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. This week on the show, I'm joined by my good buddies Dan Johnson and Tony Peterson to discuss the current and future status of our hunting culture. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Light and their Camo for Conservation Initiative. And today we're kicking off a new series this month of March. We're going to be exploring the culture of hunting, and by that I mean all of the brought and murky issues related to who we are, how we do what we do, why we do what we do, and all of those things related to hunting here in America. How we represent ourselves, how we conduct ourselves, the things we do, the way we talk about what we're doing, all of that. It's one of those topics that is tough to talk about, honestly, and that's why I thought we should have a whole month dedicated to it. Speaking with different people with different perspectives about where we are today as a hunting community and where we're headed in the future. Is that a good place, is that a concerning place? And what kind of influence can we as individuals have on what that future looks like. That's the game plan, That's the discussion we are going to be having. We're going to be talking about everything from fairchase ethics, to technology, to access and hunter numbers and media, social media, you name it. We're going to get into it. We're going to press all of the controversial buttons and hopefully come out of this thing with a few new ideas, maybe a couple different ways of looking at things, and my greatest hope is it will help us as a community, point us towards a better future for this thing that we love so much. So, without all said, with that kind of runway ahead of us, today's episode is going to start light. We are going to dive into this topic with my two buddies, Dan Johnson and Tony Peterson. You know him well, you've heard them on the podcast many times in the past, and I thought, man, these are the guys that I have kind of rambled about these topics the most with in the past over the last ten to fifteen years. So why don't we have a regroup, Why don't we get this threesome back together and kind of check back in? You know, are the same ways that Dan and I felt ten years ago? You know? Do we still feel that way today? Do Tony and I feel the same now as we did five years ago when we first started touching on some of these things? What do we think about the future? Each one of us has a different perspective, We come from a different background, We hunt within a different context of situations and locations, different sets of values maybe in some cases, So the three of us wanted to come together and just kind of lay a groundwork for what we think about some of these topics, some of the challenges that we have with them, some of the ways that we're trying to wrestle with them, and use this as kind of a launching off point for the rest of the month. And I think that's what we achieved. It's a fun one. There's definitely some classic everything. I guess if you follow the podcast in the past, you probably know what to expect. If not, you are in for hopefully in engaging conversation on these topics with a little bit of weirdness thrown into so you warn and ready for that as well. So without all said, I think we should get onto the conversation with Tony, Dan and I and this kicking off point, this starting point for our discussion around the culture of hunting. All right with me here for another episode of the podcast. I've got my two right hand mans, Dan Johnson and Tony Peterson. Thank you guys for joining me for this one. 00:04:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, buddy, appreciate it. Mark. 00:04:21 Speaker 2: Last time the three of us were together was the Roast of Mark Kenyon and I was at the Vortex HQ back in last September and just talking to the guys there, and several of them brought up the fact that that was one of the funniest episodes I've ever listened to, that they enjoyed it so much. They actually listened to certain bits where you guys were giving me hell multiple times. So I'm gonna try to keep us from having around two of that. 00:04:54 Speaker 3: But uh, I don't even remember that episode. 00:04:58 Speaker 2: You might have been black. 00:05:03 Speaker 3: What's in that coffee, Tony? Yes, seriously in my frozen coffee mug? Yep, Well, Mark I'll tell you what. First off, I really appreciate this, and I will try real hard on my end not to derail this one like we did last time. I'll take this one just to hear more serious, just for you, Bud. 00:05:25 Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. 00:05:27 Speaker 3: Hey, Mark, Mark, do you get the impression the way Dan's talking and presenting himself right now that he got into some anabolic steroids this weekend. 00:05:36 Speaker 2: He's coming off a big weekend. Yeah, I could see that. 00:05:39 Speaker 3: Did you have a cage fight this weekend? 00:05:40 Speaker 4: Or what? 00:05:41 Speaker 3: Buddy? What am I? Am? I being aggressive right now? It just feels like you're yelling at us. Maybe I'm sensitive because I live with multiple women, but fel that's right. It feels like you're coming in hot buddy. 00:05:52 Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I mean I have two of my best friends right here. Why would I want to do anything to hurt number one their feelings or physical harm. Hey, I'll take a step back if you think so. 00:06:02 Speaker 2: I did see I did see on social Uh, Dan, your daughter is whooping on some other girls in wrestling. 00:06:08 Speaker 5: It seems like, huh, yeah, she's uh, she's kind of turned into a savage this uh, this year, and it makes me very happy, especially when she starts to get to the age where she can start dating and I know that she can defend herself against you know, maybe some boys with some you know, feely fingers, if that makes sense. 00:06:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, we get what you're saying. 00:06:35 Speaker 2: You didn't have to go in to detail, but yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, I feel like you might be living vicariously through her now, like you're watching her wrestle and then you got a royd like in the bathroom behind just to get ready for it. 00:06:49 Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm ripping sinks out of the wall and stuff like that. 00:06:52 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:06:53 Speaker 2: Anyway, Dan, that's a good lead into our conversation. 00:06:57 Speaker 3: Dan, I have a question for you, because Mark, you're not at this stage yet. When she competes, or your kids compete and they don't do very well or they have a bad day, does it like ruin your day? 00:07:07 Speaker 4: Truthfully, it only ruins my day because their day is ruined. Yeah, and so my daughter, I'll just use it because it's fresh from this weekend. She wanted to place. There was seventeen girls in her bracket she wanted to place this year. That means eighth or higher, and three of the four girls that placed she didn't place. She won her first match, lost her next. Two of the girls that placed eighth or higher this year, this year, she's already beat four of them, and so she didn't place. She was devastated, And I was devastated, not at her performance, but because she was devastating. 00:07:52 Speaker 3: You know. 00:07:52 Speaker 4: Same with my boys, when you know, they strike out, or they have a bad game where they drop a pop fly or something like that, or my oldest boy wrestles too, when they have a bad day, I have a bad day, not because of the expectations, but because just how they feel. 00:08:07 Speaker 3: Yeah, how about if they do something really embarrassing, like a big mistake. 00:08:13 Speaker 4: Like when you mean a big mistake, you mean like a big mistake during yes sporting event. 00:08:18 Speaker 3: So or like, let me just frame this up. This It didn't happen this year, which was wonderful, but the last two years, my one, my lunatic daughter has made a basket in the wrong basket two years in a row. And she actually shakes it off, but I mean it's so freaking embarrassing and you're like and you can see it coming, you know, like just like, oh, my God, I'm so excited to get the ball right here, and I have no defenders around me because everybody else is on the other end of the court. You're like, don't shoot, and of course, you know, they make like one out of every twenty five shots they take, and of course they always make that one. 00:08:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, especially embarrassing now the girls are sixteen. You think that by now they've got to figure it out. 00:09:01 Speaker 6: Now that they're driving themselves to the court. Hey, okay, Mark, you got two boys. 00:09:08 Speaker 4: Okay, And so you know, Tony, you whether you know or you don't know, boys are way different than girls. Like it's emotional, right, But you were talking about, you know, do you ever get embarrassed about your children? And my youngest boy's watching Paul Patrol the other day and he's laughing. He's laughing, he's laughing. I hear him cough real loud, and then I hear him say, oh boy. 00:09:34 Speaker 6: Then there's silence, and he walks up to me and goes, dad, I pooped my pants. 00:09:44 Speaker 2: It was a really good episode. 00:09:47 Speaker 4: And I'm just like, what, buddy, Yeah, dad, uh, I pooped my pants. I'm like just a little bit. He goes, no, it's all in there. That's when I get embarrassed. Yeah, even though there's no one to see it. I'm just like, oh, dude, you know you're old enough where you know you shouldn't poop yourself. 00:10:08 Speaker 3: But imagine how he's going to feel when he finds out that you talked about that on a podcast thousands of people and he's just this poor little guy who got too into his cartoon. 00:10:20 Speaker 4: Yeah, dude, dude, he loves the Paul Patrol. 00:10:23 Speaker 3: When my daughters were like five, the flu was just raging through our house and I remember just walking down my hallway and one of my daughters was coming the other way down the hallway, and she just stopped and she just looked at me, and I could just see it on her face. I was like, you just shut your pants in. 00:10:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:10:38 Speaker 3: She's like, yep, you just watch it. 00:10:42 Speaker 2: So then do you do? You have to do that thing though, Like we're lots of times a kid does something dumb or makes a mistake or whatever, and then you always try to step in with the parental example like, oh, don't worry, buddy, I've done that too. You have plenty of those kinds of stories for your daughter, Tony. 00:10:57 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, once every ten years. I'm that's one of my cadence. 00:11:02 Speaker 2: I think you're I think you're covering some things up Tony once every ten years. 00:11:05 Speaker 4: Come on, No, I mean like a good one, like in public or whatever. 00:11:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so I'm not just. 00:11:12 Speaker 4: Talking about those when you're working. 00:11:14 Speaker 6: From home and you're like, oh no, hey, Mark, you better course correct. 