00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan. This is episode number one one tan the show. We are joined by Randy Newburgh and we're discussing my very first black bear hunt, Western white tales, and the latest in conservation and public lands issues. All right, welcome to the Wired Hunt podcast, brought to you by sit Ka Gear. And today on the show, I am joined by a very special guest, and that's someone we mentioned just a bit last week, Randy Newburgh. And you know Randy as a previous guest on the podcast, I think in two different episodes. But Randy is also the host of the television show Fresh Tracks with Randy Newberg. He's the host of the Hunt Talk radio podcast and one of the premier spokesman and defenders of hunting, public lands and conservation in North America. And I was recently lucky to be able to head out on a public land black bear hunt with Randy. So in today's episode, Randy joins me to discuss our little adventure, and he's going to share some spot and stock black bear one on one info as well in case anyone else wants to try to hunt like this in the future. We also talk Western white tales, and then finally we wrap up the show by discussing the latest events related to the future of hunting and public lands conservation and a few of our thoughts on these issues that are likely to impact all of our ability to hunt and fish and recreate in the outdoors in the future. So that is the game plan, and this one was a lot of fun record. I hope you all enjoy just you know, half as much listening to this as we did actually sitting down and recording this with the mic. So with that, I do want to briefly pause to thank our partners at Sick of Gear for the support of this podcast. You know, last week I mentioned that our sikest story today would be related to that blackbird hunt I was headed out on, and I mentioned that it might be able to share some audio from that hunt. Unfortunately I do not have that. So this whole episode though, really is a sick of story, as both Randy and I depended on Sick of Gear for this hunt and the experiences that were about to share with you. But I'll mention one technical gear thing that that happened for me on this hunt. And it was on the second day, and it was down down the valley. It was probably high sixties, really sunny, really warm, and when I was loading up my pack, I had this kind of dilemma. I wasn't sure how many extra warm layers I wanted to put in my pack, because right now was warm, it was hot. I didn't want to have a bunch of stuff in my pack. So I sat there and kind of debated this for a second. But when I looked at my insulating layers, I had a Kelvin light jacket. It's so small, also light, it packs up right into its pocket. I was like, you know, what, screw it, I'm bringing that just in case. It's so small, so light, I don't think I'm really gonna, you know, be inconvenienced by this. So I threw that in the pack just in case it cooled down, and lo and behold it. Did you know? When I was high up on that mountain glass and for bears, the wind came up, the temperatures went down, and it got really cold. Luckily I had that jacket. I pulled that out pulled that over and I can't tell you how happy I was to be able to glass and be just wrapped up in this blanket of warmth from that jacket. So it was a great reminder of how important layering is and and just knowing and having the right layers for the conditions you might face and be able to change out that system as those conditions change. So with all that said, if you would like to learn more about sick Is Technical hunting apparel, you can visit sick gear dot com and just f y I. There are new two thousand seventeen products have just hit their website and are now available, so you can head over their ACEP to check the is out if you're interested. And now for the rest of my sick of story, my very first spring spotting stock black Bear hunt. Here's myself in Randy Newburg recording in Bozeman, Montana, and we are back now in studio in person with Randy Newburg. Thank you Randy for doing this. Thanks for being here. Mark. I won't even charge Janny rent from my studio here. That's a good deal because this is nice. This is much nicer than my usual digs and and really a lot nicer than where I've been recording the last two weeks. Last week I recorded in my truck pulled off on the side of the road in Livingston, and I think two weeks before that, I was in a campground parking lot in the truck, using the juice off of like a little cigarette adapter to keep the whole thing running. So this is a big upgrade. Yeah. For those who don't know, we're sitting in my c p A office here in Bozeman, Montana, right now, in the quiet room. This this room right here, because this is where we hold client conferences and it's obviously confidentiality, the big deal. That's why this room has sound proved, so it sounds like a studio. It's it's very nice, so it's it's really good. So, but there are no dead animals hanging on the wall here. No, there's a couple of nice pictures. Yeah, but we need this. This room needs some dead animals. Could you bring some Randy Newberg flavor to it? I would like to, But since my name is not out on the front door anymore since I sold my partnership interest, something tells me those might end up in the trash. It's uh, it's how do I say this. I'm very lucky, I think, to be here right now talking to you about this stuff, because you have just been incredibly generous of your time this past week with me, and I just need to start by thanking you for that, because this all started because I was going to have coffee with you the other day and we're just gonna catch up a little bit and talk about, um, some local knowledge I had that might be helpful to you and your son and just other things. And somehow that coffee lead to multiple hunts and a podcast and me just taking all sorts of your time. So I don't think you know what you're getting into way, but do you agree to get coffee? You might be regretting it now. Actually, my wife said, don't you have something to do? And I looked up and I saw that Mark Kenyon was in the neighborhood. I said, well, there's something to do. I'll take Mark on some hikes every evening and and I'll take him to what I pretend are my favorite bear spots and we won't see a bear. I'm sorry, Mark, I don't know what I did wrong. You don't need to apologize one bit, because this was my very first bear hunt, and it was a really cool experience. So what I was hoping we could do here was talk about what we did, how we did it, how it went. UM. But then I also wanted to dive a little bit into the how to part of it because I've never gone bear hunting before this, and so before I knew I was going to go with you, I was planning on just going out there solo on my own. So I was reading every article I could find, and watching YouTube videos and and just trying to figure out how am I going to find some black bears on my own here in the spring? UM, which was a little bit done. There's not as much information online about doing your own spring black bear hunts as I would have thought they'd be. UM, So for anyone listening, I'm hoping we can give some people kind of a one on one of Hey, if you want to go out here and try something like this, which which I highly recommend, now, um, how can they do that? So I'm hoping we can get into that too, And then just don't follow Randy Newburg around if you want to see black bears. I learned that the hard way. That's cool because you came to Montiana, you bought your bear tag over the counter. Our season opens here statewide April fifteen, and there's place I shouldn't say statewide. Each there's some places that have different opening dates and different closing dates, but the general rule is from April fifteenth to June spring bear season is open. And in Montana you can't bait and you can't use hounds, Whereas if you go over to the border just west of here in Idaho, most of their unit it's not all you can bait, and some of them you can use hounds. You go south of us here in Wyoming and it's just about every unit you can bait, but I don't know about the use of hounds in Wyoming. So but all three of those states are over the counter. It's pretty cool, and it's it's very very I mean it's over the counter. It's a time of year where most of us don't already have obligations other than if you're turkey hunting or something like that. And it's a chance to get up in the mountains and it's it's beautiful. It's a great time to be out there and shoot. Normally, Mark and two nights sitting on those ridges we were on, I would average two to three bears in the evening. But well, let's not spoil it quite yet. Let's start at the beginning and work our way to tell them how many bears we end up seeing on these evenings. Okay, all right, so I'll let you lead the discussion. Yeah. Yeah, So so you told me that, um, that I was welcome to join you on on this bear hunt. And the first one I think was last week Thursday maybe. UM. So we met at a parking lot. My wife was gracious enough to drive me back and forth to these things, and uh, I had to sign a waiver that i'd bring you back to one piece and you did that very well. He got me back and no injuries. Um, and I got to meet you Camerman, your two caramen, who are great guys, very cool. Marcus and Michael are good guys. Hope that was fun. Holy smoked though. Michael, you're new guy. Yeah he can sweat. Yeah. Yeah. We'd look back in Michael's hat. We'd be about a fourth way up the hill and that dude, he's he's just pouring it out. O. Man, he was too. But but yeah, so we we went off to this piece of public land, and basically the game plan was to just hike, hike, and hike up to the top of this kind of glassing knob or small mountain, um, whatever you want to call it, and we're gonna we're gonna watch from there. So so my first question for you, Randy was why there? Um. I asked that seriously and a little bit facetiously. Why they're what was what was the thought process in our plan there that night there? And my thoughts, I always want to get to a place that gives me the greatest amount of view shed how how many places can I glass from that spot? And as you saw, about the only place we couldn't glass was to our south, to the east, the west, the north. We had this huge vista for miles and yeah, some of that out in front of us would have been private, some of it would have been public. But the idea is when when spring bears come out of their dens, and we've had a pretty hard winter here, So my gut's telling me maybe we're a week behind just because of how cold and how much snow we had. Uh, those bears have the feedback on. They're trying their best to get their digestive track going again, so they're mowing on the grass and the vegetation there, maybe looking for winter killed carcasses. And when you get these stretches of warm days in the rockies after a long winter, it's usually in late April early May. You get these three four or five days where it gets up in the seventies, and that is when bears seem to come out like crazy, and you see them moving a lot. They're they're not that stay canary in the spring. They're moving just looking for feed, looking for feed, And so that's why I get to glassing spots. You'll see a moving across the openings. You'll see a moving across the hillside. And the idea is, once I see them, how do I get in front of them? Does it look like they're head in some place to feed? Is there some really nice green lush spot that as the snow has receded up the hill up the mountain. A lot of times you get these patches that are just way greener than the rest of the mountain, and usually they're head into those green spots, and so I'm if I see them, I'm trying to get there. So that that was the method to my madness and picking that spot. Okay, So so I will divulge the secret now that first night we did not see a bear doing any of those things you said, but it sure looked like a place that you could right. I mean everything you just described there just seemed to be to a t. The view was incredible, the scenery, it was incredible. Um. The the other thing that I forgot to mention about what I'm looking for, Mark, I'm also looking to be near calving and fawning grounds of elk and deer, because when those elk calves and deer fawns start hitting the ground in late May early June, those black bears, for them, that's like buffet time. And I know a lot of us are like, oh, I hate thinking about bears eating all these little calves and fawns. Uh, But that's just the reality what goes on out there. So these black bears are tuned into that they know where these calving grounds are and where these fawning areas are. And how many elk did we see every night? So many elk, sony elk, and deer newly's white tails. I mean it was we didn't see bears, but we saw so many critters. I