Ep. 765: Chain Reaction Roadkill, the Elk Rut, and Harsh Truths | MeatEater Radio Live!

00:00:04
Speaker 1: Smell of.

00:00:06
Speaker 2: Welcome to Meet tadcast.

00:00:26
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, welcome to Meet Eater Radio Live.

00:00:29
Speaker 4: Uh it’s eleven a. I’m here in Bozeman, Montana at Meat Eater h Q. My wife, who just got back from the Dolomites in Italy, still thinks it’s two in the morning, but it’s eleven here.

00:00:40
Speaker 3: I’m your host, Brodie Henderson.

00:00:42
Speaker 4: I’m joined today by your favorite history buff and Frankfurter aficionado, Randall Williams and the world’s foremost wildlife and public lands conservationist Ryan cal Cally.

00:00:54
Speaker 5: Wow.

00:00:56
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I’ll trade you for the Frankfurter.

00:01:00
Speaker 4: Today, we’ve got a couple interviews. We’ve got one about road kill be getting more road killed. It’s pretty cool story out of Wyoming. And we’re also going to talk about what’s at stake if the roadless rule on forty five millionacres forty eight millionacres of your national force is rescinded. And since it’s prime time for all the archery out hunters out there, we’ve got a rout report from some hunters who are out in the field.

00:01:28
Speaker 3: And finally we’re gonna lay down.

00:01:30
Speaker 4: Some harsh truths and we’ll check in with the crew at our newest media to retail location in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sounds funy, but first I’ve been I got an order from on High to make an announcement, the announcement everyone’s.

00:01:49
Speaker 3: Been waiting for.

00:01:51
Speaker 4: In December, you can join Steve, Joannis, Clay Brent, and our own doctor of History Rand Here for a night of laugh, news, opinions, and free prizes on the Mediator Live Christmas Tour UH. They’ll be visiting the following cities Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis, Fayetteville, Dallas, and Austin. And you can get details at the mediat dot com backslash tour uh and and find out the dates and the venues and all that stuff.

00:02:23
Speaker 1: Randa Williams is going to do the entire tour and a cousin Eddie bathrobe all on Christmas vacation. So there’s gonna be all sorts of fun Christmas hijinks. You don’t even know, you’re crazy.

00:02:36
Speaker 5: I’ve been practicing all of my carols, even the weird ones that no one likes to sing.

00:02:41
Speaker 3: You’re gonna break out your Santa suit.

00:02:43
Speaker 5: I’d like to I’d like to actually use this opportunity to invest in a real Santa suit at this company. Well, I feel like we have the Yeah no, but hark the Herald Angels sing. We’re just going to get into the the deep cuts.

00:02:58
Speaker 4: Going south, which is a new, new kind of part of the country that I hit on the tours before.

00:03:03
Speaker 5: I’m excited.

00:03:05
Speaker 4: People were riping for a long time, so we listened to them. Guys, are starting to feel like fall around here.

00:03:11
Speaker 6: Man.

00:03:11
Speaker 4: The leaves are starting to show some color, Temperatures are cool enough, days are getting shorter.

00:03:16
Speaker 3: It’s hunting season. I’ve been out for grouse a couple of times with my boys.

00:03:23
Speaker 4: Done all right, But my first big hunt is going to be antelope season here in like what three weeks something like that.

00:03:30
Speaker 3: We’ve got four tags.

00:03:32
Speaker 4: It’s gonna be crazy trying to fill four tags. What’s your big, first big hunt of the year, Randall.

00:03:39
Speaker 5: Well, I actually got out this past weekend and we were in some areas of Montana. We have an early rifle. Yeah, yeah, So I went in with a buddy and we camped together one night and then split up and kind of looped back to the truck.

00:03:54
Speaker 3: Elk or deer?

00:03:55
Speaker 5: What were you after both? Elk? If it’s the very right opportunity because the logistics are difficult. But saw elk saw a lot of deer. Actually, I was surprised and just didn’t. Yeah, but amazing to get out and amazing to uh, you know, discover that the studs in your binocular tripod adapter or loose, or that there’s a hole in your tense rain fly. Yeah, shaking it all out before the weather gets dangerously cold.

00:04:32
Speaker 4: It’s a pretty pretty unique opportunity to carry a rifle around for deer and no super.

00:04:36
Speaker 5: Cool, super cool and yeah, like just gorgeous country. We didn’t we saw people, but we didn’t talk to anybody for four days and nice, saw some moose, saw some goats.

00:04:47
Speaker 4: Cool, cal You’re doing a pretty crazy hunt. Did the company take out a life insurance policy on you before this traditional bow round bear hunt?

00:05:00
Speaker 1: Well I never thought about that, but knowing some of the folks around here, like like I do, uh yeah, probably probably there’s there’s some Vegas style Yeah, that’s being placed for sure.

00:05:11
Speaker 7: Our friends.

00:05:12
Speaker 3: It’s fan duel first big hunt. Yeah, yeah it is.

00:05:15
Speaker 1: I mean because that’s a long hunt and then.

00:05:20
Speaker 3: People a little about it real quick.

00:05:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s out on the Alaska peninsula and it’s brown bear and I’ll be using my bow, which if you’re going to try to get a brown bear with the bow, the fall time is up close and personal time because they’re in there on the salmon streams and the water’s rushing and stuff, and it’s always windy out on the peninsula.

00:05:42
Speaker 5: So it’s good.

00:05:42
Speaker 1: Spot in stock conditions, provided it’s not too nasty, and so you know, the the deck is as stacked in your favor as it can be for just getting in tight.

00:05:55
Speaker 3: Are you are you camping on the island? Are you? Are you doing the boat or how’s it gonna work?

00:06:01
Speaker 1: Well, we’re not into the islands, we’re not on the ills.

00:06:05
Speaker 3: That’s right, You’re on the keen eye.

00:06:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And it’s still TBD as far as because you know, they’re just they’re flying in and out there all the time right now. So it’s we’re gonna figure out the best spot to be yep and and be there. And I’m going up a couple of days before the season starts, and hopefully I have all those little kinks that Randall just gave me a little bit of anxiety with ironed out before it’s it’s sneaking up on Bear’s time.

00:06:39
Speaker 5: I’m gonna give you a little insider tip. Check your air mattress for any slow leaks. The old hips are a little sore.

00:06:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got to carry tenacious tape with you, man.

00:06:51
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, I I uh. This is like the first time in a long time. I was certain that I had my my whole repair kit with me, but for what I reason, it didn’t make it in the backpack. So it’s a useful reminder. Yeah, but yeah, the hips are sore. Started having to dig out my little hip hole under my tent before I go to sleep.

00:07:11
Speaker 4: That’s a bummer when you wake up and those things are just deflated.

00:07:14
Speaker 5: It’s also a bummer when it’s it’s been solid. I bought it used like five years ago, patched it one time since, and I’ve never had an issue. Headed out in Yellowstone last month, no issues. I don’t know really what happened.

00:07:25
Speaker 3: So and then five years you got your money’s worth.

00:07:28
Speaker 5: Out of it. Yeah, but I don’t want to buy a new one. Have you seen the prices these days?

00:07:33
Speaker 1: They are ghastly. But the flip side of this, right, and this is the covey of signing up for a big hunt. Is I have not done. This is the furthest I have ever in my entire life been into any legal hunting season without hunting a single day. Like I’ve just got all this other stuff I have got to get done, and rap.

00:07:58
Speaker 4: Much going on in the world of conservation and public lands. Cal is too busy.

00:08:03
Speaker 3: He no longer hunts.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: That is a real reality. That is just like so easy. Is right there?

00:08:12
Speaker 3: Yep, it’s right there.

00:08:14
Speaker 1: And I’ve spent my entire life fighting against that type of reality.

00:08:17
Speaker 3: So start fighting for Cal so he can go hunt.

00:08:20
Speaker 5: Geez, come on, I’ve got to lead on some sandhill cranes. Oh lovely from the neighbor. So excellent. I’ve got plans this weekend if you want to join.

00:08:28
Speaker 4: All right, we talked about bears a little bit. We’re going to talk about bears some more in our first interview. Our first guest today is Brian DeBolt. Brian works out of Lander, Wyoming for the Wyoming Fish and Game Department as a large corn of carnivore conflict coordinator. And the reason I came across Brian is I read an article just in the last couple of days about multiple black bears that were killed by vehicles at the same location over the course of a day or two, I think and decide to follow up with Brian and let him explain to us about why it happened.

00:09:10
Speaker 3: We got Brian on here. He is, Yes, how’s it going, Brian?

00:09:15
Speaker 6: Good? Hi guys, how are you good?

00:09:17
Speaker 3: Good?

00:09:17
Speaker 5: Good to meet you.

00:09:19
Speaker 3: Thanks for you, thanks for joining us.

00:09:21
Speaker 4: Before we get into this chain reaction roadkill story, can you give us just a little background on what you do for Wyoming fishing game.

00:09:31
Speaker 8: So, yeah, you read my title. It’s a little lengthy. Large carnivore conflict coordinator.

00:09:38
Speaker 1: So you set up the fights.