00:11:19 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going the wrong way. 00:11:23 Speaker 2: Before we go any further down this path, the reason I had you on here was not to talk about digestive issues, but to talk about culture and uh yeah, culture and community. You know over well, we've done this podcast for more than ten years now, and both of you have been on a whole lot of these shows with me. We've talked, sometimes like on purpose, about the culture within our hunting community, and sometimes it just happens out of nowhere. But over the years, we've talked a lot about what's going on within this world of people that we, you know, share the woods and waters with. We've talked a lot about things related to politics that are impacting hunting. We've talked about things related to media. We've talked about things related to technology. We've talked there's all these different topics that kind of swirl around the culture of this thing we do and love, and so this month my thought was to talk to a handful of different people about where we stand now. You know, twenty twenty four seems like there's a lot of stuff in the water. There's a lot of I don't want to say drama, but there's a lot of things going on these days that I think are influencing and will continue to influence what the future of hunting looks like. So I thought, before we dig into this deep, we should kind of set the stage with the three of us and kind of see where our heads are at, kind of circle back on some things that we've talked about in the past, you know. You know, Gosh, I remember early days of the podcast Dan having these conversations with you, raging against hunting media in different things like that. So it's like, where do we Let's talk about some of these things and how our perspective has made be changed in the years, or maybe how it's hardened and stayed the same, how things maybe look different to us now that we're more on the inside at this in the media side of things. I mean, we've been in the hunting media side now fifteen to twenty five years or so between the three of us, we've all been hunting most of our lives. So for me that's been like thirty six years, for Tony sixty some, and we've all kind of had these these wide ranging experiences. So that's that's where my head's at. That's what I want to get at here. 00:13:40 Speaker 3: You know, I'm only seven years older than you, Right. 00:13:43 Speaker 2: It feels like an eternity. Man, it feels like. 00:13:46 Speaker 3: I'm a lot more mature and wise. Right. 00:13:51 Speaker 2: That's not necessarily where I was thinking, but hey, this is where I want to This is where I want to start. I kind of want to think about this like a like a health check, annual physical on the hunting community, like just checking the vital signs, checking the status, checking where things stand now. So if you were to step back and look at the culture of our hunting community as a whole, and you had to rate the health like if you were a doctor or some kind of you're gonna say, man on a a mixing metaphors here, because I'm going to say like an F to a scale. So maybe this should be more of like a teacher analogy. But whatever, what I'm trying to get at here is if Tony, you were gonna look at the state of the culture of hunting right now and give a grade level A down to F, what would you write where we are right now and give me like a quick, like quick explanation of where your head's at when you come up with that grade. 00:14:47 Speaker 3: I would probably go C minus or D plus right now. And the reason I would say that is because, and we can talk about this later, but if you if you look at what's happening out there as far as the hunting population, we're complaining like crazy right now about each other, you know, non residents coming in, residents leasing up, whatever, and we are we are actually taking away real opportunities from our fellow hunters right now. So we have this boogeyman going on that we've always had of the anti hunter, you know, and they're going to take away your lyon hunting or your bear hunting or whatever. You know. We kind of know the targets thereafter. But if you look at what's happening in Colorado right now and going to be happening next year, and there's a bill that just came up in Oklahoma, I don't know if it'll pass or not. But we're sitting here bitching and bitch and bitch about our hunting and our solution is to take something away from somebody. And we are like, we have this weird little kind of cancel culture thing going on in our ranks where we don't we're never going to talk about the hunters taking away our hunting rights, even though that's exactly what we're doing to each other. And we're really caught up in that right now, and that worries me a lot. 00:16:01 Speaker 2: All right, I want to dive into more of that, but let's get to you, Dan. What's your answer? What's your take? 00:16:08 Speaker 4: So I read that email, and I think the reason that there's so much I don't necessarily I'm going to use the word division, but I don't know if that's the right word, because I feel like there is no hunting one hunting culture. I think there's multiple hunting cultures. I think that I think that if you're a landowner, or you are a or you have money, your grade is going to be much higher than someone who is a public land hunter, who's blue collar and doesn't have the the budget for hunting like others do, and then that that is much lower right, and so I can talk on what I know. You know, if you have a ton of money, if you own ground to where you're able to manage high quality you know, deer and put money into it, there's no reason for you to be upset at things. But if you're struggling to find access, if you're struggling to find one or two acres in public that you know other guys are are coming in on all the time, that's just the reality of public land hunting. But I think there's two there's two different cultures that are fighting against each other, and nobody's right and nobody's really wrong because both are hurting and both are helping the you know, in a way, there's positives and negatives on both both cultures. 00:17:52 Speaker 2: So you didn't give me a grade, though, I mean. 00:17:57 Speaker 4: It's hard, Like I can't say if I'm going to average them out, I'll say it's it's a it's like a sea or something like that, right, because things that I worry about, like I am honestly worried that unless I don't buy land, my kids are not going to have a place to hunt in Iowa unless it's on public, which I beat this horse to death several states in the on the east right, not every state, but Iowa Kansas, that's two of them that are that are way like they have hardly any public land. And as there's this displacement from private to public, public becomes overrun, people have to change their scale of what kind of deer they're going to shoot. Thus, you know, like I mean, it's just this snowball effect. So I would say that it's a sea. But then there's also in that in that grade, it's like an average, right, the people who can have the land, have the access, have the money, they're they don't care because they're they're they're happy, you know, they have an A. But then the other people d minus you know, like then it averages out. So that's really all I'm trying to get at. 00:19:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I follow you. I was gonna give us a C as well, and I was kind of looking at it a little bit differently differently than you, Dan, But but I gave us a C because I see some things that are really encouraging and I see some things that are really discouraging. So I see like some A level stuff that I'm happy about the direction we're going, and I'm seeing some like f level stuff that I'm like concerned about the direction we're going, and so that kind of puts me in the middle and that I feel like we are approaching these like in this inflection point a little bit for hunting where we've heard about it for years and years, but we're just approaching this point where we've got the demographic shift happening that has been forewarned about for years. Right, We're approaching that window of time when the baby boomers are gonna leave the hunting population, and so we're going to have that decline, dramatic decline that everyone's talked about coming, that's gonna happen, and so we're going to have fewer hunters than ever before, at the same time that we have the risk of these anti hunting things that you talked about, Tony that are continuing to pick up steam. So we have fewer people representing us while there are more threats from the outside, while at the same time, any negative, bad apple kind of stuff that we have within the community can more easily get out there into the world than ever before. As we talked about this before, right, the social media risk, which then could inflame the non hunting anti hunting risk. So those things worry me, while at the same time, like I see things that I'm excited about when you see like the rise in you know, people, new folks coming into the hunting world from the outside, Folks realizing that, like, man, this hunting things pretty darn't cool. There's this great way to get food, there's this great way to connect with the natural world. You're seeing, you know, folks like Rogan, folks like that who are connecting and bringing in new people. So we're getting these new niche sub communities within the hunting world that I think are good and exciting to see. I you know, selfishly feel like they're not selfishly. But I think like over the last ten years, there's been a growing wave of hunting being presented in different ways beyond just like shoot a big giant deer. We're having more people talk about these like deeper ways of looking hunting that I think appeal also to these new people, and that's a good thing. I think. The access thing, though, is a worry, Like you said, Dan, on the flip side, though, like there has been some wins on the public land side, like people are realizing how valuable public lands are and so I think that's something where maybe twenty years ago a lot of folks took it for granted. I don't think people take it for granted now. I think there's more of like a there's an army of public land defenders now that will help us keep the opportunities we have at least, so that's encouraging. So yeah, I'm kind of right in the middle, and it just feels like, man, it's like it's like you're walking a really thin ridge line. Is how I feel about where we are in the hunting world. 