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 Casey Anderson, a big game hunter, a wildlife filmmaker, and a large carnivorre specialist to discuss the much debated and pretty darn tricky topic of coexistence between hunters and carnivores. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by First Life, and this week we are tackling a topic that I have long wanted to discuss. This is a tricky, hairy, tough animal to wrestle with. Here we are discussing hunters and carnivore and whether or not these two groups, one set humans, one set animals can coexist. What are the challenges of living alongside large carnivores like bears, mountain lions, wolves, What are the realities that come alongside of that? What are the pros and cons of having these animals on the landscape, What are the risks? What are the benefits, what are the challenges inherent in trying to find some kind of balance in between, because there are really strong opinions on either side of this issue. There are some who think that wolves and grizzlies are you know, God's gift to the world, and they're going to solve all of your problems, and they're going to cure world hunger, and they are angels, you know, spitting rainbows and butterflies out of their butts. On the other side, you have people that think that wolves and bears and lions are the work of the devil, and they are going to destroy ranching, and they are going to destroy your opportunities to hunt, and they are everything that is making your hunting worse. Right, there's some people saying that as well. There's some people who want to wipe grizzly bears or wipe wolves off the map. There are some people who say that we should never be able to hunt them and that they're the best thing in the world. The reality might lie somewhere in between. I would say my perspective, and I'm leading you here a little bit with a preview of what's to come, but my take on the matter is that there is somewhere in between those two polar sides of this issue that deserve some time and attention and some discussion, and that is what we're going to do here today. And joining me, as I mentioned at the top, is a guy by the name of Casey Anderson, and he's someone who is very well equipped to talk about this topic because he has lived this from all sides. He is a hunter. He is a big game hunter, he's a bow hunter. He's chased elk and deer and all sorts of critters like that. He grew up in this world, in this lifestyle, so he understands our perspective. On the flip side, he is also an animal lover, just like many of us are, who appreciates these animals on the landscape, not just elkin, deer, but also bears and wolves and lions. And he studies them and follows them and films them for a living, and because he loves doing that and is fascinated by them, so he sees the value in having these creatures out there too. So he's talked to the animal rights activists, he's talked to the hunters, he's talked to the people going to Yellowstone to watch for wolves, and he's talked to people in Montana where he lives about hunting wolves. He's seen all sides of this issue. He's explored it and disgusted with experts. He's lived it himself. And that is I think a really key thing here for this discussion, because he brings to this topic a perspective that is not just informed by reading some papers or by reading the social media comments or by listening to some other random person. His experience and perspective is based very much so on his on the ground experience because over the last thirty plus years, he has traveled all over this country and world, getting up close to and studying grizzly bears, mountain lions, tigers, wolves, big toothy critters that evoke all sorts of emotions. He's been up close to them, watched them for days upon days upon weeks and years worth of time seeing them, watching them, developing an intimate understanding of the reality of these creatures, how they live, the impact they have on the landscape and the people in the area. He's seen it all the good, the bad, the in between. So I wanted to chat with Casey today to explore this kind of murky in between what exists between the predators are horrible and the predators are the best. What's there in between, what's the radical center of this issue, and what can we as hunters do to better understand how to make sure there's a positive future for us in our hunting way of life and the critters that we like to hunt and pursue, but also for the health of the ecosystem out there that supports those animals, which does include carnivores in many cases. So that's the plan for today. That's the chat we have in store. I absolutely love this one. Casey is a wealth of knowledge, has a lot of great stories. He just launched a new YouTube channel be called Endless Venture. I highly recommend it. It's very entertaining. By the end of this conversation, I guarantee you're going to want to go check it out. So I'm just gonna preview it for it until you just go ahead subscribe to that now and then come on back. Listen to this chat with Casey. If you have ever wondered about, or been frustrated by, or confused by, or just simply intrigued by the challenges, the debates, the discussions you see online when it comes to hunters and the animals we hunt, and then how all that exists alongside stuff like wolves or bears or mountain lions or coyotes, any of that stuff has ever popped up in your mind and you're like, man, that's a doozy her Man, that's frustrating her Man, I don't get it. This is the chat for you. This is one to listen to. So, without any further ado, here's my conversation with Casey Anderson. All right, joining me now is Casey Anderson. Welcome to the show, Casey, thanks for having me Mark, Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you making time to do this. It's a conversation that I've been looking forward to for a while. I never expected it to be on this podcast, but my wife and I first started following your work. I don't know, it's been a lot of years ago. Now you've been doing this for twenty years, thirty years probably something like that, Is that right, Casey? I think we first stumbled on your stuff maybe fifteen years ago. But how long ago did that start? 00:06:57 Speaker 3: Yeah? Fifteen years ago I was doing National geographic series, but I've been doing wildlife filmmaking type stuff for about thirty one years. 00:07:09 Speaker 2: Getting old, it goes fast. I can't believe that thirty one years. So I think most people probably are familiar with you from that kind of stuff, from your National Geographic series, or you did some stuff on Animal Planet too, Is that right I did? 00:07:24 Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been all around the block animal Planet, History, Channel Discovery. 00:07:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've done all this wildlife filmmaking. People view you as a wildlife expert. I've heard you talk about yourself as like a animal activist or advocate, but folks probably might not be as familiar with the fact that you are also a hunter. Can you give me a little bit of that background. How did you get into hunting? What is that? 00:07:49 Speaker 3: You know? 00:07:49 Speaker 2: How is that a part of your life now? 00:07:52 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I grew up in Montana, was born and raised, fifth generation, so hunting has been a big part of my family very very long time. Yeah. I mean I was hunting in Montana, you know, going out with my dad since I could walk, you know, and you know that it really hunting really made me who I am today in a lot of ways, you know, as a tracker looking for animals, being out in nature, you know, you know, even though we're pursuing elk and deer most of the time growing up, you know, it's having those interactions and encounters with the other wildlife always left me a little bit curious wanting to know more, especially the more elusive ones like mountain lions and grizzly bears, where you just you'd see them, you know, maybe once a year or every once a decade, right or you know, you see their tracks, and so wanting to know more about them really kind of led me into trying to film and and learn more, you know. And funny thing about the filming someone asked me, like how I got into filming, And it did start in hunting in another way. 00:08:59 Speaker 4: You know. 00:08:59 Speaker 3: I would go out have these amazing stories and these amazing encounters with my dad, and I'd come back to the school yard and I would tell these stories over and over. And it got to the point where I had such so many good stories that I think everybody thought I was full of it. And there's a part of me that started documenting this stuff just to prove that I wasn't full of it, right. 00:09:22 Speaker 2: That's funny. So I've always thought, you know, watching you know, like Planet earth or any other wildlife you know, focused film or documentary. You watch this stuff and sometimes wonder do these guys really know what they're doing a lot of these folks, they kind of imagine someone coming from London or England or wherever it is over there where they've got the BBC Studios where there's so much of this wildlife expertise as far as documentary making, And I wonder, like, these guys come over here to America and they're filming bears or deer or elk or whatever it is, and how often are they stumbling around half blind when you could take a deer hunter or elk hunter, or someone from Montana or Wyoming or Michigan who's lived out here tracking deer or elk and they could probably do a hell of a job finding these critters and filming these critters. Uh. Have you found that a non hunting wildlife filmmakers struggle a little bit more than folks like you who have that hunting expertise. Is there some truth to that? 00:10:23 Speaker 3: Oh? Man, totally on p Yeah, sorry to me. My friends that are listening that are in that camp, that are but they know they are, you know, that's the thing it's it's there's a I would say over they a majority of the folks that you see on TV don't know what they're doing, right, you know, they they spend most of their time in the field on the net's during these projects, right, so you know they're not not you know, they're not like rookies, but they don't have a lifetime and experience and definitely not generational knowledge. Yeah, you know, I hate to pick on them. You know, usually they're pretty face that shows up and there's usually somebody who has had the experience off camera who's tell them all about it and leading, you know, guiding them through the through the process. And yeah, but even even me, man, I'll tell you I'm go all over the world, and I'm the first to admit that, you know, I don't know anything about tigers or snow leopards, but what I've learned in Montana and western North America, you can't apply that stuff. You know, there's a bit of resiliency gained from hunting, but there's some simple tracking stuff you gain from hunting that you can't apply to other parts of the world. So you're not starting off from scratch. But you know, being humble enough to realize that when you're in somebody else's backyard, listen, watch learn. Yeah, I'm always learning and I love it. You know, I'm always learning in my own backyard. 00:11:46 Speaker 4: You know. 00:11:46 Speaker 3: That's the one thing. The more you out there, the more you realize you've got so much to learn. Yeah, I mean, I'm an open minded dude. I never like to use the word expert because I don't think there are any yet. 00:11:59 Speaker 2: That's the beautiful thing about hunting or wildlife in general. It's an endless, an endless road to walk down. You're never going to have it all figured. 00:12:07 Speaker 3: Out for sure. Absolutely. So. 00:12:10 Speaker 2: You grew up hunting as a kid with your family. You fell in love with the pursuit of wildlife, studying wildlife. You mentioned that in particular that the especially elusive critters like mountain lions or maybe some of the other carnivores that was particularly caught your attention. What was that like and how did that kind of shift your career trajectories. You started not just pursuing wildlife to eat them, but also to study and then film these critters, tell these stories. What was it about lions, wolves, bears that kind of got their hooks their claws into for lack of a better pun. 00:12:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean more you're you know, as a hunter and being out there and killing elk and I mean, I'll just just give you a little anecdote. I remember one time because you reminded me of it. 00:12:57 Speaker 4: Here. 00:12:58 Speaker 3: I was like in fifth grade and I must have had a little bit of a knack for tracking because I'm in class and I remember the teacher. Ade walks in the room and had to slip to the teacher, and the teacher goes, O, casee, your dad's here to pick it for that appointment. I don't. I'm like, I don't remember this appointment. But I'm like, okay, So I go to the office and there's my dad looking standing there waiting for me, and so let's go to that appointment. And I'm like, I nod my head and we get and get out the truck. He goes, I just shot a big bull with my boat. We got to go track this thing down. I lost the blood trail, you know. So he lost the blood trail, so he knew that I could help, you know. I think it was a you know, part of that being a young kid too. You don't get in your own way a little bit, you can get focused. But he would do this all the time, So my tracking capabilities were My Dad definitely noticed him right away, and I think the more he kind of celebrated him, the more I wanted to lean into him. So then I guess, I guess where I'm going here is that you know? So now there's these other animals you see tracks of. You never get their eyes on them, but you know, you know, fundamentally if there's tracks on the ground and you can follow those tracks at the end those tracts as an animal. So what about this mountain lion? Right where's this thing at that? I see its tracks all the time? So I think that I became almost just obsessed with the idea of trying to find these things I knew that were out there and leaving their tracks behind. And that led me, you know, I went to Montana State to study wild biology, and then in the summer months, i'd go down to Yellowstone and I would run into these guys that we were talking about friars, these guys from la and New York who were out here doing documentaries but not knowing where to find things. And they would come up to me and say hey kid, you know, I'll give you fifty bucks a day to carry my heavy backpack on top of the mountain and go try to find some of these animals. And I'm like, seriously, like jackpot, right, this is what I'm good at. 00:14:45 Speaker 4: Right. 