Ep. 1000: The Future of Hunting in America with Randy Newberg

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. On this special one thousandth episode of the show, I’m joined by Randy Neuberg to discuss the future of hunting, wildlife and wild places and how all of this might impact our way of life in the months and years to come. All right, welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast and this very special episode brought to you by First Light. This is our one thousandth episode, which is which is a pretty wild thing to say. And today we’ve got I think a particularly appropriate topic and guest for this conversation, and I do have an announcement that I want to share with you as well about my future. So first a brief introduction to today’s episode and the main point of this conversation. That guest is Randy Newberg. I think most of you know who he is, but he is the host of Fresh Tracks, the YouTube show, the television show, as well as the Hunt Talk radio podcast, The Hunt Talk Forum, and more largely, he’s just simply one of our nation’s greatest advocates and voices in support of public lands and wildlife and hunting and fishing. And he’s someone that over the last decade or more, has really been someone for me that I’ve leaned on. I’ve met up with him for many a coffee or a phone call to discuss what’s happening with public lands or conservation and really helping me understand how to look at these things, how to do something about it, how to interpret all that’s happening. He’s really been a great mentor for me. So today, in this moment of reflection, as we look forward, and as I look back on one thousand episodes of this podcast, and then where this is going, and where hunting and fishing is going in our way of life and all these different things, it seemed like Randy would be the perfect person to discuss this with. So today we’re going to tackle his predictions for the future, you know, where things for hunting might be in ten years or even further down the line, and then more narrowly, what the next twelve months might look like, and some of the key things that he’s watching, key things he’s concerned about, and you know, ways that we as the hunting and fishing public can be involved in making sure that that future is a brighter one. We discuss, you know, changing demographics of hunters. We talk about how hunter numbers are changing, how both of those two things might impact hunting opportunities. Hunter writes, you know, hunting access over crowdvoing all of those questions and controversies that are coming up more and more now. Today we discuss habitat loss and wildlife population declines and conservation related issues on all of those fronts. It is one that I think will be both educational and inspirational to anyone listening if you hunt or fish, if you love deer or elk or trout or bass or whatever it is. I think this is a conversation that will arm you with the information to be a part of a better future, to make sure that we can keep hunting ten years from now or twenty years from now, to make sure they’re still fish in the stream or you know, turkeys on the roost here in a decade or two, which I know is what all of us want. And so that’s our conversation today, and that is also very relevant to the piece of news about my own career that I want to share with all of you. And I’ll try to keep this brief, but you know, as many of you longtime listeners know, you know this podcast and the writing I do, and the kind of the work that I do on Mediator and on social media, and then this podcast even you know that has evolved over time, that has changed and grown and kind of wound its way through through many different paths over all these years. I started Wired to Hunt back in two thousand and eight with a very simple mission. I simply wanted to scratch my deer hunting itch I was, you know, between my junior and senior year of college. I couldn’t hunt because I was on this internship in the city, and I just want a way to do something deer hunting related. So I started this blog back then, and in the years since, you know, it has grown from just a daily website post about deer hunting news, stories and strategies for the next generation into eventually you know, social media channels and videos, and then this podcast, which launched in twenty fourteen. And you know, then I started hosting shows for Mediator and doing increasingly different things, but also the topic and the focus of my work has changed as well. You know, it’s shifted and has grown from just how do you hunt stuff? How do you kill more deer? How do you become a more effective hunter? Two? Over time? How do we make sure that there are deer out there to hunt? How do we make sure that there are wild places out there to explore and opportunities to hunt or fish or backpack or climb or whatever it is you like to do outside. As I have had my life change by hunting and fishing in the outdoors, I’ve wanted to find more and more ways I can make sure that keeps happening to the future for other people. And so you’ve likely seen that evolution here in the podcast. You’ve heard more episodes with that type of content, including today’s episode. You’ve seen this show up in my shows that I film for Meat Eater. Increasingly, you’ve likely seen that in some of the different things I’ve done, whether it be the volunteer efforts we spearheaded with the Working for Wildlife Tour or my work you know now on the National Board of Directors for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, or the National Deer Association Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters, different things like that, and now I’m excited to share that I’m taking another step in that direction as I am starting this week taking over as director of Conservation for Meat Eater, And this is something I am beyond excited about. This is something that’s so in line with, you know, where I want my career to go and where I think I can make the greatest difference. Where my heart is. You know, as a father of two young boys, my kind of view that I look out the scale has grown so much because I’m not just worried about however many decades I have left on this planet, but now also those two young boys. And I think anyone out there who’s a mom or dad can probably relate to that. So in this new role as director of Conservation for Mediator, I’m thrilled to be able to build off of the foundation that my good friend and mentor, Brian Callahan laid and Steve Ranella of course laid this conservation ethos that we have at Mediator and that drew me to Meetator, you know, almost ten years ago. I’m excited to build off of that. I’ve always felt that we were doing great work, but we could do even more, and so my goal and my task is to find ways to do that. How do we become even more strategic and focused on how we use meet Eater’s platform and voice and content and resources of all kinds to fight for the future of wildlife and wild places. That’s my job is to figure that out. Is to activate our team and our shows and our resources and dollars and energy to make that happen. To make sure that we have deer in the woods, fish in the stream and in the ponds, make sure we have access to these wild places, make sure we have public lands available, make sure we have healthy habitat on private lands. Making sure the hunters and anglers’ voices are heard and our actions are seen. When it comes to the really important work we’re doing to fight for wildlife and wild places. All of that is on my agenda and on my to do list in the months and weeks to come. I’m very excited about it. I don’t want to belabor the point here anymore, but expect a lot of exciting new programs, ideas, content and projects coming from Mediator. I’ll continue to do whitetail stuff here on Wired Hunt of course that is my first true love. But there will be more voices and different voices on here on Wired tount as well. I’ll be having some new content projects in which I’ll be exploring these larger topics of conservation and other wildlife and wild place related topics. So keep an eye out for that. Lots of new stuff to come in the months and years to come. But I appreciate you guys being with me all of these years here at Wired to Hunt. Thank you for your support and your attention, your comments and ideas, and maybe more than anything, thanks for your passion. The passion that I know you guys have for deer hunting and for the outdoors. And so many of you too share the same interest and love I have for keeping these places and these critters around in the long term. So I hope that you will come with me on this next phase of my journey. Thank you for being here, and now this very appropriate conversation with mister Randy Newberg about the future of hunting in America. All right, with me back on the line again today is Randy Newburgh. Welcome back, Randy.

00:09:51
Speaker 3: Mark, So nice to be here talking to you. Thanks for inviting me.

00:09:56
Speaker 2: It is always a pleasure. We’ve talked a good bit over the years offline. I feel like at least once a year, if not more, we’re checking in on each other and seeing how things are going. And as I’ve just mentioned to you offline, you’ve long been a person that I’ve been able to turn to with questions and and help me kind of think about things the right way or center myself on these these issues that you and I both care so much about. But I went and looked back at podcasts we’ve done, and we actually haven’t done a podcast, at least on this show in five years, which shocked me. It’s been that long.

00:10:36
Speaker 3: So yeah, I had to get to Yeah, we get to brainstorm every so often. I just in my head, I’m thinking you’re recording all this so.

00:10:48
Speaker 2: Saying I know, I know, right, So I’m glad we’re making that happen here today, and it’s it’s it’s on a fitting episode, the thousandth episode, an important kind of milestone for Wired to Hunt and for me. So I appreciate you joining me for this one.

00:11:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, and well, I’m honored that you’d ask me.