00:09:43
Speaker 8: Well, I try to referee him anything. So the large carnivores in Wyoming that we deal with our black bears, grizzly bears, mountain lions, and wolves, and whenever they come into conflict with people is my role. Whether it’s a bear tip and over a garbage can, bear killing livestock, you know, wolve’s killing livestock, or you know, oftentimes hunters encounterbears, you know, and shoot a bear and self defense or maybe even a human gets injured or killed. Unfortunately, that’s my job.

00:10:30
Speaker 4: I imagine you got to have a like a pretty cool demeanor for that job, because on the one hand, you’re like looking out for people and livestock and things like that, but you also need to like kind of keep an eye out for the best interests of these these predator species as well.

00:10:50
Speaker 6: Well. It’s uh, yeah, cool, I’ve never been turned.

00:10:56
Speaker 8: It is an interesting dynamic and often the the people are sometimes more difficult to deal with. You don’t say yeah as you know, so it’s it’s interesting, yeah, And you can’t you can’t judge people beforehand by any means. I mean, you could run into a kind of a rough, kind of redneck, old looking fella and there’s none.

00:11:21
Speaker 3: Of them in Wyoming, come on.

00:11:23
Speaker 8: But they they want to do everything they can to make sure that the bear’s okay, that we don’t hurt it, that we don’t don’t have to remove it, you know, lethally kill it or anything. And then next door there’s a you know, in that elderly lady or something in her nightgown, and she wants to make sure that bears as dead as can be.

00:11:41
Speaker 1: So because it tackle their bird feeder for the fifth time, why can’t that bear learn?

00:11:46
Speaker 8: So you just never know it is it’s an interesting dynamic to yeah, be in the middle.

00:11:52
Speaker 1: It’d be helpful if everybody had some pointy years on both sides of their head that either stand up or lay down.

00:12:00
Speaker 6: Yeah, that we could tell a little better behavior.

00:12:05
Speaker 4: So with that in mind, with what you’re out there doing every day, I gotta imagine this time of year, bears especially like very actively trying to put on as.

00:12:17
Speaker 3: Much weight as possible.

00:12:20
Speaker 4: It’s it’s got to be very busy for you in the conflict department, probably your busiest time of year.

00:12:26
Speaker 8: It’s extremely busy, and this year is no exception. Yeah, bears are in what we call hyperphasia, just like you mentioned, trying to gain as many calories as possible before they go into the danding period. And so they are forging longer, they’re active longer, and with anything they can possibly put into their gut, you know, whether it’s natural or unnatural foods, And by unnatural I mean yeah, like bird feeders and food and and that type of stuff garbage. So, yeah, we are extremely busy right now.

00:13:06
Speaker 4: Well let’s let’s I’ll tie that into what happened a couple of weeks ago. Can can you just tell us, like initially what happened, and then we’ll get into why after you kind of let us let us know what happened, and if you want, like you can tell us where this happened to.

00:13:23
Speaker 8: Okay, so real Briefly, there’s a highway goes over what’s called South Pass.

00:13:29
Speaker 3: Very famous place. Well yeah, among certain circles.

00:13:34
Speaker 8: It’s a south south pass of the Oregon Trail and different things over the south end of the wind River mountains here and had lots of wildlife up there. But again, long story short, and elk was struck and killed by a vehicle, and in short order, within a matter of a few days later, a sow with two what we call cubs of the year they’re were born this year, were struck and killed right at that roadkill elk they were, Yeah, all three struck at the same time. And lots of traffic again on this highway, it’s a pretty major thoroughfare. And then later that was early early in the morning, and then later that evening, uh, fourth bear was struck and killed at the same location.

00:14:33
Speaker 4: So and uh, normally you wouldn’t get called into any kind of like roadkill situation.

00:14:43
Speaker 5: Correct, correct, So.

00:14:47
Speaker 8: If there is an animal, let’s say struck on a on the road and it’s still alive, and maybe uh, a highway troman or a you know, a state trooper or a sheriff’s deputy or something shows up unseen and the animal needs to be put down, you know, because it’s correctly injured. They have to call us. We have to give them permission to do so, because we’re the authority over wildlife. But a dead critter, you know, if something’s just been struck and killed, that is not our authority, that’s the Woming Department of Transportation, because then it’s just a road hazard and it’s not live wildlife anymore. So we typically don’t get calls like say, unless it’s still alive.

00:15:32
Speaker 4: So just for people who aren’t following, an elk gets killed, it attracts the sal with the with the young or with a year old cubs, and later that the elks still hasn’t been removed, and it attracts another bear which also gets killed. So what what like you got involved? I assume at that point after that fourth bear got killed and what happened after that?

00:15:59
Speaker 8: So actually I did get involved a little earlier. I was I was aware that the that a bull elk had been struck and killed post impression that it was going to be picked up. And I’m sure not criticizing anybody. There’s road killed everywhere. It just happens a lot. And then I got a call early in the morning one morning that these three bears had been struck. So I responded, and sure enough, it’s a sow again with a couple of little cubs. And I gathered them up, and the elk was still there. And again I probably would have when I had loaded it up, but I had three bears in the back of my truck, and I made another wrong assumption that, well, okay, it’ll be picked up now, you know. And then that evening, right at dark, I get a call that another bear, a bear, was struck and killed by a vehicle, you know, mile marker fifty five whatever, And I said, no, that happened this morning. I told her dispatch and there they said, no, no, the guy sitting there right now that just hit the bear. So I went back up there, and sure as heck, a fourth bear right there on the same spot had been struck and the elk carcass was still there. So I went ahead and loaded the elk carcass. That time m hm and got it out of there. So yeah, it’s uh, you know, these kind of opportunistic I would call him. It’s an unfortunate opportunity that these critters get struck, whether it’s a coyote or you know, we get a lot of like ravens and magpies that are on these carcases.

00:17:44
Speaker 9: Yeah.

00:17:44
Speaker 4: I was going to ask, is this the first time you’ve seen that kind of like chain reaction roadkill event or is it is it fairly common?

00:17:53
Speaker 3: Well maybe not with bears, but.

00:17:55
Speaker 8: You know, this is the biggest one I’ve seen. Usually it’s one kai or you know, maybe one magpie or you know, and we have had bears struck before, but not to this extent.

00:18:08
Speaker 6: That’s not this many.

00:18:10
Speaker 8: This is the first time I’ve been you know, doing this for twenty six years, and this is the first time I’ve seen it in this this big capacity.

00:18:19
Speaker 4: But I would imagine that, you know, Wyoming’s got a lot of desolate spots, even on these major highways, that this is probably something that happens more often and we just don’t know about it, right.

00:18:34
Speaker 8: That does that? That’s true. That’s true usually when it is a bear, though most folks do report that we have a few mountain lions struck in the same you know, type of scenario, and often it’s a passerby that reports it. I think folks might be a little apprehensive, well, you know, especially if it’s a grizzly bear right there. You know, they’re an endangered species on a and uh so they’re may be reluctant to call. They think they did something wrong. But bottom line is it’s just an accident. And so it’s off on a passerby it says, hey, there’s a dead bear land on the road and we get called to investigate that.

00:19:16
Speaker 1: Can you get a salvage tag for black bear in Wyoming?

00:19:21
Speaker 8: You can, yep, yep, if a if a bear is taken legally, yeah, it can be donated there. Yeah, any any donation of a of a grizzly bear, course i’d have to be through the Fish and Wildlife Service. But any other game under under the jurisdiction of the Game and Fish you can get a salvage tag.

00:19:42
Speaker 1: But not not for roadkill? Can you get it for roadkill?

00:19:46
Speaker 6: So interesting?

00:19:47
Speaker 8: So with roadkill, there is a new law that just passed last year and people are allowed to pick up most roadkill I won’t get into all the details, but basically deer, elk and aneloe, they can acquire that, they can pick it up it. There’s an app it’s called Wyoming five to one one, And if you come across the roadkill you want to salvage it for whatever reason, you can log onto that five to one one app and they basically give you a salvage number and you can take that whole carcass. Again, some animals like bears and lions or not, you can’t legally pick those up based on that, so, but other critters you can.

00:20:37
Speaker 1: Yes, I would have thought I was in like a candid camera situation if I was trying to salvage. Yeah, like this is is this considered baiting?

00:20:47
Speaker 3: Right right? Yeah?

00:20:51
Speaker 4: Brian, Uh, Wyoming has been been pretty good at building wildlife overpasses in the last I don’t know deck More like how successful have those been in reducing roadkill at like sites that formerly just sort of like known like pinch points where a lot of animals were getting killed by vehicles? Like have those overpasses like drastically reduced roadkill?

00:21:21
Speaker 8: Yes, they really have. They’ve been so beneficial And these things as you can imagine are multi million dollar projects. It’s a huge effort between the Game and Fish and the you know, Department Transportation and you know local wildlife groups, the landowners. It’s it’s a monumental effort, and of course we’d like to have more, but again they’re huge costly projects, and so right now we’re picking kind of the low hanging fruit. We spent decades, you know, identifying migration corridors. Again, these choke points you’re talking about where or roadkill accidents are very common, and we’re focusing on those areas. But yeah, we’d sure like to expand it into other areas. Absolutely, they’re they’re great, They’re wonderful.