00:14:45 Speaker 3: So that's how it started. That's how I started, that made that connection to TV. I would take those skills that I learned from hunting and those tracking skills, and now I'm out in the park searching for these elusive animals I've always wanted to and making enough money to you know, buy beer. 00:15:05 Speaker 4: You know. 00:15:05 Speaker 3: So it was like it's how it went down. And so that just metamorphosized into like, you know, the producers asking me to do a little bit more, me helping him produce some of the story ideas. And then ultimately about my junior year, used to before my junior year in college, a guy came up to me and says, hey, I've got the series. It's this launched. I wanted, you know, I need you to come along with me. I'm going to go all over the world and you're gonna be my sidekick and help me find animals. And I'm like yeah, And I never looked back. I never did. I That's what I've been doing since then. 00:15:38 Speaker 2: So that's how it all. Yeah, So you grew up in Montana at a particularly interesting time because before you were born, we saw many of the big carnivores in Montana, across the western United States kind of reach a low point. Right, Grizzly bears reached their lowest point there in the seventies, mountain lines were pretty close to their lowest point. Wolves have been completely essentially eradicated from the Western United States. And then in the nineties when you were in college, I guess wolves are reintroduced. Grizzly bears have been slowly recovering, reaching higher levels than they had in a while, Lions showing back up more and more. What was that like growing up and seeing that change and seeing these critters start showing back up. Was there any point where you kind of remember like a before and after or like when you were really young, these things are pretty rare, and then by the time you're in college and beyond, now all of a sudden you're seeing this different world. Was that noticeable? What was that like? 00:16:36 Speaker 3: Oh Man so much? I mean he really kind of painted the picture there, I mean literally, as my start of my career that these animals were invisible and they just started coming back. I mean, growing up seeing a mountain lion, seen a grizzly bear, it is so rare. You know, wolves like a fantasy, right, something from the far North, and then to be you know, one of the first projects I worked on knocked down on those the pens. When they had the wolves ready to release, we did you know, a guy guy showed me a map. He's like, hey, I'm going to get some footage of this. And I looked at him, like, well, let's this go on. The back door doesn't close back there, it's going to take us about fourteen mile hike. And he's like, let's do it. So we went back and shot some like snipered some you know shots of the wolves and the pen. I didn't know at the time what was going to be, what was going to happen. It was interesting. Even then I was so skeptical. I mean, half my family are cattle ranchers, and you know, they weren't real happy about it, so, you know, it was it was interesting time. And then yeah, as my career started launching, these animals were gaining ground and you see more and more of them to the you know, and arguably you know, then the early two thousands, you know, the grizzly bear started popping up like crazy. You start seeing more and more, and it was it was interesting, and it actually had a lot to do as the launch of my career. You know, I started going out there and having pretty guaranteed sidings and observation and opportunity with grizzly bears, and that was taken advantage of it. Yeah, no, I mean it was. It's still changing. You know, it is a very strange time to be involved in this because I've watched it go, like I said, from zero to one hundred in the last few decades, and now we're trying to make decisions of what we're going to do with all these animals, right. 00:18:21 Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where all sorts of interesting conversations come up. And there's never been a shorte of controversy with these critters, right, I mean before the reintroduction of well even before all that. Right, if we really rewind the clock, you've got you know, European American settlers coming across the country and encountering gray wolves and grizzly bears for the first time, and pretty quickly not wanting them around, and then over the next hundred some years essentially getting to work eradicating them, and then they're rid of them. And then when we talk about trying to help bring them back, there was all sorts of fear and hysteria around. Well, if you bring back wolves, it's gonna demolish all the elk, it's going to kill all the cows, et cetera. There's a lot of that. I'm sure you were hearing that from your family members and people there in the mid nineties. And then wolves were brought back and grizzly bears have been protected and slowly have been returning. There's still a lot of that talk today, right, there's still a lot of people who say, well, you know, the wolves destroy the hunting here, or the wolves are destroying our ability to make a living on the land. What's the reality been from your view? You've been in the middle of it, You've lived a lot of it. You have friends, I'm sure I've heard you talk about friends who are elk hunting guides and friends who are wildlife viewing guides. So you've had people who've dealt with this from all angles. What's the reality on the ground. Bin Have we lost all the elk? Has it become impossible to raise cattle? Is it something in between or is it the Disneyland story that some folks also say where it's you know, wolves are just you know, shooting out rainbows and butterflies from their butts and saving all the world's problems. What's the truth? 00:19:58 Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate the question, and and I can only tell you the truth from one of my truth right. It's the truth is it's somewhere. It's very gray and somewhere in the middle from what I see. You know, I actually go out and try to find wolves all the time. It's hard. It's hard, man. Wolves aren't everywhere. They're hard to They're hard to find. I see results of them being out there. I definitely just let's just take some kind of a metric here. Let's take elk. Elk's a great one because I grew up hunting them, and there was a heyday in the nineties before the wolve. Early nineties, Man, there were there were elk everywhere everybody. All my friends were out shooting them. You know, all the guys that could couldn't hike up a trail quarter mile or getting a bowl, right, So if you look at it in that aspect, it was easier to haunt elk. But do I think the ecosystem was was healthy? Probably not. It was healthy for an elk hunter, but it wasn't healthy holistically. Yeah. I think that I've, you know, in some level, and I've I've talked about this. I've killed my biggest bulls. Lately, I feel like there's bigger bulls out there than there ever has been. I mean, I remember in the early nine ers you can go out there and you'd see like one hundred you know, brusheads in a day, you know what I mean, But you you know the real big whoppers. Man, I feel like, you know, records are getting broken constantly. And I'll tell you what I like to hunt better now. There's something about it, man, beyond the landscape with predators, to beyond the landscape with praise, species that are weary, who don't give you the second glance when you crack the branch, because there's other predators out there that are not going to be forgiving. You're hunting them more like there's a I don't know, I have a lot more pride, I guess in it in some level. So there's that. I mean, I'm just giving you that. But you know, as a predator, you know, the predator thing waxes and wings from just a guy who's seeking them out all the time. You know, there's a lot of there's a push right now for grizzly bears. But I've notably noticed in the last couple of years, I'm actually seeing less grizzly bears than I ever have. I don't know why. Maybe they're changing their habits. I you know, the only wolves I've seen in the last couple of years regularly or been in the in Yellowstone Park, and there's parts outside the park to where I see wolves all the time. But I think they're getting weary too, because they are getting hunted and they're very hard to find, not an easy animal to hunt, whether you're with a camera or a rifle. So it's all changing. I think there's that that mix between humans and humans and predators is evolving, and they're changing their habits, even if if even if there's more on the landscape, they're I don't know, they're just getting more weary period. Yeah, that's what I'm seeing. 00:22:52 Speaker 2: So so let's say you're at a diner or some bar in Paradise Valley or Livingstone, or or maybe you're traveling your over in Minnesota checking out the boundary waters or something, and someone's sitting at the bar next to you and they're talking about this very topic. And let's say they're a hunter, and they're saying, man, we used to have good deer hunting here up in northern Minnesota, and now I can't hardly see a deer. It's because of the damn wolves. Or you're there in Livingston and someone's talking about all the elk hunt is not like it used to be in the nineties. Wolves ruined it. What do you say to someone like that? How do you carry on a conversation? What do you what do you try to share with them? Given your experience that's pretty unique from compared to many. 00:23:37 Speaker 3: You know, first thing I do, Mark, is I listened to them, because everybody's got their living their own life, you know, and animals, they all have their own values out there, and you know, hympathize with anybody who's lost livestock or and not seen as many deer around their trees stand in Minnesota or whatever. Man, I do because I think that there's change on the landscape. I'll listen to them, and I don't ever I don't know. I don't ever disagree or pushback or try to preach my agenda. I don't have an agenda, you know. I I think the main thing I try to do is help them understand the importance of a healthy ecosystem, and that includes about I mean includes predators, a balanced ecosystem. I feel like if we could all agree on that, if that was the bottom line, no matter what are. You know what our value is, you know what stakeholders we represent. That if we just want a healthy, well balanced ecosystem, that's that a win for everybody. Yeah, you know, the wolves in Montana is a tough one, man. I mean there's part of me that wishes and that knew they're just north of Helena. I knew there's wolves around there. I hurt them, howling have seen their tracks. This is pre reintroduction. And if you took the amount of money and and value the chaos that created and just gave them time and try to open up corridors, wolves would have been in Yellowstone. I've been social wise, they would have been accepted. You know, a little lot more, and I always wish that that would have been the case. But here we are, you know, bears. I think it's another thing. I mean, we hear about them. You only to hear about them because they've done something wrong, right, you know, And so I'm always trying to paint the picture of the other side the truth. I mean, I I've argued, probably have had thousands of bear encounters, and they've all been pretty good, you know. But at the same time, I'm not the rainbows and stars. You're not your butt thing either. I mean, I've also carried a man off a mountain who's killed by a grizzly bear. I've been around the dark side a lot too, So I know there's a reality of that, you know, And I think that the truth lies there in the middle. And the other part of it is, I think those of us who lived amongst amongst all these animals, I mean, I think we have to have a pride in the fact that we do and kind of you know, kind of honor and respect our neighbors no matter what. Man, Because there's a lot of people that don't live in the country with grizzly bears and wolves. There's a lot of people