00:22:38 Speaker 3: Right now. 00:22:38 Speaker 2: We're on a thin ridge and if we take a misstep off to the left or right, we could be in a world of hurt. But right now, when we're on that ridge line, it's not too bad. Like we're in a beautiful place. But man, there's risks on either side, which I guess is why I thought these kinds of conversations are worth having, because I've always thought, man, just just keeping this kind of top of mind and looking at our culture not as something that somebody else is doing that we can point a finger at and say all these guys suck. It's more so like we own the culture like we are, we should take ownership in it. Right, So if there's something we're concerned about, we should What can we do right? What can I as an individual do? What can me and my hunting buddies do as a group, you know, how can we point in a direction that we think is more positive? So that I think is is why. That's the why for all of this. I want to dive into a couple of things you guys brought up. One of the big ones Dan you talked about is access and like the implications of access on the future of hunting and who can hunt, who can't hunt, the everything that goes in this. That's the divisions. Tony, you talked about divisions. Well, here's one of those big divisions, which is like the private land crowd versus a public land crowd. There's a lot I don't know. If I don't know, there might be a lot of animosity. Maybe there's a little bit of animosity, but it just gets amplified by social media or whatever. But there's some level of animosity between the landholders who control land and can, like you said, Dan, have got it made. And then there's everybody else who feels like we're getting priced out of the game. Can't get access to it, decent stuff anymore, et cetera. So with that you have a flip side, which is on the public land side, you've got a limited amount of land. But we're also trying to recruit new hunters, and so there's complaints about too many hunters now in public land. So that's like a whole lot of different things all roiled up into one general topic of issues. Tony, what do you make of this? You spent a lot of time writing about it, talking about it public versus private landowners versus di wires. How do you think we can move forward? Word or how should we best move forward when it comes to like bridging that divide in some kind of way, not necessarily on like the hunting success side, but on the like the culture these groups of people and trying to somehow work collectively to keep hunting in a positive place. 00:25:17 Speaker 3: I think I think the biggest mistake that we keep making is we cannot help ourselves but slide into like this trophy hunting mentality all the time. And so when you look at the messaging and it comes from us, it comes from everybody in the industry, just about it looks like like how Dan said, if you're a private land owner and you've got those resources guarded, everything's rosy for you, right well, like on paper maybe, but that guy still gets pissed at the neighbors, shoot the little bucks or whatever, like there's you know, there's still reasons to be mad. And then you have this other side where people are on public or I would argue you could lump in, you know, permission based hunting too now, just because generally if you're getting if somebody's letting you on a property, you're probably not in there alone. So it's sort of more of a pressured versus controlled division really. But what we just can't help but do is focus so much on the big buck thing that we make it look like that's it. Like from the outside looking in, it's like that's the goal. And if the reason that people have such a bad attitude about public land isn't because they've been out there working their asses off and finding deer, it's because they look at it and go, I'm never going to kill a big one. You're never going to kill that one fifty there, right, So it's like why go? And so I think I think our messaging has been wrong, Like I think we got to look at this and go, we're pretty damn lucky to get to hunt anything, and we're pretty lucky to have places to go do that. So yeah, like Dan mentioned, you know, you might have to adjust your standards, right, and people go, I don't want to go do that, And I'm like, well, if you go scout and work this out on public land and shoot a little one or shoot a dough or something like, if you've never done that, probably give it a shot first before you're like it's not worth it, because when you go through like I've gone through the big buck phase, chase one bucks, all that stuff, and you kind of get to a point where you realize, like, it's cool, but it's not as important as we presented a lot of times and every one of us. If suddenly, you know, I would pass the law in Michigan passed a law and they said you can't shoot anything over one hundred and twenty inches, we'd be hunting one hundred and seventeen inch bucks, you know what I mean. Or if they were like there's a month where you can't hunt bucks, we'd go hunt doughs. Like you'd still go for the experience of being out there it would change a lot of how you approach it. But I think I think we've made a big mistake and we fell into this in like two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, when the when the Power Couple Sportsman channel thing was really on the rise and then it broke and all of a sudden, Steve Varnella and Randy come in. We do this to ourselves, but I think we have to be aware of it and just go like, hey, the mature buck thing's awesome, it's fun. It's cool to see them coming through the woods and focus on them. But it's not like that's not the sole reason for anyone to do this, And we have to be careful about our messaging. 00:28:18 Speaker 2: So what does that come down to though? Is that is that on the media or is that on individual hunters? Like, like, who has the who has the power to change this? If we think it's a thing that needs to be changed, where where does that change come from? 00:28:33 Speaker 3: We do? I mean, I think this stuff filters down. I mean before, you know, just think about it this way, before the Druries and the Lakaskis and the Kisskis and these people figured out how to essentially grow giant deer and keep them around. How many people did you hear about just randomly in your life that we're doing that, you know what I mean? Like it right? And so I mean, you know, there are probably people who had that kind of figured out in the sanctuary thing forever, but it wasn't like a wide scale Like you're not surprised if you if you do immediate or a live event or go to a deer classic, you're not surprised when people talk like that and present that style of hunting. Well, that didn't come from the you know, like that didn't come from the general population. That came from people who had to kill big ones on TV and figure out a way to do it. So I think it comes from us. 00:29:25 Speaker 4: I'm going to disagree because not wholly, but just on some parts of that. And I think it's it's situational based off of where you live and where you hunt because back in the day, and I didn't even when I first started hunting when I was twelve or thirteen years old, in Iowa, as far back as I can remember, it's always been big Bucks. It's always been that, hey, dude, Like even before the Lakoski's moved to Iowa, and I had permission on any place that I knocked on doors, right, farmers were telling me don't shoot the small bucks, like, don't shoot, you know, like I would. I can remember the first time ever got a trail camera picture. I went and I got it developed. I showed the farmer. I go check this buck out. At the time, it was a big buck. 00:30:25 Speaker 3: For me. 00:30:26 Speaker 4: It was like a one hundred and twenty five inch eight pointer, and I was like, oh my god, I'm gonna try to shoot this buck. He hops out of his combine. He looks at it, then he goes, don't shoot that buck. Don't shoot that buck. Shoot, you know, put a little bit more time in. There's much bigger deer around here for you to shoot. And so the culture here is different than the culture in Michigan. The culture here is different than the culture in Texas. 00:30:53 Speaker 3: And so. 00:30:55 Speaker 4: It's it's always like the way I grew up, it's always been about antler size. What's changed, in my opinion, is the age. They brought the age class into it to almost justify the sole purpose of shooting big antlers. Of course, there's people there, yeah, you know what I mean. Well, and so it's like Oh, dude, I only shoot big deer, well you shoot or I only shoot old deer. Well you're the only reason you're shooting old deer is because they grow the biggest antlers, right, And so I don't I don't know whether that was really a disagreement. Well, it's really how I how I was raised in it. 00:31:39 Speaker 3: I know there's been pockets like that for a long time. What I mean is like the guys in Pennsylvania when you were twelve years old, they didn't know about Iowa, you know what I mean, Like you might have heard or whatever, but it wasn't you know, some dude down in Louisiana wasn't like I'm gonna I'm going up to hunt Iowa for big bucks like that, you know. I mean, that's different. But you're right on the you know, we we do this weasel word stuff all the time. Where we figured out trophy hunting is negative, like you know, from Africa to the US wherever. If it's pure trophy hunting, it is not very palatable to the to the general hunters and to the general population. So we went, well, mature box, they're responsible, Like that's a responsible way to hunt. But you're right, we just kind of we just kind of switched the definition and we're like, they just happen to have the biggest antlers, you know, and I we don't wait for them to get eight and a half nine and a half years old on the downswing, you know, we're like, okay, fill them in the prime. 00:32:37 Speaker 2: But let's uh, let's what's the what's the alternative? You know, because if you're saying trophy hunting or being all geeked out about antlers, big antlers is has been a negative thing in your view, Tony, And from like the anti hunt to what you're saying, the fact that this idea of trophy hunting has been proven and many many surveys like trophy hunting is very unpopular with the general public. So if the idea of trophy hunting is going to hurt us in the eyes of the non hunting public who have the majority and the opportunity to strip us of our privilege, So if that's a bad thing about it, If people are getting bummed out about hunting because they can't meet the expectations they have based on the trophy as they see on TV. If you're saying Dan that you know, we're losing access to quality places where people can kill big deer is the alternative. Just I guess I don't know where do we go from here? Because all that's true in a way, But at the same time, we all still like to shoot big deer. We all still get geeked out by big deer, and whether we want to admit it or not, big deer are also the thing that everybody clicks on, that everybody taps on Instagram, that everybody watches on YouTube, that everybody wants to think about, wants to see, wants to watch on YouTube. It's the deer I want to see when I'm drifting around the roads in August and I'm hoping to come around a corner and see a big, giant buck in the back of the beanfield. So how do we we? I just these are things I thought about a lot, We've talked about a lot. I just don't know where we go from here when we all agree like we like this thing, but we also know it can be toxic, I. 00:34:19 Speaker 6: Think, Sorry, Dan, Oh, go ahead, Tony Well, I was just gonna say, I don't know what the answer is, Mark, but I would I would argue I would die on this hill that our focus on big deer has been a negative to hunting because if you just from the purely perspective of access, we know the one way to keep people around and keep them happy is have an access to more ground, right. 