00:22:12
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:22:13
Speaker 3: Cool.

00:22:15
Speaker 4: I guess the last thing is, uh, if someone’s involved in hitting hitting an animal or they there’s a you know, maybe a big bull out like on the road dead, like who do they call?

00:22:28
Speaker 3: Who should they be calling?

00:22:30
Speaker 8: Yeah, so now that this five to one one app is available, that’s probably the best thing you can even just if you don’t want to harvest that, you know, pick up that road deal, you can just report it and it goes to the Department of Transportation and then the maintenance crew can you know, nose there’s a carcass there, and they can get that scavenged and eliminate that road hazard, so you don’t have this chain reaction thing going on. So that’s that’s a great cool. Yeah, great tool to do that, or just called you know why dot whatever. But one thing I feel kind of compelled to mention too is especially with bears, because that’s what I deal with more often than anything. You know, we have some some highways and everybody’s familiar probably with Bear three ninety nine that was struck and killed on the highway in Wyoming, and she’s darn sure not the first bear. There’s been multiple grizzly bears these roadside I call them habituated roadside grizzly bears that have been killed along these highways. And part of what contributes to that is is frankly, people feeding these bears. And it’s not good like say, a roadkill that maybe’s being scavenged by a bear and then unfortunately a driver comes along and yeah, they don’t see this dark black bear in the middle of the road in the middle of the night, and they strike it. That’s an accident. But when when people are actively feeding these bears and and oftentimes it’s just to get a photograph. They don’t realize how they’re habituating these bears to the roadside and increasing that opportunity for them to get struck and killed or a person or a person Yeah, all the Yeah, you know, family, you know, somebody vacationing from a you know, different location and they come through Wyoming or Montana and oh there’s a bear off the road and they clamber out. They pull over and clamber out to get a picture. And you know, there could be a semi truck or a delivery truck zipping down the road at you know, high speeds, not looking for wildlife. They got a job to do, and yeah, it could cause a traffic accident or even hit a human. So yeah, that’s that’s another big part of this, and that three ninety nine bear and others do live a considerable amount of their life roadside and that’s not good. They’re just not living the wild natural life. And it was just a matter of time, you know, before she was struck and killed on the highway, because yeah, that just happens.

00:25:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, but if she didn’t live there, you couldn’t take pictures of her.

00:25:25
Speaker 8: Yep, And you couldn’t make the money and post it on your Yeah, yeah, it’s all about money, that’s right.

00:25:31
Speaker 10: Yeah.

00:25:31
Speaker 1: And just to doccupile on here, it’s not the bear’s fault. It’s eating your bird seed. It’s your fault for leaving the bird seed out to get eight, So put it away.

00:25:44
Speaker 3: That’s right, exactly.

00:25:45
Speaker 8: That’s a good point. Cal I appreciate that. You know, we work so hard with not only this roadkill stuff, to try to prevent the accident from happening in the first place. So much of our work is trying to show people how to Yeah, you can feed birds, have it at your house, but there’s ways to do it that the bears can’t get to it. You know, if you can’t have chickens, you know, electric fences, you know your grain, horse grain and stuff, put it away at night, garbage put you know, secure it all away from a bear. So we work so hard to prevent all these unnecessarily deaths in the first place.

00:26:20
Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:26:20
Speaker 1: And if you leave a dirty campsite, even if it’s all that biodegradable material, watermelon rinds, stuff like that, Uh, you’re just letting bears know that people leave good things behind, So pack it out. With you.

00:26:36
Speaker 6: Free meal. Yep.

00:26:37
Speaker 4: Okay, Brian, thanks a lot for joining us. It is a great talk, interesting stuff. Maybe we we’ll check back in with you about about this kind of same issue or something else that you’re involved with at a later time.

00:26:51
Speaker 6: Excellent. No, yeah, I appreciate you having me. Thank you very much.

00:26:54
Speaker 5: Thanks.

00:26:55
Speaker 1: Have a good season, neither, well.

00:26:59
Speaker 4: I guess yes, Randall’s been out el hunting, but poor Cal hasn’t. But we’re gonna move.

00:27:05
Speaker 3: On to our rut report.

00:27:10
Speaker 1: I remember that sound.

00:27:15
Speaker 3: Oh it’s beautiful. Okay.

00:27:18
Speaker 4: This is the week in September that pretty much every archery elk hunter who hasn’t tagged out has been waiting for. It’s the peak breeding period for elk, and the ideally, you know, the bulls should be screaming their heads off and you hit the call and they come running in. It’s not always the way it works. But we’re gonna check in with with some hunters we know who are out there hunting now. We’re out hunting recently, just to see if the action’s been hot where they’re hunting.

00:27:48
Speaker 10: Hey, guys, it’s Corey Culkin’s coming at you with a Montana rut report for Wednesday September seventeenth, hopefully close. I’m in south west Montana. This is day five of an eight day elk hunt, and it’s been pretty slow, to say the least.

00:28:08
Speaker 5: The rut activity, that is.

00:28:10
Speaker 10: Elk have been pretty quiet, very nocturnal, hearing them in the dark moving in and out of our little hunting area. But it’s also been pretty crowded too. Here in a lot of dug fluty bugles from the ridgetops everywhere, and I don’t know if that’s keeping the elk quiet, But few people that I’ve ran into have agreed that it’s been pretty slow. Excuse me, pretty slow, So I don’t think it’s just me hunted numerous different locations, different drainages, driven an hour each direction from my camp, trying to find hot cows and bugle and elk. And it’s been quiet in the general vicinity that I’m in. But the weather’s been inconsistent. It’s been raining every other day. It hasn’t froze yet either, which I’ve always found that first frost of the year really gets them going. And it still hasn’t gotten that cold yet at least here, so we got pretty consistent weather The next few days really hoping things pick up starting this afternoon because we only have two and a half more days on this little journey and I won’t be able to hunt again into October. So hoping we can pull it off.

00:29:21
Speaker 11: And yeah, good.

00:29:22
Speaker 10: Luck to everybody out there, and back to you guys in the studio.

00:29:27
Speaker 11: That was real down Durham here with Philips game calls, just wrapping up an elk hunt from last week. Man, we faced tough conditions with full moon and warm weather, and then it kind of turned. We got a bunch of storms that kind of rolled in and that was really nice, got a big cool down, but then we still had that full moon. We were fighting and it seemed like bulls were just pretty tight lips still. But around the tenth things kind of turned. Bull started piping off a little bit in the mornings, and on the eleven Son Austin kill a nice bull, call him right in. And then the twelve, thirteen, fourteenth, things are really starting to pick up. So I feel like we might have missed the really good calling action because it was kind of tough there early. So anyway, everybody get out there take advantage of this time. I think the bulls should be ripping here for the next week and a half two weeks and should be some big bulls hitting the dirt. Good luck out.

00:30:27
Speaker 12: There, Hey, guys, coming to you from central Colorado, right in the middle of muzzleloader season. We’re out here looking for some elk in the past few days, checking out another zone today. He might be able to hear it. Behind me, there’s a spring with some running water. You can kind of see the aspens are starting to turn. Had some good sign did hear some bugles a couple of days ago, but haven’t gotten close yet. The weather’s been good, good fall weather, plenty of rain, and we actually had some some snow at about eleven thousand feet as well, and it got down to about forty degrees the last couple of nights, so we’re hoping that gets them fired up. So it’s been fun checking out these zones. This time of year. It’s a nice time to be out. So looking forward to the rest of the week and we’ll keep you posted.

00:31:20
Speaker 5: Good luck everybody.

00:31:23
Speaker 3: Hey, what’s up, guys.

00:31:24
Speaker 13: This is Logan here with the Reut report coming out of southwest Montana. Things are definitely shaping up to be a great couple of weeks out hunting as we head into the third week of September in the place that we’ve been hunting. The opening weekend, things were pretty slow. We didn’t hear too many elk bugling. We saw a lot of cows, but most of the bulls seemed to be in their summer range and hadn’t came down to try to breed cows yet. You know, this past weekend things were starting to pick up. We heard a lot more elk vocalizations elk rebublin at night, later into the morning. We’re able to call bulls in on Saturday, and we’ve heard them talking all Sunday. So this this next week should be even better. The fall equinox is on September twenty second this year, which is typically corresponds with the peak rut, and cows are coming into heat around that time period. So typically the five or ten days before and after the fall equinox or the peak rut, you’re going to have a lot of rutting behavior, which will make elk much more susceptible to calling.

00:32:38
Speaker 7: Bulls are going to be fired up.

00:32:41
Speaker 3: You know.

00:32:41
Speaker 13: It’s just a great experience to be in the woods and here elk bugling. So this is the perfect time of year to do that, especially these next couple weeks. So you know, in southwest Montana, we’ve got some cooler weather.

00:32:55
Speaker 7: It’s not too hot.