that go in their backyard and don't have to worry about them or think about them, and they're not living man. And I think that I've tried to, you know, get folks to realize that we that this is a gift to have these animals in our backyard. And there is something about that the wildness that you have by having large fetters on the landscape, that is is such holds such value and you feel it when you go to these places that don't have it. You know, my grandpa cattle rancher, you know, he was a he had a lot of pride in being a Montana cattle rancher and dealing with forty below winters and grizzly bears and wolves and you know, and if you heard people are you know, arguing about it or complaining about it. He always said, there's a lot of grass and Nebraska and that's proby a better place to raise cattle, you know. And it's it's just kind of that the state of mind. I guess it's just like you gotta have pride in some level. And I think it's gonna be tough. We got to I don't know the answers. I think it's gonna be give and take and compromise. And that's when I sit down with those people that you're talking about. I try to find that compromise, you know, I try to hear them out. I play double advocate from all sides, and that's say hey, can we meet in the middle somewhere on this, because ultimately, I think that's what's gonna where it's gonna have to end up. Yeah. 00:27:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, because because like you said, the reality is somewhere in between, and for some reason, big carnivores. I guess many things polarize these days, but big carnivores especially seem to polarize, and you get someone on on one side or the other believing the this kind of radicalized, curated story about the critter where it's either they're they're solving all the world's problems or they are all the world's problems, right when, as you said that, the reality is there in between. The reality is that, you know, the elk population in Montana is actually higher now than it was prior to wolf reintroduction. But to your point, it is different. There are some places where they're not as easy to kill as they used to. I've got a good friend of mine who I went on a wolf hunt with last year, kind of studying this talking to people about this set of issues. I went on a mountain lion hunt, I went on a wolf hunt, and I went wolf watching and exploring Yellowstone, trying to talk to as many different people as I could to understand this set of topics from these different perspectives. Right, And the fact of the matter is that, yes, like wolves have impacted prey populations in some places, in some localized places a lot. But at the same time, they've not destroyed it everywhere. They've not ruined hunting. They've maybe just changed behavior or shifted locations or you know, rebalanced populations in relation to the habitat. Maybe we're closer to where they maybe should have been at one point, but not as many as some hunters of like. Of course, another thing is that, like I'm sure you've seen this and heard this a thousand times, predators are very easy to point a finger at, like they are obvious things like oh, that's the problem, when in reality the truth is much more nuanced. Right, Oftentimes habitat related things and human development related things on all that is impacting you know, prey populations but you layer on top of that, then yes, there is some predation happening, and then that's going to seem even more serious. And then the wolves are a lot easier to get mad at than the fact that I'm building a new house and you're building a new house, and your buddy's building a new house, and you know, habitat is changing and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, that's that's a harder story to wrap your head. But on the flip side, then you've got the same thing with you know, folks who live in New York City who love wildlife and who watch all the nature docum, they watch all your shows, they watch everything on Netflix and Discovery Channel and whatever, and they do a couple of nice posts on Twitter or whatever talking about how much they love animals. But then they think that ranchers are horrible because they're upset with the fact that wolves are killing some of their cattle, or they hint that hunters are horrible because some of us are frustrated sometimes with the impacts, And so I think to ignore either one of the realities, the fact that there are challenges with predators, but at the same time, there are real values to having them, like there's there's truth to both sides of that, and ignoring you either one of those sides, you know, puts you in a place where you're just not seeing truth. You're seeing this kind of kaleidoscopic view that's all painted one color, and that makes it really hard to ever find a solution. Like you said, right, the solutions probably lay there in the middle. 00:30:54 Speaker 3: Well said, that's all Well said now completely, And I find, you know, because they now have the responsibility and you you're in the same boat. We're talking to people. We have a bunch of people listening to us. And I find myself more and more these days trying not to preach the choir. I try to lean it, you know, reach across the fence and pull folks in the middle. I tried to, you know, I just did a thing about bear spray bolls versus bullets. I try to be very honest about it, you know, show showcasing both sides, not preach. Let people make their decision about what they wanted, what they want to use for bear defense, you know. And I know that I've nicknamed them, you know, I used this before, But the jeth Rows and the moonbeams. So those are the extremists, right, the jeth throw sorry jeth throw out there. I'm sorry to pick on your name, but you know, they're the ones that are going to push the button and eliminate all the predators. And then the moonbeams are the ones, like I said, they have some spiritual connection during a full moon, that have some vibe, you know, and they love all the predators. You know. I may never get their ears, but there are a lot of folks in the middle to both sides, and they don't know which one to be on. And I think that you know, giving them the right information and talking to them about the things that you just mentioned, most folks listen, and most folks are pretty smart. You let the facts out in front of them and they'll make some pretty good decisions. And I think we got to resist the extremism. I think we got to We just got to say no, we're not going that route anymore. We're tired of this polarization. It ain't working, it's broken, So it's time to let's find this compromise in the middle. And a lot of people, look, I have some friends man, and both sides that look at me and call me a whimp for picking that middle ground. And yeah, I'm sorry, man, I guess I'm a wimp, but I think it's the way forward. 00:32:42 Speaker 2: Well, I've liked to refer to it as this, and I think I heard you say the same thing or something like it. It's like the radical center. It's kind of radical now to be in the middle. And I think that actually takes maybe the most boldness these days is to resist falling into this while you're in this camp of this camp, resist that that's the easy choice to be like, Oh, that's my team and I'm just going to follow them for wherever they go, whatever they say. It's a lot harder these days to carve out your own path somewhere in the middle and maybe pick a little bit from both sides and hear both sides and consider different ideas. That's a that's a tough path to to hoe. 00:33:22 Speaker 3: But yeah, and I think we got to make that team strong. Man. I tell you I've gone to all the I go to a lot of the Fish Wildlife Commission and meeting they're listening at very least, and it is the it's the jet throws and the moonbeams that show up and talk they're allowed. Man, they're the squeaky wheels and that radical center that we need that needs to exist. They don't show up, and we need to show up. The radical center needs to show up. And we got to talk, and we gotta we got to represent. And I'm and you know, honestly most people officially in Montana that that's who they are. You know, they just choose not to speak up for some reason. I don't I don't know what it is. 00:33:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, you talked about earlier how you'd like to kind of push back on the kind of I'm strgging to think of what I'm trying to say here, but you kind of push back on the obvious things like if you're talking to someone on one side of the issue, you'll kind of give them the devil's advocate perspective, and then if you're over on the other side of the issue talking to folks of there, you'll give them the other side and kind of, you know, push on, pushback on both. So we kind of pushed back a little bit on the idea that you know, large carnivores are destroying wildlife and destroying hunting and destroying ranching. There are challenges, there are localized impacts, but all the studies have also shown that, you know, it's not cataclysmic on the flip side though, then there's also the Moonbeam story, you know, in Yellowstone for example. Right there was the reporting and the studies that came out, you know, ten years after reintroduction about the ecological impacts the wolves were having, and there was the eventually social media posts and films and videos talking about how wolves change rivers and all the different things like that that the trophic cascades story and ideas, and then I don't know, ten years ago or however long it was, then new studies came out saying, well, that's that's not quite right. There's actually other things that are impacting you know, beavers and grassland production, all this kind of stuff. So maybe the wolves change rivers thing isn't everything that it was that those those stories told us. And when that all came out, what I heard from my community from hunters was jumping on that and latching onto it and saying, wow, all that stuff was overload of croc All the trophic cascade stuff is blowny. Anything like wolves and bears aren't all you know, everything that the crazy California Disney World. People said get rid of them, right. That was like the Jethrow reaction to the news that the Trophic Cascade store was a little bit more complex. The jeth Throw reaction was that means it's bs again. The truth is more in the middle. From what I've learned in my research is that there is something there, but it's a little bit more gray. This is a very long winded way to get to a question. Sorry case, My question is can you speak to what the reality is of the positive impact of having these animals on the landscape? Because you mentioned this earlier, You mentioned like, hey, there's importance to having a balanced ecosystem, there's importance to having wolves and bears and lions on the landscape. It's easy for someone to say that. It's harder for someone to understand that. Can you help us understand what does that mean? What does that look like? And and was the Trophic Cascades story a load of croc or is there some reality there but maybe just not as simplified as those videos and early stories made it seem. 00:36:48 Speaker 3: Yeah, it was some good, pretty good propaganda from that side, you know, Like you said, I think that at first it did appear that it was something that made sense. But I think you're right, it's blood gray there. I think that part of it's true, But there's a lot of other bits and pieces that are missing from that story. Are that actually add to that. What's happening in the change, Like you mentioned, I's going there, So what have I seen on the ground. Do I think wolves had created a more vibrant ecosystem? Yes, it's the short answer is yes. But I think it's it's it waxes and WANs, it gets out of balance and then we you know, you know, as soon as the wolf hunt came in and there was some actual animals being harvested and they were moving around and not getting the sedentary, at some level things changed. And I feel like I honestly do. And again there's all the moon beams are getting mad at me, but you know, there's a couple of things that happened there. The actual ecosystem seemed more vibrant. Everybody was a little bit more happy, and I remember, I mean, and I was like, yes, you know, like we got we got like I've got friends that hated wolves ten years ago and now love them because they love hunting them so much, Right, and if you in ten years ago, if they could push the button and all the wolves that disappeared, they would have. Now there's no way they would do that because they enjoy that. They enjoy going out there and hunting, actually hunting them, so now they found value in them. Yeah, there's not there's not a many elk on the on the landscape. It's harder to find antlers in some of these spots where I used to go find them laying around everywhere, and during the shed season. There's a lot of things like that. But you know, there's there's more. I see more diversity of wildlife, especially meso predators, you know, things like bobcats and badgers and pine martin and things that you almost never seen. Somehow there's more around. And whether that's directly a tie to wolves, I don't. I can't make that correlation, but there's certainly more. It's more vibrant, more variable than I've ever seen it, more closely to pure you know. The other thing is the more we curate the wild, we're just domesticating it. You know, if we take freaders up the landscape, we have a bunch of unculates kind of being lazily around, you know, and we're one step away from putting fences around them and call them cows. But when you have predators and lands came, there's on the landscape and they're shaking things up. You can see it, you can feel it. There's just something about every animal is just a little bit on edge living life, a little bit more alive. And I think that that's that's something to consider, you know, we can cons we can continue down the road of you know, let's be honest. I mean, the more regulations and the the more taking predators off the landscape and all that stuff, we're just we're one step closer to Europe, you know, and go there and go walk around the wild and tell me how awesome it feels. Yeah, And I think that on the next step is what we have down in Texas, you know. And so I think that we've got to look at it and realize that those animals are doing something to make it better and making and keeping and maintaining the wild. I'm not a biologist. I'm not out there measuring things and stuff like that, but I can just feel it, and I can just see it. And as a person who's out there pursuing multiple species to film and wanting and finds value and seeing them and their interactions with each other. I'm seeing it more than ever. And I'm sure it has to do with having predators on the landscape. 