00:11:09
Speaker 2: And I’m going to ask you to do something a little bit challenging here, So forgive me for throwing you under the bus right off the gate, but I’m going to ask you to I’m going to ask you to zoom out. Let’s zoom out and put on our predicting goggles and look with me to the year twenty thirty six, ten years from now. Paint me a picture when it comes to hunting and wildlife. Paint me a picture of what you predict we might, as hunters or anglers or outdoors people be living through or experiencing in twenty thirty six. Where do you see things going?

00:11:48
Speaker 3: Wow, I’m going to put my goggles on back to twenty sixteen and try to compare what I would have thought when I was fifty one in twenty sixteen and see how much different it is today. There’s a lot of things that are going on today that I think if you had asked me this question ten years ago, I would have predicted it or felt very likely it was going to happen, as it relates to the continued attack on public lands. But some of the things that I would not have predicted are the changes in not just the hunting world but our world in general of how bombarded we are with messaging and content and the instantaneous sharing of information, you could see it coming, but ten years ago I could not have predicted it would be to the volume that it is, or that it would create certain levels within American populace where you just don’t know what to trust, right, Yeah, Can I trust what this source says or what that start says? And so it creates a bit of a paralysis. One of the human conditions that it probably prays on is just our level of skepticism, and that that takes a lot of energy to always be trying to sort out can I trust this? Can I not trust that? And it also causes people to be a little bit hesitant about being an advocate and speaking up and saying what they feel or what’s important to them, because they’re asking themselves, is this really? This is really something I trust? Can I trust this person who’s telling me this? So I would not have seen that. So as I go forward to twenty thirty six, to your question, I think we’re still going to see the continued attacks on public land. That’s without a given or without a question, that’s just a given. The other things I think in terms of why life, I think we’re going to go through a period where hunters are going to realize that we’re going to get back to the cornerstones of what got us here. Right now, I think we’re we’re kind of looking for that. We maybe enjoyed a period of the good old days and maybe took for granted some of the things that got us here. But I think hunting, at least where I live out in the West, is going to have some hard times where herds are going to continue to drop and drop and drop, and they have for the last twenty years. But we’re going to reach a point where people are going to say, you know what, enough of that. We’re going to go back to what hunters have always done, and that is we’re going to fund habitat, We’re going to focus on habitat, We’re going to speak up, going to stand up, going to do the right things. And I’m not saying we’re not doing that today, but we aren’t doing it as consistently as our predecessors did. So I think there’s always this boomerang effect, right that they say, history repeats itself, you want whatever term you want to put to that. I think we’re going to see some of that by twenty thirty.

00:15:10
Speaker 2: Six that resonates in me. Now, I’m want to ask you to zoom in a little further. I want to dive into what you just said, But I also want to shrink the scale just a little bit and ask you now to predict what will happen over the next twelve months. How do you see the next twelve months kind of coming to manifest in relation to those things? And then once you tell me that, then I think we can unpack a couple of those things.

00:15:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, the next twelve months are probably the most worrisome twelve months I’ve had in my life of being an advocate for public clans and conservation. What is being cooked up right now and the things that are happening, and the pace at which are happening, and just the fatigue we’re all feeling from having to push back on this stuff. Is I hope it’s the apex of my life of the volume of this and the potential damage of some of it. So in the next twelve months, I would tell people, if you think last summer was difficult, brace yourself, it’s going to get more difficult. They learned a lot from last summer when Mike Lee floated the big beautiful bill amendment to try sell public lands. Well, that was a little bit of a test balloon. Let’s see how much pressure there is. And I found out there’s a lot of pressure. Okay, how do we become more discreet than this, How do we become a little more clandestine, and how we accomplish this, how do we not do it in a way that raises as much angst but still lets us get what we want out of it. And that’s that’s concerning to me. I mean, I could writele off a list of things right now that I know are cooking in DC and that some of the groups are some of the people, some of the folks who really aren’t in our camp when it comes to conservation on public lands, what they want out of this, and depending on how the midterm elections turn out, you know, And this is just this isn’t just this administration. It’s anytime there’s an administration that sees a mid term change, or a Congress sees a midterm change, they get in a big hurry before that next Congress gets seated. And you know that pattern oll repeat if there’s a change in power in the midterms in November when that new Congress gets seated in January, there will be a big hurry to do a bunch of stuff. And I can say this because I’m older and grayer than you, But there’s an old saying of beware of an old man in a hurry, and that that’s cautioned me of what I think the next twelve months hold in store.

00:17:59
Speaker 2: So in the short term you’re very concerned. In the long term, you noted a low point. We’re gonna go downhill in some fashion. We’re gonna experience some kind of nadir, some some bad stuff’s gonna happen, but we’re gonna bounce back out of that.

00:18:15
Speaker 3: Yep. Hunters have, Americans always have.

00:18:18
Speaker 2: Can you give me some of the specific things that you think will be the examples of what’s going to be so concerning this next twelve months and leading into the next three, four or five six years before we have that bounce back. What are the two three things that are keeping you up the most at night right now that will really impact hunting and hunters and outdoors people.

00:18:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, the things that really concerned me will be diversion of money that is meant for access, because we all know that private access is shrinking. That makes public access, our access to our federal lands, even more important, and they’re diverting that right there. They’re not submitted the LWCF projects, which Land and Water Conservation Fund is the biggest funding mechanism for improving and solving complex access problems on federal lands or within the federal landscape of public private So they’re diverting that money or they’re just not putting the projects forward. So we are going to lose a lot of projects that private landowners have been in the works for the last anywhere from three to five years, working with federal agencies. They’re these kind of landowners we want to work with because they are conservation minded, they want the public to have access, and we’ve been promising them for years. Stay with us, stay with us. Congress is going to approve this all of a sudden, Department of Interior says, we’re just not going to submit a list. So now these landowners who’ve trusted us are left holding the bag. So they’re going to go sell the private parties, which is exactly what some of these groups want. So in the twelve month next twelve months, we’re going to see the impacts of that we’re going to see the impacts of Department of Interiors are saying we’re going to divert this money from access. We’re going to divert it over to maintenance. Whatever maintenance is, right building a new headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado, or whatever that might be, it’s not going to be for public access. The other one that we’re going to see is where I live in the West. When we talk about habitat, a lot of that’s on federal land, publicly owned federal land. And right now it’s a race to see how much resource extraction can happen on federal lands with the least amount of accommodation for wildlife, which is not how we’ve done it in the past. Right, we need these resources. Anyone who wants to just say no, no, no, no, you’re heading down a dead end street because we need resources. One of the things Americans have always done a good job of is saying, yeah, we can get these resources, and we can do it to accommodate wildlife. But I’m just looking at what’s happening in Western Wyoming. Western Wyoming is the longest migration corridor on the continent, or at least in the lower forty eight. I should say it has our keystone meal deer herd, the western Wyoming meal deer herd. It has the largest prong horn population on the continent. And right now we are letting the oil and gas industry nominate which partials they want to put up for Lisa this summer with no accommodation for the meal deer and the prong horn. So we’re looking at a meal deer herd that with the Jonah project in the late nineteen nineties, the Pinedale project in the early two thousands, that meal deer herd is down fifty percent. How many hits can that meal deer herd sustain to its migration corridor and to its winter grounds. And so if you live in Wyoming, that’s a concern to you because that’s where a lot of Wyoming guys hunt, are guys and gals. And if you’re a non resident, that should be a concern to you be because if that starts going down further and further and further, the first place that gets cut is a non resident opportunity. So residents and non residents are in this game together. And right now, I don’t see a lot of people willing to stand up and push back on this. So in the next twelve months, if these projects go up for lease, get approved, and eventually get developed. We’re talking about some of these being right in the core of a very narrow migration corridor that’s hundreds of miles long or one hundred miles long. But these herds have used for thousands and thousands of years, and they’ve already shown us that they can’t continue to sustain this type of development without accommodation for them. So the flip side of that is we could do things that accommodate them, and we should. And that’s where we as hunters play a role, is to say, yeah, we need energy. We don’t. No one’s saying we don’t. Let’s develop energy, but let’s do it in a way that wildlife has a chance. And all that’s coming. I mean, those are just two quick things coming in the next twelve months plus more.