00:32:56
Speaker 13: The new moon’s approaching, so the nights are going to be dark, the days are going to be relatively cool, and those are all the perfect conditions for all county. So I am very much looking forward to getting back out there. I hope you guys are too. I’ve got a hunting trip plans. You’re in for a good however long you’re going to be out there for, and yeah, can’t wait to get back out. I hope you guys are having fun and.

00:33:23
Speaker 5: Good luck out there.

00:33:26
Speaker 14: Jason Phelps with Phelps Game Calls, calling in for a quick Elk Woods Rutt report. I’ve been in Northern Utah hunting since the eighth of September. It’s now the thirteenth of September, and kind of what we’ve seen, we’ve had some good days, but it’s just not quite cranking yet. Some of the bigger bulls are still leaving their cows, you know, in the morning, to go bed separately. Still, so it just kind of lets you know that things aren’t really happening. We have got on some herds where some cows have been an estris, and you’ve heard bulls glunking and really trailing you know, specific cows. But overall, I feel like it’s just kind of getting going. I would say in the next day or two, you know, maybe some cold weather snap in there, but I would say by the fifteenth, sixteenth, things are heating up to really be going. But that’s my rut report from northern Utah. Things are just getting ready to be going. And I would, if I had to guess, the fifteenth to thirtieth is going to be on fire. Take care of Good luck to all you out there, and good luck in Elk Woods.

00:34:22
Speaker 1: Our audience here asked to decide if any of those people are you know, worth listening to in the first.

00:34:28
Speaker 3: Player full of Shit, Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:34:32
Speaker 5: Corey looks like he is on day five. Okay, day hut.

00:34:36
Speaker 4: Those reports just just make even angrier that you’re not out there right now.

00:34:40
Speaker 1: Cal oh no, no, I would love love to be out there, but I always I have always done a heck of a lot better. If I didn’t listen to any of that type of stuff and you just went hunting, you just gotta go hh. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean they’re they’re pretty consistent reports. You yeah things right now is the time?

00:35:02
Speaker 11: Right?

00:35:02
Speaker 5: Sure?

00:35:03
Speaker 1: I do. Uh the throwing out the equinox as fact, well, it’s like, you know, fall equinox happens, and the activity has to peek around that, you.

00:35:15
Speaker 3: Know, because some people would say that about the moon too.

00:35:19
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:35:19
Speaker 5: Although I’m inclined to listen to Logan because he filled every single tag that he had in Montana last year. Yeah, man, I think the only guy in the office that I.

00:35:31
Speaker 1: Think Logan is fantastic. He’s a fellow third floor office mate. Last year was his first.

00:35:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:35:41
Speaker 5: Oh, come on, I’m not I’m just sad.

00:35:45
Speaker 1: Context.

00:35:47
Speaker 4: All right, it’s time for some listener feedback. Give us some juicy, juicy stuff, phil important questions, hot takes, grumpy people, happy people, lay it on us.

00:35:56
Speaker 7: Sure, this is from Spicy Nachos. I have an ethical question for you. I would out elk hunting last week and came across a cow with a severely broken leg. The kicker is that she had a calf with her in a wolf dense area. Would to take the cow? Well, there’s some typos in there. But I don’t know if you guys can put to put together a.

00:36:15
Speaker 4: Like, I don’t know that that’s like it’s not ethical. I don’t think it’s unethical to not shoot her. I don’t know about you guys, but I also think there’s no problem with shooting her.

00:36:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know there’s.

00:36:30
Speaker 1: You can’t assume with wild legs. Yeah, I’ve seen uh way back when the first dude I guided with, he had a three legged dough that had you know, noticeable limp, And every set of clients who had a dough tag was like, well, it’d probably be better if I had killed her, and you know, we’d be like, yeah, cool, make a stock. And this this old gal was cagy. But the truth was, I mean she was there for five years, twins.

00:37:05
Speaker 4: And there was this dough that lived like near my buddy’s house where we used to hunt. There was a dough we called Peggy and she was around for almost three years.

00:37:16
Speaker 1: Because she reminded you of your aunt.

00:37:17
Speaker 3: Because she was missing a leg.

00:37:19
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I will say this past weekend at our first camp on the Glassy Knob, the first thing we saw was a bull moose and we’re like, that’s not what I thought the first thing we see on this trip would be, and that that moose had I don’t know if it’s a broken leg or some kind of growth, but its back left leg was swollen up like the size of a basketball, and it was kind of dragging it and it fell or almost fell a couple of times just trying to step over things. And god, it was hard to watch. But I you know, it’s like if it’s it’s one thing, if you have a tag, right, and it’s like, that’s an animal. If you’re after a cow elk it’s got a broken leg, I think that calf is going to be fine.

00:38:02
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the opposite of that, right, is like that cow has proven to be a successful adult breeding animal. She is expending energy to keep that calf around. If you’re really thinking about her health, I’d kill the calf. That way. Mom gets to focus on herself and she’s got the survival instincts. Mathematically, that calf is probably is voted the most likely to die. Yeah for being an idiot.

00:38:35
Speaker 4: And listen, if you’re going to decide to shoot an animal that’s injured like that, you’re you know, you got to own up to it.

00:38:43
Speaker 3: If you cut that thing open and that whole hind quarter is green and smelly.

00:38:47
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, yeah, that’s your tag.

00:38:50
Speaker 4: I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer for that. Like if if it makes you feel good to kill her, kill her. If not, like, go fill your tag with another animal.

00:39:00
Speaker 1: And don’t assume.

00:39:01
Speaker 7: Logan came in to clarify that he killed those elk with a bow, so he just wants to. He also says he’s killed elk before that, but I don’t know what he’s referring.

00:39:11
Speaker 5: I got your logan last year was his first archery elk, but he’s killed other elk.

00:39:16
Speaker 7: M This is a big question, but I don’t think it’s something we’ve tackled before on any podcast I’ve been a part of.

00:39:21
Speaker 5: Oh Jesus.

00:39:22
Speaker 7: This is from Ethan Blair. What was your worst hunting or fishing trip? And why is anything the first thing that pops into your head?

00:39:31
Speaker 5: Mmm.

00:39:33
Speaker 1: I’ll just tell you, like bad attitudes in camp. We used to call him the camp cancer and the you can be on for all reasonable people, it would be like the worst trip ever. But if everybody on the worst trip ever has a good attitude, it’s still like an enjoyable time.

00:39:57
Speaker 4: I’m trying, I’m trying really hard to think of a trip where I was like, God, in hindsight, that was horrible. But a lot of times the horrible trips you look back and you’re like, that was okay, that was fun, Like.

00:40:10
Speaker 1: Exactly, that’s an adventure.

00:40:11
Speaker 5: I have a bad one for my dad when we went to the Boundary Waters. One of the times we went to the Boundary Waters, well, he got he got the treble hook. He got a treble hook, one rock in each finger, and we busted that out. Then he was throwing a bear bag or a bear hang over over a limb, sort of standing on a steep cut bank, and he fell down the cup bank. You know, his momentum throwing the throwing the rock took him down the cup bank. And and that was the same day as the fishing hook. And then the next day he and the other guy that was in his canoe capsized in the middle of a giant lake. A great story. Oh and he got bit by a spider. And so when we got back to Ely, they took him into Duluth because they thought it might have been brown recluse, and he was. It was like the wound was opening up, and I was just like, man, that’s.

00:41:05
Speaker 3: A rough day.

00:41:06
Speaker 5: That’s a rough that’s a rough little trip for one guy. But that was a great trip for me.

00:41:10
Speaker 1: I would rather be on a bad trip with great attitudes than a great trip with bad attitudes.

00:41:16
Speaker 3: Totally, totally, completely.

00:41:18
Speaker 7: I’ll do a couple more here. That was from Ethan by the way, this one’s this one’s fun. I think this is from Michael. Question for the crew, what coworker would each of you pick to hunt hunt with for white tail, elk, and black bear? And I encourage hurting each other’s feelings too.

00:41:37
Speaker 3: I don’t hunt with like the whole crew for any of them.

00:41:40
Speaker 7: No, you can’t say that you gotta pick one.

00:41:42
Speaker 3: fIF one for each species.

00:41:44
Speaker 5: Sure, Yeah, for white tail, I would say either Mark or Spencer. Sure, based on based on improving my odds of success.

00:41:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, I’d want Jason Fellis to guide me for.

00:41:59
Speaker 5: Elk, yep, and then black bear. Maybe Corey Caulkins.

00:42:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, he kills a nice one every year.

00:42:05
Speaker 5: Wouldn’t be honest? This is kind of ruthless. Well, well, I mean he seems to have a lot of long, lonely hikes in the spring, yes, Uh, this is ruthless.

00:42:18
Speaker 1: I would love with uh Dirk because I haven’t got a l hunt with him. Jason Phelps is very fun dude to hunt with, like like just just fun. And when we hunted the other night that was killed anything it was. It was a fantastic trip. And I would rather go white tail hunting with Mark Kenyon over Tony Peterson purely for you know what, maybe I retract.

00:42:55
Speaker 5: That you know what you know you still haven’t say is Clay for black bear?

00:43:01
Speaker 1: I’m gonna say Spencer new Heart for whitetail? Yeah, because I know I would just bug the living shit out of it and it would be very entertaining the whole time.