00:34:41 Speaker 3: Like, that's just like a that's such a wind for hunting in general. But if you look at in the white tail space specifically the resource guarding, where leasing land or buying land or you know, somebody's you know who, maybe grandma owns the dairy farm and they used to let a bunch of people in, but one of the grandsons loves big Bucks and he's going to be like Graham, I don't want anybody else in there. If you're talking about, you know, people getting pushed on to public and smaller properties and losing places. Most of that, not all of it, because there's urban development. There's a lot of stuff that happens. But it has been an undeniable facet of hunting that the idea that you can control a place and kill big Bucks has has kept a lot of people from access to ground. I don't know what you do about it, because I don't I don't want to stop people from being able to buy land and lease land and do their thing. So you look at that and go, what's the hedge against it? Maybe opening up more public maybe more walk in access programs. I don't. I don't know, but I think I think we need to acknowledge. It's the same thing with a non resident resident fight. We have to acknowledge that we are really selfish in some ways, like we want it for ourselves, we want it easier, and we will we will do things to get that. And so that's I mean, it's okay, like we're all like that. We all, like you said, we all want the big bucks, we want a fun hunt, but that comes at a price, and we have to be aware of that. So if if we're gonna just inherently naturally be that way, we should acknowledge it and work on the other end and work for that access or or something that kind of can help level that out. 00:36:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, And I one hundred percent agree with you. And then would also tag on the fact that while it's true that we all do enjoy seeing the big deer and all that comes with that, it's not to say that the rest of hunting is not incredible too. So it's just as important too, Like we can't help but celebrate big deer because they're just impressive. But at the same time, we probably can make a greater effort to make sure we are celebrating and talking about shooting the spike, shooting the dose, having the encounter, or hunting in a place where we don't see a lot of deer. But man, it was a hell of an experience. It was a great adventure. We only saw two little yearlings, but man, that was a great challenger. You know, Dan's first out of state kill a few years ago. That wasn't the biggest year in the world, but I think you were about as happy as anything. So I think those stories deserve just as much airtime and as much celebration from each of us, either as the media or just hunting individuals too. That makes a lot of sense to me. But what do you thinking, Dan, I've seen your wheels turning, so there. 00:37:28 Speaker 4: Was I don't know, Like, I'm sure I didn't make it up. Like there's a statistic that I think about a lot, and that is the amount of acres per hunter. And so what I'm what I'm seeing is a giant split in what I'm assuming, Like I don't have any hard facts for this, but this is an assumption and this is what kind of you know, while one group of hunters it's taking up more land per acre to do their thing on, there is another group of people who that acre per hunter is shrinking, and so their experience is going down because obviously wild deer or wild game in general is not going to want to hang out in an environment where there is more predators than there is, you know, just a higher ratio of predators as you get to the other side. And so what we have here, and Tony mentioned it, is we have certain groups of people who are gatekeepers for the natural resource. And they are I'm trying to think of a positive word here, they are in charge of the natural resource. Right, they're doing everything. They're not doing anything wrong. They just are doing their thing on their land or their least land or whatever, and it grows. So I think, going back to your original question, the word that I want to throw out there, and at any time you want to change culture or change a person's thoughts or beliefs, somebody has to sacrifice something. And whether that is a guy who is notoriously a large private land landowner, his sacrifice may be let a guy who lost a property hunt his own farm, maybe set some expectations for them, give him, give him access to the kingdom in some way, shape or form. The other one on the far the far end would be if you're a public land owner, you may have to sacrifice time to take somebody else hunting, or to help a fellow hunter find a good place to hunt, or talk to the person that you have permission on and just be like, hey, listen, I got a buddy. He does he doesn't hunt very much or whatever his story is, you mind if he hops on with me and I can kind of take him under my wing. Those types of things, And there's so many different examples of that moving forward. But you can change an individual can change, I'm assuming rather easily, but an entire culture, an entire group of people. You ask people to, Hey, do me a favor. And in Tony's example, it's trophy hunting or big antlers. Hey, I need you to stop caring about big antlers. 00:40:44 Speaker 3: Uh what what. 00:40:47 Speaker 4: You want me to stop caring about? Big bucks? Big bucks are or what I think about every day? 00:40:52 Speaker 3: Right? 00:40:52 Speaker 4: Yeah, I need you to stop thinking about that for you know, the rest of your life. And so in order to change the culture, and that is a a tsunami. Trying to stop a tsunami, it's the way I think it would be damn near impossible. 00:41:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why I don't think you can stop that. I think you you more so just have to create a tsunami in the other way too, so you have growing energy for the other parts of hunting as well. Back to like the access thing and the challenge here, I think something worth noting is like, you're right there. There's if we recognize that this this access thing and this kind of distribution of resources not being fair, right, it's also just the reality of the world. It is what it is. Like, we we have a very in demand resource, which is white tailed deer or land access, and we either accept the fact that that's how things go in a capitalist society or we try to become you know, redistribution of income commies or whatever. So we're not going to go that route. So the fact is like, this is this is what it is. And people with their hard earned money bought their properties, did their thing, and God bless them. But I think you bring up some good points, Dan, which is like on the for those that have you know, there's the old saying. I don't know where it came from, but like with those with great power, comes great responsibility, right, I think it's worth reminding all of us, For those of us that do have access, for all of us that do own land or have a lease or have great spots like, remember there's other people out there who don't have that, and and maybe we can all do a little bit more to share our access in one way or another. That's one way we can help on this issue. On the flip side, Tony, you brought this up, and I think it's a really good thing too. We still need to continue working to add new access. So let's make sure that if we're gonna bitch and moan about not having enough public land, then we should each and all of us individually be working to increase access opportunities by supporting any legislation that comes down the pipeline that might lead to new access. By you know, learning about the Farm Bill, which is the bill every hand four or five years that funds many of these walk in habitat programs, that gets you the access in Kansas, that gets you the access in Michigan, that gets you a lot of these private land properties that are opened up to public land hunting. That's all funded through the Farm Bill, and so learn about that, learn about how to talk to your senators and representatives about supporting that when it comes up for reauthorization this coming year. That's something we can do. And then of course fight like hell to make sure we don't lose public lands. I think those two things. If you have access, share it, If you care about public access, fight for it. I do think that's one thing that all of us could partake into to some degree. Maybe it's if you own land, invite a bunch of people, if you just have permission, see if you can have permission to have a buddy join you a couple of times, take a new hunter, whatever it is. I think those are a few, like tangible things we can do that chip away at this a little. But if we're all not trying to do our own part in this, that the avalanche is going to keep on going down the mountain. It's just it's only going to get worse. And I think that's so many things within this larger conversation of like where things stand in our culture. There's all these micro issues, and all of them are going to continue sliding down the slope. Whatever the easy thing is. That's where things are going to go unless we, as a collective within this community all decide, okay, you know what, this is the thing that matters. I'm going to do my little part. We can all do our own little part, and that all adds up. Like you said, Dan, you can't. You can. You can change an individual relatively easy, it's really hard to make a whole community change their mind. But we don't need to do that. All we need to do is own ourselves and that does add up to something. 00:44:55 Speaker 3: But Mark on that point though, Mark, I think there's like a I think when we talk about this, if you're like, oh, we need to change wholesale change the hunting culture, what we like one of the big things we really need to do is the perception. So when you when you mentioned earlier about the haves and the have nots, it's like, that's that's how it's going to break down. Some people are going to have a lot of resources, some people aren't going to have very many. That's how nature works, right. But in our very specific instance here, I feel like we would benefit so much from all being more honest about you know, the easy hunts we have and the hard hunts we have, because it's so easy to try to default and paint yourself as like such a badass and like this was so hard and I worked so hard for it when we know. 00:45:42 Speaker 2: This for fifteen years. 