00:23:22
Speaker 2: And even those two examples you just gave, there are dozens of examples of how that very same thing is happening in other corners of the United States or in other corners of our public land and wildlife policy. I mean, the specifics of like migration quarters. Let’s look get up in Alaska our actual longest single migration on the continent, which is caribou, and the signed to develop a two hundred plus mile industrial corridor bisecting one of those longest migrations, or or drilling and developing the calving grounds of our largest remaining herd of caribou in the continent, and again oil fields there. So there’s many, many, many other examples like that. And the funding thing is you just mentioned, that’s massive. That is tied directly to the biggest reason that people stop hunting, which is limited access, not being able to find somewhere to go. And the biggest complaint probably that people have today is, hey, there’s too many folks out there. It seems like we’re over crowded. All these non residents are showing up, or all these city slickers or all these whatever everyone’s complaining about that. Well, if we don’t have funding for new public land and funding to keep our current public lands well managed and usable, well then that’s a bigger and bigger problem. But Randy, all of this feels like it’s being shoved down our throats without anything that we can say about the matter.

00:24:46
Speaker 3: It is. It is being shoved down our throats because we have a Congress that has just stepped aside and said, you know, we’re just here for mostly the formative part of our job, where we get in front of it news camera and make a big stink about some abstract issue. That’s it is being shot down our throat because of that. Because we are the United States, citizen always had its opportunity to weigh in through public meetings, which we’ve gotten rid of most of those public meetings. We’re taking resource management plans that took ten years to put together where the public did have their input there and they’re being removed and being thrown out. So that whole public process that we’ve worked on, that’s we were told your voice counts. The new model is, let’s just get rid of that. So the last remaining if you want to call them, steps on the ladder or levers that we have is to put pressure on our congressional delegations to say it is up to you to do your job, and your job is to weigh in on this stuff, to push back on it. And one of the things that just in the last week is kind of optimistic is the administration put forth a bare bones budget for the Park Service, for the BLM, and for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. When that came to Congress, Congress said, no way, we’re not We’re not cutting it like that. So they restored most of that. So that’s where Congress needs a you know about on the back of Hey, thanks for standing up and doing that. And that is the example of what Congress could do in every one of these instances. They could give voice to this, they could give perspective to it, and they are there to represent us the people, and that we got to hold them accountable. I know, people just get so tired of the ninth grade Civics thing. Right, you got to call your congress person. You got to call your congress person. That’s what we got to do. I wish I could say we could, you know, if we all got on Facebook and complained enough that change it. That’s what that’s what they’re hoping. That’s what we’ll do because it doesn’t make a difference. So those are those are the things I see.

00:27:09
Speaker 2: What’s your read or what’s your takeaway from last summer? I think some people saw last summer and saw, well, there’s a lot of celebration about the fact we stopped the public land sell off, but a whole bunch of other bad stuff got through that we couldn’t do anything about because we were focused on the self, while other folks would focus on the good, which was well, Hey, at least we had one example where everyone came together, stood up for something, and it did seem to make a difference. And there’s you know, there there is some optimism. There’s a lot of people that are saying, man, if we could just bottle up what happened last June, July whatever and apply that in the future, we could really change things. And there do seem to be some folks on the Republican side who are saying, ah, this Mike Lee set of ideas and his people, this isn’t settling well with my constituents. I’m getting a lot of as the emails and phone calls, maybe we’re getting a little bit of momentum there. What’s your take on that when you analyze what happened and think about what that means for the future.

00:28:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was a very powerful event and I felt that personally since we watched it all unfold, right, A lot of people didn’t know that at the time when that amendment was on the Senate floor. There were eighteen Republicans who were going to vote against a chairman of one of their committees. That’s how bad of an idea this was. And it wasn’t just US Hunters, it was people from everywhere. Yeah, US Hunters had a big role because we have access to some of the more rural senators who were very important in that, so we maybe had an outsize role in it. But it was everybody who’s a public land to use her public land advocate. So I in my head, I’m like, I wonder if this has taught them a lesson, And you never know other than I was meeting with a lobbyist who mostly lobbies on more resource issues and probably i’d say friendlier to the right side of the aisle, and he sought me out. He’s like, hey, I got to ask you some questions because I could really use your help, and I’m willing to talk to anybody if I think it’s progress. And one of the things he said really caught me. He said, you know, don’t worry about the public land sale thing. There’s not a Republican who wants to touch it. He said, I can tell you there’s a chairman of the committee who told me we are not touching another public land sale for ten years after last summer. Mike’s good, Okay. So then I said, what about all these other kind of behind the scenes stuff, stuff that doesn’t require congressional action, all the things that can be done by executive order, secretarial order, Like I wish I could help you on that. He did. He wasn’t very optimiz stick on that part of it, which again confirmed my thoughts of where this is going in the tactics that are going to be used.

00:30:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a specific clarifying question I want to run by you. You talked about the dollars that have been appropriate for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and that was a big win for us back in twenty twenty when that was permanently authorized and supposedly fully funded. As you mentioned, that is what we use to pay for future public land access and increases, and in twenty twenty five. Correct me if I’m wrong on these details, but as I understand that the twenty twenty five dollars had been held up from being sent out, and no list of the projects for twenty twenty six have been sent But then I did see in the House budget they approved full funding for LWCF just recently. So where do we stand with twenty twenty five payments, twenty twenty six nomination, and where LWCF is going in the future. What’s the specific moment we’re in there.

00:31:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, most of this is happening in the Apartment of Interior or not Department of bag which the four service is under the Department of AG. So most of what we’re talking about of these concerns are with Department of Interior, which covers the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. So the twenty twenty five projects for that fiscal year probably are we’re not going to get them done because if there’s a secretarial order or word that just says don’t complete these, it’s not like your BLM state office can go do something if it’s against what the National Office says. So the other part of that is Congress can appropriate the money, but if Interior doesn’t submit a project list, there are no projects to be funded with the appropriation. So the folks with the levers of power, who are the anti public land folks right now, who have way more levers of power than they ever have. They know how the system works, and they know where the little tricks are of how can we muck it up? And those levers are being pulled right now. So I’m optimistic when Congress says we’re going to do this. But if you have agencies that are led by people or influenced by people, or omb steps in and says we’re not going to do this, it doesn’t get done. And these are private landowners who are going to sell us an eastment or they’re going to sell us an in holding to solve complex issues, and they can’t wait forever, and the other side knows that. So the more they run out the clock, the more these that fall apart.

00:33:01
Speaker 2: And to clarify for folks, these funds are dollars that are not coming from taxpayers. These dollars are coming from royalties from offshore drilling, so that’s where these dollars come from. And then these dollars are used to purchase land from willing sellers to increase the public land estate or access sites, parks, that kind of stuff that then we get to use benefit from sites. Yeah, and this isn’t like yep, this isn’t like small scale stuff like that. There’s tens of thousands of acres that were you know, up for nomination in recent years, right, or hundreds of thousands of acres I’ve heard even from Okay. This is serious access that could be acquired but may not be known.