00:43:10
Speaker 3: You’d be like, God, forget these white tails. I’m gonna go look for a mule.

00:43:14
Speaker 5: Do I’ve gone to Well, I guess I have black bear hunted with Clay, but I’d love to sit in a tree stand over bait with Clay just to see him watch bears, because I’ve gone to the zoo with Clay and watched bears at the zoo with Clay and that was fun.

00:43:28
Speaker 12: Yeah.

00:43:28
Speaker 3: He was like, yeah, that would be very entertaining.

00:43:32
Speaker 7: Okay, I’ll save the rest of later. No, Phil, you’re doing great, Okay, thanks, we’ll do one. Mores is from Noah. Question for Randall on a scale from one to ten, how bummed are you that you missed the D and D session?

00:43:40
Speaker 5: Honestly, I’m sick to my stomach.

00:43:42
Speaker 7: I was too. I was devastated when I can’t.

00:43:45
Speaker 5: Believe Spencer lined it up in that way. I made my availability clear, uh and and yeah, it’s just enough.

00:43:53
Speaker 3: Asked him why you weren’t there, and he said you weren’t available?

00:43:56
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was country.

00:43:58
Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:43:59
Speaker 7: I saw Randall declined the invite, and I sent him a text saying, you’re going to miss miss the session.

00:44:03
Speaker 3: I was trying to well.

00:44:05
Speaker 5: I didn’t even realize it was D and D. I thought it was just gonna be feel trivial, nobody.

00:44:09
Speaker 7: The only two people that knew it was happening were my wife and Spencer’s wife.

00:44:13
Speaker 5: So I still don’t think I understand what D and D is, But it seemed.

00:44:20
Speaker 1: I hopefully Phil, you were you were pleased with our ability to adapt. It was hard at FT. I was like, I was so confused, what was going I tried to.

00:44:30
Speaker 7: Ease you into it, and you guys did did so well. There were even people that messaged me saying, I’m so glad Brody and cal were game to play, because I thought they would just turn their nose up at it. And I I had that worry too, which is why I invited Shelby to bring some enthusiasm into the room in case you guys just walked out on me.

00:44:47
Speaker 1: I just didn’t understand. I was like, I was waiting for like a formal like rule thing. Okay, and now this is how you play the game. I was like, I, yeah, you guys didn’t need that. It was hard you got Yeah, he did great, it was a lot of fun.

00:45:03
Speaker 4: You’ll have to develop a new campaign that campaigns what it’s called, right Phil. That’s right, Brody, we’ll do a new campaign sometimes sounds good.

00:45:11
Speaker 7: Cool. All right, that’s it for now, Phil, For now we go. We’ll save some more for the end of the show. So all right, keep sending him in.

00:45:18
Speaker 3: We got another interview coming up.

00:45:20
Speaker 4: Next up, we’ve got Chris Hill, who is the CEO of the Conservation Lands Foundation. She’ll be joining us from Alaska. CLF is the only organization dedicated to the conservation and expansion of national conservation lands, which she’ll have to explain a little bit, which currently total about thirty eight million acres, And I’m gonna let Cal handle this one because he’ll do a better job than me.

00:45:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, Chris and I are internet friends.

00:45:49
Speaker 5: Yeah, welcome Chris.

00:45:53
Speaker 1: I just say that because we haven’t met in person ever. As this world goes, Yes, how are you Chris Hill?

00:46:00
Speaker 15: Great? How are you guys doing things? For having me?

00:46:02
Speaker 1: And where are you today?

00:46:05
Speaker 16: I am in Haynes, Alaska, which is southeast Alaska, and it’s the first day in four days that it hasn’t rained, so it’s really nice out.

00:46:15
Speaker 1: Do you would you mind hitting us with a quick Southeast Alaska hunt fish report? Have you been doing anything fun?

00:46:22
Speaker 5: Oh?

00:46:23
Speaker 16: Yeah, so you know this is this is the best time I think to be in Southeast Alaska because it’s co host season so.

00:46:31
Speaker 15: And Coho is probably my one of my favorite fish too to fish for. So they’re here. The derby started.

00:46:40
Speaker 16: I gotta I gotta keep my championship up and win the derby again this year.

00:46:46
Speaker 5: Oh wow, you’re the returning champ.

00:46:48
Speaker 16: I am the returning champ on the fly only.

00:46:52
Speaker 5: Still nonetheless.

00:46:54
Speaker 15: Yeah, it’s fun, it’s a lot, it’s really fun.

00:46:56
Speaker 16: And we just got back from a trip to Yakutat to go surfing and fishing, and we did a little fish a couple of days on the Sea Tuck to.

00:47:06
Speaker 15: Fish for coho and it was just fantastic.

00:47:10
Speaker 1: And steelhead fishery too, right they do.

00:47:14
Speaker 16: Yeah, so sea took the Sea Tuck is a really awesome river. It’s in the Tongas and it’s home to all five she sees a Pacific salmon and has a healthy steelhead run. So it’s it was, It was really amazing.

00:47:29
Speaker 15: Yeah.

00:47:30
Speaker 1: Heck yeah, Well, since you said the magic word tongus, would would you like to really this is your time, Chris. But we have lots of things happening all at once in the conservation landscape. What are you and clf uh working on the most? What’s what’s your number one item to tackle?

00:47:55
Speaker 15: Oh that’s that’s a hard one. So because there’s just so many things.

00:48:00
Speaker 16: So Conservation Lands Foundation represents this broad, nonpartisan national network of community leaders that are solely focused on the lands from BLM. We’re focused on expanding, protecting, and restoring those lands at BLM. And you know, as you guys know, BLM is the has the largest amount of the country’s public lands at two hundred and forty five million acres, and just in comparison, that’s larger than the Forest Service and probably three times.

00:48:30
Speaker 15: Larger than the National Park Service.

00:48:31
Speaker 16: So these are all those lands in between the National Park Service, and we work with over eighty community led land conservation organizations across the West and really do it in this sort of community based advocacy model where investing in local leaders to protect their lands has really proven to be one of.

00:48:52
Speaker 15: The most effective strategies.

00:48:53
Speaker 16: So, you know, really as we look at sort of the onslaught of all of the things that are happening and all of the attacks that are happening on public lands, the idea that we want to privatize these places is still incredibly unpopular opinion in the communities. And we’ll continue to see, you know, we as a community did a really great job the selloff of public lands during the reconciliation fight, but we’re going to continue to see the onslaught of more and more things that are going to come from the administration and Congress to try to continue to privatize those lands. So right now, what we’re working on, and I would say there’s probably two big issues at the moment, the repeal of resource management plans within Congress, and then on the administration side, it’s opening up drilling in the Western Arctic and the repeal of the public Lands Rule.

00:49:51
Speaker 1: And we have not talked a lot about Western Arctic here recently. Would you want to give us a quick snapshot of of what the conversation is. Western Arctic obviously huge caribou area, and our Western Arctic herd is not historically healthy right now from a population standpoint, and Western Arctic has some calving areas, and obviously a huge migration route for our migratory birds.

00:50:30
Speaker 16: Absolutely, and it’s one of the last remaining intact ecosystems we have on the planet. Right, I think I think you went this summer to did you go to the Western Arctic.

00:50:40
Speaker 1: Or well, we have been like we would have been east to west. Yeah, we were, so we were, we were. We were still quite aways east to like Prudo. Okay, yeah, we’re closer to Canada.

00:50:54
Speaker 15: Okay, gotcha, gotcha.

00:50:55
Speaker 16: But that whole entire system, right is super important. And so right now we’re kind of in a holding pattern at the moment. So in June, the Interior Department proposed to rescind the current Integrated Activities Plan.

00:51:11
Speaker 15: So it’s like a management plan for the Western Arctic.

00:51:14
Speaker 16: And that plan limited oil and gas development from expanding into the special areas, which is some of what you’ve been talking about within the Western Arctic. The important piece of that plan is that it really did balance energy production with the protection of this ecosystem. They opened it up to rescind it, they proposed to rescind it, they had a comment period.

00:51:41
Speaker 15: That common period.

00:51:42
Speaker 16: Has since closed, and during that common period, we really saw the communities rise up and have a steady drombeat of opposition. So right now we’re waiting for the administration to release its final plan.

00:51:56
Speaker 15: During there at the same time, if you remember, during the congression all.

00:52:02
Speaker 16: Reconciliation fight, the Senate added back in provisions that directed DOI to resume oil and gas, the oil and gas leasing program in the Western Arctic. So this that provision sort of went back to the Trump era plan that requires at least four million acres to be leased for drilling.

00:52:23
Speaker 15: So there’s more to come here.

00:52:25
Speaker 16: I think we’ll it’ll start to unravel itself again and we’re probably going to see this in the courts.

00:52:32
Speaker 1: And then I guess real quick, what from that community level that you spoke about, what’s the community response in regarding in regards to rescinding roadless in the in the Tongas. Tongus and roadless typically go hand in hand. You can’t talk about Roadless Act without talking about Tongus.

00:52:56
Speaker 15: Yeah, that’s for sure, you know.