00:45:43 Speaker 3: Dude, some hunts are hard and some are not. And you know, the messaging from the top down has been that no matter what, this is a real struggle and we're lucky to kill our you know, second hundred and eighty incher this week and you just happened to come in and you know, never mind that we've been watching him for seven years and we have you know, you know what I mean, Like if we were more honest about just what's really going on, Like how much time do you have? 00:46:10 Speaker 2: You know? 00:46:10 Speaker 3: Like I always think about this with the hunting public guys, is you know, they're super good hunters. They're good dudes, but they you need to acknowledge the advantages. Right if you're if you're in a western river bottom hunt and you have four or five six people glassing different spots, good hunters scouting huge advantage And I'm not taking anything away from them, but the more you're like, listen, if you think you're going to come out here by yourself and have the same results. Maybe not, you know, like it just it's just not going to probably work that way. And I think, I think we need to change the perception of what we do because killing big deer is really easy on good like really good properties, Like that's a special scenario and so you look at that and go, well, that one sixty that is not the same kind of deer that a lot of people are hunting. And I think we all inherently know that, but just just to change like how we look at it and go, yeah, some people have that and that's great, but that's not the reality that a lot of people are walking into. Like you got to you got to adjust what your expectations are for your time in the field like that that has no bearing on what you're going to experience. 00:47:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like I feel like in my view, it's always been not silly, like for for folks who have or who are killing these big giant deer, I don't you do your thing? I think everyone, I think the person in that world Tony probably doesn't feel like it's easy. They still feel like they're putting in a ton of work. Probably right. I mean, it's a different kind of work. But I'm telling you, if you talk to someone who owns a thousand acres of land, they're going to tell you what I've I've spent so many days on the tractor, I've spent so many days scouting and stuff. I've spent so many days doing that, and they're going to say it's just as valuable as what you're doing. So so I get what you're saying, and I'm I guess what I'm adding on is that I like or the argument you're making that resonates the most is not so much tell that guide to a minute, it's easy, but rather everybody else, remember to set your own expectations based on where you're at, what your situation is, what your goals are, and don't get too wrapped up in what anybody else is doing. Right, We've all had this conversation with the past, like hunt your own hunt and try to put on blinders to what everybody else is doing, because it doesn't matter what Dan's doing or what I'm doing. Just focus on you, right, and don't get worked up about what's on YouTube or what's on the outdoor channel, because that's where these mismatched expectations and disappointment and frustration comes in, right. 00:48:44 Speaker 3: I mean, I think and I agree with you, the pre hunt work part is big, right. If you're a white to hunter, what you do before the hunt is the most important stuff, whether you're scouting public land or you're planting one hundred acres of food plots. But I think I think the people who do that know that they're doing that to make the hunting easy. So that work is not easy. Running a business is not easy, you know, farm in the land is not easy. I get that. But the whole reason that that's happening is so the hunting will be easy, you know what I mean. 00:49:18 Speaker 2: And so I think it's they would say that that's part of the hunting, but I get what you're saying. 00:49:22 Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, it's just different and it you know, I'm like, again, I'm not they donuts for donuts. People want to do that and enjoy it great. I'm just saying, like, let's just I think we have an obligation on our side of things to just be honest about this stuff. 00:49:37 Speaker 2: Yeah, so I want to shift a little bit of our direction. It's it's going to all kind of tie in. But there's another whole side of like where our culture is going. So we've talked kind of about access. We've talked about, you know, what we value, whether it be antlers or the experience or or whatever. We've talked about that a little bit. I think another big thing that goes to this idea of like making it easy. Tony written about this quite a bit over Mediator in the last year or two is all these different things we're doing to make it easier. I think technology is a big part of that now. So you've got things like, you know, cell cameras more and more popular and prevalent, more technology there, you know, instant photos, live streaming video. Now, you've got more and more people using thermal scopes going out there and yeah, well yeah, crossbows are a thing. Thermal scopes where you've got these no scopes that you can put on your crossbow or something and basically shoot after dark if you were so inclined. People are using thermal scopes for recovering deer now or just like driving around and thermal scoping everything to see if there's deer in a thicket. You've got a lot of drone use now, people using drones to scout properties to do, you know, see where the deer are at certain times of year. Then, of course is the question of using drones to recover deer. You've got rifle scope technology now where you can just zap it at auto range, finds the animal and then sets your radical to aim exactly where you need to aim with this wind direction, at this thousand yard distance or whatever. There's a whole lot of different specifics, and I don't even I don't know what to make of where all this is going, except for the fact that it's not going to stop. This is going to continue, and so do we fight it, do we not fight? 00:51:26 Speaker 3: It? 00:51:26 Speaker 2: Doesn't matter? Does it not matter? Somebody twenty years ago probably would have looked at where we are today and said, oh my gosh, if that stuff happens, it's going to ruin hunting. But here we are sitting here today and we're still hunting, and a lot of people are happy, and many people say it's the golden days of whitetail hunting. So high level, when I bring up all of that stuff, Dan, what makes your skin tingle, what makes your chest tighten, what makes you either excited or worried? Where's your head out when it comes to these things. 00:52:02 Speaker 4: I look at it like I'm kind of a purist because I grew up hunting in what I would say is some of the and it's because I was green. I didn't know, so I made it hard for myself. Well, it was hard because I didn't understand dear and how dear. I didn't understand people and how obsessed they got. So I grew up in a time and that was that was early on. And then my whole story is that I hunted for a little bit, became a degenerate, and then I found hunting again right when I was about twenty six, and that's when I dove into it. 00:52:45 Speaker 3: And that's when I said, I love this. And so. 00:52:51 Speaker 4: I feel like, I don't know, I just feel like as I feel like hunting saved me. Hunting, hunting kind of course correct in my life and kept me in the woods and kept me out of bars and then hanging out with the wrong people. And so I have a connection to hunting that goes deeper than just antlers. It's it's something that is like in me, it's like a part of it's my it's my it's in my heart, you know. And so when I look at someone and I and I'm it's this is me judging them. I'm judging them, and I'm saying, man, you're taking advantage of this natural resource. You're you're not showcasing the beautiful sunsets, the fresh air. 00:53:42 Speaker 3: You're not like. 00:53:45 Speaker 4: There's there's some there's something pure and beautiful about this hunting and the outdoors. And then when I see companies taking advantage of that and using that to make dollars, it becomes muddy for me, and I just I don't like it. 00:54:05 Speaker 3: And so. 00:54:07 Speaker 4: I like hunting because it is a challenge, because it is difficult because big bucks just don't walk underneath your stand. They don't do that. They don't where I hunt big big deer or any deer. They don't just come into a food plot or wherever the food sources. They don't just come out and stand in front of you for twenty minutes then you shoot them. Right, That just doesn't happen. And so when I see someone wanting to make something easier, I just kind of laugh at it. And because all they're doing is hurting themselves, right, They're trying to say, oh God, I need a weapon that has a longer range, so I don't need to get as close, thus risking getting blown out. Oh well, I don't want to scout because it sucks in August when it's ninety percent humidity. I think I'm just going to use this cell camera to tell me everything I need to know. Right, But all you're doing is missing something. You're missing this whole education by time and the stand by time in the woods, and and so I'm only comparing all of that to me and what my personal likes and dislikes are. 00:55:22 Speaker 2: And that's the trick though, is like, and the where I struggle with all this on is we can only we're always judging based on where we put ourselves. Like, so we've got our thing, which is where I draw my line. So this is what I think is okay. But there's always going to be someone who's a little bit more comfortable, and there's always probably gonna be someone who's a little bit less comfortable. Right, There's we can sit here on our high horse and say, oh, you shouldn't use that super long range rifle, or you shouldn't use that such and such livestream trail camera. But then at the same time, there's gonna be somebody else who's gonna look at me and say, well, you shouldn't use a cell camera at all, or you shouldn't use a compoumbou I only use a tread bill, or you shouldn't hunt private access at all, because I only hunt public land and that's harder than your permission. So what I don't know, and what I am constantly trying to figure out, is how do we as a community wrestle with what is appropriate versus not because in the end, we the hunters, the community, should be just making those decisions and not the companies. Right oftentimes we'll just go along with the company. If the technology is there, we just use it. That's the easy thing to do. But I would say that we should rather in some kind of way try to self enforce or try to be the ones who are helping direct this stuff versus just what's the next money making thing? Right? But how do we do that in a way that isn't just me saying my view on this is better than your view, where where I'm AT's better than where you're at. I don't know practically how we tackle this as a community because of the fact that is inherently such an individual choice that. 00:57:03 Speaker 3: That's where you go with it, though, I think so, I think I think you present this message of take you know, if you want to use every every advantage you can, you know, one hundred yard crossbow, bait, pile, cell cameras, whatever. I think we have to just present this image of like are you happy because you hear a lot of people bitching about their hunting, and so is this you know, are is having twelve cell cameras out there making you happy because you're not going into the woods as much for sure, right Like, you're not scouting, you're not putting it in. It's like, you know, there's