mean, that was just fun that area we went to. For whatever reason that I can't explain. I don't know if it's because of fires, if it's because of just the mineral content and the soils. In the springtime, I see way more cow alk and dough meal deer and dough white tails in those basins, and I think that's where they fall. I think that's where they have and I think that's why as that's happening, the bears know that historically, and they're moving towards that spot that I was going to ask, how can you if I'm not familiar with an area already, how do I determine where these cat and grounds are? Is there anything to look for from a habitat standpoint, or do I just need to figure it out by glassing and walking around? And I wish I could tell you that I had some science to it. Fortunately for me, I live here, so I spend a lot of time in these hills and I see it. If I had to find some characteristics to it. Uh as you know, there's a huge burn there. Those burn areas generate unbelievable amounts of feed, but also quality of feed and a lactating elk or a lactating deer. They want the highest quality food they can confine, so those burns provide that. Uh. But even away from the burns, there were still a lot of those animals. And I I wish I could tell you what makes the I can go to four basins that all look the same, but for some reason, two of those four, the elk and deer will select those. The other two they'll just kind of disregard. And I'm not smart enough to know why. I wish I can tell you why. Is there any like elevation band like you're usually seeing them at a certain height maybe or anything like that. There is def And we were talking about that on the mountain the other day about those elevation bands seem to have the same greenness and lushness. And I think that's because of as the snow it's somewhat dependent upon where that elevation is to the snow retreating up the hill. Uh. Also just geography and geology. Uh. The geology of it is, you get a lot of faulting and stuff in the mountains, and so you might have one area that's mostly granite, one area that's mostly limestone, and those bands of one or the other are going to have different forage types. Um. A geologist friend of mine taught me this where he only hunts limestone areas because his experience shows that ungulates prefer feeding in areas with limestone as the soil composition. And I never really thought about that until I started doing it, and I'm like, whoa, look at that. So that is something you pay attention to them. I do now I didn't then. H And he's a geologist, so it's it's interesting to hunt with the geologist. He I'm looking at the total landscape. He's looking at Oh this, we're in a good limestone stretch here. To me, I'm like, who cares if it's limestone, granite, something in between. I don't care if it's you know, mud and bog. Well, for him, he understands how that soil composition translates into minerals being absorbed by the plant communities and how the wildlife selects that. Yeah, it was. So there might be areas where it's a function of of the elevation, but that elevation might be there just because of the soil composition at that point or at at that elevation. So again in the fall. It's it's much more pronounced in the fall that at least for meal there in hunting season, I see the the does and fawns heading in, the young bucks heading down lower. Following so in August things start drying up in the rockies and he gets brownish colored. You see with the first snow often you see the doze fawns and in young meal deer box head lower and then anywhere from a thousand and fift feet in elevation above them, the mature bucks will stage, and they will stage there through the end of October until the first three days in November, and then all of a sudden, the trigger comes on and you see him down lower with with the younger bucks and the does and fawns, and and we've taken where you and I were bear hunting. We've taken three really nice meal deer bucks in those staging areas there, And a lot of people are like, oh, it's not a good place to hunt because when the rut starts, all these bucks dropped down onto the private. Well, yeah, they do in the rut because that's where the does are, but they're up on the public in that pre rut phase just before. It seems like that area has been very productive for you. Yeah, we've We've shot a couple of bears in there, We've shot some nice meal dear shot a white tail, and we filmed the white tail hunt in that area. Uh outcome. So it's it's a it's a good spot. But one thing. And people are starting to realize this with when they see our images and they see our video. Uh, someone sent me an email in it. That's when it kind of struck me that, oh, people are catching on and Randy, everything you film, every picture I see of you, you guys are in burns. What's up with all the burns? And I don't want to say there aren't critters uh in areas that haven't burned, But in the Rockies. The Rockies are a they it evolved as a fire prone ecosystem. Before man started suppressing fire, these places were burning every thirty years. And so if you talk to the historians and the biologists, they said that before that our suppression of these fires happened, wildlife would move to wherever these mosaic patterns of burns were at. Well, Randy is kind of like that these what curtis, I'm moving to wherever these burns are. And uh so that's uh that's part part of why I think that area in the last five six years has been pretty good. Now you look at it and those burns are starting to get a little bit older, they're starting to get grown up with with new trees, and so I might have to abandon that spot in the next few years and start looking for where's the next burn that's two or three years old. So here's my two questions on that. Number one, what's the time frame after burn that's best? So is it one to five years or whatever that is? And the number two, how do you go about finding these burns? Um? Other than just being there in person? Can you actually find them when looking online on maps and stuff like that. Yeah. Uh, I don't know if I want to tell all those secrets, but I'm going to uh as the first one is easy. Uh I hunt burns certainly within one year after the fire. If it's an early summer burn and you get fall moisture, I'll go and hunt that burn that fall, um, but certainly the next year for the possibly up to the next ten years, and if there are other burns nearby that they can select from. That are newer burns, They're gonna go select those newer areas. If it's all nothing but dark timber and that burn is ten years old, they'll still be in that ten year old burn before they'll be in that dark timber. So how long do I hunt them? It just a little bit depends. I always like to hunt the freshest burn I can find. Let's put it that way. As far as where to find them, uh, the generic answer is there's a website called inc web I n C I BU E B and it'll show you current status of fires. So in the summertime, I can be diving in and watching that. So am I allowed to plug a product here? You can do whatever you want. Okay, you're you're outside of my control. I take for whatever you might do. A lot of people know that I use the on X map system and on their cell phone, their smartphone app, the hunt app. It's called there's a layer called fire layers goes all the way back to two thousand. I can't believe I'm telling everybody, but that's it. And so you add that layer on your smartphone app and it will show you what year the fire was. The it'll give a polygon, Uh, outline of where the fire was. Interesting. Oh, it's it's the if. If you're doing desk scouting like I am, Uh, I don't know how how you do it without having that fire datus. If if you're thinking of coming out west, uh and in your in a quandary for where to start, my default is find the burns and you will find. Okay, I think we are elk, deer or whatever. I think we have this. We grow up with this idea, and I think hunters are the worst because we see these hunting magazine pictures and stuff of these big high meadows, beautiful dark timber around the edges of them. You'll never see me hunting there. I mean, that might look pretty, but if you're an elk or you're a meal there, you're like, keep right on trucking. There's nothing to eat there. So I'm looking at these ugly burns, and the number of elk and deer bedded in those burns is crazy. Most people just I think visually they say that's there's not gonna be anything there, or if it was there, i'd see it standing up. They can bed in that stuff and be just about and image. So it's uh, that that's kind of a diversion about how all of that connects to bear hunting, but it is somewhat connected to where I select where I'm in a bear hunt. Well, And on nine number two of the hunt, we thought we you thought you had spotted a beded bear in a burn area for close to burn area. Um too, it did not try him to be a bear, I don't think so either, or he stayed motionless for three hours or several days, because he was there a couple of days earlier also, but it did look like it certainly could have been one. And I got excited there for a moment because I've got a bed of bear, and I'm like, all, you think we can get over there in time. You're like, yeah, we're gonna go for if it's him, And so I got fired up day two, We're gonna get on a bear. I feel terrible, Mark. I was about ready to throw my stuff in my pack, and it would have been about, I don't know what a mile and a half over there. I would have dropped about a thousand feet elevation and had to pick up another eight hundred going up the other side. But we would in two hours. We would have had time to move in on it, but it turned out not to be a bear. It was not a bear and false alarm, and that was the story of the rest of night number two as well. Yeah, that's that's what I tell people that bear hunting in the spring anyhow, is two hours of hiking, uh, followed by three or four hours of board just glassing with the hope that that boredom is interrupted by fifteen minutes of absolute chaos. That's that's kind of how it, dude. Yeah, but it's that's not too much different than tree stand whitetail hunting. You know, yeah, you're probably not gonna hike for two hours, but how often do you sit there thinking, oh, man, today's not the day, today is not to day, And all of a sudden you turn and looked over your left shoulder and there's a big Hanks standing there. You're like, that's instantly, big pulse of adrenaline. I kept telling myself the whole night last night, you know, as the clock was taking down, I just kept saying, stay focused. Any second, like even with only five minutes left before we go, that black form could step out and it could be game on. And it always seems to be whenever you let your guard down, whenever you mentally kind of check out and saying it's not gonna happen. What was me? It seems like when that happens, that's when all of a sudden they show up and you're not ready and you miss your opportunity. Um, So I'm constantly trade. It's like so mental any kind of hunting is, obviously, but it's always how can you stay in it? How can you stay positive and be focused? And many times it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, and I struggle with that. I get bored easily. I must have some sort of attention disorder. But one of the things I found that helped me through that is one to a place where there's a lot of other wildlife. It keeps me interested to see, oh, wow, three three different elk I hadn't seen just walked out into that opening, or wow, where'd that group of meal there come from? Or whatever it might be in and I don't know. It just makes it easier to to be encouraged and be excited and keep your eye on through the optics on the hillside. Yeah, So, as as a hunter, I think most of us are just generally, you know, enjoy watching wildlife and just seeing them do their thing. And that was that was a blast, is getting to watch something dear and elk move around, interact with each other, occasionally see us. There's that one Kyle elk on the first night that came right on up the hill, right towards us. Yeah, that was weird. Come from down wind too, Bar. I don't know if I can't explain why she would come that close after smelling us. She had to have smelled us coming from down And like, what did you think about seeing white tails at I was very surprised. You just assumed that these deer would be staying way down low in the bottoms, and it was just cool. It made me excited someday want to hunt white tails up in a place like that. You don't think I would never think that you could chase white tails way up high like that, surrounded by snowcovered peaks and being up in them. Um, that is really cool and it combines my love of mountains with my love of white tails in the same place. Um, you gotta be