00:52:59
Speaker 16: So Tongus is national forest and it’s it’s dear to my heart because it is in my backyard. This is where I recreate all the time. And the Tonguess National Forest is particularly going to be affected by the recision of the roadless rule because it’s you know, the worldless areas, and the Tongus is almost ninety two percent of all of the forest. And you know, as you guys know, the Tongus is the largest national forest in the United States. It’s the world’s last remaining temperate rainforest. It’s called the climate forest or the lungs of the North of North America because of its old growth trees and the ability for those trees to really like breathe in carbon and use it as a carbon sink for the rest of the earth. It’s completely and just beautifully biologically diverse it’s home to brown bears.

00:53:55
Speaker 15: And black bears and wolves and all sorts of Sitka.

00:53:58
Speaker 16: Blacktail deer, which by the way, that’s that hunt is starting soon too, so I’m super excited about that.

00:54:05
Speaker 15: And it’s like it’s one of the most important habitats.

00:54:08
Speaker 16: For all five species of Pacific salmon, so it’s super important. It’s culturally important for indigenous folks who have steward and lived on the land since time immemorial, and it’s a tourism powerhouse. You have all of the things right for the Tongas that just make it a really important place. And because of all of those things, those communities are the ones that are really standing up and saying no, we want to keep the roadless rule intact, and it’s important to do so. You know, the roadless rule has been around since two thousand and one. It’s nine million acres of the Tongas that are designated as roadless, and it’s important for us to continue that. It’s not just the Tongus that the roadless rule helps, right, it’s across the west and probably a lot of areas where your folks are listening from as well. So I think we have one more day. I think the comment period ends tomorrow. I know Trod Unlimited if you go on to TU dot org that you can submit a comment on their portal.

00:55:13
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:55:13
Speaker 1: T’s got a good map too. The Wilderness Society’s got a good map up. BHA’s got a good map up. If you’ve got on X you can see you can put on your your roadless area layer and and see you real quick. Speaking out of bos Angelus here, our entire watershed for the Gallatin Valley is in a roadless area and highly highly accessible for all you casual dog walkers even so exactly. Yeah, well, well used, well loved stuff. Yeah darn right. Well how do folks learn more about CLF Chris.

00:55:59
Speaker 15: Oh, great question. So we’re on all the socials, right, you can.

00:56:02
Speaker 16: You could find us on Instagram and all of the social media’s and then you also can go to Conservation Lands dot org. That’s our website. You can get involved there. We also, as I said, we work with over eighty local nonprofits, and I would imagine that a lot of folks can be connected to some of those local nonprofits to really do some of the work on the ground and get to know the folks in the communities.

00:56:30
Speaker 5: And I will add that you just mentioned to U’s action page. I went on there and just submitted a comment now and I even personalized it, so everybody in the chat, it doesn’t take that long to go and make your voice heard on these public lands issues.

00:56:48
Speaker 16: That’s right, and you know we’ve seen time and time again it’s those comments that make a difference.

00:56:54
Speaker 15: Some people are like, what is my comment going to do?

00:56:58
Speaker 16: But it actually makes a different increase that record to show that either the public is for or against an issue. And you know, when we’re looking at it from the agency perspective, but also from the congressional perspective. Congress people want to hear from their constituencies. And when we band together and have that voice become you know, very large and big things happen and things change. And we saw that with the publicly and sell off fight.

00:57:23
Speaker 5: That’s right.

00:57:23
Speaker 1: And if you folks at home want to think about it in a very tangible way, do you act differently when people are paying attention to you?

00:57:36
Speaker 15: Exactly?

00:57:36
Speaker 1: Our representatives and our senators, they can darn sure act differently when they know a lot of people are paying attention to them. So right, that’s part of getting your comment yeah, uh, Chris Hill, thank you so much. Con Conservation Lands Foundation, we’ll have to have you back on and where to go, Where to folks to find you again.

00:58:01
Speaker 16: Conservation lands dot org or any social channels.

00:58:05
Speaker 1: Awesome, Well, thank you so much, and we or I we’ll see you in the heart of the cold, cold city next week when we’re going to talk about climate and conservation and public lands in Manhattan an actual island.

00:58:22
Speaker 3: Running around there.

00:58:23
Speaker 15: No, we might see some rats though.

00:58:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks Chris.

00:58:31
Speaker 16: Yeah, thank you all, and I’ll see you soon.

00:58:33
Speaker 11: Thank you.

00:58:33
Speaker 5: Thanks Chris.

00:58:36
Speaker 3: We got a new segment for you today and it is called Three Harsh Truths.

00:58:43
Speaker 7: Hey, little honey, let me launch your candle cozy so hot to handle now, spin doctors like I just.

00:58:58
Speaker 3: I just came up with this segment of couple of days ago, and you just, oh my.

00:59:02
Speaker 5: God, we should just make up new segments all the time.

00:59:05
Speaker 7: Oh please don’t.

00:59:07
Speaker 5: It’s the highlight of this show.

00:59:09
Speaker 4: Three Harsh Truths is where our panel of experts, self appointed experts, We’re gonna share some things that most people might not want to believe, but they’re certainly true, at least according to us. And I thought about calling it hot takes, but it’s like overused and hot takes are typically opinions that are expressed like without any real evidence, and we wouldn’t do that to you, So we’re gonna share ours with you in order cal laid on us.

00:59:41
Speaker 3: What’s a harsh truth.

00:59:44
Speaker 1: Buying your hunting and fishing license is not enough. You have got to if you want to be a responsible hunter or angler, you have got to participate in our system of wildlife management, which sometimes you would feel like is being political, but uh, fill out your surveys, go to in person, go to your fishing game committee meetings, participate in the comment periods, and write your senators and congress people. It makes a huge difference.

01:00:24
Speaker 4: I love filling out those surveys and showing up to meetings too.

01:00:29
Speaker 5: Is like you feel so much more involved and you have you have such a greater awareness of what’s happening.

01:00:36
Speaker 3: Is you’re to learn a bunch of stuff you otherwise would not.

01:00:39
Speaker 5: Sometimes it feels like cheating in terms of just like being aware of what’s happening with wildlife in your state.

01:00:45
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, Do you want to like round robin this thing or do you want me to go do all three.

01:00:52
Speaker 4: Well, we decide you can lay another one on us, raynal and I should have told you we’re just gonna do one each.

01:00:59
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, great, But if you got an all quick one, lay.

01:01:02
Speaker 1: It on ye Antelope jump fences.

01:01:07
Speaker 3: I’ve seen it.

01:01:09
Speaker 4: They can do it around for fifteen and is wondering what.

01:01:14
Speaker 3: To do when they end up at.

01:01:17
Speaker 5: That dovetails with Uh, this isn’t my harsh truth. But one of my harsh truths is, like all the stuff you’ve heard isn’t isn’t right?

01:01:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Randall.

01:01:29
Speaker 5: My harsh truth is this. Uh, there’s there’s a lot of like a discourse online about social media and hunting and and like is social media ruining hunting? And and a lot of it focuses specifically on like what’s unique about hunting and social media. My harsh truth is social media’s ruining everything. If you have any hobby, it’s being it’s being ruined by social media. And I would just like, if you look at like all the problems, I feel like a lot of the problems that people complain about in the hunting world are just problems about the modern world, Like permits in national parks are hard to get, like everything’s getting too expensive, and so I just feel like there’s a lot of like finger pointing within the hunting community about what’s ruining who’s ruining what. I mean, there is that too, but it’s like thermals. It’s like, if you want to go backpacking somewhere, someone’s already you could watch a video of someone with a GoPro on their head walking that trail.

01:02:36
Speaker 4: Like I went down, like I’ve been running more and more lately, and I went down a running social media trail tragically the other day. And it’s like social media is ruining running. I’m like really like, because it’s not ruining it for me. It’s like whether you choose to allow it to ruin it for.

01:02:58
Speaker 10: You or not.

01:02:59
Speaker 3: Like no one’s on the gun to your head telling.

01:03:02
Speaker 4: You to like believe or follow what’s on every social media page.

01:03:06
Speaker 5: It’s ridiculous and I think that, Like now, I had a lot of thoughts about this, and they sort of sprawled. The one is you haven’t everything you’ve heard isn’t true. The other is like, just decide what you want and you’ll get it out of hunting, right, Like, like, oh, do you want to go somewhere and see no see see no other hunters.

01:03:26
Speaker 3: You can do that, or you can decide to let social media ruin.

01:03:30
Speaker 5: It for you. Yeah exactly, Like like it’s it’s all about keeping it in perspective and just recognizing that like the finger pointing and the X y z. Yeah, like that’s all. It’s not unique to our community, not at all. And there’s a lot of breath and and ink wasted on it.

01:03:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you’re going to do social media, do d I y woodworking plumbing electrocal. Yeah yeah, then man, that’s who I’m watching.

01:04:04
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh, I know, like there’s I’m sure there’s plumbers out there, Like social media’s ruined plumbing.

01:04:09
Speaker 3: I don’t make as much money as damn it.

01:04:11
Speaker 5: Randall can replace the light switch now, Yeah, exactly.