00:33:45
Speaker 3: Right. So the clutching is that we’re going to let that happen. And if you’re in the Montana delegation, you’re getting interful about it. Now. I get if I was maybe in a very urban state, if I lived in New Jersey, I don’t know that I’d be that worked up about it because I don’t have a lot of public land there. But no matter where you live, if you want places to hunt or access on public land, these easements that get bought with LWCF, these little in holdings that can block access to twenty thousand and fifty thousand acres. Acquiring those solves these problems. So all of us, no matter where you live, benefit from it. And you know, the program LWCF is the same age I am was past the nineteen sixty four and the idea, the premise behind it was we’re depleting one publicly owned asset, our oil and gas reserves offshore let’s use some of that money, a very small portion of it to conserve and replace some other public asset, the terrestrial, the land that we have here on shore. And so that’s been the premise. It’s never been this political football until about ten fifteen years ago. It was always such a well received program. And even today the citizens, if you read every survey about that Republican Democrat, over ninety percent of all people Republican, Democrat, independent, want to see this program continue and they want to see it used invested to solve access. But you wouldn’t know that if you listen to Congress or you watch them on the you know, on the news or whatever camera they’re in front of. You know, they got to make a big spiel about something.

00:35:38
Speaker 2: So the the kind of adjacent issue to this, And I kind of mention this at the top, but I’m curious more of your take on this. One of the most hotly debated, discussed, trolled about issues in the hunting world right now that everyone’s complaining about is overcrowding, not being able to find places to hunt, or having your hunting spot below up or tuny people at the trailhead, or I’ve lost all my permission spots to hunt in Michigan because everyone’s leasing up everything and there’s nowhere to go now, and so there’s all sorts of concern around this, and there’s all sorts of finger pointing around this. Some of those fingers have been pointed at people like me and you and other folks that talk about hunting and fishing and outdoor recreation and all that. What’s your take on that, in what the future looks like in that regard both the causes for it and remedies for it, and how you think about it.

00:36:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, how I think about it is that we are losing There’s no argument to be made that I can think of that would counter the understanding that we are losing access. We lose access to public or private lands because of development, because of leasing, because of sometimes it’s hunter behavior. There’s all kinds of reasons why we lose access to private lane. Well, then if that the ownership in my state of Montana, ownership change is a big thing. You get people who come and buy a ranch and or a billionaire and it’s one hundred thousand acres and it used to be the school bus driver got to bring his or her family out there. The mechanic brought his family out there, the you know, the waitress brought her family. That there were thirty people who had access to hunt that ranch. It changes hands, it gets locked up, nobody hunts it. Now those thirty people aren’t going to quit hunting. They get displaced. So there’s there’s things like that that contribute to it. So everybody should be on board with more access. So then we get to the question of that’s one of the causes. Then there’s the question of is it because there are more hunters that’s the number that’s one of the other premises to the discover ussion, right, or one of the other statements made that’s creating crowding. Well, there are not more hunters. The IUS Fish and Wildlife Service reports related to this talk about hunting licenses sold. It doesn’t break out total hunters. And I’ve been studying those reports for thirty years, and i’ve so in the last three months because no one’s been willing to dig into this really to try to get to what are true hunter numbers. I worked for someone who is an AI specialists, and we spent aged a lot of time going to every state from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty three and examining the trends, then yeah, some states change. Okay, in twenty eighteen, we said that now youth and adults or senior citizens they got to buy a license, but it’s free. So all of a sudden there’s a spike. It looks like they sold more license. There’s a lot of things you got to balance out in this. Well, if you use twenty fifteen as the baseline year and give that a score of one hundred, with very few exceptions, every state in the country has seen a licensed sale to residents that is way below that. Every state with a very few exceptions. Because I’ll use an example like Colorado in their year of that ends the March of twenty twenty, which also we add the COVID spike. Right, they said, if you’re going to accumulate points, you got to buy a small game license. All of a sudden you got a whole bunch more people who had to buy a license that year. So even if you adjust for that, there’s there’s not an increase in hunters. And I’m sitting on all this data and I’ve got volumes of it. I mean, if you if you want to find the power of AI sit down and do a couple month project or someone who knows how to use it. So I’ve shared this data with some people who are kind of involved in this stuff from the standpoint of agencies, and I’m like, why don’t we have license sales resident license sales for every state, because here’s what the trend says. If you relied on the US Fish and Wildlife Service reports, you’d think that we’re static or maybe even increasing.

00:40:34
Speaker 2: Yep.

00:40:36
Speaker 3: And when I showed them their reports are like, oh my god, yeah, we need that data because some of the critics who you know, who want to say that we’re the problem for everything. I’m like, well, why don’t you go build the data then, And they’re like, well, that’s the best I got, that’s the best that’s out there. I’m like, well, if you really want to have a factual discussion, go do the work to build that data and don’t use the flawed US Fish and Wildlife Service data. And people are like, well, how’s that flawed? Well, I buy ten hunting license to apply in all these states, so I get counted ten times, and we know the trend in the last twenty years is that more people travel to hunt. So if you look at the report from twenty years ago, there weren’t as many people getting double counted, triple counted, ten times counted as there are today. So true boots on the ground of hunters, whether we’re talking small game, big game, is not. That is not what’s creating the problem. The numbers are going down. Yes, every one of these states that we analyze has a little blip in twenty twenty. Very few of them have hunter numbers back to where they were in twenty nineteen. And if you adjust it for population growth, the slope of that curve is way steeper decline if you adjust it for population growth.

00:42:05
Speaker 2: So fewer absolute hunters. But those hunters that are still here might just be concentrated in smaller and smaller areas. And maybe many of these hunters are spending more days per person than some did in the past, possibly because of the effort level that many hunters have now is higher. But here’s the thing, Randy, there are some in our community that would say to this, good good, I’m glad there are fewer hunters because that means there would be less competition for me to kill my big buck or my big elk, And good riddance and let’s keep people out of here because they’re ruining it. Well, how do you respond to that? Why is this a problem in you?

00:42:47
Speaker 3: If you want to yeah, if you want to embrace, embrace that scarcity mindset, tell me where that leads us in the long run. Tell me where that leads ten, twenty, thirty, forty years from now. It’s one hundred and eighty degree reversal from the abundant mindset that got hunting to where it is today. So are we going to fight over the last little scraps of the last few mial deer in Wyoming? Are we going to fight over the last little scraps of big horn sheep in Montana? Are we going to put more sheep on the mountain or are we going to do what those mill deer need? Because if let’s use Wyoming right, mil deer and pronghorn numbers in Wyoming are about half of what they were at the turn of the millennium. What does that mean? That means there’s half as many tags. So if you want to double your odds of drawing a tag as a resident or non resident, let’s get back to what the numbers were in twenty twenty or in two thousand. That’s abundance thinking. That’s saying we can do better, we can do more. That’s what all of our predecessors said. I completely reject and decline to even entertain the idea is of that scarcity mindset that we just got to fight harder, We got to figure out how to exclude somebody else. Now there are other things that have created crowding in my state. We always said we’re going to have seventeen thousand non resident hunters, dear and now come big game hunners. Well, the legislature got involved in about twenty years ago and they said, well, my children just moved out of Montana, I’d like to have this program called to come Home to Hunt where they don’t have to be part of the draw. And then the next legislative session they had this Montana Native program, and then they said, well, let’s let college students who have more than I think twelve credits they can buy nonre So now Montana goes from seventeen thousand non residents to over fifty thousand. So if you live in a state like Montana where your legislature tinkers with that, absolutely you feel crowding. But that’s not due to more hunters. That is due to your state legislature and use, especially some of these critics sitting on your ass when these issues were being debated in the legislature. So, yeah, you can have difference. It’s not a monolith of everything is going on the same trend in every state. It’s identical. My state of Montana, we have had way more non resident crowding. Our resident license sales have stayed flat for the last twenty years, but our non resident sales have more than tripled because we said, oh, non residents, you no longer have to draw a cow out tag or an antler list meal deer tag. I mean, just buy one. Well be they’d get ten percent of those. And whether it’s someone at the trailhead or boots on the ground because I have a cow elk tag or a bowl olt tag, doesn’t matter. It’s still crowded, it’s still more people. So you got to get into it and look at it a little. What would I say, with maybe the intent of trying to understand it rather than to rationalize what you’ve claimed is the problem all your life. And my response very often is if you think crowding and getting rid of people is the problem. Why don’t you raise your hand and you’d be the first person who gets the hell out of here. Then under start solving this problem, and they never raise their hand.