careful, Randy, you might show up one night. He's that guy in that tree stand there Hey, I'll watch if I see a truck with Michigan plates at the trailhead, you know that's trouble. I'll be like, uh, this guy any more in my secrets. No, it's fun to go and hunt white tails and spots like that. I have a whole bunch of spots scattered across Montana like that that. I found him while outcunting, and I'm I'll never be able to get rid of my white tail problem growing up in northern Minnesota. I think now I've shot twenty five bucks since I've moved to Montana, and I think only four of those have been meal Dier bucks. All the rest have been white tails. And you come, if you come to Montana, everyone's got the elk mindset. It's elk, elk elk, and they should. I mean, we've got great elk. But you will see guys walk through some of the best white tail hunting on their way out hunting, and I'm just sitting there. They think I'm taking a break and and being lazy. Well, I'm sitting there because I know how many white tails trotting through these spots. So it's uh, it's just cool where you can have that because when you were out here last year, you hunted a classic kind of Montana pattern of a rat parian area, which that elevation there of where you were hunting is probably two thousands or twenty feet lower than where we were seeing these white tails the last few days. Yeah, and it's so cool to have both of those options, to be able to hunt them in either or different types of habitat um. You kind of choose your own adventure. Yeah. I like that. There's so many of those different places. I'm already I've been thinking about do I want to hunt in different places coming fall for white tails in Montana? Where do I go back to the old spot? Because that was pretty great and I just recently went shedoting there and found some nice antlers. That'd be fun. But I also like the idea of exploring these new places and the new you know, there's there's something to be said about figuring out the new area, learning the behaviors and the patterns, how do they use this terrain, where are they coming from, where are they going to? Um. That's just a part of like the hunt that I really enjoy. Um. But maybe it hurts my ability to kill more deer because I'm constantly jumping, never taking up time to what what do you think of my idea of the Rocky Mountain white tail trifecta. I think it's awesome, I would I think that sounds like a lot of fun. So last year we got we pulled off two of the three. We did Montana. I shot a really nice white tail buck in Montana. We hopped over the border uh northern Wyoming. My buddy Matt side All from on x Map shot a really nice white tail in Wyoming. We need to get if my calendar would fit it. We need to get Idaho in there, because the whole month of November pretty much you can hunt white tails with a rifle in all three of those states, and the general population of those three states they drive by all these white tails looking for elk. Right, So if I was a Midwest guy, and I certainly if I lived in the Midwest, I'm not going to miss my peak rep period with my bow. But after that you could there's so much public land you could come and easily do Montana and Wyoming, or Montana and Idaho as two of the three pick up a tag in most instances over the counter. Maybe in Montana now we're getting more demand for our deer tag, so you might have to apply in the draw. Wyoming all those good white tail spots you can usually get as a leftover tag after the draw. Idaho never sells out all their dear tags, so you can get that over the counter. Get a watch out, because you were talking to you might show up for your white We can't do it. We can't do it in seventeen. I think in two thousand eighteen, I can't think of a better guy to do the Rocky Mountain white tail Trifecta with than Mark Kenya. I would love to do that. That's an invitation. If you want to take it, well, then you've learned the hard way that when when you throw these invitations out of take them. So, but we do it with rifles, Mark, I'm fine with that. You're okay with that. I'll just plan on killing a few of the bow beforehand. I'll head out with the with the firearm for the trifecta and that would be a blast. And I would love to see the rut out west here with these white tails, because you know, back home, in a lot of places I hunt, the number of bucks is much lower. The ratio of bucks to dose as much lower. The ratio of age structure here, the density of deer's incredible. The age structure seems terrific, and the number of bucks to dose is just crazy, crazy compared to anything I've seen it. So I just cannot imagine the competition for these does that must be going on another It's got to be pure chaos. It is. If you sit in some of these Greek bottoms. And I told you this as we were walking off the mountain the other night, that even if they told me I couldn't hunt white tails here, that I could just watch them. I would have so much fun sitting in these Greek bottoms on November eight, because it is chaos. These bucks have to compete so hard because there's so many other and they are just all day long, running like crazy. You'll see him rutting that hard even into Thanksgiving, and the tongues are hanging out, they look like they're they're so withered. You wonder I was just going to make the winner. Yeah, somebow they do. I would. I would love love to see this, So I guess I'm I'm coming out. If you decided to do that, I will make that work because that would just be too much fun. It'd be a lot of fun. Oh my gosh, Yeah, we do a podcast every night. I'd be up for that. I think there'll be plenty of talk about. Yeah. Well, if each of us had a tag, that'd be six tags we'd have to fill. I could do a whole TV season of just white tails. That'd be pretty cool. A lot of good YouTube videos, at least a lot of YouTube stuff that would be that would be awesome. Um, back to bears though, bears. Yeah, sorry, See, we get that's part of being white tail nutsy. Everything kind of spirals down that direction, and that's really what we should be talking about since this is traditionally a white tail podcast, But I want to cover a little of this bear stuff because the bears are pretty darn cool. Um. So we didn't end up seeing a bear either night. But um, what I want to touch on is in the future next time I come out, if I'm doing us on my own, or if somebody's listening and they want to try this someday. We've talked a little bit about some of the place to look, but what else is the first time black bear hunter need to know? Heading out in the spring, somewhere try and do a spot in stock hunt. Is there anything we haven't touched on as far as where to look for him, as far as when to be out there, as far as Uh, I don't know specific glassing techniques or things to consider when you're actually stalking at them, anything else that we need to cover there. Yeah. Um, let's start with you know, the person is just coming out who's never bear hunted before. Um, if you want to give yourself the best advantage, I'd say come out May ten through then in across all three of the states we're talking about, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Uh, you're gonna have bears that are moving around because the bear breeding season starts in late May and runs through about you. And so if you want to find if you're really focused on, say a big boar, he's going to be most active the first part of you because he's searching out phemales um. The downside of that is is sometimes their hide can be rubbed really really bad by then, So it's it's a little bit of a trade off. But usually the dumb question I'm starting to rupt, but being a non bear hunt when you say their hides are rubbed up is that they're just rubbed up on trees. It's just it's the hair their winter coat is starting to shed. So it's some some of the old boars. It doesn't happen nearly as pronounced as with the sows. The sows I think they come out of the den's a little earlier, and they I've seen some mangy looking at the sows that just it. You look at them and you think, my goodness, who would not that you would? You? You select for boars anyhow, because bears have a little reproductive rate, so you'd always want to pass on the south if you possibly can. But rubbed means they look like they rubbed against the tree. It doesn't necessarily mean they're rubbing against tree. It's just they're they're transitioning the kind of like your dog is shedding. But they don't shed smoothly that big patches and chunks come out. And though usually the areas that that will shed first will be the front legs and then the flanks um and uh, you'll you'll know. You'll look at it, you're like, what's wrong with that bear? And usually it's they're rubbed. So but back back to the point about where to find them. If you came out May tenth through, you're going to catch a window there that pretty much every bear is out of there DAN by that time. Uh, it's going to be a little bit dependent upon weather. How far up the mountain they are. UM for me, I look for so think about in the springtime they come out of the Dan. They've got to get their digestive system going again. They've been hibernating for five months, six months, and they are hitting vegetation heavy at that point. Uh. They love the really succulent stuff like flowers, glacier lily, skunk, cabbage more so than just grasses. And a lot of times you'll look up the mountain and if you take your binoculars or spotting to go, you'll see some of those places that have this deeper green to it, and it also might have a lot of flowers looks like flowers. That's those are the places I look for, UM. And I'm not a bear expert by any stretch. Uh. There's some guys who they have it absolutely dialed in because they've hunted the same mountain range for twenty years. There's nothing that beats that. But you could come out in most places in the Rockies. And if you find those kind of spots that give you multiple places to glass, multiple openings, uh, lots are you're gonna encounter a few bears, and in that area, pay attention to what pattern or what what is happening. Okay, I saw this bear at nine thousand feet. Wow, yesterday I saw bears up around nine thousand feet. Well, guess what, there's something at that nine thousand foot level that's attracting him. Or it might be the flip side. Okay there, Wow, I climbed up. They're all down at six so or it might be all right there all on north facing slopes where the snow still hasn't melted there, even right on the edge of the snow. It These bear are in so many different places, it's you're you're going to have a pretty good chance of seeing them. Uh. One thing they do like nearby usually is some shady place too bad during the day. Ah, you asked me on the mountain the other night, do I ever hunt in the morning, and and I don't. I'm not saying that it's not good bear hunting in the morning, It's just that I never do it. Uh. And very few of the guys I know hunt in the morning. So I've heard this a lot from other people too. Yeah, they tend to focus on afternoons. And I don't know if that's just I don't know if that's a habit that we've collectively formed. Uh, but I've I have. When I first started bear hunting, I spent a lot of time hunting all day long, and I would say overwhelmingly the number of encounters or bears I spotted were from three in the afternoon on kill dark. Um. Question about location. Yeah, one thing, Um, I want to think about chasing elk or deer out west lots of times. It's how he gets far away from the road as possible, get away from trailheads, get away from other people. Um. Is that something you worry about as much of the bear hunting or not? I do, because the stuff near roads and trailheads is going to be hunted harder, and so your age class of bears uh is going to be much lower. Ah. It's if you do have a bear that came out of it's Dan. Say he made the mistake at Dan and near a trailhead, and when he comes out and he's first getting his bearings about him, Uh, odds are he's going to get picked off. So you know, I'm usually hiking a mile mile and a half from a road or trailheads just because I'm I know that just like elk uh. Even if bears are a little bit more habituated to humans. Uh, and sometimes humans provide them food through garbage cans or bird feeders or whatever. Uh. General rule is bears want to be away from people also, So those spots where we were glass and uh, you know, if we would have seen bears in some of those spots, we we'd hiked in about a mile and a half, we might have had to run another mile and a half, so we would have been three miles from a road at that point. So I do I look for those kind of places. What about hunting pressure during spring bearing season, I'm assuming it's much less than elker deer Wait wait, way way less? Do you still have to think about it though, decent bit or yeah? I do? And I know that hunting pressure is going to be really heavy Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. So if I was traveling out here to do a hunt, I'd want to get here on a Saturday or Sunday scout a little bit and then really start my hunting Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and you'd almost have it to yourself. That's good to know. And we had no problem during our weekend hunts. Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna plan time to come out, ah, that's what I would do. I mean, there the amount of hunting pressure for spring bears compared to deer now because not even I don't even think it's ten. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice to be out there and not worried about seeing people all the time. It was really nice being out there. You know. Last night we were talking about we were just sitting out and you know, I was a little bit bumming out. We hadn't seen any bears. But I kind of caught myself and I was like, look around you. Right now, you are surrounded by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of acres of public land stretching in every direction as far as the eye can see. That is we own title too, that we can roam it, walk it, hunt it, explore it. And it's just I'm constantly in awe when I when I take a second to step back from whatever I'm focused on, and just like look out of it. This is this is incredible. There's nobody else out here right now. I don't think there would have been a single person probably out there. I mean there could have been, but you would never know it if there was. In our two nights, we did not see another. That's we saw. We saw some turkeys. There were a couple of hammering off. Yeah. Any of you have ever taken Mark on a bear hunt when there's some turkeys goblin down below, you almost have to tether him to a tree. I did get excited. I gotta kick out of that. That's the first time I've ever seen turkeys up way up in the drainages like that. I have no idea what they're doing up there. They were gobbling because the first time you told me you heard when I said, oh, that's a sand hill, Craine was like, man, am I going crazy because swore that was a turkey. But I trusted you. Then, even my bad hearing, I'm like, whoa, that is turkey? Turkey and Mark can call him without a call. That was fun. They were responding just a little, a little yelp when I was doing there, but to something you mentioned a second ago. I want to touch on because this is one of the things I was worried about the most when I was planning going on my own. You mentioned the fact that we should be targeting boars and not sous because the fact that they've got that low reproductive rate, and I had been worried, like, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna screw up and misidentify. How do I tell the difference between a male and a female? Um? So I tried to watch the videos. I tried looking at pictures and doing different things like that. Um, but it's a little hard to do this. I was showing, But what can you tell us about identifying a male versus a female black bear? How did you do that? Um? The the obvious one is if the sow has cubs. Before I go after a bear, I watch it for as long as I think is good because I don't want I don't want to run over there get all excited. And then I get there and here comes a cub or two little cubs walking out of the brush. Um, that's your first indicator that it could be a sou. There's cubs. Just enjoy the view and watch and observe. Uh. If there aren't any cubs, if I tell people, if if you went to the supermarket and bought a pair and laid it on its side, you'd have one side of it is like tall and one side of it is narrow. Well, a sow black bear kind of looks like a pair from a side profile. It's rump looks really big, and it gets really dainty out towards the front, whereas a boar he looks like a big russet potato. I mean he's big in the rump, he's big in the shoulders, he's big in the neck. It's a refrigerator walking across the So if you see him at a side profile and they have a smaller front end than they do a back end, and just about bet that it's a sow, then if you see him straight on, a boar is going to have these big shoulders. They almost look bull legged when they're walking. I mean their front legs are bow almost and and they waddle more than walk. If you can see it from straight on through your spotting scope and it's a sow, its shoulders are gonna look very dainty and narrow, and it's gonna walk almost with one foot in front of the other instead of this swagger. Uh. And then as far as the head, a boar is gonna have a much bigger head than a sow. A sow is gonna look like mostly nose and ears. A boar, a mature boar, his ears are going to be over towards the side of his head instead of like a sow. Her ears are going to be on the top of her head. Uh. There's not one definitive thing, but there's a multitude of things. If you start looking at it. If you've got quite a bit of a gap between the ears, odds are you got a boar. If there's not much gap there and those ears look pretty big relative to the head, odds already have a sow. So there's there's not an absolute science to it. Uh. When you do see a sow with cubs and you absolutely know that's a sow, observer for a long time and just try to get a feel for what those traits of her body is and you'll you'll quickly be able to say next time that that's probably a sow. Um. So there's something just about watching bears that I find so cool, Like, I think they are such interesting animals that the things they do or interact and I've watched a sow with cubs, both black or grizzly, and just seeing how they interact the things they do. I don't know, there's just something really neat about bears. I can sit and just watch them for hours. No, I think bears are the most comfortable animal. And I say comfortable. They just go about their business and they really aren't like deer and elky. They're always like spring loaded. Uh. A bear is just I'm I'm a big bad dude. I'm here doing what I'm doing. I'm making noise, I don't care. I'm tearing up roots or snapping off trees or whatever. And there's who I am. I own the joint. And it's kind of fun to watch them. One of the things that is interesting is you get towards la late may when you're watching them. Uh. I've seen boars try to interact with sows, and if they have cubs, those sows will run those cubs up those trees immediately because uh a boar he wants that saw to come into heat, so he will kill. One of the greatest problems with bare reproduction can be boars killing the offspring of other boars, so he will kill those cubs, and you'll see those sALS instantly run those cubs up that tree, and she is acting ornery and you'll see him come walking around and she's like, he wants on this, buddy, I'm gonna and uh So it's kind of funny to watch, and I enjoy watching them try to interact in late May. It's uh, it's very entertaining. Yeah, that's the one thing I'm just so bummed about. It is like I literally could do what we did last night seven days in a row, ten days, and I wish I had more time to sit and watch and um, if I lived out here, I'd be doing this. Yeah. I am lucky to live in a place where I get to go do that for you know, last night you asked me how many days will I sit on these mountains just in May, and you know, just here in Montana, it's probably gonna be six to ten days. This year was just sitting and observing whether whether or not I'm lucky enough to find a bear, I don't know. And then I'm gonna try to go to Idaho in early June and do the same thing. So I don't know. It's it's good exercise. It's great fun. Uh And I I learned a lot when I'm out there, no matter what it is, I'm learning something about that species, whether it's the deer, elk I'm looking at her bears, or just learn something about how that landscape is being used by the wildlife. If you it seems like if you open your eyes to it, there's a lot that you can take in from any situation like that, if you just pay attention, if you notice things. So I have two more kind of practical questions I'm curious about. Okay, I'm an impractical guy, so it takes your chances here. I think a lot of people when switching from being just a if I've only ever hunted deer, one of the things a lot of people ask is what kind of firepower do I need? Do I need to change my archery set up? Do I need to change my rifle set up? Firearm set up? What's your recommendation there? Can I use my white tail gear hunt a black bear? I do use all my white tail gear, same stuff, whether it's your bow or your rifle. We've shot black bears with a two seventy seven and m M O eight three D wind MEG three O eight I mean classic white tail calibers. You know, some people say, I can't believe you'd hunting black bears with a seven mm OA. You know what if you hit a black bear in a vital spot with a hunter and forty grain accubon or good high quality bullet partition whatever it is, that bears not going anywhere. If you hit that bear in the vitals with a sixty pound draw weight bow with a good sturdy broadhead, guess what if that broadhead sharp, that bears not going very far? So I I if I was coming out here, I wouldn't I wouldn't invest an extra diamond equipment. If if I was a rifle hunter, I just make sure I was using some sort of premium constructed bullet. Okay, well that's nice. The barrier to entry again very low, very low for white tail. Bring your same YEP, fine over the counter taghi of a hill, look around a lot and have so. Then my final question would be, then I wish I had, I wish I had to be dealing with this situation right now. But next year, next year, I will. Can you give us some advice on eating black bears, some ways to prepare or or make sure because some people give the black bears a bad rap um, say they're greasy or whatever. How do you go about it? So black bears are fun for the dinner table. Yeah, And for a little background, growing up in northern Minnesota, my dad used to set out bait stations for bear hunters and that was all fall bear hunting in September. So those bears have been on berries all summer, and they almost had a sweet taste to him. In some of those places, it was hard to find a strong tasting black bear when they've been on berries all summer in the springtime. I'm just gonna, you know, let people understand that those bears probably ate, probably ate an elk gut pile just before they went in the dan, and they've been sleeping for four or five or six months however long they've hibernated, and they've just come out, they're going to be a stronger taste. They don't have the fat like they do in the fall um, you know, just their their body hasn't been circulating enough vegetation and food froom, so they're gonna the spring bears are definitely stronger than a fall bear. Uh, you'd asked me the other night. How I prefer to cook a bear. I'd prefer prefer to take a bear roast and rump roast or whatever and slow cook it. H and a croc pot or whatever with you know, I I just like almost a stew type thing with carrots, pearl onions, some potatoes, uh, some flavors. However you prefer to flavor it. Uh. Sometimes I'll cook it that way and then I'll take it out real quick and I'll put a little rub on it, and I might throw it on the grill just for a quick sear to it. Huh. I don't stake my back straps on a bear like I do an elk or a deer. I cook it as a whole uh loin roast. Um. And the only worry I always have with bears is they have a pretty high incidence of trichinosis. And so depending on who you talk to, most will say you want to cook that thoroughly at least two hundred and sixty five degrees throughout. I don't like well well done meat, so I will with that backstrap. You know what kind of has this round? It looks like a big long round cylinder of meat. I will cut that lengthwise so that then I know the interior will get cooked quicker without having to tortu the outside. Um. And with those, I usually just put a rub on it. Uh And for me, simpler is easier. Um. You know there's a lot of guys who render their bear fat and stuff like that. I've never done that. I always worried it's going to go rant it on me. Uh. Yeah. It used to be in Montana that if you shot a bear that fish, Wildlife and Parks would test it for tricking olysis. Now that's voluntary and you have to pay the expense to get it tested for trick analysis. We both know another guy who's been on our podcast. His crew ended up the meat Eater crew. They ended up with trickings and they learned this the hard way. Yeah, even though they knew about it before. That's the that's the part where I'm like, you guys knew better than that. But I'm I've always been a little bit leary of of that with bears. Um. And I've never had one test positive for trick analysis. So I don't know what the the frequency of