01:04:20
Speaker 3: Nice, Randall. I like that month’s a little longer. I’ll get through it though.

01:04:27
Speaker 4: There’s a quote from a hunting writer and I don’t call who it is, but it’s stuck with me over the years, and it goes something like, anyone can take a five hundred yard shot at an animal, but it takes a really good hunter to sneak in and kill one at fifty yards. And the reason I’m telling you that quote is I strongly believe, based on years of experience, that it’s a mistake to encourage or allow young or novice hunters to take long ass rifle shots at big game animals. And like long is relative, right, like it’s it’s this, there’s not one specific distance, but I’ll get I’ll get.

01:05:05
Speaker 3: Further into that later.

01:05:07
Speaker 4: But the reason why is, even if a new hunter is practiced and they’re capable of making four or five hundred yard shots at the range, shooting at animals like in the heat of the moment is just way different than shooting at paper targets. And for every hunter, but especially an experienced hunter, the goal should always be to get as close as possible to minimize the chance for a poor shot, a miss or a wounded animal whatever. But I think just as important that that’s the reason you always hear, but just as important long range shooting at animals is not how you learn to be a good hunter.

01:05:43
Speaker 3: It’s just like not has nothing to do with it.

01:05:47
Speaker 4: Becoming a good hunter comes from reading like things like reading sign watching the behavior and body language of animals, learning how to like pick a route that keeps you out of sight on a start, being quiet, paying attention to the wind direction, Like those are the things that that’s how you become a good hunter. And I like, personally, I’m gonna I’m gonna get up on the soapbox, like I I held to a strict no shots over two hundred yards rule with my older son for his first three big game seasons. And I know he’s like a better hunter for it because he was learning along the way. And it taught me a lot because it didn’t hamper his success one bit. In his first three hunting seasons, he killed three meal deer bucks in an antelope buck like following that two.

01:06:38
Speaker 3: Hundred yard rule.

01:06:39
Speaker 4: And then like, now he’s a little older and I’ll let him. He’s shot more, he’s shot at animal, he’s shot at targets more, and I’ll let him stretch that range.

01:06:47
Speaker 5: Out a little bit.

01:06:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is just like a funny observational story. But my good buddy Jim, like old old, old old Jim down in Idaho, he’s real. He’s yeah, I think, well, he’s always the oldest of our hunting group. And he bought a super fancy sheep rifle ultra light thing.

01:07:13
Speaker 4: And that’s the thing is those types of long range systems are like so prevalent now that it’s just like there, you know.

01:07:20
Speaker 1: There, But here’s the fun thing, Like he and he’s got a you can shoot like a mile on his own property, like step out the door, and he shoots all the time and has the ability to do it. And he’s very capable. And about three seasons after getting this rifle, he’s like the furthest shot I have ever made with this exploative expletive rifle is one hundred and fifty yards. Yeah, And because when you grow up and you’ve put the time in to become that good hunter, your interactions with animals are much tighter.

01:07:58
Speaker 3: They’re also more fun and excite they.

01:08:00
Speaker 1: Are, but you are just naturally putting yourself in a tighter distance. And the reality is is like the closer you can get, the fewer variables you are going to encounter. YEP, And you know your ability to see what could be blocking your shot, no matter what scope you have at four hundred and fifty yards is not as good as it’s going to be at one hundred and fifty years.

01:08:26
Speaker 4: I like, I’m not I don’t want this seem like I’m trashing long range shooting. I just think it’s a disservice to like young and new hunters to be like, there’s.

01:08:36
Speaker 3: A bucket five hundred yards, lay down, shoot, you know, like it’s just like they’re not learning much.

01:08:41
Speaker 1: Oh man, I watched some folks. I watched these guys shoot this buck last year and it wasn’t all that far, but this is like a dense grizzly bear area, and you know, they charged up the hill. They probably shot at like four hundred and fifty yards, which is a long shot, but not crazy far when you’re talking about long range shooting. And I watched those guys walk around trying to find this deer that dropped in its tracks for forty minutes, to the point where I was like, I better help like bird dog these people into where the deer drops. And there’s just things like that that people don’t consider. Yeah, and if you don’t know you whacked that thing, a lot of people are going to give up on it and be like, oh God, maybe I missed. The doubt starts creeping in. And there’s the state of Wyoming. They had a conversation in the Fishing Game regulation process about trying to address long range shooting and there’s ways that all of which would be you know, it’s it’s regulating morality, which is not something we can do effectively. But limitation on the amount of ammunition you can pack with.

01:10:03
Speaker 3: You make you think twice about.

01:10:07
Speaker 1: And I think I’m like, what would the effect be if it’s like how many tags do you have? You got one valid tag? You get five rounds. That’s three day, right, and two extra in case you think the rifle got knocked off a zero already need to prove you’re.

01:10:28
Speaker 5: You’re still funny. I’ve never heard that the round limitation.

01:10:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they do it on like wm as for your waterfowl.

01:10:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, interesting, try to limit skybusting.

01:10:42
Speaker 3: Anyway, that’s what I think so.

01:10:47
Speaker 6: Or not.

01:10:50
Speaker 7: Yeah, there should be when the second started out, there should be some sort of music bed playing underneath it. It’s like a very you know, kind of four poding intense.

01:10:58
Speaker 5: You could have a little button you push and it just because oh, that’s harsh. Throughout the Smacked Down, whenever one of us makes a good point to go ooh that’s harsh.

01:11:06
Speaker 4: Phil, do we got any reactions to those harsh truth or or or maybe some some of the listeners.

01:11:12
Speaker 7: I mean there were there was some happening throughout the thing. I I don’t remember that you know their timestamps, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what they were.

01:11:20
Speaker 5: Well, give us something what we reference to here, let’s do a general chat.

01:11:26
Speaker 7: Mostly what’s he want? Halfle finger? He said one thing, you should use your woodsmanship, not marksmanship.

01:11:34
Speaker 1: See.

01:11:34
Speaker 7: I don’t know what he’s referring to here. That’s what we just talked about.

01:11:38
Speaker 5: Great, Jim. This this if you’re still on there, This moose that I saw with the busted up leg. The leg was on the left side and the right antler had grown in all kinds of funky. I’ll send you a picture you told us about that.

01:11:51
Speaker 7: At some point, it’s mostly people asking mogor questions about Hungary and people talking about Steve on theovon shout out.

01:12:00
Speaker 4: Well, if nobody’s got any anything interesting to say or ask?

01:12:05
Speaker 7: See, this is a this, this is a me problem. I screwed up. I should have been on it putting these comments up as it was happening.

01:12:10
Speaker 3: Damn it.

01:12:11
Speaker 7: I’m so sorry.

01:12:12
Speaker 5: You’re having such a big week with D and D. You find some good come on. This is my favorite part.

01:12:18
Speaker 7: No, no, I’ve got listener feedback. I’m just thinking of stuff in.

01:12:22
Speaker 3: Direct to the three harsh truths.

01:12:25
Speaker 5: Let’s get this, I knew you didn’t drop the ball.

01:12:31
Speaker 7: Cal This is from Ethan when you kill your monster grizz, What is your plan with it? Rug mount soft tan sausage roast.

01:12:38
Speaker 1: Do you think this far ahead? Or is that bad bad juju?

01:12:42
Speaker 7: If you feel like you’re is there any superstition around I?

01:12:46
Speaker 1: Well, it’s it’s part of logistical planning that you do. You need to plan for being successful, and then if you’re unsuccessful, you’re just carrying extra stuff, right, So yeah, I am planning. The big negative of a coastal bear in the fall specifically is they are they’re feeding on salmon. And I have friends that take a chunk of meat off every single bear and cook it. And and I believe them because they have they have the largest database data set that they’re working with.

01:13:25
Speaker 3: Can I interrupt? Yes, in Alaska, there’s no salvage rule for those fall bears, is there? Correct?

01:13:32
Speaker 1: And you don’t? Yeah, So my plan is to ideally do some cooking up there if I am successful, and come up with a game plan for what I’m going to do with some big old grizzler bear meat. The other thing I have tags for because I’ve I’ve purchased them in advance are our wolves. And in this area, you know, it’s an area where the caribou population is of concern and they’re encouraging people to harvest wolves, and they feel like there’s a very high population of wolves. And I have always wanted to cook wolves, so I’m ideally, well, we’ll have like a big old grizzly bear ham and a big old wolf ham and we’ll do some fun cooking down here in the meat Eater studio too so and then as far as like rug Mount soft tan stuff like I have not thought that far, like I it will be utilized. I guarantee you.

01:14:44
Speaker 7: Great. This is just an update from Kyle who asked a question about differences between spring and fall turkey, and he’s happy to report based on that advice, he got his first turkey ever yesterday. Right.

01:14:56
Speaker 5: I saw that. I saw that on the damned social media. That’s ruining everything.

01:15:00
Speaker 6: Terrible.

01:15:01
Speaker 5: Congratulations, congrats, Kyle Charles says.

01:15:04
Speaker 7: Its media to Rose still happening. I haven’t seen a new episode in a while. It is Yohanny’s gearing up to film the next batch of episodes, so stay tuned.

