out of sight out of mind, it's insight. Well thanks a lot, man, Hey, I I really appreciate you taking the time and do this. This has been fun. You are always someone I can turn to for inspiration and insight. And uh, I cannot wait to see this book that you're working on. I can't wait to read it. It's it's gonna be awesome, I know it. Um. I just wish it was here sooner. I want to read it right now. I wish you were done already. I'm sure you probably too yeah, as a person who's written a great public lands book, I can tell you for sure me to anybody, Oh yeah, And I know you must have felt like that at some point, Oh for sure. Every every day I was just wondering, when is this thing going to be done? Well, i'd be able to finish it. Can I do this? But I'm certain you won't get it though, man. And it's also it's a great book. And I've I've handed it out to anybody who would who I knew would needed it. I appreciate you doing a lot of people who had to read it anyway because I've put it on. Thank you for doing that. And and hell, if people want to follow along with what you've got going on, or read your work or on a stay tuned to when your book does come out, how can they do that? How can they see what's going on right now? I'm I've got my website, which is how Hearing dot com um, and I've got the b H a podcast which I hope they'll that people are listening to. And I am told that once I buy a smartphone that I can have this Instagram account that I'm gonna use as I travel around the country working on the book, but I don't have that yet, So the way to follow it now is either a lot of stuff is archived on the website or just through the podcast. I give sort of some sometimes I say what we're doing, Um, I have you know, I'm I'm I'm not a luddike by at all at all, but um, I'm really behind because I have such a short attention span and the fishing and hunting it takes over my life at times, really, perhaps in an unhealthy way, like I'm gone. Well, I think you'll you'll die happier man, because of that than otherwise. Maybe anyway could be could be worse things. Hell, yeah, alright, hey man can say yes when this is all flying out, hey, I will take you up on that. I love love that part of the States. So I'll see you in Wyoming maybe too later in the summer. I agree. Sounds good. Hell cool man. Thank you Mark, And that is it for us today. Thanks for tuning in. Appreciate you being a part of this. Appreciate you listen to what we had to say as we kind of bounced all over the place. And I don't know, this is kind of one of those conversations where I was trying to wrestle with questions I've had myself and try to get Hell to help me think through it all. So hopefully that translates into something that is helpful to you too. So that said, thank you again, Be safe, be well, and until next time, stay wired to Hunt.

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