trick analysis is. But if you're cooking bear meat, just make sure that as a safety make sure you get it above the I think most would tell you one sixty. You want to get it above that. I've seen that too when I was doing But for me, I I cook bear a lot like a cook elk. Pretty much, any elk recipe works good for bear cool. Well, I'm looking forward to putting that to the test a year from now. And and now I don't know if I actually will do this, but correct me if I'm wrong. But my bear tag is still good for the fall season two, right, So if I fail my dear tag early, I could could go bear hooting for some bears. And you will see the bears here in the fall are far more concentrated than they are in the spring. They are on berries. The black bears, anyhow, are on berries heavy in the fall. And you will go into these brushy creek drainagers, and if you sit there and watch, you will see these bears just pulling these limbs down and mowing on anything that looks like a berry, a huckleberry, choke, cherries. Where we were at the last two nights, those kind of purplish drainages you see, you know, those were in the fall. Those are just laden with choke cherries. Just looked and I can't tell you how many fall bears I've seen in there's just going after it. So I'm not going to give up my two thousand, seventy bear tag yet. There there could be a fall bear in my future. Maybe could be. That would be great. That would be cool. If I could get a deer. If I can draw that antelope tag on a prom and then pull off a bear, that would be something you do bear, whitetail, and prong horn in one trip. That'd be pretty wild. That would be really cool. It's doable, possible. I don't know how likely, but possible. It's possible. So I've got that to look forward to. I guess yeah, I'll be uh. I'll be odd elk hunting in September. If you're out this way, I'll keep my eyes out for black bears, and if I find where one's hanging out, I'll let you know I appreciate it. That is one thing in the three states we're talking about is there's also grizzly bears. Uh. Where we were last night, you saw the big signs that says say Gosha grizzly bear area. Um, and there definitely are grizzlies in these places. You can go to other parts away from the Greater Yellowstone area that has fewer grizzlies are in northwest Montana. Uh, there's grizzlies there. Um, I don't worry about it that much this time of year. Uh, grizzlies are looking for carcasses. They're still feeding on vegetation also. But there, now that I say this, I'll get eaten by one or something. I hope not. But I've seen black bear hunting. But there they seem to kind of keep to themselves. Um, they're not in that state of hyperphasia like they are in September and October. So they're they're pretty methodical, just lumbering around doing their thing, digging for rodents or eating vegetation or if you find a carcass. If you find a winter kill carcass in grizzly country, there's a good chance that a bear is going to be working that carcass. But don't let that scare you. Uh. There is a reason that I don't call bears in grizzly country. My experience has been when you call for bears and they come, they're coming you you almost have to throw a rock at them to change their mind. Well, if that's a big silver tip grizzly, I don't want that problem, because if I have to shoot it in self defense, I've got a serious problem. Either way, I may not escape without a few scratches and bite marks. So it's there's just all kinds of reasons and problems why I don't call bears in grisly country. Some would say, oh, you're Chicken Newberg, but that's fine. I just don't need the headache that might come with it. And it seems like your current strategy works just fine most of the time, so I don't need to. Yeah, and uh, it would have been fun if if we could have brought one of the what I'll call just serious fanatic bear hunters with us. I I consider myself pretty casual about the bear hunting. I I go and do it, but there are some guys who that's what they live for. There it's it's bear season and then there's the rest of the year. And if we would have had one of those guys with us, you would have you would have seen someone who is really wired differently. You look at him like, man, there's guys he's got something going on with bears. So I just admit up front I've I've shot my you know, share bears, but I'm not I don't consider myself an expert. I just go and do it a lot where I get to observe a few things. Well, it's been really interesting to be able to learn from you and hear how you've been doing things and observe and very helpful. So I'm really glad that my first bear hunt, I was able to tag along and learn versus I priced walking circles on the mountain by myself, and you would have seen as many bears than that as you did with me. I guess that's possible. You got to go in your first bear hikes, not bear hunt this fall. All right, now, briefly, we're going to pause for a weekly segment with our friends at white Tail Properties and producer Spencer new Hearth has a great guest expert today who's going to give us some advice for those who might be in the beginning stages of looking for their own little piece of white tail paradise. This week with white Tail Properties, we have joined my Jeff pro a land specialist out of Northern Missouri and Jeff is going to be telling us about what kinds of questions you should be asking when looking at a new property. Well, there's a lot of questions when it comes to buying a piece of ground, particularly for hunting. UM. One of the most important things, uh, the key components is the neighbors. Uh. It's probably the most asked question I get as an agent that specializes in UH in land is particularly hunting ground. UM. Obviously, if you've got neighbors that aren't like minded, are you know, could be bad neighbors, Uh, it's going to cause some problems for you that I think the key component is to know the neighborhood you're buying in to try to get a good idea of the neighbors and what they're you know, what their goals, their thoughts are in terms of what they're hunting or shooting excuse me. And that is probably one of the key components. UM. Another another question is is you know, does the farm have you know, what kind of income does the farm have? Actually that may be the most portant all too some folks, but you know the income potential on the farm. I mean, is there CRP on the farm? If so, when does that CRP expire and is it you know, when does it run out? Number two? Is it is there is there a tillable agreement on the farm to rent the crop ground out? Uh? You know, and who's the farmer? And is the farmer reputable? Is he does he pay good? Is his his rates good? And you know what does that program consists of? You know, key components to the farm is obviously you want uh to have good cover for betting, for security to hold the deer, and you obviously need food. If you'd like to learn more and to see the properties that Jeff currently has listed for sale, visit white tail properties dot com. Backslash probes that's p r O p ST. So I want to cast switch gears, sure, because the other thing that's been on my mind a lot while we're out here doing these bear hunts was you know, the fact that we were hunting on the clan and of all the people I know, there's a few people I know that are more tapped into what's going on with public land these days than you. Um, You've been a great resource for our audience, you know, coming on the show a couple of times and and talking about kind of introducing our audience to this whole threat of the public land transfer and some of these things. You know, back in two thousands sixteen you talked about that, and I think our audience UM is very well versed on the basics of that now. I talked about a decent bit. It's been something that I've been passionately following myself now for the past few years. But can you bring us up to speed on what's been going on recently? What are the things? You know, we've talked about the whole h R six twenty one deal, um, But I'm kind of curious on your thoughts on you know, since since the election, there's been all sorts of talk of different things. What's what's on your mind now? What are the things that have changed or might be changing, or that we need need to be aware of on this issue. Yeah, and when I was on a year ago, UH, and we talked about the whole transfer the probably glands to the States. I think the level of awareness and understanding of that topic has increased dramatically, not just in the West, throughout the country. And people now realize that the western state landboards are not very hunter and shooter friendly, so transferring these lands to them is a bad idea, and there's been so much pushback on that that you're starting to hear some of these Western congressional delegates walk away from that idea because we have done the hunting community has done a great job of making that political poison. Oh you want to we we have made it obvious that transferring these lands as akin to preparing them to sell them. And that is the reality. Now these people, these elected officials that have had to try to answer some questions of well, what's in the details of that while they stumble and fumble and look like fools. And so I think that phase is starting. They're starting to pivot and say, boy, that's political suicide. Let's let's not let's not talk about selling the lands. We we learned that in the eighties and nineties that if we talk about selling them, we're going to get thumped. Now that that marketing strategy strategy we had about transferring them, we're getting thumped pretty hard on that also. So now it's it's morphing into a more nuanced idea of let's cut agency budgets, let's cut this, let's make let's do let's impair the value of these lands. Let's not fund all of the management actions, Let's not fund all the backlog of repairs and maintenance. Let's not give the agency's money to do their work, so people get frush traded with the agency. Um, you and I were talking about how I need public land film permits. So I've been calling this forest saying I need a film permit to go bear hunting, not where we were hunting, but in a different state. Well, their budgets have been cut so much that where there used to be one permit office, or not just for film permits but all permitting, special events and all kinds of stuff, one one officer per forest, now that person might cover four five districts. And that's an example of well, if we cut their budgets, their ability to do their job is less and less, and people are going to get frustrated. And the more frustrated the masses are, the greater the likelihood of us being able to convince them to sell it, to somehow change ownership to whatever. So you do think that even though they may be pulling back in some of their statements or proposals to a transfer or transfer or a sale, that's still the endgame. But it's they're going to be approaching it by death by million cuts. With all these different budget cuts or whatever might be, they can eventually lead to maybe changing public opinion in some way so they can get away with this and things like, oh, well, we're gonna say, we're given the four Service more money this year, but we're going to give it all to firefighting cost We're gonna cut their their daily work of they're they're logging programs, their road programs, there, whatever program it might be, wildlife programs, conservation programs, watershed programs, we're gonna cut all that. We're going to give them more money and firefighting, and then we can tell everybody, oh, look what we did. We gave the four Service more money. Well, that doesn't do them any good to do the things that require active land management. And there it's it's again part of this strategy of that I think they've hit the reset button. That guess what, We're not going to accomplish this in the next five years. Let's set a goal of accomplishing it in the next twenty years, and we will starve these agencies on the vine. And there's no doubt you ask anybody, there's always places for improvement. But the Four Service, if I remember right, uh, and I might have my numbers wrong, but in relative numbers, it's going to be pretty close. The Four Service had UH back in the nineties, if they had fifty thousand employees, then they're down to thousand employees now. Well yeah, so there's and what they're about half of what they were in the nineties as far as employees, and so the demand on them keeps growing though, Oh, we want you to do this now. Oh guess what, We've gotten invasive weed problem across the West. We want you to take care of the invasive weeds. Oh guess what, We're having more catastrophic wildfires at cross the West. As as we suppress them and suppress them, the ones that pop up get bigger and bigger. So there's