01:15:10
Speaker 5: It requires coordinating a lot of schedules.

01:15:14
Speaker 7: Caleb, because you were mean to me and yelled, I will answer your ask your question. If you need vision assistance, do you prefer glasses or contacts in the field.

01:15:24
Speaker 5: I can tell you what Sydney preferred, because my vision is perfect. She preferred laser eye surgery.

01:15:30
Speaker 4: There you go, options see contacts here.

01:15:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’ve seen people have issues with both. But I do feel very poorly for one of my good friends who I won’t won’t name, used to call him the pot bellied stallion. Uh, looking at that dude with his glasses all fogged up when he’s sucking wind trying to get up the hill fast.

01:15:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it’s like looking through buying knows in a spot and scute with glasses is kind of a pane.

01:16:03
Speaker 1: But but do you feel like you like I feel like you should have like a little eyeball kit if you’re going to go the contact route, multiple like you need your solution.

01:16:15
Speaker 5: Sydney always did context and it was like contexts in the tent. It was just like a nightmare.

01:16:22
Speaker 3: Well, dailies are way easier.

01:16:23
Speaker 4: I mean, they’re a little more trash to deal with, but I mean I just bring twice as many dailies as I think I’m gonna need because the dust gets in there.

01:16:32
Speaker 5: What you know, at one point we pulled some dailies out of the trash and washed them to put them back in her eyes.

01:16:39
Speaker 1: Interesting, improvised and overcome the laser.

01:16:44
Speaker 7: I will say aiden, thank you for watching the show live for the first time. I appreciate it. I have seen your question that you have submitted literally nine times about getting a young hunter into it. I haven’t picked your question because that’s that’s we’ve talked about that a lot. And also Brodie’s the only dad on the panel.

01:17:03
Speaker 5: So but my my parents didn’t hunt.

01:17:06
Speaker 7: Randall, And how did you get into hunting, and how would you encourage other young hunters to get into hunting.

01:17:11
Speaker 5: Get your friends into it, find friends who have We had like a group of friends and one of our dads hunted. Yeah, there’s ways, and we all transmitted it through osmosis. There’s mentorship programs with fish and game departments. Buy our book Catch Caerry Fish, Count the Stars. There’s a great big.

01:17:30
Speaker 3: Section in there on how to do it like, there’s ways to do it for sure.

01:17:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’ll tell you, if you’re interested in it and you’re not just actively figuring it out, you’re probably not cut out for the hunting game. I say that that that sounds like a harsh truth, Haru. But I’ll tell you, like, I was surrounded by very casual hunters and it wasn’t like anything near the way people live it in this office. And I bugged the hell out of the people to facilitate my obsession with hunting without having anybody directly there to be a mentor, right Like, I just there was something about it. I was very interested in it, and I pushed and pushed and pushed, and people kept throwing footballs and basketballs and baseballs at me, saying like here, play with this. You at them exactly so you’ll you’ll figure it out. Like if it if you’re interested in it, you just got to make it happen and don’t let stuff holds you back.

01:18:43
Speaker 5: Ye. Great, Sorry to do that to you, Phil.

01:18:46
Speaker 7: Well, Jordan says, Phil is getting little sterns into this big trivia podcast.

01:18:49
Speaker 1: Jordan’s shut up, that’s not the reason. I’m just a little prickly.

01:18:56
Speaker 7: After that uh, that misunderstanding about the feed Act with the three harsh Trews and everyone got mad at me. And also like I carry a small amount of insecurity about being a non hunter who has to pick hunting questions for a bunch of hunters to answer.

01:19:09
Speaker 1: It’s a hard job.

01:19:10
Speaker 4: Back heres, there you go, There you go, Phil laying down the law.

01:19:17
Speaker 3: All right, we’re gonna move on from that.

01:19:19
Speaker 7: Phil, Oh, let’s do it please.

01:19:23
Speaker 4: You know next time you’ll do better, Thanks Brody. So, we got a couple announcements to make before we sign off, and the first one is we’re opening our newest media to retail location in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And they got some events going on grand opening and some tailgate tour events. Who’s going to that tailgate tour?

01:19:44
Speaker 5: Spencer Spencer, Mark Kenyon and Chester Floyd.

01:19:48
Speaker 4: And they’ll be at the store, but that’ll probably all get covered. And this announcement that Phil is gonna play right now.

01:19:56
Speaker 9: All right, Milwaukee Hunters, This Friday, September nineteenth, until seven pm, we’ll be having our brand opening up this brand new meat Eater store right here.

01:20:05
Speaker 5: And Brooke Goil Wisconsin.

01:20:07
Speaker 2: It’s a family friendly events and be sure to bring your kids, bring your spouse, and no matter where your adventures taking you this season, we got you covered. From Western Big game to Phelps game calls to f NHF gear, we got everything you need to get you going further and staying longer.

01:20:22
Speaker 6: We also have brand new.

01:20:23
Speaker 9: Milwaukee Meat Eater logo where Wow.

01:20:25
Speaker 2: Behind you, we got whitetail where for the season from cold weather to early season. We also have water polo clothing right behind me.

01:20:34
Speaker 9: The event’s going to be.

01:20:35
Speaker 2: Joined by the Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Group, the National Deer Association, The Meat Eater Tailgate Tour will also be here some of the Meat Eater personalities. With all that being said, we’re happy to be a part of this community. So come on buy this Friday, grab a beer, tell us some of your hunting stories, and be prepared for lots of fun.

01:20:55
Speaker 5: Thanks for all your support.

01:20:57
Speaker 1: Well, I want to go now. Yeah, I would have you remember Wayne’s world when they’re talking with Alice Cooper and Mealy Wake There’s there should be a corner of the store dedicated just to that.

01:21:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, and cheese curds probably something that.

01:21:17
Speaker 7: But he got there.

01:21:17
Speaker 3: I’m not talking with my mouth.

01:21:18
Speaker 4: Well, besides opening our new store, we got a whole bunch of new products and content coming out soon. Ray will show that to the camera.

01:21:30
Speaker 3: That’s the new jerky we got I think three different flavors.

01:21:33
Speaker 5: Maybe it’s delightful.

01:21:36
Speaker 3: It was great. This is bition.

01:21:39
Speaker 4: So if you’re laying and you don’t know how to make your own jerky out of deer, elk or whatever you got in the freezer, that stuff’s real good.

01:21:45
Speaker 3: It’s buffalo.

01:21:48
Speaker 4: We’ve also got after a long wait, see that Phil there it is, it’s here. Releases next week the apped up old Truck’s calendar.

01:22:02
Speaker 3: I’m not gonna show you what’s inside.

01:22:04
Speaker 5: You gotta buy it.

01:22:06
Speaker 3: Oh, it turned out great.

01:22:07
Speaker 12: Man.

01:22:09
Speaker 7: Uh I you know what I I learned a word miso phonia. You guys know what that is.

01:22:13
Speaker 3: That’s when a sound really bugsy, real bad.

01:22:16
Speaker 7: When people are chewing into a microphone.

01:22:18
Speaker 3: You’ve got it.

01:22:20
Speaker 1: Masticated.

01:22:21
Speaker 7: I mean, I support it because we are meat eater, har hars.

01:22:27
Speaker 3: It’s jerky, you gotta chew it.

01:22:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, the working hard to make the jerky a super cool project. So this round is sourt of saying, uh, you know, American buffalo. And then we’re working on a bunch of other uh like sustainable projects that that support are ranchers that are doing really good things for wildlife and their way living.

01:23:02
Speaker 3: That’s right.

01:23:04
Speaker 4: And by the way, if you like, don’t know this soccer here, if you buy it, it’s not expensive, but if you buy it, two bucks from every the sale of every calendar we’re going to donate to backcountry hunters and anglers so they can keep fighting the public lands fight. So you’d be doing a great thing for BHA and anyone who enjoys public lands if you buy that calendar advance, Yeah.

01:23:33
Speaker 3: And then real quick.

01:23:35
Speaker 4: As far as content, Heather Deville’s new series Our Way of Life is coming out. I think, I don’t know, I don’t know the date, but it’s coming out soon.

01:23:43
Speaker 3: And I think it’s like one of the coolest things.

01:23:46
Speaker 4: We’ve done in a really long time, Like for video content, it is awesome.

01:23:51
Speaker 3: So check that out.

01:23:52
Speaker 4: And Meat Eater Season thirteen is going to be available real soon as well, and Randall has a final announce smith for everyone.

01:24:01
Speaker 5: Yes, on next week’s show, we will once again be circling up the Meat Eater Movie Club and the title we’ll be discussing is the twenty ten documentary Elephant in the living Room, which is available for free on Pluto and Amazon Prime. It’s one of my all time favorite documentaries, and I was delighted to see that it’s now available to stream for free, and so I’m excited to revisit that rich, rich text about exotic pet ownership. Excellent.

01:24:31
Speaker 4: Yes, all right, guys, thanks for listening, and tune in next week.

01:24:35
Speaker 1: Be kind, be courteous, be safe out there. Enjoy your season.

01:24:39
Speaker 5: Be cool. Trus