a reason you're going to go run eighteen miles in the mountains when you could just buy a metal from Amazon. Sure, you know, would cut out the whole training process and the race and have the trophy. But it's not the same thing, right Like, there's a reason that you're challenging yourself that way. So I think I think for some people they're out there and they're like, I have, you know, five days to see in to hunt because I have six kids at home and a demanding job and whatever, I want every advantage I can I can get and I think there are some people who are looking at it going I feel like I should be using a lot of this stuff because it promises me an easier filled tag, but it's not making me feel better. I'm not enjoying it as much. So I think you have to look at that. I'm seeing this with some of my buddies because they're at the age where they're buying properties and they're building them up and the food plots and the box lines and all this stuff, and it's to the point where they don't really have to scout anymore. And that's a big like they're missing this big part of whitetail hunting. And it seemed like on paper, you'd be like, that's the dream. You've got it made. You know, you can go in here and sit on Halloween and you're gonna have a great hunt and see a lot of deer and maybe kill a big one. But there's something missing for some people who need that. So I think on an individual level, just like with the hunting media, like I think on an individual level, you have to go am I happy, like do I enjoy this? And kind of have to you have to work with that, and. 00:59:02 Speaker 2: You know, maybe maybe one of the solutions here is leaning into it's it's it's maybe the same solution to the whole trophy hunting whatever that I think we've all recognized has gone too far in some ways. Rather than bemoaning it or pointing a finger like, oh, you got to change, you're the problem, the solution might almost always be celebrating the other alternative side, which is like celebrating the fact that, man, this other stuff's pretty darn cool too, celebrating the fact that the hard work around the scouting or the hard work behind the whatever, or the doing this without cameras or the doing this with the harder tool, celebrating the joy in that, and the fact that doing these things in these different ways without the extra technology is worthwhile as well. So it's it's not necessarily bringing down someone else, because everyone's gonna do what they're gonna do, and we're all gonna draw our own lines in the sand. But maybe it's shining a positive light on the value of this alternative way, which is becoming more and more alternative. I keep going back to and I don't know if you ever can do this, but is there any way that we can self enforce or self police or that's not the right word. But I think to some degree this happened like when drones first showed up on the map and it became pretty obvious to everyone, like, man, they shouldn't be used to hunt, you shouldn't be allowed to use them in real time during the season, And a bunch of states put rules in place because there's public support for it, very quickly, and we said, man, that's that's too far. You know, is there a way to do that in today's world. I don't know around some of these technologies, but I but I wish there were. But again it comes down to my line. The signds different. But I mean, you don't know. 01:01:07 Speaker 3: To do it, you'd have to you'd have to link some technology to an impact on the resource. You know what it is? 01:01:14 Speaker 2: Oh, go ahead, sorry, Tony. I think So here's a specific example that I thought of that I thought would be really cool, and I hope some company will do this, and this might be a model that we can vote with our dollars, right, we can vote with our dollars and our choices. I personally, my line the sand when it comes to sell cameras is that I think live streaming video, Like seeing what a deer is doing right now and acting on that is inappropriate in my view. I personally also think that getting a picture right now and being able to go do something right now is inappropriate for me. Like that feels icky for me. If I were sitting in the tree stand and I got a ding on my phone and I looked at it and it said the buck you're after is one hundred and fifty yards away there, And if I could slip down out of my tree with my rifle and sneak over there and shoot him because I know he's right there, that feels inappropriate to me personally. So if I were in charge of the world, I would say that cell cameras should not be able to live stream and they should have some level of delay. Personally, for me, I would put a twenty four hour delay on pictures. What if we could make a fair Chase branded cell camera or a certification and so you could say, man, I only use fair Chase certified cell cameras, which means there's a twelve hour mandatory delay on everything, So you can't see live video, you can't see live photos. Whatever it is. Now, I recognize this is my own personal line in the sand. But for me, if you stamped down a trail camera and said, man, this is a fair Chase certified camera, That'd be the only camera I'd use and I'd be pretty stoked about it, and I bet a lot of other people would be two. And that'd be like a badge of honor for that product. To use it. It could be a marketing plus for that kind of company. So rather than a company thinking they need to make it easier for hunters to sell more products, instead, we would buy products because it makes us a little harder for hunters, and we would prefer that product because it is a badge of honor. It shows that we are willing to limit ourselves in some kind of ways. What if you could do that with other technology too, That's an idea. Does that resonate with either one of you or does that sound stupid? 01:03:27 Speaker 4: I like it right, That's a great example, But my gut tells me nobody is on board with that. Like, look at this world we live in today where everybody gets their satisfaction from a phone. There's no more human interaction. 01:03:48 Speaker 3: This all day. 01:03:49 Speaker 4: People do this all day. My daughter, when I give her one hour a day, on her cell phone. She's like this for one hour on it. Okay, it's crack cocaine, right. And so you tell someone, hey, here's a cell cam. Oh no, no, no, no, no. It does not send you pictures. It only sends you pictures at midnight when you're sleeping, you kidd meet people do not like general humans. They're not going that direction. But when I say that, when I say that, I'm saying democracy, that we live in a democracy. And if people hate cell cameras, Mark, or you want this fair chase cell camera, Mark, you know what you get when you live in a democracy. You get the opportunity to rally like minded people and express that opinion to the Department of Natural Resources. And you say, listen me and this one thousand people, we don't like that a cell camera sends you something immediately. We want restrictions on cell cameras. And here's a thousand people the opposite side. They better rally, they better get a group of people, like minded individuals to say, well, hold on a second. I got one thousand and one people right here, and we are in support of live streaming and all of that stuff. And I think a lot of it has to do with getting people excited about a topic, whether they like it or dislike it, getting the information and then that's that's happening right now in Iowa, Okay, the Iowa bow Hunters Association, the Iowa Sportsman's Club, right, we are we are taking strides because we have a community of like minded individuals and this is specifically about crossbows. 01:05:52 Speaker 3: Right. 01:05:54 Speaker 4: There's a company out there, and I've said this, I've said this before. There's companies out there that are sending lobbyists to Iowa in order to get crossbows legalized. During the hunting season. They are doing that, or during the archery season. Archery season. Now, mind you, Iowa already has crossbows across bow season. It's during the late season, muzzleloader season. But that's not enough, right, So these companies send lobbyists and it is all it is is it's a cost analysis. If this law passes in this state, we will make X number of dollars. That's what it is, okay. And so usually in the past, all of those laws get passed without the Department of Natural Resources taken any into any data that they have. It's a it's never like hey, guys, do you want this or not. And so what's happened is the Iowa Bow Hunters Association and some other organizations have stepped up and they've said, we don't work not the ones calling for this, We don't want this rule to happen or these said rules. And so what we've done is we've rallied a bunch of people and we've gone to our like you said, we've gone to our representatives, and we've said this is bullshit, we don't want it. And and so far I believe we were on an undefeated streak of eleven and zero for bills that this group of people disagree with. 01:07:38 Speaker 6: So I ran there, did I answer your question? 01:07:45 Speaker 3: I was going to say something here, Hey, Mark, do you think this morning Dan was supposed to take a riddle in and he took PCP instead. 01:07:54 Speaker 4: I'm telling you this in all serious near. This is what I think about, right. I don't have any other passions in life my children, and hunting is what I do. And so I know you're joking, but I am on PCP all the time for natural resources. 01:08:18 Speaker 3: I'm serious, man, No, I love it. So I want to just touch on that a little bit. So Mark, when you said, when you bring up this idea of a of a twenty four hour delay on a cell camera fairchase camera. I think the reason that that makes the most sense, and some of the stuff Dan's talking about makes sense is because what we're gonna do is we're gonna have this technology that we already have, it's going to get better and eventually it's going to have an impact on the resource or the experience. So they're going to retroact, and by that I mean the DNR, you know, State Game Agency is going to retroactively go no cell cameras or no you know, because that's the only option they have, right blanket ban. And so some of this stuff, if you just look in the future, it's the same thing with the forward facing sonar and fishing right now. If you look into the future, there's going to be an impact on the resource eventually because it's going to get cheaper, it's going to be more ubiquitous across everybody out there, and we're going to have to do something. And if they only have one option, which is not at all or wholesale, then they're gonna ban it. And so I think some of this stuff is great, Like I like the idea of bringing a logical fight to them and going, we are worried about crossbows in Iowa. Here's why we are a representative group of bowhunters, and this is what scares us about it. Same thing if you're sitting there and go, I don't feel great about livestream cameras. I don't feel great about anybody having, you know, spending one hundred and twenty bucks and getting a cell camera that could send pictures to their phone instantly. So maybe this is where it starts, like, maybe that is what you need to do, is already be talking about these options because they're going to come into play at some point. Probably. 