all these growing demands on them, and their budgets are getting cut and cut and cut and cut and cut. So I'm all about smaller government, I'm all about efficiency, But you reach a point where you're no longer cutting fat, you're no longer cutting meat, even you're cutting the bone. And a lot of these forests, a lot of the BLM lines, a lot of these federal agencies. It's impractical to think they're going to be able to do all the things we ask them to do. And Congress knows that. Uh, And so here here's kind of the irony of it. In my mind, every frustration that the public has that relates to public land or public land management could be fixed by Congress, every single one of them, whether it's a priority, whether it's a policy, whether it's a budgetary issue, and what do they do the the the greatest critics right now hold the Senate committees that oversee public lens and the House committees that oversee public lens. And there's not a single bill they've introduced to address any of these supposed frustrations. We have none. Zero. They've introduced crazy bills, like on your podcast you talked about Congressman Chavits from Utah had House Bill SI. None of those solve any of the frustrations we're talking about. So are these people serious about better land management? Now that they have all the power and they ignore it and they keep focusing on things that impair the land or go down crazy paths. It's hard for me to believe that they have any intent of better land management. And they still have the intent that someday, somehow we're going to make these lands so impaired, so degraded, that the public won't have any problem getting rid of them. It might take us twenty years, but if that's what it takes, that's what we're gonna do. So these types of things, it's not just even hypothetical, right, these types of cuts, they are happening already, Like, I mean, this is this is happening. How here's what I worry about. And I think it's probably to your point by design that it's harder for the average guy or girl to be able to keep track of all these different things and to know, like how do I make a difference. Because when something came out, it was so easy. It was they want to sell three point three million acres, And that's like a very easy thing to say, WHOA, that doesn't sound good, Rally people around it, and you can make, you know, make a lot of noise and make a difference. It's a lot harder to say, well, there's sixteen different cuts, and there's all these different A little this deregulation here is going to hurt our water, and this is going to hurt whatever. I mean, how do we, as hunters and anglers and sportsmen and women, what do we do with all this? Because it seems really tricky. It is mark and that's that's what's going to make it harder is when it's one big target coming at you, you can dodge that bullet, you know, or you know right now, Congressman Amada from Nevada has this bill introduced. They can't remember the number. I should, but I can't. But it's if you are adjacent to a a piece of public land, we can sell you all any of these parcels under a hundred sixty acres. Well, there's a lot of hundred and sixty acre parcels that control access to ten thousand acres. He's saying, you can. We'll sell the public land to you if you're addressing to it. Yeah, it's it's crazy bill. Um. So ones like that are easy targets. Uh. And you can almost look at all, right, who's behind some of these ideas Like Amada from Nevada, he's you know, he's a stated Uh, he's a chavits rob bishop disciple. So you can kind of look at some of that stuff and say, I don't think they want to change this to the to our benefit. Their history shows that that's not what their goal is. UM. But it does require more vigilance at this point because every one of these changes are going to be more subtle and more nuanced the the I just go back to the position of these public lands are of value, and I continue to impress upon any elected official I talked to these lands are important to me. Don't buy into this foolishness that someone may be pitching you that, oh this is no good or that's no good way, we don't need this or we don't need that. UM. When you have an approach that is so many little cuts, as you call it, if you try to chase every one of those little rabbit trails, you'd wear yourself. At this point, I think it's important for people to contact their elected officials and say these public lands, this is what I use them for. This is how important they are. Any public land issue that comes up, I hope you will consider that I value these public lands. They're a big part of who I am, what I see America to be, and I contact elected elected officials, even if there's not a fire, I want them to be reminded. You know, every couple of weeks, maybe they get an email or a phone call, or if I see them at an event, Hey, you know, just want to make sure you understand that all these public land things, I'm about doing things to improve the value of public lands, not impair the value. Um and again that I always worry that some of these things we ask people to do goes back to you know, high school civics class. But there is some of that to it. Um. If the say it's a congress person from Wisconsin, who really you know, they have northern Wisconsin, they've got some national forest, but they don't have much for BLM land or whatever. If that person is hearing time and again, hey, I'm I've you know, public lands are a priority for me. Public lands are are a priority for me. And they hear that enough time. Even if it's not there, I guess priority issue. When that topic comes up, it's not going to just be rubber stamped according to Oh I'm just gonna, you know, tow the party line. So it's uh, I wish I could tell you that you know, there's this or that, but as a general rule, now it's all about how do we impair these lands, how do we degrade them? How do we cut agency budgets. Let's not fix any of the frustrations. Let's let the frustration continue. Let's let the frustration build. Uh, Let's continue of the attack on quote unquote the fat even though the Fed is Congress is that it's them. Yeah, And I always point that out to him. Make sure whenever a congress person or senator complains about the FEDS, make sure and remind them that they are the fact they are, you know, and they want to say, oh, the bureaucrat this, the bureaucrat that, well, the local BLM range manager or the local force service ranger. He doesn't set the policy, he doesn't set the budget. He this all comes from d C. And in most cases that is a local person, right, Yeah, they're they're the person league or you know, the volunteer at the fire department or whatever. They're just living in the community. They got the marching orders from d C, and d C is counting that we continue to accept the paradigm that they shouldn't be responsible and that it's those damn Feds, it's they. Hope we continue to think that way. I refused to think that way, and I I try to encourage other people that if you have a frustration about your public lands, make sure in contact your congress person or your senator and say what are you doing about this? Yeah, because odds are they're not doing anything about it. It's it's an interesting strategy you mentioned here, because to your point, these people complain or make statements about these issues for which we need to transfer or sell the public because the federal government can't manage it. Button reality, they are the ones inhibiting that management or not allowing the budgets to get there. And I'm curious about another aspect of this, and I think it's some of what you're referring to here. But what we're seeing now in some cases is now deregulation of a lot of things that impact public lands. UM and regulations are such a dirty word and almost always hate regulation or many people talk about you know it's um we're over the regulated death lots of times we talk about. But in these sets of cases, are there some issues of deregulation that are happening that are going to be negatively impacting our public lands and leading towards these goals that some of these people have UM, I mean impacting clean air, clean water, guarantee. Look at the people who are trying to roll back regulations on clean water. I struggled to understand how the world leader, where the cradle of conservation was, This where conservation was born and grew from, is the United States, and we're having discussions about how clean our water should or shouldn't be. I'm trying to figure out what's bad about clean water. You know, I'm not gonna say there aren't instances where maybe some employee of an agency oversteps and doesn't use common sense, but to use those one in a thousand examples for purposes of reducing water quality standards, I just I can't go there. Clean air, clean water, productive lands. That's everything my life is built around is conservation. And anyone who wants to get on these ideological bandwagons of you know, wow, the ep of this blah blah blah. You know what, they're gonna make some mistakes, every agency, every we all are going to make a mistake along the way. But there's a reason the Cuyahoga River isn't on fire today because we have clean water standards. There's a reason that we have the best drinking water, the cleanest water system that that we've known in our lifetimes. Is because of these regulations and because of these agencies, what do we want to do? We want to go back to when whatever it might be. So, so we're we're sitting right here. Ninety miles west of here is the largest super fun site in the world. It's the Berkeley Pit in Mountana. Prior to clean water regulations that killed the entire river from Butte, Montana down to Missoula Clark's or do we want to go back to that? Right Beaute is the largest city I believe in the United States that does not have potable water has to bring their water in over a mountain path? Is that what we want to go back to? So this kind of hawk is it's it just dumbfounds me that that we in the United States are even having that kind of a discussion. And if if anyone listening can tell me why we need dirty your water, I'm I'm always open to differing opinions. And I some of these politicians, I said, well, tell me why we need dirty your water, and they just look at me like, well, uh, you know it comes down to this this these party lines though, right where you like if okay, if I am going to be associated with with this branch or this this party, then I have to agree, always, have to deregulate, always have to prioritize jobs or always and if if I if I disagree with this, you're afraid to say it, or you're afraid you're an apologist for it. How do we break out of that? Because I feel like there's there's so much of that. Yeah, I don't. I don't necessarily have the answer tell you how I've broke out of it. I am not an apologist for anybody. Uh. The only thing I'm an apologist for is clean air, clean water, productive lands, public lands, wild places, and wildlife the rest of it. You know what, if you're against that stuff, I'm not making any apologies for it, even if I voted for you. There's a lot of times I vote for somebody and then they come up with a dumb idea. If anybody can help sway them to the point of common sense and give them, give them some confidence that, hey, if I bucked the system, I'm not going to lose my position. It's those of us who voted for him. I I think we as a city, as a group collective, Uh, the country have fallen into this apologistic mindset that, oh, if I voted for the person, I can't criticize them. I gotta defend them. Yeah No, not me. And and I think in some respects if we would fly because our muscle to say, hey, we're gonna push back when you tow the party liner you come up with some crazy idea, then they would be more inclined to one listen to us, but realize, you know what, I can buck the system, and I'm going to have some support out there. Uh. This whole rollback of everything as it relates to clean air and clean water, it is a hard one for me to understand. And I'm a pretty conservative guy, but I thought the United States aspired to have cleaner air and cleaner water. And none of the people who I you know, I get the fortune or misfortune whatever you wanna call it of being involved in a lot of conference calls and other discussions of stuff that's going on in d C. And none of the people behind the ideas that we need to get rid of cleaner air and cleaner water, none of them have given me their reasons, how their or their ideas of how they're gonna make our air cleaner or our water cleaner. I don't. I don't think they're trying to change all this to make our air and water cleaner. If they are, their track record doesn't demonstrate them. And if there's anything more basic to our life necessities of clean air and clean water, I think