00:40:33 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. I feel like that is so much more relatable, I think, for people than a biological study that says, well, because wolves are back on the landscape, it reduced the amount of time that elk spend on this patch of habitat by fifteen percent, which increased grass production by twenty two percent, which led to more birds on the more birds in the valley, and slightly less pressure on willows and aspens, which eventually led to more beavers on the pond. And YadA, YadA, YadA, like all those things might be true, and it seems like, right, there are these these cascading effects that when you insert or remove an animal from a natural ecosystem, it has a set of ripple effects on everything around it. Everything's connected in some ways, right, But that's hard to wrap your head around when you're reading some kind of thick study. But when you're out there, you're right, you can feel it, and I know that's fuzzy, and that's obviously not irreviewable or publishable in the journal. But you can feel a difference. I mean, it's like when you point out the difference between like walking around in Nebraska versus Montana, I can certainly, you know, a test to the fact that everything is different. The volume is turned up to eleven. It just feels like everything you and every other animal in the landscape is on a different level. Everything is heightened, The stakes are higher. Every sound, smell, shape, movement matters, and that finds its way into every ounce of your being when you're out there. Man, So there's something there. There's so right, there's something there. 00:42:23 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a funny one, you know. I think another thing is a lot of people they used the baseline of what's a healthy ecosystem quote unquote, that's what it was in the past. You know, like my my father's generation, you know, grew up in an overpopulated health population at some level, you know where that was all there everywhere, especially the yellows in ecosystem, and they think that that that's the baseline where you need to get back to. Right. But it was very what's the word, you know, it was just very uh, I can't think of it, but it was just yeah, very it's artificial, artificial, yeah, and it was just a lot of el but there was a lot of not a lot of other things. Yeah, it felt different back then. So you know, I don't know, man, I think that I have the wolves made it in a better place. I think they have and they haven't. You know, if you take put the human factor in, I think that there's some people who lost a lot of jobs and the wolves came in, But there was a bunch of people who got jobs, you know. I know even in the Park County, the county and this north of y Elstone here, I mean half a million, half a billion, five hundred million dollars go into tourism and a lot of that's just to come see wildlife. And it's ever increasing. And I think that, you know, a lot of people are celebrating the diversity of wildlife that we have here that include wolves and grizzly bears, because that is a big draw. White people come here, but they also come here to see everything else, and everything else is here because of those wolves and those grizzly bears are here too. It's hard. It's hard, you know, It's it's like you're saying it's easy to connect those little dots, right, but to look big picture and let's look, let's look thirty years, forties, one hundred years. I mean nature works in thousands of years, right, not not these short term things. And are we doing something good? It seems like we're on the right path. But I do think, you know, these prettters need to be managed. And that's the bottom line. We live in a world that is greatly influenced by people habitat fragmentation. We're leaving our mark, you know, and if we just left everything unmanaged, it would be a catastrophe. So it's getting the other side to realize that that's part of the equation. That's very tough sometimes, but I think more and more people are starting to come around. 00:44:44 Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's continue down that line. There's this the reality of the of the situation. If we're willing to look at things that, yeah, like you just said, management is needed. There are all these different ways we're influencing wildlife now that require that we maintain being a part of it. Right, Maybe if you turn back the clock, you have to turn back the clock a very very long ways, twenty thousand plus years. If you want to see what North America was like before humans were here. But we've always been a part of it, but less so maybe than we are now. So maybe twenty thousand years ago or ten thousand years ago, we had a lighter touch, and huge populations of carnivores existed on the landscape with huge populations of herbivores, and they are able to live in balance. But now, to your point, there's all these different things going on. Having both of these things out there is important, but you know, there are all these human elements too, and part of managing wildlife now is also managing wildlife people relationships, and sometimes that is just as important for the future of a species as the actual numbers on the ground. 00:45:56 Speaker 3: Right. 00:45:57 Speaker 2: So to your point, when wolf hunting was reached, was so wolf's are reintroduced. There's a lot of anti wolf sentiments from hunters and ranchers. But then when wolf hunting was opened back up, you mentioned that it made a lot of people happy on the hunting side, right, Folks all of a sudden had a sense of agency. They felt like they could do something about it. They could get out there and chase these critters and maybe impact things a little bit. The way they'd like to see them. But at the same time, it's still managed, there were still quotas, it was still regulated. So you said something that confirmed a theory I've always had and I'd love to hear more about it, which was that I've always thought that by opening a hunting season, by having an open, carefully managed, and regulated season for a carnivor of some species, it actually improves the long term prospects for that species, because yes, there will be some taken through hunting, but it increases support for that animal because now you have a new constituency that has a reason to value that animal. So you said it perfectly with wolves, right, because now there are some folks out there who used to hate wolves, but now they're okay with wolves or even like wolves, because they've started hunting them. They feel if they have some control. Maybe they've developed a relationship with the species in a different kind of way now because they've spent time out there looking for them, studying them, learning about them, and all of a sudden, you have more people that want that critter around, maybe not the same levels that an anti hunter or just an animal activist wants, but they still want them around. I think mountain lions are a great example of this. Right, some of the most some of the most kind of like profoundly involved advocates for lions in America are houndsman line hunters for sure. So is there you know, from your perspective, do you think that that holds Is there that hold water? Is that something that you know we could make a case to the larger environmental crowd, like, hey, this is actually gonna help wolves in the long run, this is actually gonna help lions in the long run. Could this help grizzly bears in the long run? That's very contentious right now? Could you could you expand on that a little bit more? 00:48:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the bottom line is is that if if the majority or even more than half of the majority of the people don't want the animal there, that it won't be there. Changing the value quote unquote value to for an animal within the perspective of people changes a lot. And you said some things that I think are really important. I'll try to touch on. But you know, so once an animal seems, once an animal becomes able to hunt, it does the value changes? You know, now you have it's a game species, it's an animal that you can go out and enjoy being out in the outdoors and in pursuit of you like you said, you have that can you have that connection that you feel like you're actually doing something to potentially save the elk or whatever you you're worried about. Yeah, and then and then again, what you were saying, I think is the most important is that when you're on the landscape with these animals, now you're hunting them, and you're learning about them, and you're pulling the veil off them a little bit. As you learn about them and observe them, you start you start to understand what they really are. And I think that you know, like I said, once you understand who these animals really are, then you can actually have a real perspective of their place on the in the ecosystem and their place in the world. You know, the lion hunters, houndsman man, it was. It's a great example, like I said, right now, there's houndsmen, especially in the state of Montana, there's a you know, kind of a big push to reduce the line population and the houndsmen are like they're the biggest animal advocates out there right now. I mean, they're like hell, no, we won't go or you know, we're going to draw the line. And it's all based and real science. You know, in fact, a lot of the sciences is from these line in the front of these houndsmen. Because they're the only ones out there looking for cats. Are the only people out there that have any idea how many of them are out there. They've got their finger on the pulse of these animals. And I think that you see that with even bear hunters in the North and Alaska and stuff like that. They're the ones that have the actual pulse on these animals. And if there was a quota that we got too high up there, they'd be the first ones pounded on the doors of the congressmen saying no, we're not going to go there. So moral of the story is if we can collectively all have value in these animals, and again the common goal is that we want them to be healthy on the landscape, because you can't hunt animals that are not healthy on the landscape, and you can't photograph animals that are not healthy in the landscape. If that's the common denominator and we're all fighting for it, then the animal is going to thrive long term and everybody's going to be happy. And I think this we go we look for it's it's pulling back. And here's the thing, like with grizzly bears right now, you know, and lions and wolves, it's all of them. As soon as you introduce fear into the management any emotion or lack of fear, you know, any of these. As soon as you introduce emotion into wildlife policies and decisions, it goes wrong. And I think a lot of the pushes I see from a lot of people right now to dealistic grizzly bear comes out of fear. We gotta hunt them because they're getting too comfortable, you know, or you know whatever. No, we gotta hunt them because because whenever that happens, when the population is time to hunt them, not because they're getting too comfortable or I'm too I see three of them when I go ol hunting now, and I'm afraid, you know, that's not why we hunt. We gotta hunt these animals. We got to hunt them because they've reached the population now that they're a huntable population, and I think that we got to hold that line, you know, And so you know why protected animal they are afraid of and that's one of the hardest things right now. So another big part of what I do is trying to help people understand that, yeah, these animals can be potentially dangerous, but your fear might be a little blown out of proportion here and let me tell you why. And this is this from thirty years of experience, and that's all I'm just trying to do. You're trying to do. Yeah, did I answer that question? Kind of went on a take it there a little bit, But I think it does come down to value. And I think that if we can get everybody to want these animals to be in the landscape for whatever reason. But again, the common denominator is that we want these healthy populations to either hunt or healthy populations to either take pictures of whatever. But that's the common denominator. If we can all agree on that, man, then everything's good. 00:52:41 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:52:52 Speaker 2: Well, here's the funny thing is, as I've been kind of working through this myself and working on this book that I was telling you about, one of the realizations that I that I had was at both sides of this issue need the same thing for their life values, their lifestyles to continue the future if you look at the traditional animal lover environmentalists who wants to see lots of grizzlies and wants to see wolves, they need those critters to be In order for those critters to be around, they need open, wild, healthy, intact landscapes. 