00:46:44
Speaker 2: No, what’s this all going to mean for the future of wildlife game management at the state level? I mean, there’s there’s already been changes with some states going to different kinds of draws, some states raising prices, some states lowering bag limits, some states. You know, there’s all the resident complaints, like people in Montana upset about non residents coming in. But then there’s also complaints from non residents saying, hey, these are federal public lands. I shouldn’t have to pay two thousand dollars and wait ten years to go hunt there. Once there’s all of this finger pointing and complaining from all sides.

00:47:31
Speaker 3: Where’s this headed, Randy, Oh, it’s not headed in a good place, because we are and this is where I when you ask me what our ten year curve is, I think in the next five years we’re going to bottom out with this scar shitty mindset of fighting with each other and fighting over it. If you’re an If I’m a non resident in Wyoming and I love hunting pronghorn in Wyoming. As much as I love doing anything, the best thing I could do is be there supporting Wyoming residents to do what it takes on the landscape, within their state legislature, within their elected officials, to do things for habitat that increase prong horn numbers. I refuse to see this resident non resident thing as we’re in two different camps and we should hate each other. We are joined at the hip because if we have habitat, we’re going to have herds. If we have herds, we’re going to have tags. And we got to reverse that trend. If we’re going to just adopt this mindset that I’m just going to fight for my little scrap and I’m going to try exclude residents, or I’m going to try exclude non residents, or I want to have some sophisticated drocess tom. I love seeing prices increase because supposedly that keeps other people out of the game. That I reject that those are just little tricks that ignore the bigger symptom or the cause of all these symptoms, that is the herd numbers are shrinking. Other than out there’s not a Western big game species that is at a higher population level today than when I was born. There’s not one of them that’s at a higher population level today than they were in two thousand. So yeah, you and I we produce content, just like George Burd Grarnell used to produce content when he had Forest and Stream magazine in the late eighteen hundreds. And did people learn from that, yep, just like people learn from us. Does that create more demand for tags? It probably does. But I’m here to create people who want to advocate for hunting. I want them to have that experience. I want them to be connected these public lands through a tangible experience that they’ve had. I want them to see the benefit fits of habitat and conservation and how it increases the herds. And I can’t expect them to sit on a couch in Florida and somehow wish that and somehow they’re going to become an advocate for that. And there’s not a single person who will listen to this, who will watch this, who was born instinctively with that knowledge. They got it from somewhere. They may be redded in a magazine. They maybe belonged to a rodden gun club, or someone took them as a mentor and taught them all this stuff, whether it’s hunting not a state, whether it’s how to hunt. No one was born with that instinctively. So to somehow say we’re now going to be gatekeepers and keep all We’re going to pick and choose who gets the chance to do that. No, we’re going to use hunters, just like the population in general has always used whatever tools of communication are there to share information. And yeah, it gets shared really fast in today’s world, and it’s readily available and it’s easy to get. And does that increase the number of people who are interested in this? That? Possibly does? Then probably does. But is that the problem. Is that the problem with why we have fewer tags? No, not at all. If we had double the number of tags, do you think there’d be as much angst about Oh gee, I didn’t draw this year, but I’ll probably draw next year. Oh now, it’s like I didn’t draw this year and I’m probably ain’t gonna draw next year. Her numbers are on the decline. Okay, what are you doing about it? Are you volunteering for something, are you contributing to something? Are you calling your congress people? Are you doing the things that improve habitat? Because We can fight and argue about this stuff all day long. Something that our predecessors do is it all comes down to the land and the habitat. You want more ducks in the sky, you better have some wetlands.

00:51:58
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know this is not something that is just just happening with hunted species either. We’re seeing declines across so many different species, many that are hunted, you know, with the exception you mentioned, elk are doing pretty good in many places. White tailed deer are doing great. They’re the you know, they’re the rats of the big game world. They’re able to survive anywhere. But I mean turkeys, upland birds, all the western big game species you mentioned. Caribou are plummeting, Moose populations in many places plummeting. So much of our wildlife heritage is not slowly disappearing. And to your point, nobody will do real action, will truly engage unless they have that connection. Nobody watches a nature documentary Netflix and then changes their life because of it. Nobody watches something on YouTube and just that one thing is enough to flip them into an active advocate, engaged with their lawmakers or getting out there on the ground doing something about it that is very uniquely, something that is tied to people that have a close, radical engagement with this thing. So I’m with you, Randy. I think that the only way we’re going to win any of these things is by putting out a hand to folks and saying, come on out, see this stuff. It’s amazing. It’s yours to enjoy, experience it, take care of it.

00:53:24
Speaker 3: Yep. And if that means I don’t draw my Colorado Elk tag or deer tag, next year, some new person who’s interested in that ends up with it. But they become a voice and they start doing the things necessary to improve habitat, to improve access, to get this cycle back to more meal there or more elk or whatever. You know what, Fine by me.

00:53:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:53:53
Speaker 3: And people are like, oh, you’re full of crap. You don’t really mean that. I absolutely mean that. I just we’ve been handed this is probably and this comes with age.

00:54:04
Speaker 2: Mark.

00:54:04
Speaker 3: I’m sorry if I sound like an old grandpa crimudgin here, But with age, I have realized every year more and more what I was handed. What I was born as an American. I didn’t understand it when I was born. I didn’t understand it when I was twelve when I’ve passed on our education. I didn’t understand it. When I got out of college at age twenty two, I started learning it a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Now I realize that everything I have enjoyed in my life in the outdoors is because people who came before me didn’t really give two craps if they upset somebody. They took seriously President Roosevelt’s statement that the wildlife and the habitat cannot speak for itself. We must and we will. They live that. They established the Duckstamp pro They established the National Wildlife Refuge Program that now is being reviewed, and who knows what’s going to come of that. They put infrastructure in place for the for Service so that we’d have public lands. All of this came, We had the Pittman Robertson ac quick. The list goes on and on and on of things that our predecessors made hard decisions where it cost them a little bit more money, or it cost them some opportunity. But it was about that next generation, as Roosevelt would call them, those still in the womb of time. And the older I get, the more I understand how much was handed to me, and this whole idea that we don’t have an obligation to that next generation, that somehow it’s all about me and my chance of getting a tag. And I got to you know, there’s oh, there’s four people at the trail that had today instead of three. I just that’s that is not appreciative of what got us here. It just is. I mean that we want to talk about America’s greatness and all the wonderful things in this country, and I agree with that statement, but within the hunting space and within the things that we get to do on public lands, every bit of that came because someone wasn’t afraid to stand up. And I’ve been lucky that in my life I’ve had some of those people as mentors. You know, anyone who has ever driven to Yellowstone Park from yellow from Livingstone, Montana to Gardner, Montana. Friend of mine, Jim Poswitz, who’s passed away recently. He led a team of biologists who kept the Yellowstone River from being damned what was called the Allensburg pinch point just south of Livingstone. It would have flooded the entire Partaradise Valley. And this was in the late seventies, right, oil and bargoes, the energy crisis, all this. The idea was, we’ll flood that valley, we’ll have a water supply, and we are going to put electrical generating stations all the way from Livingston to Billings and by the time the Yellowstone River got to Billings, it would have been dewatered. He got his team of scientists and biologists got that stopped, and everybody was pissed at them. His department got dismantled. Within Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. He’s called an idiot, an obstructionist, you know, a crazy guy. Is there a person today, forty five years later who thinks it would be a good idea to damn the Yellowstone River at Livingston, Montana and flood it all the way up to Yankee Jim Canyon and dewater the Yellowstone River by the time it got to Billings. No. But my point is they stood up and did the right thing for the wildlife, for the wild places in the wild things, and they said, you know what, maybe we’re going to take a hit here and there, but they had the support of the people also, and that’s what we got to do. And I don’t take that as just like, oh, well, that’s great, thank for doing that, Jim, I’m going fishing today, or I’m going on today, hell with everyone else. To me that if you are a hunter in America or an angler, these are the type of legacy things that have been handed to you. And I get it that. When I was younger, I didn’t grasp it. Yeah, I volunteered for all these things because I grew up in a town and in a family. We’re volunteering with this part of what you did. But I didn’t. I didn’t see it from the bigger picture of Wow, no wonder, we have such an abundance, No wonder, we have such an amazing thing because generation after generation took the baton and they worked towards the same thing, in the same thing, in the same thing. And the question is for us in our generation, are today are we going to do that? Are we going to piss it down our leg and say, well, appreciate you giving that to us, But now there’s too much work, It is too uncomfortable, too inconvenient to keep that ball rolling. I don’t I’m confident that that’s not how hunters are. Yeah, there’s the vocal minority. There’s the critics, there’s the whoever, But the core hunter American who wants something better for their next generation are the people who are going to show up. And that’s why I’m so optimistic when you asked me ten years from now, where are we going to be, We’re going to be coming back this way because that’s how hunters have done it, that’s how Americans have done it. And we might have to go through some more bumps along the way, but we’re going to get back to habitat, going to get back to building these herds, and that next generation who comes after me, they’re going to be the beneficiaries. And I couldn’t be happier.