01:10:00 Speaker 2: Here's the thing, though, let. 01:10:01 Speaker 3: Me let me, hey, Mark, let me finish a real quick thought. There's Tony shut old angel dust here, go ahead, buddy, I. 01:10:12 Speaker 4: Haven't had that. I haven't heard that term since high school. 01:10:15 Speaker 3: Hey, you can't fly man, stay away from the edges of the tall buildings, buddy, exactly, exactly. Okay, you know I haven't done that. Maybe DARE Drug Abuse Resistance Education can sponsor wire to hunt. 01:10:29 Speaker 2: Just say no, Dan, just say no. 01:10:34 Speaker 3: Anyway. 01:10:35 Speaker 4: Anyway, so you were talking about the buzzword. Here is fair chase. Okay, there's no definition of fair chase. Because in Ohio you can use crossbows and it's legal to use bait. In Texas, who knows what the definition of fair chase is down there, right, And so every community, every state has a different definition of fair chase, yep. And and so how are we supposed, I mean, unless you have like a flat wall across the entire land, no baiting, no crossbows, it is not fair chase to use those things or sell cams or whatever the case may be. There's no definition. So how are we supposed to support or be against something that does not have a clear definition. 01:11:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. And in it also because these things are defined by the individual, it then becomes like this whole issue of personal judgment calls. And then it comes back to what Tony mentioned at the very top, which is all of these internal divisions, right, everything we're talking about, many of the things we're talking about here, at least crossbows versus non crossbows, or cell cameras versus non cell cameras, or private land versus public land. There's a lot of us versus I'm saying, right, we've got all these internal conflicts, We've got all these internal divisions, which some people would say, Hey, we got to quit all the internal squabbling because we've got external factors that are also at play that are a bigger risk. And if we're tearing ourselves apart, we're making ourselves vulnerable to these other things. And there's truth in that too, I think, to a degree. So I don't know how how we've had this same conversation for years, guys. I can remember Dan, you and me talking about this a decade ago. We were slightly we were probably slightly chubbier and slightly dumber, but basically dumber, basically the same thing. And I don't know how you tackle it and change it without there being these internal divisions. And maybe that's necessary. Maybe it is, okay, I would say it is. You have to have some internal squabbling. A family does not solve their issues by sitting at the dinner table and pushing everything underneath the rug and never bringing up the hard topics, right. That just leads to more animosity bubbling underneath the surface. That leads to you hard feelings that stay hidden away, and then all of a sudden explode that leads to negativity growing and growing and growing. So I think Number one a healthy family addresses their differences and concerns upfront, and so I personally would say, it is okay to have these conversations, and we should have these conversations, but they should be handled like a healthy family, not the crazy psychotic family dinner at Thanksgiving where people are yelling and screaming each other and calling each other names, but instead with respect and interest. In the other point of view, I think if we can do that, that maybe leads to the family or the community moving in a better direction, or at least understanding each other better. But then I go back to this, I think a solution to many of these things that does work that is not necessarily like creating unnecessary divides and having me be like I'm better than you, you should do it my way. I think a lot of this goes back to rather than telling people what they shouldn't do or what they're doing wrong, or why they're luckier than I am, or why it's not fair that you have this and I have this, or that you use this technology and I can't use the technology. I think in many ways the better solution is just leading by positive example in the way you think is more positive. So doing the thing, celebrating the thing, telling the stories about the thing, sharing with your friends and family about the thing that you find valuing in a positive way. So if you think that we need to have more access, well then show through your example how you can create that and how we value that. If you think that it is better to have a more restricted weapon when you hunt, that you shouldn't use crossbows, or you shouldn't use high power rifles or whatever it is, then showcase what you're doing and the value that has and lead through that example and make it cool, make it appealing, make it possible for others to do it in that kind of way. If you want to have a fair chase cell camera, well then you know, live by that and make it so that your buddies want to do that same thing, so that if I could influence my best hunting buddies and me, you know, this is the way I've been doing things, and actually I enjoy hunting more. I don't feel like I'm getting left in the dust because I still have a challenge. I still have this, this and this, and I think that can lead to positive change in a way that's not this like dictatorial finger pointing. Hey, you're taking away my rights. Hey, you're forcing your beliefs on me, negative tearing apart kind of thing. Does any of that make sense? 01:15:49 Speaker 3: Well, because that's what's coming if we if we don't, if you don't get ahead of it, that's what's going to hit you eventually, right, Ye, you know, yeah. 01:15:58 Speaker 4: I think a lot of it. A word that just keeps coming to mind as empathy. And I'll give you a little bit of an example. I used to have different thoughts back in the day about using dogs to hunt, all right, and I thought, for some reason, I thought, hey, dude, that that wasn't sportsman. That's not sportsmen. Right, you're using a dog to track, you know, obviously you're. 01:16:25 Speaker 3: Gonna get it or whatever. Whatever. 01:16:26 Speaker 4: My dumb ass thoughts were back then, and it was because I was uneducated about the topic. And then I met a you know, then you meet guys like Clay Nucombe, who is probably one of the nicest people that I've ever met in my entire life. And then I imagine a law being passed where Clay Nukeomb cannot use dogs to hunt. You know how bum that dude would be if if you took that and so took that from him along with some of the other people in the hound hunting community that I've met throughout the years, and they these are nice people. And I'm sure there's someone out there who shoots a crossbow that is extremely nice and pleasant to be around, same with you know, sell cameras or you know, you know things like that. 01:17:14 Speaker 3: And and you just you just. 01:17:17 Speaker 4: Got to go meet the people, right have a have a discussion. We just live in a world right now where it's like I am Republican, you are Democrat, I hate you, or vice versa or whatever your whatever your belief is. People just die on the sword all the time. They don't ever want to have a conversation with their friend or dude, you know what me. 01:17:46 Speaker 3: You get it right now, you get it, you know what I mean? 01:17:50 Speaker 2: And so. 01:17:53 Speaker 3: Can I comment on that? 01:17:54 Speaker 2: Yes? Please? 01:17:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it's amazing because I always think Clay is such an. 01:17:58 Speaker 6: Assholes he's two side. Probably No, Clay's a wonderful, wonderful person. 01:18:05 Speaker 3: But what you say there, Dan is way more important than it may be being presented, at least in my eyes. Like just think about your hunting when you started going to South Dakota and experiencing an environment that is not Iowa, and you're like, I want to be here, I want to hunt. And then you think, okay, I am against hound hunting for deer or hound hunting for bears or whatever. And then you start to meet hound hunters and see how passionate they are and you go, Okay. Exposure to all this stuff opens your mind a lot. And so one of the things we do is hunters, which is really bad for us. This hit home for me. I was at a I was at a meeting here in Minnesota. This the Minnesota d and R was doing a little tour and they were going to do some changes to the deer season and there's some proposals out there, and so I went to one of these up here in the cities and I don't remember, you know, fifty sixty people in this room. DNR makes their presentation, everybody has a chance to talk, and what blew my mind was almost to a person in that audience, their only concern when they asked a question was on my forty acres. I don't see very many of this, or on the at where our cabin is. 01:19:21 Speaker 6: We don't see this, or we've always had this. It was a very it's very easy to just. 01:19:27 Speaker 3: Look at hunting through the lens of this little world that you live in. That's your hunting spot, that's all you do. And as soon as you expand your horizons a little bit and do some other stuff, you realize, like, there's a pretty big world out there beyond the borders of the property you're used to hunting. And I kind of think that's an anecdote for a lot of this stuff of being like I would vote away you know, your ability or your opportunity to use this kind of technology or to use this kind of thing or hunt this kind of way, because I don't do it. But as soon as you star are traveling and getting even in your own county, like going from your private place to a public land spot to hunt rabbits or something like, anything you do that opens you up to these other experiences changes how you view this stuff. And I think that I think in hunting it's so easy to just get sort of like tunnel vision on our are what we want and where we hunt. 01:20:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that for sure. So if if I were to distill everything we've talked about, three things bubble to the surface. For me, like three takeaways. And I'm curious if these are like the three truths that you guys called out from here. But I think number one and I guess what I'm trying to do here is set a stage for where this conversation continues to go for because I think that's the thing with any conversation around culture, ethics, our community, fair chase, all these things related to the culture of hunting. There's no end all, be all right, We're not going to solve all the problems today. Nobody can solve all the problems or figure things out today or this year. It's an ongoing conversation, it's an ongoing process. It's a fluid thing, right, And so I think number one is the fact that we all have to be engaged in that fluid thing. We need to be aware of the fact that there is this culture that we are a part of, and it is going somewhere, and we can either bury our head in the sand and just go along with the float, or we can choose to engage in it