we probably take it for granted. And this is where you know I'm kind of an old kajer. I'm fifty two year twenty nine. I remember before unleaded gasoline, you would go to a large city and every city had smog, even a city of fifty thou people had smog. Well, I remember the Rainy River where I grew up in northern Minnesota. You didn't eat the walleyes out of Rainy River because of the paper mill upstream and International Falls in Fort Francis. There were warnings do not eat these fish right below there. Why because And it's not like at that time people said, oh I want to pollute the river. Some of it was. We just didn't know what effect it was having at that time. But now through regulation, through change, through better ideas that that's just an example. Water quality has improved, the fishing has improved, that so many things have improved as a result of it is that really where we want to go back to. But Randy, if you're talking about the environment and stopping pollution and clean air, you're you're a far left wing nut. You know, if that's what people want to call me, I don't really care. I mean, I'm not. I I own more guns than any far left wing nut. I know if you come to my house, I'm sure a t F would be like, Man, we what this guy? This guy kind of preparing for armageddon here? What? But it's fremely frustrating though if you to sometimes if you say that you care about these things, like why can't hunter, angler, firearm owner also care about these things? It's it's necessary to what we love to do. That's a great question mark. I almost say, how could they not about it? You know? It's so critical to the things we love. And I do worry that in my community that I identify with the most and where my most my platforms are mostly heard, is the hunting world. I worry that the hunting world isn't going to stand up and be counted. This is this is our time, this is If we don't stand up, we we are We want to take credit for being the the original conservationists, going back even before uh uh Roosevelt. We go back to Grennelle, we go back to Marsh, We we go back to you know, way way back Audubon. All of those people were hunters and they were the ones who started planning the seeds of conservation. And we want to make that we want to claim that mantle today. How can you claim that I am the carrier of the torch of conservation? But I'm going stand silent when we decide we're going to have cleaner or dirty or air and dirty or water. Tell me how you can reconcile that I can't. And where's our credibility when outsiders look at that and we try to try to care that mantle, and we try to use that as something, and we, because of peer pressure, whatever it is, ideological pressure, we become apologist for those people who want to make our water dirtier or our air dirtier. We we run a risk, I think the hunting community, in the fishing community, we run a risk of losing our credibility and our claim to the mantle of conservation if we stand silent when this stuff goes on. And this isn't just important for the integrity of the resource, but also I think for the future of the right to do what we're doing, because I think the big part of how we communicate to the non hunting public about why hunting is relevant and valuable still today is because of our role as conservationists. And if they look at that and say, okay, you clean to be conservationist, and then they see at well, you only care about the three animals you want to shoot. You don't care about the clean air, you don't care about the clean water. You're not concerned about's bigger that. You just want your gun and you want to be able to shoot. Dear, then I don't think we don't have a whole lot to stay. The rest of society is way more perceptive than that, and we're going to look like hypocrites. We yeah, yeah, I know that might be uncomfortable for some people to have to come to that conclusion, but the time is now to say, am I a conservationist or am I a hypocrite? Am I going to roll up my tent because someone I voted for is I don't want the discomfort of my you know, one of my coworkers or somebody else given me grief because I've yeah, I voted for the same guy. But man, if I stand up and speak on behalf of clean air or productive lands or whatever it is, I'm gonna get grief about it. Well, if that's all the h if that's enough to sway you from speaking up, then the question becomes, are you really committed to conservation? I mean, Roosevelt said it, the wildlife and its habitat cannot speak for itself. We must, and therefore we will. I mean that was a hundred and twenty years ago that he said that, or d fifteen years ago, just as true today. It's absolutely true. And I've been recently, I've been in my speaking presentations and some YouTube clips were working on and I've told you this story the other day about where you were camped that was going to be a reservoir, and blows my mind. I'm working on this series of stories about how conservation has never been easy, it's never been convenient, and it's never been comfortable. And if we think now we can just bail out whenever it gets hard, or we can walk away because it's not a convenient time, or you know what, that's a pretty uncomfortable discussion. To have, so I'm just going to ignore it. If we do that, we are going to lose our credibility as the leaders of conservation. It's gonna be damaging for us in the hunting and angling community, and it's going to be really damaging for the landscapes and the wild creatures that depend on it. It's just the way it is. Even if you even if you don't care about this like ideologically just as a prime minist, like just thinking about the just purely if you want to focus on your individual future ability to do the things you like to do, even if you aren't super passionate about these things, but you just want to. I still want to be able to film my freezer. It just makes sense that we need to be caring about these things and doing something about these things. And to your point, and we've both experienced you to a much larger degree, I'm sure than myself, but we've we face blowback for things we talked about that's uncomfortable or outside of the party line or whatever it might be. And I think to your point, we have to be confident in our beliefs and uh willing to stand up for these things. And you know it's not always me rainbows and butterflies and big box and bulls um. I mean, I spoke out pretty loud on some of these things in the last week, and my emails and private messages and Facebook messages have been pretty pointed. But that implies that I'm worried about the blowback. I am not. I'm fifty two. I don't know if I've got one day, one year, one decade, or thirty years left on this planet. But whatever it is, I'm not gonna take a leave of absence about making the landscapes better, more productive for my kids, my my hopefully grandkids, or the next generations. I'm just not. And if that come that, it comes with risks, for sure, it comes with pressures. It comes from those days when you know someone you appreciate it, you've had a friendship with cause you up and says new Burgh, you off your rock. Yeah maybe I am. But guess what, I'm not standing here letting a political tide roll back everything that the hunters and anglers before me I fought for for the last hundred and fifty years. I'm not. And if that causes a wrinkle in our friendship, I guess maybe we didn't have as good a friendship as I thought. Yeah, it's just for me, you know, someone who has platforms like you do. I think it's more incumbent than ever on us to provide some voice in leadership to these causes, because if we fold up the tent, we've we've been granted these privileges, these amazing lives of being spokespeople for these causes. And if I decide, oh it's a little too tough of sledding here, I think I'm gonna just bail out for a couple of years. Well guess what, Randy, you shouldn't have these platforms. Then that's that. That's my thought on it. Yeah, No, I think you're absolutely right. So and I think to all this what we've just been talking about here. You know, we start our conversation with public land, so the thrust public land, but some of these things we're talking about more recently, this applies to whether you hunt public land out west or you hunt the thirty acres behind your house in New York. Um. I mean this is a nationwide issue. This impact all of our hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, breathing, no matter where you live. Um. So I think that this is one of those very clearly core issues to all of us. That is, Um, it's unfortunate sometimes that we, uh, I don't know, because we don't want to be associated with a different group, or because we're uncomfortable with the same people that talk about this and march on this. They're different than me. But you know what, we actually do care about some of the same things too, and we can look past some of these differences because in the end, we need a couple of core things here that we all care about. There's there's a bumper sticker in Montana and I'm going to get it a little bit uh ah off when I say it, but it's something of gay hippie laggers for Jesus, and it's it's kind of the subtitle is I don't care who you are. You know, open minds and in different perspectives are helpful. Uh. And whenever I see that bumper sticker, I kind of chuckle because coming from a logging family, I kind of think about you know that that that covers the whole spectrum right there. Um. But it it's usually and it usually has some little subtitles around it. But when you were talking about how no matter who you associate with or where you come from as your own kind of personal beliefs on these topics. We we we got to get to the point where we can say, yeah, we disagree on some things, but on this topic, I don't care what your opinion is on topic see on topic A if if you're for uh, you know, conservation and healthy landscapes and and water and clean air, We'll sort out the differences on other stuff at a different time. I'm not going to run scared and hide because someone's gonna say, oh, I saw you at a meeting and you were talking to so and so. Yeah, I guess what so and so is concerned about productive lands just like I am. It's we're in that weird time where it's, you know, people want to find ways to move everyone over to their own little corner. It's who can build the biggest army in a little corner, rather than let's build big armies, big coalitions in the middle for the important things. And it's easy, it's easy to completely filter your whole world into these little things, like I only get news from this little, tiny viewpoint, and my whole social media feed is just people think exactly what I do and it's really easy to get stuck in these little corners. Um, maybe even you're completely unaware of it. But to your point, like last night, we were talking about this, and we're talking about you know, some of the things you've learned over your years, um, and just the importance of always trying to be open to those different perspectives and getting information from all arenas, and trying to look at things objectively, from different ways of looking at things. I think it's increasingly rare today but ever more important to do that because it's so easy to get just Yeah, I don't want to live in an echo chamber where everybody says the same thing I say. And as we were talking last night, I engage with people. But if if this person sent out an email to a hundred people in the outdoor world, every person would delete that email. Request me. I'll email them back and say, what's up, Let's let's have a discussion. Let's have some dialogue. Even though I know I disagree with them on of the issues, I want to hear their perspectives and I want them to understand the perspectives of the community I come from. Whereas there there's risk in that. Uh, sometimes you know the people will say, I can't believe you're talking to that person, Why, why would you give any feedback to that group, or blah blah blah, whatever it is. But I'm one of those guys who I want as many perspectives as I possibly can find. And I've still got my values, my principles, my why you know, my my life is driven by my why why do I do this? Why am I here? Why? Why am I spending my time on things that's never going to change. But it doesn't mean that if I listen to somebody who has a different, different perspective, that I agree with them. It means that I'm trying to learn more. I'm trying to understand. And it's I think we've we've gone so far away from that that everybody is afraid to engage and interact with those of different ring opinions. I'm not. I I enjoy it. I you know, I can accept it to day. You know other I'm never going to agree with this person on most things, but on that thing that they might add a point. I'm also