01:00:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it’s amazing how we can feel in this moment, you know, overwhelmed by the trajectory of so many things, and wildlife populations and declined, and public lands and even private land protections being slashed, clean water protections being slashed, everything. But to your point, if you look back in history, it’s very easy to forget how relatively short a period of time ago it was that we were in a way worse situation than we are right now. Right, I mean, things were amazing, Yeah, you know, several hundred years ago, and then in the eighteenth century, things rapidly declined and we just kind of clear cut the nation’s wildlife metaphorically speaking. And then we got to that late eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds when there was this growing awareness as you mentioned with George Bird, Grennell and Roosevelt and Hornaday and so many others, and we said, whoa, whoa, whoa, tap the brakes. We got to do something different, and then we we righted the ship. And now we’ve been on this slow but steady not always slow, but significant increase and improvement. We’ve brought back white tail deer were nearly gone. Rady white tail deer were down. Yeah, you know, so so low of numbers, unbelievably, and we’re up to thirty five million. There were maybe you know, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands left across the entire nation. Now thirty five million elk populations have been restored. I mean, so many different things that are amazing success stories that we did within the last one hundred years. But now all that’s you know, back trending down for so many species, and we can look back there and say, hey, you know, there is a model for what to do and how to do it, and I think the model that I see, and you’ve alluded to this, but the model that I see and that I think the hunting and angling community epitomizes better than anyone. You know, there’s many other folks in the environmental and conservation community over the last fifty hundred years that have done something, but the hundred and angling point portion of that, I think epitomize what kind of my growing theory is. And this is something I’ve been writing a ton about right now as I’m wrapping up my latest book, is that there’s a difference between saying something and kind of like a like a passive environmentalism or conservation was like, oh, I care about this thing I’m posted on social media, And then there’s this other thing that I think the hunting and fishing world has demonstrated, whether it be in the fifties and sixties with actual reintroduction efforts of turkeys or flying in sheep, or getting out and planting native grasslands or planting trees. It’s it’s so many different examples of it in the fishing world too, where people are out there rebuilding stream banks, or building beaver analogs or whatever. It’s actually doing something active in concrete. Sometimes that’s literally dirt in the hands, in the dirt on the ground, or sometimes it’s showing up at the capitol or writing a handwritten letter and walking it to someone and talking to someone. But it’s it’s active, it is concrete. It is you know, no longer performative. And I think hunters and anglers, as you said, have done this and now is this time that it’s it’s it’s our time we have to do it again.

01:03:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you look at the American population we are We’ve always been across section of the American population. We’ve had you know, within our community, we have some differences, like you just pointed out there. But think about nine I think it was nineteen sixty nine. You live in the Great Lakes Country. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio started on fire. Yeah, because it was the dumping grounds for paint factories and oild refineries. And you tell that to people today, they’re like a river started on fire, not that long ago. Yes, No, So I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the Boundary Waters or Rainy Lake or the Rainy River or Lake of the Woods where I grew up. I was born in Badet, Minnesota, where the Rainy River dumps into Lake of the Woods. Grew up south of there in Big Falls. As a kid, we would go and fish the Rainy River when the walleyes would migrate up the Rainy River from Lake of the Woods to spawn. Well, there were upstream from that in International Falls, and for Francis, Ontario, there were multiple paper mills. There were all kinds of things. Cities were dumping their raw sewage in there. When in my lifetime I was a kid. You would go there and fish and you would see signs right at eye level. As you know, I’m seven years old. I finally learned to read by then, and you’d see these signs, do not eat these fish. Do not eat these fish. Warning, do not eat these fish. You would not cast your line out there unless you had a bob or because if your line and sinker hit the bottom, you’d reel in a string of pollution and snot and flam that you didn’t even want to touch. That’s in my lifetime past the Clean Water Act, and it got vetoed by President Nixon because well, this was gonna cost America so much money. Congressover wrote his veto, and the goal of the Clean Water Act, if you want to summarize it, and was kind of the sales pitch at the time, was every water needs to be fishable and swimmable, because there’s not an American alive today who is not within a half hour drive probably have a water back before the Clean Water Act that was not fishable and not swimmable. Lake Erie was not hardly fishable. There were warnings everywhere in the Great like do not eat these fish, do not eat these fish. But guess what Americans did. They told the President, we don’t care that this is going to cost us a lot of money. We’re going to retrofit every industry in this country that creates some sort of byproduct that’s a pollutant, and yeah, we’re going to see inflation, and yeah we’re going to have to more. I guess what Americans did. They wanted their kids and grandkids to have fishable and swimmable waters. And that’s what we have today. And so that’s why I have all this faith in Americans. That we might have to go through a Cuyahoga River starting on fire. But there are events that are going to trigger us to say we aren’t doing that, we aren’t putting up with this anymore. And so I could give example after example. And I know I sound like some old guy, but I’ve lived it. My lifetime is not this big long arc of history. You know. I’m not Moses who lived over many hundreds of years. And so I want people to understand that, no matter what the challenge is, Americans, hunters and anglers have rows up and said we can fix this. We want better. It’s always been about better and more for that next generation. And I think that Clean Water Act is just that’s a perfect example because so often we hear, oh, that’s going to be expensive. Oh that’s going to raise the price of whatever. Oh you know how much we’re going to have to pay more at the pump for our gas. If we got to accommodate meal there Well a lot of times that’s not even true, but if it was, Americans have always said, Okay, I guess we got to pay an extra penny every time we gas up our vehicle. If that means that the meal deer and pronghorn are going to prosper in Wyoming, I’m good with that. Is what Americans have always said, we saw when we passed the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, Americans said, yeah, let’s suck it up, let’s get it done. And I’m just confident by you know, maybe this ten year window that you asked me, maybe that’s not the exact period, but by then we’re going to be back to this new trend of saying, boy, we almost squandered an unbelievable gift that we had. Let’s not do that.