00:53:26 Speaker 3: Right. 00:53:27 Speaker 2: We have some of that on public lands, but as you know, many of these critters live off of National park lands. Many of these species. If we want them to continue to live into the future, if we want grizzly bears to maintain genetic variability, to not just be an island population in Yellowstone, they need to be able to have habitat outside of the parks, right, So they need open, undeveloped, healthy habitat. So what is that that's private lands? Who owns all these private lands around Yellowstone or Glacier National Park or Colorado? Well, it's ranchers and land owners who live in these valleys who are trying to either make a living raising cattle or sheep, or they're probably hunters. They're people who make a living on that land. Well, what's happening to allow of those people, Well, it's hard to make a living these days, it's hard to make a profit. They're having to sell off to subdivisions or to whoever it is, all the many different people that want to purchase these properties and develop them for one reason or another. So for that to happen, for us to keep undeveloped lands, for us to keep ranchers in business, and keep these undeveloped lands out there, what do we need to do. We need to help make their life a little bit more manageable. We can't make their life so they can't make a living. We need them to be able to turn a profit and to be able to maintain their way of life. How do you do that? Help them coexist with carnivores, Help lessen that burden a little bit, Help make it so they can live alongside these critters. Now flip it to the other side. These ranchers and hunters. They want to be able to keep on hunting. They want to keep on raising cattle or sheep or whatever it is. They want to live their life. They want to be able to do these things they've done. Well, what do we need to do to make sure that they can do that. It's not going to be wiping grizzly bears and wolves off the landscape. It's not going to be you know, taking matters into our own hands and shoot, shovel and shut up that kind of thing and making hunters look horrible and making ranchers look like they're part of the problem. No, they need to showcase and would benefit from showcasing the Hey, we want these lands. We would love to be able to make a living out here doing this kind of stuff. Maybe there's creative ways to make a little bit of money from a fee added to National park passes. Maybe there's, you know, all these different habitat leasing programs, ways that we can you know, compensate folks who are bearing the burden of having this wildlife on their property that's benefiting them and everyone else around them. So I think there's ways that if we look at what's needed, which is healthy habitat open landscapes. You need that to hunt, you need that to be able to see wolves. You need undeveloped, intact places. You need that to ranch, you need that for grizzly bears to spread out to where they are. We all want the same thing, but the only way we're going to get it is by kind of realizing there's some compromise in the middle that we need to make and then we have to understand the two different perspectives a little bit and give and take a little bit here and there to finally get that stuff, because we can't do it by ourselves, right, we need everyone kind of pulling in the same direction. Does anything that make sense? I'm kind of I'm laying all of my ideas on. 00:56:35 Speaker 3: Your singing my song. Man, you're singing my song. Everything you said is so so accurate. I've once said one time, like the ranchers man are the the It's the greatest. They're the greatest thing for wildlife right now. I mean it really is. I mean without them, we'd be wildlife would be in big, big trouble. And we just people have got to connect the dots to make that realization. These wide open spaces under a threat of development. You know, I've watched my family sell up, their sell off their ranches and thirty acre parcels here and there to development over the years. And it's hard. It's hard, but it's because it's a hard living and and it's people aren't supported, you know, Yeah, you know, are there ways we are we you know, in my backyard, we're working with ranchers here who are willing to let all animals on their property. We're trying to figure out ways to mitigate conflict. There's a lot of innovation with AI and different technologies right now that are really moving the needle, and there's going to be a time I think that that people are going to realize. I feel like people are moving that direction that these wide open spaces are super important for everything and that we need to maintain them and how can we make them sustainable and through And it's through acceptance, it's through taking through these technologies. Yeah, no, you're preaching. You're preaching my my gospel by all that. Man. I think Kenyon Anderson for twenty eight, I don't know, let's go. I think it's I think it's good. I mean because I think that this is a this is a narrative that not a lot of people are. It's not speaking loudly, but I really do. I think it's common sense solutions. You know. I talk to ranchers that are like they want the help. You know, sure there's the shoot shovel, shut up folks like you said out there, but they're they're going extinct, man, they really are. I think a lot of these younger younger folks that are taking these ranches over. They they they see that they can raise cattle through the summer months, hunt in the fall, and then take take those same people out and show them wildlife for the winter. You know, they can double dip, triple dip. Right. They see the value of these animals on the landscape. I mean, some of the best documentaries I've made mountain lions, wolves, and grizzly bears have all been on private land. It's some of the greatest habitat out there. I'll give you another example, and I I've seen firsthand. This is ridiculous, but it's true. I've seen some spots where cattle overgrades in areas and some thistles popped up, and then in the spring, the voles love the thistle root and the bears come in and hammer that area. And I've seen it, and it's in this very specific time where the bears are mating. So you see these large congregation of grizzly bears on the landscape going to these cattle ranches mating, and then it's actually bolster and the grizzly bears are actually populations getting bolstered by being on cattle ranches, you know, and I always wondered, is that, you know, is there an aspect of that that's kind of emulating something that happened with the bison? You know, who knows? Right, I think we just got to dig into all these things and figure out what's what's working. And we've got to make sure these large these large spaces still remain because we lose them, we're in trouble. 00:59:52 Speaker 2: Yeah. So so another thing like and again I'm you are helping me here, like pressure test some of the things that I've been trying to like put into words. So so I'm I'm getting an unpaid service out of you here. 01:00:06 Speaker 3: Case I appreciate conversation a lot. 01:00:10 Speaker 2: One of the best at well yeah, me too. This is stuff like I've been thinking about for so many years, and and it's really hard to articulate it though in like a social media post, right, because these things are complex, they're nuanced, they they resist simplification, right. So I've always thought, man, I need a big place to really put it all out there. And so that's what part of this book has become that I'm that I've been working on and and one of the things that became very apparent to me, and I've always thought it is going back to like what our values are for our community, the hunting community. One of the things that's very valuable to us is the ability to continue hunting well into the future. Right where it's very easy to get folks fired up about defending our rights to hunt, right, that's that's an easy thing for us to understand. We need to maintain our rights and releg is to hunt well. What is that dependent on? That is dependent on public support, because we live in a democracy where the majority rules, and you know, if eventually the ninety six percent of the nation who doesn't hunt, all of a sudden not you know, what's the word I'm looking for here, stop supporting what we do. We're in trouble. There will be ways to lose our rights to hunt if we lose that public support. So this is a long winded way of saying that we need to be careful about our pr We need to be careful about how we present ourselves. We need to be careful about how the larger community looks at hunters and the value the hunting provides. Right now, one of the best ways we've done that the hunting community We've always said, we've always liked to prophesize to the world that we are the best conservationists. We're the original conservations where the real true, you know, hands on the ground, hands in the dirt conservationists. 01:01:55 Speaker 4: Right. 01:01:55 Speaker 2: We do a lot of good stuff, and there's a lot of truth to that, tons of truth to that. But if at the same time we are saying all that, some hunters are also driving around with pickup trucks that say shoot a pack, or smoke a pack a day, or shoot shovel and shut up, or posting pictures on social media with an illegally shot wolf hanging by a noose, or different things like that that I've seen, And all of a sudden, the non hunting public sees this and they say, oh, that's hunters. They're people who hate wolves and hate grizzlies and want to kill them all, and want to whack and stack and pile up two hundred coyotes and just just kill them all. That's what hunters are. It seems like you only want to conserve the species that you want around, but you're willing to just eradicate everything else. That doesn't seem like a conservationist that raises a lot of red flags about what hunters are, or who hunters are, or what they are bringing to the table here. I've always thought that this predator hate crowd, which is probably a small it's a bad apple, few bad apples within our community, but they can be a loud community. They are really self defeating. They are really hurting our ability to maintain our rights to hunt in the future. They're not helping hunters by killing a bunch of wolves. In talking about it in this way, they're actually hurting our future because of that. Have you seen that? Have you thought about that? Have you experienced any of that? What's your take? 01:03:21 Speaker 3: I tell you you and I have the same mind. Yeah, one hundred percent. 01:03:25 Speaker 2: Man. 01:03:25 Speaker 3: I think that we've got they may be doing the most damage. I really believe that. And I've said this before, and I've got a lot of people come back to me and say, no, gun rights folks and animal activists like Peter are doing the most damage. But I don't know. I don't think so. I think that we all know what they're doing. Most of the world knows what they're doing. They can smell what they're doing. But when they see someone label themselves as a hunter and do exactly the things that you said that that tarnishes the hunter more than anything. And those folks who are on the fence that you know about that, when they see that it's it makes them change their mind. Those other folks have already changed their mind. It doesn't matter. So it's a big part of what I do, man. I tell you, I think it's an important thing is that, you know, I when it comes to demographics, and I mean I can literally look at if I look at my socials, I'm about fifty to fifty, you know, I have fifty percent hunters and fifty percent tree huggers, you know, and so and sometimes I'll, I'll honestly do I'll do a little bait and switch, man. I'll I'll put something up and I'll pull in some hunters and I'll throw out some heavy, fluffy stuff to them, and then vice versa. You know, I'll put something fluffy out there and I'll pull it in and I'll, you know, take a picture with an elkrack on my back and say this is coming straight to you from a hunter, right. But I want to pull people into the conversation because I think that we got hunting will go extinct. If people don't continue or don't continue to advocate for it, don't weave the garden, meaning look for those people that are doing that and just get tell them no, stop it, do not support it, you know, and tr trust me that pressure will go on when fellow hunters start saying, dude, that's not cool, over and over again, that pure pressure will make a difference. And we got to do that. We got to call these people out because if we don't, we're in trouble. Per I mean, I think and I've seen it, and it's that's there's some sloppy stuff out there, and you know, I even think it goes as far as you know, these big issues like grizzly bears. If you want grizzly Bears delisted as a hunter, talk about it with facts, right, talk about it coming from a place that makes sense. You know, if you start to getting real emotional about it and it comes from a bunch of bs and a bunch of old school mentalities that don't make any sense. Everything else you say that comes out of your mouth, no one's going to stand. You're going to listen to it. And that includes saying I'm a hunter and it's worth being around. So think about what you're saying, think about the decisions you're making, and make sure they're based on that. Man. I think that's super important. 