and be a part of that direction. Right, I would rather be on the boat paddling versus floating with my head down. So I would say number one takeaway from This for me is like, there is a thing going the culture of hunting that will impact the future of this activity in this lifestyle, and whether it's around in the future, whether it's something we want our kids to be involved in the future, et cetera. So be a part of it, don't just let it go flowing past you. That's number one to me. Number two, I think is this idea of remembering, as you said, Dante, to have empathy with others, which is the idea of empathy is just looking at things from other people's perspective and remembering that everything doesn't revolve around just you. And like you said, Tony, it's not just what's happening on your property, not just what you think about things. But there are these different ways of looking at the world. There are these different places we come to the world from. There are these different backgrounds and context. So when we talk about our culture, when we talk about fair chase or hunting decisions or access or anything, have empathy with others and let that be a way that guides this engagement that you have. And then finally, I think that in a lot of ways, if you see a change that you think needs to happen, in the culture in where hunting is going. I think in many ways we are going to do better if we try to influence with the carrot and not the stick. So rather than you're wrong, screw you, you can't have this thing, maybe we can lead with the lead by example, show the positives of this alternative way. I think at least that's one of the things I'm coming away from this with is that that has a possible that that can help us avoid these internal divisions and more so lead our community in a way in a positive fashion by making it the cool thing, or the desirable thing, or the valuable thing. 01:23:24 Speaker 3: You know. 01:23:25 Speaker 2: This is this is where we started the trophy hunting thing. Twenty years ago, there were probably some people who wanted there to be more big deer on the landscape. Right thirty years ago, there were folks that that, I want to kill more big deer. I want to see boon and krack of bucks. I want to have five and a half year old deer whatever, right, And there's different ways to do that. You could enforce regulations to make you have to pass on, you know, small deer or certain antler point restrictions. There's ways to you know, enforce different rules on a hunting. There's all those kinds of rules, and maybe that helps to some degree, But the biggest thing that I think led to their being more older deer around now today, larger deer. All that stuff is quantifiably true. You know what changed over the last twenty five years. It wasn't that there was a bunch of regulations put in place across the country that really changed the game. It was that the culture change. It was that media and people made it cool and desirable and aspirational to see bigger deer, to hunt bigger deer. You saw as possible, You saw the people were having fun with it, and everybody wanted to be a part of it. What if we could make the same kind of cultural change around these other things that we think matter by way of making it aspirational, cool, exciting, valuable, not by putting some regulation or restriction or saying you can't do this thing. I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulations and all that we should, but maybe we can make the same kind of positive difference by changing the culture through our own example. And that doesn't apply just to the three of us because we're in media. I think the same can be applied to my buddy who lives in southern Michigan, who has a whole bunch of other buddies, and who goes to the wild Game banquet and who shares his pictures on social media. That person has a level of influence too. And maybe that's a third thing that I'm taking away from this conversation and wanting to carry on as this this month goes forward. Those are the three things to me. Do you guys have anything else you would add to that kind of the takeaways for folks to kind of be thinking about, or is there anything I said that you guys think is off the rails. 01:25:34 Speaker 4: I think hunters have to have start to have internal conversations with themselves. I have it all the time, right. You know, most people who listen to my podcast know my stance on crossbows. But I do have a heart, believe it or not, and I do think of people and it would be like would. 01:25:54 Speaker 3: This benefit them? 01:25:55 Speaker 4: Would would it get them out in the woods more? 01:25:58 Speaker 3: You know? 01:25:59 Speaker 4: Am I being self on some of these things? And I think it all it all really starts with ourselves and our thoughts and views on certain things. And then you can say to yourself, how much is this, how much do is this important to me? How much do I wait this my ideology towards it, towards these things, And then you can say to yourself, you know what, I kind of have a problem with sell cams or I kind of have a problem with this rule or regulation, and then you can then you can say, man, I'm just not a fan of it. Here's why I'm not a fan of it, because you like I hate to say it, but there's times where back in the day, I used to just have a blind opinion with no information to back it up. And ultimately what I did is I made myself look really stupid. And I mean well thought out, well thought out idea and thoughts on how you make your decisions and then how you express those decisions to another group of people I think are really important. 01:27:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you think, Tony? Any final thoughts? 01:27:16 Speaker 3: I think we should have had Steve Ranella on this podcast. 01:27:21 Speaker 2: So we Steve. Steve would have put it much more articulately and be way less fun though than we had. 01:27:28 Speaker 6: Oh yeah, he's so boring. But what I'm saying is just just big words. Like he just used big words, right, but if. 01:27:34 Speaker 3: You're talking about changing the hunting culture, you know, I mean it's undeniable that a guy like that has such sway, you know, And so I mean it's kind of a joke, but really I do agree with you, like I do think we have a chance, Like I think we have a chance to change how people view this first without going to extremes of banning this or that, or you know, advocating for something to be taken away, because that's this is the thing that's biting us in the ass. And you're going to see this in Colorado next year, and you know, we we want something. So we're like, we want fewer people out there because I want a better experience that comes with consequences. Like that's not a free play for everyone. And you know, you saw that in Kansas. I think it was last year, two years ago, when they banned trail cameras on public land. It's like the private land hunters are great, screw them whatever. But when you when you advocate for something going away, it's going away for good typically, So that's not something to take lightly like it's just just because it doesn't affect you. Kind of like what we talked about earlier. So I think, like to Dan's point too, we should be careful with this stuff. Like if you're sitting there and you're like I hate this or I love this, like you know, put yourself in somebody else's shoes. Like there's a lot of different individual experiences happen out there. So I think that the most dangerous thing we do is quickly decide to cancel something or quickly decide to take something away because it feels like it will benefit us in the short term, because you're you're taking that away from somebody, and that's gonna affect somebody in a negative way. So it's like, yeah, you're like, oh, you have the power now because you're on private land in Kansas and it doesn't affect you. Well, guess what what if those public land hunters are those people just they mount an offensive against baiting, and you're like, oh, well, now this is an issue that affects me. And so I think we just have to be very aware of that stuff, like when something goes away, when the government's like no, no, you don't have this anymore. It's freaking gone, and we got to be careful about that. 01:29:36 Speaker 4: I also, I think there's two sides of every story too, right, And I mean for every and take this how you want to take it, But for every Steve Ranella, there's a Matt Renella, you know what I mean. And so somehow, somehow, those those people have to come together and have a conversation in community, kate with each other. There's there's the public, the private, there's you know, you you pick the outliers in each thing, you know, in each category, those people need to have a conversation with each other. 01:30:16 Speaker 2: I think that's that's a good place to leave it in that we have to engage on these things, like we have to have these conversations, and it's there's a big difference between having a conversation versus yelling at each other across social media, right, And so I think I think that is a really powerful thing that we can all try to do a little bit more, is like engage in real, open conversations with people about these things and recognize that screaming at people, name calling, that doesn't get us anywhere. But having a little bit of empathy, trying to understand other people talking about these things, trying to be a part of the solution, lead by example, engage that's going to take us into a direction where I think we will have a more long term future for this lifestyle, hopefully healthy resources that we can enjoy, and you know, all the other good stuff that we value. So this is a starting point. This is a beginning to a several week conversation with some other folks that will hopefully be much smarter than the three of us. And you know, I don't know if we brought any answers to the table. We asked some questions. I don't know if we have answers, but maybe these other people will. So I appreciate you too helping me get some thoughts and some questions bubbling up and boiling around in the heads that our listeners will hopefully be engaged in themselves in these coming days and weeks. Thank you, gentlemen. 01:31:48 Speaker 3: Thank you Mark. 01:31:49 Speaker 2: I love you, Love me too, buddy. 01:31:52 Speaker 3: Hey Mark, quick here, do you think the next time we get together like this it'll be an intervention for Dan. 01:32:00 Speaker 2: Usually to talk about that stuff off air? 01:32:01 Speaker 3: Total, I'm just gonna email you some links to some rehab facilities the next time I log on, and there's like a therapist with you two. And you guys have to read a note to me. 01:32:14 Speaker 4: It's like, dear Dan, you're so bright, but sometimes the darkness creeps in and you're violent. 01:32:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, so make sure you guys tune in next time. All right, And that's a wrap. Thanks for being here. I hope we gave you a few things to think about as we move forward and until next week, thank you for being here and stay wired. Don

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