01:07:58
Speaker 2: So I want to pivot a little bit to sort of an adjacent set of issues, but related. When we consider the future of hunting in America, what we’ve talked about so far is the future of the resources that we need as hunters. We need wildlife, we need wild places, we need clean air and clean water and access to those things. Then there’s also this side of the question, which is we need the opportunities and the rights to do that. And this is very much related to the debate over should we have more hunters, should we introduce people to the field, should we be recruiting and retaining because all of that, of course influences our rights and opportunities politically. But I’m curious if you can talk about that when you look over the coming year to ten years and you consider the change in demographics that we’ve discussed, what is all that going to mean for the future of hunting? Where you see that headed.

01:08:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well, I live in a state where we passed a right to hunt as part of our country situtional amendment in I think it’s two thousand and six, So we have a constitutional right in Montana. But let’s not kid ourselves. We really have a social license by society in general within your state or within your country of what’s going to be allowed. We can pretend otherwise, but that that’s really what it gets down to. So going back to all this AI data grinding that I did and that I got help with, when I population adjust those trends, it’s really frightening. Most of those when you population adjust for them, that if we use one hundred as the baseline in twenty fifteen, by twenty twenty three, the last year we could find the complete data set, most of them are in the high eighties or low nineties. That’s nine years we’ve slid from. If you want to use those relative scales of one hundred people to eighty seven people or ninety two people so if and some people say, well, if we want to stay level with that, you know how many more hunters we’re going to have to have in the field. I’m not here to say we’ve got to have more hunters that’s going to keep up with population. What I am saying is that the percentage of hunters who are going to be advocates and speak up needs to stay high, needs to be more. We always need more people who will speak up and advocate. But there is a reality that if people are not exposed to hunting, maybe they only do it once, or maybe they go along with somebody and a person shoots a brace of pheasants and they get to enjoy a pheasant meal and they’re like, Wow, I can see why you like hunting. That’s that’s amazing food. That’s a great experience. We’re if we think that we’re going to protect ourselves and make a case for our social license to do this from an ever shrinking number of people, we’re kidding ourselves. We are kidding ourselves. If you want to look at this even further, you know this hunter number thing. I’m seven weeks If I had have been born seven weeks later, I would not be a baby boomer. I’m like the tail tail end of the baby boomers. But Seane Mahoney told me one time he used an analogy. He said, you know, the hunting population in North America is kind of like a python. Let’s use those pythons down in Florida right now. They found out that they eat a white tailed deer. And about fifty years ago, this python ate a white tailed deer that’s slowly working its way through this python, and in the interim he’s been eaten field nice. The baby boomers represent that big deer. Pretty soon, that python’s is going to crap out that big deer. My generation is aging out way faster, way, way faster from hunting than what the new people are coming in. And the Council of Shooting and Hunting to advance shooting and hunting sports about seventeen eighteen years ago, came up with this idea called R three Recruit, Retain, Reactivate. Some of the state agencies took that up. Between the agencies and some of these other councils, they’ve worked on that, they haven’t they haven’t been kept up. I don’t want to discount the people who worked on that and the effort they put into it, but it really hasn’t worked if you want to measure it by how many news hunters have been recruited to replace those who are dying and just aging out with health. So some people are probably listening to this and well, so you’re telling me Newberg, in ten years, when you age out, all you baby boomers are going to be out of the way. Man, I’ll be able to draw my tag Again. I’m not putting in that context. My point is when you have a group of people that represents this very large number that still buy hunting licenses. Right, my uncle Larry’s seventy eight, he’s fighting all kinds of health issues. He buys a license, but he doesn’t hunt. So you have a lot of baby boomers who are buying a license who are not the boots out there in the ground that you’re competing against. Pretty Soon, they’re going to be gone. Their financial contribution to nonprofit groups, their contributions to buying licenses are going to be gone, their equipment and excise taxes are going to be gone, and more importantly, their political clout is going to be gone. So you tell me how well that python that I used in my metaphor analogy, there is going to live eating field mice when it really needs to eat rabbits and white tailed deer. That is the reality of the recruitment slash, whatever you want to call it, the replacement of hunters in America. Right now, we’re feeling the pressures from this big bubble that’s not quite out of the snake, but it’s going to be out of there in ten years. I mean, I’d love to think that I’m going to be hunting elk and cheap toll. I’m ninety, but I can tell you right now, mark the last ten years, it felt like I dragged an anchor around the hill. So I’m an age out and so all this stuff that we hear to me, it’s very very short sighted. Don’t discount the fact that people feel pressure, feel competition for tags. That we all do, right, every one of us do. But there’s reasons for why it’s happening, and there are much larger trends that endanger the future of hunting and conservation that I just tune that stuff out. I can’t again. I go back to it be in this scarcity mindset and I just can’t get there.

01:15:27
Speaker 2: So related to that, one of the you know, one of the big worries about these changing demographics is that as there’s a smaller percentage of hunters as part of the greater American population, there’s gonna be less political support for it. And we’ve seen over the last five years, ten years, these you know, increasing attempts to limit hunting opportunities, to shut down a bear season or shut down houndsman or shut down mountain lion hunting or bobcat hunting or whatever might be. And the concern is always like, well, even if you don’t hunt mountain lions, this is a chip, This is a chip in the wall that could grow and grow and grow, especially as demographics change. And that seems to be a very real risk if we don’t change the demographics, if we don’t do what you’re saying. But I’m curious if all of the things we talked about might be tied together, and that if we were to have an abundance mindset and do what you’re describing and welcoming new people and growing ranks of advocates at least, and if we were to step up and really showcase the way that the hunting and angling community are true conservationists are improving the resource are trying to lead to a world of abundance. Is there a future in which, even if we can’t keep up with population growth, as you said, might we be able to change that opportunity for our social license so that we can change how the rest of that growing population sees us, if they see us not as these you know, bloodthirsty bamby killers, but instead as hey, wow, you know, I continue to see this hunting fishing crowd, and man, they keep on stepping up and saying, Hey, we want to protect wildlife. Hey, we want to protect public lands. Hey we’re doing great stuff on our private lands that are good for butterflies and bugs and bunnies and all this other stuff too. In ten years, maybe could we change it so that we’re still trying to introduce new people, but at the same time folks like, hey, that hunting and fishing crowd, they’re not so bad. Let’s let them continue doing their thing because it’s actually good.

01:17:36
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, we can do that. We just got to be good storytellers about it. And I don’t mean by that we make up the story. We have the most unbelievable story there is to tell, and when you get a chance to tell these kind of stories to people who aren’t aware of them because they haven’t been exposed to hunting and fishing, They’re like, WHOA, I didn’t know that. Like I look at all the stuff that happened last summer, right, rock climbers and mountain bikers and dog walkers are getting a hold of me, Like, man, thanks for you guys are just you’re you’re taking no prisoners on the public land thing. Thank you, thank you. I’m like, well, you know, that’s kind of where I grew up, that’s what I lived for. That’s where I go get my food. And they’re like, huh, I get it. I get it. So we have every one of these that we view as a threat, I’ve view as an opportunity. Everything that someone sees as a risk, I see as a possibility. So your question of can we change that, Oh, I’m one hundred percent convinced. You know, we got to be smart, we got to be strategic. We got to kind of discipline ourselves so that other people don’t discipline us. And we just have too much to offer, and we have way too much to contribute, and we have such a track record that shows what we’ve been able to do. We just got to tell that story.