01:06:10 Speaker 2: So let's dive into the grizzly bear situation a little bit more, because this one is is hot. It's been hot for a long time. It's going to get hotter now as it's seemingly likely given the political wins, that they're probably or there's a high chance of them getting delisted now and maybe they're being hunting seasons in this somewhat near future. All of that is going to be this huge Some will view as like a huge win, some will view as a huge loss. I will look at as like this very fragile moment where things could be made or broken for a long time. For example, if you are a hunter like we are, and if you think that grizzlies should be managed like other animals and that there should be a hunting season for them at some point, can you imagine the negative ramifications if a grizzly bear hunt were opened up and some famous bear from the edge of Yellowstone or edge of Rantiiton is shot by a slob hunter who posts something nasty about it and like glad to have this piece of shit off the landscape or whatever. Can you imagine this will be cecil lyon CeCILL the lion times a thousand, right, So there's going to be this massive pr both opportunity and risk if this happens right. It could be the opposite. It could be someone who comes into it like you're describing, who says, hey, I'm a conservationist, I'm a wildlife advocate. I am a hunter. And you know, the biologists say now is the time to hunt them, and they're going to do it in a careful, regulated way. So I want to be a part of that, and I want to do it the right way, and I want to show respect to these animals and to everything else out here. And that person could be a tremendous ambassador and maybe change the minds or educate some people. But it could go either way so easily. So I guess what I'm curious about your take on this case is where do you land on this delisting issue. It's a tricky one because well, I won't say what I think, tell me what do you think? 01:08:16 Speaker 3: It's it's it's a tricky one and it's one that I just I wrestle with obviously because people people really listen to me about grizzly bears. I wrestled with it for a lot of reasons. But again I draw the line, and I've drawn the line for myself and the same thing I said that we got to talk to other people about the same conversation I got to have with the Minnesota guy in his tree stands in the north Woods. What is going to create a healthy ecosystem, a balanced ecosystem if biologists say that the grizzly bear numbers have reached saturation, reached capacity, and it's time to take him off the list. I mean, delisting is what is a wonderful thing for species? Right It's a It's a marker that the population is growing and becoming more healthy. That's what we ultimately want. Right now, At what point do we start to hunt them? I think it's a different metric, right. They're an animal that has a low reproductive rate, They're an animal that's very susceptible to changing environment. I think all those things got to be in consideration. Like you said, it's a very fragile time in many ways, and that's one of them. I think Montana. You know, I've heard they're going to wait five years no matter what, to really get a finger on the pulse of what the grizzly bears are doing before they even think about hunting them. I think that's I think that's great. I think that that's smart. I think the fact they put a number on it like that right off the top is a It shows the care in some level. But then you know, how many, how many can we hunt? What bears are we trying to hunt? I think it's a lot of stuff like that, And I think it's important that you know this is these are biologists that are making this decision that and have an agenda. I always like this idea of kind of a committee of biologist that may be on a little bit both sides the fence, you know, kind of really balance it out, because you know, no matter what, when these desisions are made, there's always that everybody's got a little bit of a a twist, a spin, no matter what. It's just in a human right, you have a bias. Right, So I think it gets is an unbiased of folks at the table that say, okay, it's time green light, right, and then man, I mean that's my it's my take. What do we want? I mean, what do we want with grizzly bears? We want grizzly bears to be on the landscape and the healthy population that you can get along with people and coexist, And if that that requires hunting to manage, then that is then that is a great thing to do. And that's the bottom line. Do I think that we're ready for it right now? I mean, right now, there's a lot of other management things that are going off with wildlife that I think, Wow, they're really having a hard time figuring this out. So do I think they're ready to handle something as compli geated to the grizzly bear right now? 01:11:01 Speaker 4: No? 01:11:02 Speaker 3: Do I think they can in the future if they get their ducks in a row? Yeah, do I think that that would be a big win for the grizzly bear. Believe it or not, it would be. If we can get our ducks in a row, we can come up with the statistics that bears are ready to be hunted based on not fear, but on biological facts by as unbiased committee of biologists, then it's a celebra It's something to celebrate, absolutely, And then we've got to be super careful. As you said, Mark, you know, as hunters, we have to be very respectful. We got to look at as a gift that we're gonna we're gonna baby and take care of respectfully. And then you know, we got to look at something we're gonna be proud of a lower forty eight states, and we have we live in a place that we've managed and taken care of so well that we're allowed to hunt grizzly bears because there's enough of a healthy population and there's ecosystems that exist in this place that are that are great enough to allow for grizzly bears to live in a healthy way. That is awesome, and we got to celebrate that and take care of it. So let's hope we get there. Man, I don't know. Is that ten years from now, is that three years from now, is that twenty years from now? I don't know. We can't do it too soon. I think we got to be very careful with that. And I think it's hunters, we've got to respect that and realize that let's not do this too soon. Let's not jump the gun because we're a little bit afraid of these animals when we go out there, Let's not jump the gun because we're really bad at making elk cow calls and a bear comes in like it's a predator call. Let's just let's just do it the right way. 01:12:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many angles to this one, and so much of it, like you said, is wrapped up an emotion on both sides of the issue. For sure, on the side that wants to hunt grizzlies. You mentioned the fact that some folks want to do that because they think we need to reinstill fear in the bears. There's too many of them out there. When I go elk cunning, They're dangerous, They're a threat. Can you just expand on that side a little bit more? Because you've spent so much time with these bears yourself all over the country, you understand them more than almost anyone in the country. Probably, should I be afraid of grizzly bears out there? How much wood hunting change or not change that? 01:13:12 Speaker 3: Yeah? I appreciate this. I want to talk about this because it's a good one. I've thought about this so much, and I've been in places where there's bears that are not hunted, and I've been in places where there's plate bears are hunted, and I've been in various places where bears have different relationship with people. Here's the bottom line. The bottom line is that bears are not out there to look. They're not looking for people to kill and eat them. Okay, people need to get that out of their head. Has that happened yes, Can it happen yes, but it's getting struck by lightning twice? Kind of statistics there. Why do bears attack people? Let's think about that. Let's break that down from behavior away. The fundamental baseline behavior why a bear attacks people is because they are afraid of them and they see it as a perceived threat. Now, and I will, and I'm going to throw this out there on the record. When we are allowed to hunt bears and there's people actively pursuing them out there and taking shots at them, we are going to see an increase in attacks. And it's going to be two full and there's gonna be a lot of reasons why there can be more people on the landscape actually putting themselves in bear scenarios. There's going to be bears that are wounded and that are going to be acting in survival mode, and they're going to get people, and then there's just there's going to be an increase of bears afraid of people on the landscape. And the way that bears, grizzly bears specifically deal with things that they're afraid of two things. They either run away or they fight. Fight or flight, right, And one thing about the lower forty eight grizzly bear is that it chooses fight a lot more than a lot of other bears do. So do I think that making bears more afraid of people is a good thing, not necessarily, not in the way that most people think it's going to because I think that is the very reason why they attack you. Yeah, and you know what dead bears don't teach real quick. 01:14:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, before you go any further, how many times have you been in close encounters like this with grizzles, Because I want to make sure people understand this isn't just like a random person saying this kind of stuff. You have been in close contact in these types of situations dozens hundreds of times. 01:15:16 Speaker 3: I mean it's not easily hundreds of times. I've been charged by bears at least a dozen times more than that, more than that, but I've also charged bears, probably more than that, more than I've been charged. I've bear sprayed bears seven times. But I'm you know, I'm a unique guy. I go out in the forest and I'm actively pursuing grizzly bears, often with the wind in my face, sneaking up on them to close the gap so I can get close enough to get a good shot of them. I spend time with them. I mean, I yeah, I have again hundreds of encounters, and most of them bears run away they see me, but in place that they're not hunted. Let's stick like cat my National Park. I've walked, I mean, bears walk within ten feet of me and don't even look at me. They just don't care. You're not a threat. They don't look like you're at us food, they don't look at you as threat, and they just leave you alone. They look at you like you're a fox or something on the landscape and just don't care. But when we start taking shots at them, they're going to care. And I think that, you know, some were gonna run away again, some are gonna get more afraid, and some are going to use that flight part of that response more. But there's gonna be those ones. They're going to feel like they're in a corner and they're gonna be extra afraid. There's gonna be a little bit more fight. So that argument doesn't hold ground hold water at all, and I wish hunters would stop using it because it doesn't. There's no statistics about that anywhere that I've seen, and from my thirty plus years or almost fifty, if you look at from a lifetime standpoint, I'd not seen any any evidence of that being true. So it's just a bad argument, and I think it's part of one of those arguments. Like I said, stop saying it because it just makes you look like you don't know what you're talking about. 01:17:21 Speaker 2: Now, continuing down that line of thought though with like fear, another reason why folks like to suggest that we should be hunting these grizzlies is that they are now spreading outside of places that are appropriate for them to live. Right, some people would say, well, it's okay for grizzlies to live in Yellowstone, but I don't want them in Cody, or I don't want them, you know, knocking on the door behind my place and drigs, I don't want them you know, bumping up to my ranch here in Livingstone or wherever it is. There's folks who are afraid of grizzly bears expanding outside of these little ranges that are in now towards more of our historic range. You know, there's places like the here of Idaho excuse me, Idaho that have been designated as a recovery zone for grizzlies that have appropriate habitat that still don't have bears because of the fact that they just haven't been able to connect back into their consistently enough. Argument being by some peoples, if we start hunting them, it will keep that from ever happening and will push them back into their tiny kind of micro islands of habitat right now, what do you think about that? Aon like the fear of them expanding and then be on the flip side, which is the benefits of them expanding. 