interested how people outside of our community of hunters and anglers view us as hunters and hunters. In English That's a big part of why I engage with some of these groups is how is the rest of society seeing us? Because we see ourselves through a lens that if you grow up hunting and fishing, you are different. You are never going to see the world the way people do who don't hunt and fish and are connected to those landscapes and hold them to a priority that we do. So except the fact that we are different, we see the world differently. But we are only five to ten of the of the world or of our country. So if you want to understand on how we're going to have a future when we're that small of a minority, you need to be listening and reaching out to figure out how do the rest of our society see us? At least it's it's helpful to me, and and I try to try to do that and know that there's gonna be risks and I'm going to take some lumps along the way for doing it, but oh well, yeah, But to your point, it's just inherently necessary for the future. If we don't if we don't pay attention to that and nurture that and be thoughtful about that perception, um, we don't have a future. No, we we don't, uh Chaane Mahoney the Elk Foundation, and you probably saw it on your feeds. He did this piece called relevance. How do we stay relevant when hunters are five percent of the population And anyone who hasn't seen that, I'd suggest that they go and read it. It's or listen to it. It's what is it for me? That thing that we usually posted I embedded on Wired Hunting Blood should go out to Wired and hunt and and see that and and just think about the fact that hey, we're five we in in our country five percent. Five does not control the future. You fit within that in some way, shape or form based on how the other accepts you or views you. Know. So, how do we keep our relevance because right now we're very relevant, our our history, our accomplishments, what we do for wildlife and conservation is more than then what the other does per capita, and maybe collect maybe more than what they do collectively. I got to stay true to that communicate that we need to not step outside of that um terrific heritage that we have and start doing some stupid things that knock down all the tremendous achievements of our our forefathers and the conservations and hunters and naglers before us, And there's a whole lot of pitfalls there. Yeah, we were not gonna we don't need to get into every different but man, I mean there's just and I probably talked about this too much on the podcast. The probably sick of me talking about it. For all this stuff, it's just it's important if we want to be able to talk about bear hunts, if we want to be able to talk about strategies for chasing elk, if we want to talk about the best way to hang a trail camera to you know, pattern of mature white tail buck, we need to be having these conversations and we need to be caring about these things. Yeah, I just think about in my lifetime. I grew up in northern Minnesota, the nearest big community to us with Duluth, Minnesota. St. Louis River dumps into Lake Superior in the Deluse Superior, Wisconsin area, And when I was growing up, nobody ever thought of fishing where the St. Louis River dumps into Lake Superior. And there there it was the start of so many invasive non native species in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes had become. I think when the Cuyahoga River started on fire in Cleveland in nineteen sixty seven, I was three years old. They kind of rows our collective awareness about a lot of things. But even you know, growing up there and seeing how the Great Lakes were looked at as a little bit of a dumping ground, uh, you know, taken for granted. And what thirty years, forty years of hard effort, collective sacrifice prioritizing cleaning up the Great Lakes. I wonder if people now take for granted that. I look at how many tens of millions of people live within close proximity to the Great Lakes. I wonder how many of them really think back of how bad at it could be and how much work it took to get here. Are are we gonna stand and do what it takes to keep it that way? Or are we going to let the hand the time roll back? Are we going to put it in reverse? And to me, the Great Lakes are great picture for anyone listening to just think about or going You can do some quick research on it and you'll see there's no environment, no ecosystem that has been probably as abused as the Great Lakes or has shown such remarkable response and change to smart policy, hard work and just making it a priority to clean it up. And one final point on all this that you know, we talked about some of the ideas and proposals to roll back some of these things, and lots of times. The justification for that is that we need to increase job growth, we need to make it easier for businesses, etcetera, etcetera. I think it's very clear as our community is doing better job quantifying the job and economic impact that outdoor recreation and wild productive landscapes have. I think it's very clear that protecting these places, managing these places properly, it is good for jobs, it is good for economic growth. I'm going to get the number wrong, but a new economic report was just released recently from taking a look at the outdoor recreation economy, and maybe you know the number, but eight d seventy six billion dollars sounds like what I remember seeing something like that. It was almost nine hundred billion dollars. It is a tremendous, tremendous driver of economic growth of jobs within across the country, whether it be specifically public lands or recreation, fishing, fishing, hunting, hiking. I mean, it's a tremendous job grower, grower in rural communities where some of the traditional um jobs are starting to change with the way the world's changing. This is this is a future. This is something that works now. It's going to grow jobs and grow the accounting in the future. And by the way, it also is what allows us to enjoy this way of life. And what's more sustainable than outdoor related jobs. It's it's predicated on good, healthy environments, landscapes that are productive for the things we love, and people make a living doing it. Last I checked, that was as close to the best solution policy experts could get to. So why are we thinking about doing things that compromise that for the sake of this little job and every job if it's your job, it's not this little job, I mean, I get it. I've seen mills, clothes, I've seen the mechanization display sloggers, UM, so that when it's your job, it is important. But collectively we have to look at that and say, all right, how how do we make a true assessment about this that doesn't discount all of the outdoor benefits, all the recreation, all the jobs that you just mentioned and that part of the economy. Because the other sides do really good jobs, do a really good job of converting their activity to dollars and cents. We've never been that good at it. We've always relied on the oh, it's for this, that's cultural at social, and it's all that. But what we're finding is, if you want to talk numbers and jobs and economics, are are things that we love. We can stand toe to toe and have an equally compelling economic argument as well as all these other things we talked about. And to something you said earlier, this caring about these types of things, standing up for these types of things. It's never been convenient, it's never been popular, it's never been easy, And I think it's kind of encouraging. Um as I've like thought about these things and and uh, you know, struggled with what should I do or how do I do this? Or how's this going to play? Or you know, am I risking the future of what I want to do? And I look back at people like Teddy Roosevelt or you know, George Burgernell, or Ela Leopold or Bob Marshall. Are all these different people that made a significant impact on whether it be just the future of productive landscapes or public lands or whatever it might be. In every single instance, as I've been studying the history of this, there's been tremendous, tremendous controversy. There's been tremendous blowback. There, wildly unpopular, there's people calling them all sorts of crazy things. Um. In the short term, you're gonna get that. But history is the ultimate judge. And I think as as as Roosevelt said, you know, these things need to be preserved for you know, not just those today, but in the womb of time fraternity. And I think if you're focus on the long term, if you're focused on the future of these things, if you keep that as like a compass, a compassy point towards and if that's part of your why, um, then I think it's okay to take your lump sometimes and maybe step outside of the lines of what you're buddies think you should be doing, or your political party or your community. UM. I agree. Mark in the history shows that. So Roosevelt, and he's always the good example one because we study him in history. But he got thrown out of his own party. He had to go start another party. But of all of his critics at the time, how many of them are on the face of Mount Rushmore. How many have history judge worthy of being one of the four people that represent American ideas to such an extent that they're on Mount Rushmore. None of his critics, you can't even and no one. You would have to google it to find a name of one of his critics that is of memory. Yeah. So he Yeah, he was president, so he had the big, big pulpit. But the point of that is it wasn't easy for him. He got thrown out, he got ostracized. He he was looked at as the wild wing, not that western cowboy dude from the Dakotas and Montana. He's got these crazy ideas about hunting and fishing and conservation. We need to get rid of him, and they did. But history has judged him as having a much clearer vision than his critics. So that always gives me a comfort because I go through those days like everybody where it's like, oh man, I know, am I out in the weeds and I'm really getting a lot of heat or this? But so did other people. Yeah, just comes with territory. Stand in line, take a number. There you go. I think this is a I think this is a good place to wrap it up. So Randy both, Now you've given me another couple of hours of your time, and you've given me hours and hours on the mountain. I can't thank you enough. It has been a privilege and honor to go bear hunting with you, to you know, just have conversations like this with you. Um. You know, like I said last night when we were driving back from the hunt, um, you are a tremendous role model for young hunters and anglers and conservations to look at someone like you who is willing to stand up and speak out in these things. And uh, and I respect that tremendously and I appreciate that. And uh, I'm very glad there's people like you for people like me to learn from. Well, thank you, Mark. I appreciate all that, and I appreciate what you are doing there. And I told you this last night. There's cadre of and you can do yourself when you say it. Hey, there's this cadre of younger thinkers in the conservation and public land hunting fishing world that I'm give me such great comfort that Hey, we're going to be on the right path. And you and your listeners and your followers, I I don't think that. Maybe maybe I'm wrong, but I hope they understand. Maybe that's what I should say. I hope your listeners understand what an impact they're having, because I have seen just in the last two or three years, the needle is riding the the pivot point has come, and it's because of people like you. You're advocause he your your listeners, your group of people that are making a huge difference. And you know, if I can give a couple hours of my time telling bus stories to that, thanks for having me. It works out pretty well all the way around. So how about next time we talk, um, we'll be talking about a white tailed for a fact that maybe there we go. Let's do it all right, and there you go. Another episode is in the books and some really important topics to keep in mind. There, I think, and I hope you guys found this to be as inspiring and motivating as I have. You know, you guys and gals, the Wired hunt community, you and me. Let's all keep on grinding together to protect our hunting heritage and our wild lands and our wild life, because if we don't do it, who will. All that said, before we go big Thanks to our partners at Sick Gear, Yetie Cooler's, Matthew's Archery, May Haven Optics, Whitetail Institute of North America, Trophy Ridge and hunt Terra Maps, and thank you for listening. I appreciate and value each and every one of you. You guys are an amazing group of outdoorsmen and women, and I hope you have enjoyed a great spring weekend and I hope you'll stay wired to hunting. Got both the best to be that

Save this episode