01:18:31 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a tough one because you know people don't want them there. Then it's it's a tough you know, should they should they be there? I don't know the answer to that. You know, there are they are expanding, They're going into their historic range. Where do we draw the line of where they should be or where they used to be. You know, eighteen fifty is that the range that they should be able to get back into. No, I mean we've done a lot since then, So I do think it's going to come down to again unbiased biologists saying, okay this, you know, they're there's going to be some collateral damage, right for let's just use the eastern Rocky Mountain front. Right now, we're seeing a massive expansion of bears pushing off the front. Bob marshabled in this area out into the flatlands, and there's a lot of ranchers there that haven't had a deal with grizzly bears and it's you know, it's scary to them. They don't know what to do about it. But simultaneously, there are grizzly bears now moving into habitat that's completely suitable for grizly bear and will benefit from having grizzly bears on the landscape. So should we allow that happen? If a few people are going to get mad, but it's ultimately going to make the hundreds of thousands of acres healthier ecosystem. I don't know the answer to that. It's a tough one man it's a tough one. I would love to see, you know, go out in the Missouri River Breaks and know that there was grizzly bears running around. But I'll tell you what, most people that live out there don't want that, so maybe they shouldn't be there. Then, if most people out there don't want it to be I don't know public land, you know, it's again, it's like if it's public land again, I think it's going to come down to unbiased biologists kind of figuring out what's best for that land and what's best for the ecosystem. I can't give you a hard answer. 01:20:16 Speaker 2: On that one, mark that's fair. It's a hard one to answer. A lot of this I think comes down to value, like you talked about earlier, and in either demonstrating the value that they provide already or finding ways for them to create value in different kinds of ways. So for example, with like a rancher, private landowner, you know, the public you or I might say that we benefit from grizzly from grizzly bears being on their way towards the Missouri Breaks because we know that that's gonna, you know, in some ways create a more healthy holistic environment and ecosystem. We would like to know they're out there, maybe see them. How do we make sure that the rancher that lives next door is getting value out of that. Well, maybe it's by compensating them in some kind of way for the presence. Like I know there's programs out there in eastern Montana around the American Prairie where they have programs where if you get trail camp pictures of certain wildlife on your private lands nearby, they'll pay you for that. There's habitat leasing programs down by you, and you know southwestern Montana where folks are being paid for the presence of elk or by doing certain habitat practices that would be beneficial to elk or bears or wolves. They're going to compensate the rancher saying that, hey, we know you're bearing a burden of housing this public wildlife on your land and there's some challenges that come with that, so we're going to find ways to help, you know, make this financially valuable for you too. Or like I mentioned earlier, you maybe you've heard about one of these ideas that's like, hey, let's add a wildlife fee to every Yellowstone admission price, so you add another ten bucks to every time someone comes in on a bus into Yellowstone, and that ten dollars from four point five million people a year all gets put into a fund which then gets shared with adjacent and landowners to help compensate them for the challenges that they are bearing in there being elk or bears or wolves or whatever. I wonder if there's more creative ways that we can find to help make these animals valuable to people, whether it be by allowing hunting so it's valuable to you in that kind of way, or with financial reimbursement or whatever it is. But we need to make these things a win win win for no matter which side of it you're on. 01:22:25 Speaker 3: Man, that's so spot on. I think that we got to look at those things. I think I've heard, you know, even here in Park County. I'm part of a group called the Wild Livelihoods Business Coalition, and we've talked about that. You know, we've got a big portion of those four million people going through Park County down to the northern gate of the park and they're spending money on bed tax and you know all that stuff, and can could there be a little bit of that chunk of percentage of that that goes back and does help out these folks that are basically harboring wildlife and keeping these ecosystems attacked. I think that's a great idea. Again changes the value perspective, but overall it's a win win win, And again I think that maybe that's the platform that the Kenyan Anderson twenty twenty eight that we run on. 01:23:11 Speaker 2: At the very least, I need to drag you along on my book tour. 01:23:16 Speaker 3: But no, dude, it's such a it's such a smart I love it because it Let's be honest, man, you hate to bring up economics when you talk about wildlife, but it's the way the world goes around. And if that's the value is actual money, then that's the value. And it's it's just the way it works, and it's okay, and I think people would sign up for it. Man, people who love wildlife, you have a little bit of money to help them out. You know, hunters can buy tags, right, what can non hunters do something similar? You know, just go buy a tag and it's some you know, and it supports these initiatives that I think there's a lot of people out there are smarter than me that are figuring these things out all the time, and yeah, let's just do it and let's make it cool. I mean, I hate to use that term. It's so simple. We got to make it cool, right, It's got to be something everybody thinks is awesome and believes in, and all the silos are all thumb got the thumbs up about it and saying this is good. Yeah, I think that's what we got to do. And having this conversation right now is a big part of it because there's people listening, and those people that are listening can talk tell the same story to other folks, and we can make something happen. Move the needle. 01:24:31 Speaker 2: Yeah. So, if you could envision a future fifty years from no cases in which there are grizzly bears thriving, There are wolves in manageable, healthy populations across the country. There are also terrific herds of elk and moose and mule deer and pronghorn, and hunters are still around happily doing what we love to do. And wildlife viewers are still happily viewing and visiting Yellowstone and all these other places and seeing critters and this imagine world where they're still open and intact and undeveloped private lands surrounding these public cores with ranching still a viable lifestyle. If all of that were still true in fifty years, what would have had to have happened over the course of that period to get there? What are the key what are the what are the key things? If we were going to list out like the Casey Anderson's five commandments of how we can coexist with carnivores for the next fifty years to make it actually work, what are those like key tenants that has to happen. They could be something we've already talked about, or if there's anything we haven't discussed yet, what has to happen to make this a reality? 01:25:43 Speaker 3: I'll start off with, Man, I don't have high hopes, but I don't think it's impossible. And I think the number one thing that would have to happen right now is that we would have to just stomp on the breaks. I'm crazy right now, like everything that's crazy and what I mean crazy, you know, and everybody knows what I'm talking about on both sides. We just got to hit the brakes on it, right now hard. We got it. We got to preserve what we have right now, right and I think in fifty years, if we have what we have right now, that would be a huge, huge win, even amongst the chaos. You know, we gotta we gotta. You know, this anti hunting movement, anti wildlife management movement's gotta go away. The you know, eliminate forty percent of the mountain population in Montana without even knowing how much of the of a population of mountain limes. We have kind of mentality gotta go away. You know, all the wolves off the landscape. We don't need wolves in Montana. They're bigger wolves from Canada. All that stuff gotta go away. You know, wolves should not be hunted, No predators should be hunted. That's gotta go away. All that's gotta go away. And I and I think so the biggest thing is we got it. We just gotta. It's guys like you and me, man, you know, that's why it's such an honor to be you know, part of this this podcast and part of the greater meat eater world is like I mean, Meter is doing it. I mean, I think you gotta you gotta keep talking. You gotta keep communicating because most people who are making these decisions for the world to be a better the place that you've spelled out in fifty years don't know simply are ignorant to all of it and ignorances. It's not their own fault, it's just that there's no one telling them, right, there's not Grandpa who's a hunter talking telling stories anymore. They're not listening to this. They're they're listening to crazy. And so we we got the main thing is it's going to be communicating all this stuff and having these conversations regularly and recruiting people to believe and yeah, and it's continuing to have biologists on the landscape who are making who are you know in this day and age, or keeping their finger on the pulse by the microsecond changing you know it might they might have changed things a couple of times a year to keep up with it. That's what it's gonna take, and it's it's gonna it's gonna take listening to each other. Right, you know, you and I might not agree on everything, but we're willing to sit down in a conversation. I actually think we might agree on everything based on the conversation but you know what I'm saying, I think that, you know, we got all talk, and I think it's important, you know, not just preaching to the choir. I think all that's very important. 01:28:32 Speaker 4: You know. 01:28:33 Speaker 3: I'm raised. I've got three little kids. I got a three or five and a seven year old, and I look at them and I take them out on public lands and the other gona we gotta fight for public lands. We gotta keep those things, you know, not one acre we can give away. But yeah, back to the kids, I mean, I take I take them out there, and I just think, you know, I hope that you get to have a kid childhood. I did, you know. And it's scary because it doesn't look like it doesn't look like it's going to be that way, but it can be if we can hit the brakes on crazy, just say no and help the other, and help the other ignorant people who don't understand what we're fighting for understand. And yeah, I think that's it. 01:29:13 Speaker 2: Man. 01:29:13 Speaker 3: I don't know, because I think I think most people, when the facts are laid out in front of them and it comes from a place of logic, people make the right decisions. They really do. But most people are just not hearing that. 01:29:29 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, folks are so divorced from the natural world, so distant from it, you know. I think the life that you live or the life that I live is pretty unique these days, and so it's easy just to to either never even think about these things, or if you do think about them ever once in a while, it's solely predicated on the one TikTok video you saw last week, or the one the sensationalist headline they got posted because of some crazy thing on Instagram or whatever. Right, So a lot of this too, I think, also comes down to people just need to get out there and experience this stuff themselves and see what's out there and fall in love with it for themselves, because I feel like oftentimes that is like the the initial barrier that has to be broken before you can ever get someone to really engage with this kind of these ideas in a real way, or let alone get them to advocate in any kind of way. Right. 01:30:25 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a hard one because you know, we know that everybody's not going to be able to do that. You know, we'd love that, you know, And I think, and here's this perfect segue to doing some self promotion but you know, me having my new YouTube channel, Endless Venture, you know, the only reason, you know, I can't keep up with the kids these days. And everybody keeps saying that most eyes are on YouTube right now, you got to go to YouTube. And ultimately, it's all I want is the most eyes, you know. I want people to be able to go on adventures out into these wild places and fall in love with it, even if it's vicariously through my storytelling, you know. And that is all my Endless Venture is is just it's you know, animals and finding cool stuff out there and just and giving and doing it. And like I'm just taking how many people are how many people are watching on a hike with me? Right? And if that if that initiates them to get out and take a road trip to the west and get out and walk around amazing. But even if it's just when they sit down and they're deciding who they're going to vote for, and it changes their mind a little bit about some policy that they're reading about, Uh, that's enough. I mean, that's that's big. So I think again, it's just it's important. We gotta Yeah, that's that's the responsibility that you and I collectively and everybody and meat eater and everybody in National Geograph and everybody have we have the responsibility of representing these things as truthfully and as honestly and as purely as we can and hope that we get enough people to show up that we can change some minds in a big way. Yeah. 01:32:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's uh, that's certainly what gets me out of bed in the morning. And I got to say, when it comes to where, you know, connecting to where the kids are on YouTube, you're well on your way. 01:32:10 Speaker 4: Uh. 01:32:11 Speaker 2: My seven year old son was very excited that you had a collab, a crossover video with mister Coyote Peterson. And when he saw that, he's like, Dad, I think Casey's the new YouTuber I need to follow. Yep, thank you. 01:32:26 Speaker 3: Right, that's good. That's big news. That's a big win for me right there. So tell your seven year old he. 01:32:31 Speaker 2: Said, yeah, he's seven, so he's he's on it. And then he with that said he had he asked me, he said, I have to ask you, what is the craziest thing about Coyote Peterson. We're spending time with Coyote Peterson and for folks who aren't familiar Uh, Coyote Peterson is like a more youth child, kind of focused YouTuber, all kind of nature outside activity, his wildlife kind of things that kids love, and my kids love him. He's pretty wild. So yes, so Everett, my son, Everett has to know, what's it like hanging out with Coyote Peterson. What's the craziest thing he did or does or anything like that. 01:33:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, So, Everett, Coyote is a He's one of the nicest guys. I know, he's very you know, perfect example. I'll turn out to go too much onto this, but you know, he's a guy with a very open mind and not a hunter, and him and I have talked about hunting a bunch, you know, and he's interested. You know, he's listened. But back to Everett's question, Kyote is a bit of a superhuman. I don't know if it's because he's been stung and bitten and you know, has had so much poison into his blood that his body has built up some resilience. But like just the other day, I went actually back east and visited him, and he like walked through this like worst of poison ivy. Everybody else he was involved got your typical reaction, no reaction at all. He's tough. He's a tough guy, he really is. And uh yeah, you know, and in the end, you know, his his thing. You know, it's awesome that evert's watching him because you know, Coyote does he does that. He's a showman. He's really good at producing his stuff. He has these big sensationalized things. I think a lot of adults would shake their head at, right. Yes, but as you dive in, you click the clickbait and you get in there. It's full of great conservation information. And he's got millions of people watching him because of that all the time. And again, these are people that are making good decisions down the line because they're learning through Coyote and even if they had to click the clickbait to get there, you know, and that's just it. You know, he's he's a smart fella. And again, and I'm having huge conversations with him, you know. In fact, I've had long conversations about the wolf issue. And he came in and where as you would a guy from Ohio has never been out here, and there's an animal advocate, you know, he's like, what's going on out there? He saw the guy run the wolf over in Wyoming and things that that's what we're all doing out here. He really did, you know, and I and I had an opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with him. That's now wait a minute, this is we're talking about a small people here anyway. Yeah, so Everett good guy. For sure. I'll tell Coyote that, yeah about Everett. 01:35:28 Speaker 2: And uh, he'll get a kick out of that. 01:35:30 Speaker 3: He'll like it. 01:35:31 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:35:32 Speaker 2: Yeah. Everett my seven year old and Colt, my five year old, are are both big Coyote Peterson fans and uh and blooming Casey Anderson's. 01:35:39 Speaker 3: Okay, Well, so I won't disappoint. There's gonna this little secret that you can tell Colt and Everett. I got at least one or two more collapse with coyote coming home. That's awesome. 01:35:51 Speaker 2: They'll be they'll be stoked. So so on that note, then, Casey, uh, you alluded to it a little bit. But give folks the full picture. What's what's Endless Venture all about? Where do they find this? What can they expect to see? Tell me all about it? 01:36:05 Speaker 3: Yeah, Endless Venture is just exactly kind of like the title. It is my endless ventures into the wild. So over the last fifty years of just being a kid in the woods, right, and I've done it professionally, but I've always just been a kid in the woods, and so it's just going to be that more of that, you know, I've I've met so many cool people over the years. I go back and revisit stories that they've told me, and you know, I go, I'm just doing things like I wake up the morning and go, what do I want to go do that is going to be exciting, and I just make an episode about it. So that can be anything from tracking man eating tigers in Nepal to seeing snow uppards for the first time in the Himalayas, to stay and spending the night in a grizzly bear den in the middle of winter. And the other thing is I'm a you know, as you know, like when you're out and about you see things like I'm fascinated with it with Native American history and artifacts. So if I find something like that, I'll deep dive into it, bring archaeologists, archaeologists in really try to learn more about it. I discovered a cave that's never been explored with a friend of mine that we were actually looking for mount lions with his hounds. We found this crazy cave in the middle of nowhere and now it's almost a mile of unmapped cave that we've found that we're totally documenting all this. So it's just, yeah, just being a I mean, something you can relate to. Everybody can relate to that run around the woods, just me being my inner child in the wild. Anything everything cool, and I just try to but I try to expand on it and bring an expert and teach more and tell the stories. But all the treasures man, not just wildlife everything. So yeah. The other thing like I like to throw out to an audience like yours, is like legends and stories, like you know, I always hear from hunting stories like well, I was hunting elk and then I looked up and there was a cave in the rock face, and I always wish I could get up there. I saw these pictographs once and I never could find them again. I've revisited a lot of these stories people told me over the years, Like twenty years ago. Someone will tell me a story and we'll go back and try to find this very cool thing that they saw and sometimes we strike out, sometimes we find it. So if there's anybody with like really cool stories, or they've heard this crazy story from their uncle or their grandpa and they want to go look for these legends or whatever, if there's any ounce of truth that maybe we can find something very cool and like make this story come to life, let me know. That's exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for. 01:38:33 Speaker 2: That's cool, It's got to be. I'm making some assumptions here, but I guess I should ask as a question, is it has it been freeing to be developing film for YouTube in this kind of way that's probably with fewer guardrails and restraints than maybe producing something for network television, Right? Is that pretty fuch? 01:38:53 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, definitely trying to navigate the madness of networks and streamers and all that and what they might want and whatever. It's such a hard that's a hard animal, man. It's like that, you can't unpredictable. Yeah, Now complete creative control, can go do what I want. And I think at some level that freedom comes out in me. And I think people just love watching people be excited about something and passionate about something, and because of that freedom I'm probably more passionate and excited. I've heard people give me feedback on this too that they think so I'd just been more natural and more into my element than ever. Yeah, you know, I'm an old guy. I'm gonna turn fifty this year. I've got a lot of a lot of experience and a lot of cool stories and friends and stuff. So i'm's gonna just bring it all, like bring it to life. But I don't feel like an old guy when I'm out there right checking out all this cool stuff. 01:39:47 Speaker 2: That's the scary thing is that I don't feel old either. But I'm knocking on forty's door and that sounds really old to me. And I'm realizing, like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna blink and I'm gonna be fifty, I'm gonna blink, I'm gonna be sixty. And so I better do everything I can very single day and just soak it all up right, because it goes it goes fast, and it goes. 01:40:04 Speaker 3: Fast, and things are changing. So you never know when you go to your favorite place again and it's not there, and that's that's the scary thing. But yeah, it's I think, uh, endless venture. So yeah, please go check it out and subscribe, because that's the only one I get to do it. And I think, again, it's maybe for a little bit more of a mature audience, but I think kids definitely could watch it, and I'm glad to hear that they are. But I certainly think that a lot of folks in this demographic that listen to your podcast would probably really dig it because they could relate to it, because most of us are just that's the words run around the woods catching frogs in some way, shape or form, right. 01:40:42 Speaker 2: Just the adult version of it now, and sometimes I still do the child version of it. Yeah or but but yeah, I've watched a bunch of the new videos, the ones up in cat My, the stuff with Coyote. I liked your viral video court, you know, Sunday Morning or Monday Morning Quarterback. That was great. So yeah, it's great stuff. I've watched a lot of the previous network television stuff that of course is great. So I'm excited for you, excited for this new project. And yes, at least in this sample size of three, a thirty eight year old, a thirty seven year old, a seven year old, and a five year old, you have people who like the content across that entire age range. So you're doing well. 01:41:22 Speaker 3: That's awesome. Thank you appreciate it. 01:41:25 Speaker 2: So endless venture on YouTube anywhere else that people should go. Instagram handle, any website or anything you want people to go check out. 01:41:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean Instagram. And I'm still on old school Facebook because that's old school now. But Grizzly Guy is the handle. Yeah, just go check it out. I mean, I'm updating that stuff constantly too. Again, I do feel like it's the way people can experience the wild without being in the wild, and I find a lot of responsibility in that. And I mean anything, I try to post stuff up on there, and I try to at least make it where you can learn something too along the way. And you know, I'm always learning. I've had even the day I just posted a crazy thing about hundred guys versus gorilla because I saw that not a gorilla, Grizzly because I saw the gorilla thing going around for a while. Yeah. I love I love the debates and the craziness of it all. And but in the end, you know, I threw some real facts out there, and I just want to get people thinking about nature. Right, And that's one thing you can count on. If you click on any of my socials or YouTube, you're going to be thinking about nature. And I think that we all got to do that a little bit more. 01:42:33 Speaker 2: No matter what, man, no truer words could be spoken in that Casey and I think that's probably a good place for us to wrap it up. So I've loved this. I've really enjoyed this chat. 01:42:44 Speaker 3: Thank you, Oh, thank you. I've loved it too. One of one of the best ever, all. 01:42:51 Speaker 2: Right, And that's a wrap. I appreciate you tuning in. Hopefully you enjoyed this one as much as I did. I could have chatted with Casey for a couple more hours. There's there's so much to cover on this one, so many interesting stories of his that we did not get into. We probably need to have another chat with Casey just to hear his stories, because he's done so much wild, crazy stuff that would just be fun to hear about. That probably needs to be on the schedule down the line. But today it was kind of a deep, kind of sink your teeth into it discussion of carnivores and hunters and how we can maybe get along into the future and make sure that all the things that we need and care about exist twenty years from now, forty years from now, fifty years from now. So I hope, in some small way we're able to address some of that, and I appreciate you sticking around here to tune in, So, without further ado, thank you, and stay wired to hunt