01:19:08
Speaker 2: You mentioned earlier that we might have an opportunity with the twenty twenty six midterm elections and Congress. You mentioned earlier that Congress is really what could put a stop to some of these bigger picture things, trends that are impacting you know, the slashes to budgets and management and protections for public lands and private lands. I think really key thing to remember is that the stuff that’s happening right now is not just impacting public lands. There are tons of things that are impacting dollars going to private land projects, dollars and protections that protect your water on your private land, the wetland on your private land, all of this. So that’s public and private. So that said, there’s an election here in twenty six coming up. Do you see how do you see us? If so, let me take the one step back. How can hunters and anglers make conservation an actual issue in the twenty twenty six midterm elections in such a way that folks are arguing over solutions on both sides to these challenges? Is that a realistic desire and what’s the roadmap to making that happen over the next you know, ten months, ten eleven months.

01:20:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s realistic, but it’s difficult, right because we have nationalized our elections. Right does anyone in your part of the world subscribe to the local newspaper anymore?

01:20:41
Speaker 2: No?

01:20:43
Speaker 3: No, why because they get all their all their stuff comes nationally. So we as hunters can fall into that trap of well, let’s talk about taxes, let’s talk about you know, whatever the national issues are, and so we end up voting for people who who we haven’t even asked them what their issue is about in our backyard. So I don’t care who someone votes for, it makes it. I want you to vote, and I want you to vote your values. But your values usually aren’t reflected in this whole debate, and all this money spent of framing everything as this side or that side on national issues. Vote the issues that matter to you, and vote the issues that are important in your backyard, and you will get somebody who’s going to listen to you. Don’t let the two big party machines pick your candidate for you. And where a lot of that happens is in the primaries. So everyone is looking at November. A lot of these primaries are happening in February, March, April, May, June. That’s where you can pick a candidate who’s listening to you. Don’t discount that, don’t overlook that. And regardless of what the outcome of this election is, the real issue is not who you voted well. The issue is voted for whoever represented the values that you have across whatever however you prioritize us. That is not the end of being an American. You don’t become an American involved in your government once every two years or once every four years. Whoever that person is. You have to stay in contact with them and their staff. You have to hold them accountable. And that’s what we did last summer, held them accountable. So I don’t know if the the midterm elections are going to change anything. Now you read this poll, it’s like, oh boy, history does say then no matter who’s been the president, they’ve really struggled. Their party struggles with the midterms because Americans kind of like divided government, whether whether we want to admit it or not. We like the difficulty and the slowness that comes with divided government. It makes us do one of those great American things called compromise when they have divided government. So if you look at history the midterms, say it’s going to be difficult for the current administration to maintain their power in a midterm election. Maybe it will, maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I don’t know, but whatever it is, Participate in your primaries, make sure you vote, vote your priorities, and once that’s done, don’t think that that’s the end of your duty as a citizen. Stay in touch with these people, let them know when they do good things for wildlife and conservation and access. And sometimes that’ll be someone you didn’t vote for who voted well and did a good thing. Don’t be afraid to give them a thank you. Just because you didn’t vote for him, doesn’t mean that they’re the you know, the anti Christ somebody you know, media might want to make us think that way. And if you voted for somebody, don’t think that that person has all the good ideas. Because sometimes the people I vote for have some really dumb ideas. I’m like, what the hell are you thinking? I call them up, I’m like, hey, this is not good. Yeah, So I well, I also think it just if it’s if it’s if it’s on your priority list, hunting and fishing, conservation, clean air, clean water, you know, access, Make it your priority all the time. No, not just every once in a while. Yeah.

01:24:39
Speaker 2: And I think just as important as placing that ultimate vote, regardless of who you vote for, I think it’s just as important to almost call up each party, each each candidate’s office and tell them, hey, if you want my vote, you better be good on this than this and this, and then after whoever wins, whether you voted them or not, hey, if you want my support the next time around, in my folks, my people, my community, you better be good on X, Y and Z. And if all of us were doing that and giving those phone calls to both sides, both candidates or in the primary when they’re trying to choose who the general election candidate will be, if we continually emphasize, hey, this stuff matters to our community, this stuff. If you want my vote, here’s what you gotta do. If we did that enough, if we did that consistently enough, you would find more folks on both sides of the isle eventually realizing well, I better be good on this because I want to get elected.

01:25:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right. Montana has the highest hunting participation of every state in the country in Montana in our public elections, I don’t care what side of the isle you’re on. You just about dislocate your shoulder trying to raise your hand to say I’m going to be the public land person. And I’m not saying every state’s like Montana, but the point is there’s some correlation to how much hunting and fishing there is in Montana. Have a priority public lands and access are to our elected leaders. Right. You look at last summer who set up the back wall of dead on arrival was a Montana delegation who are all Republicans. They told Mike Lee in their own party end a story why because hunters and anglers in Montana have a lot of say, and you could have a lot of say in your state. Also, it’s getting organized, it’s being persistent, being professional, and being informed and just showing up and you will have that same impact. I’m not saying that as Montana’s got it all figured out, but there’s a correlation there between the amount of outdoor activity that Montana citizens partake in and how that moves these issues up our priority list, Which kind of gets back to your earlier point of the more people that advocate for this, the better. If that means okay, more people are out doing it, who am I to tell them not to do it? You know, first time I ever showed up at a fishing access side, or I ever showed up at a trailhead, I just I crowded somebody. I did. Now, And all the critics who complain about too much crowding and all the reasons for it, guess what. The first time they showed up somewhere, they crowded somebody. So all this is tied together. We need even if hunter and angler numbers stay the same or decline slightly, the real issue is we got to do what our predecessors did. We got to say this is our responsibility, this is our job. This comes with this. This isn’t just buying a hunting license. If you say you’re a hunter, you are raising your hand and saying I’m going to do a lot more than just buy a license. That that’s purely something that’s required by law. Yeah, your excise taxes are required by law. Our predecessor did way more than what was just statutorily required. And that’s why we have what we have today. And that’s why going back to your now your request at twenty thirty six, that’s why in twenty thirty six we’re gonna have more than we have today.

01:28:24
Speaker 2: So Randy, one last question. Can you share with us one specific action we can take in this next week and one larger action we can undertake over the next twelve months that will help us each do our part in reaching that better future for hunting in twenty thirty six, this week and this year. What would do your two action atters?

01:28:52
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, this week, find some activity that’s going on in your backyard. By backyard, I mean within your area that you hunter, fish, or travel, and weigh in on it, whether it’s a state action, whether it’s a federal action whatever. If you want to get a hold of the BLM and tell them about the thing I talked about, the Wyoming militia or court, migration court or and winter range. But I mean, these are things that you can do faster than the amount of time it takes you to read a thread of posts on a Facebook feed. Yeah right, So do that and in the next twelve months, make it a point to be in contact with your elected officials. I don’t care if it’s your county commissioner. I don’t care if it’s your state legislator, your governor, or your people in DC. Those people all that kind of works its way up right, your county commissioner. If they hear a whole bunch of things about a problem that’s going on in their area and they call their congress person, Hey, out in your district here, we got this issue. That congress person’s going to put a staffer on that issue. But it’s all about communication. They don’t look you up in the phone book and randomly survey every voter and say, hey, what’s on your mind today? Right, we gotta take that step. So in the next twelve months, take that step, whether it’s a candidate or whether it’s someone who actually holds off of be polite, be professional, be informed, and let them know that this is one of your priority issues and you want them to represent your your position on it.

01:30:39
Speaker 2: There we go.

01:30:39
Speaker 3: Ready, make it a point to do that once a month. Do that once a month in America will be We’ll have this problem lecked.

01:30:47
Speaker 2: All right, I’m gonna I’m gonna follow your advice. I’m gonna do the very best I can. Randy, I’ll be right there with you. Along with a whole bunch of other folks listening to this. I’m sure. I as always, I really appreciate your leadership on this, and you’re doing so much with your platforms to teach and to inspire folks on similar you know, on these same topics and similar can you can you just remind our listeners here where they can find everything else that you’re putting out there into the world.

01:31:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, I’m I have social media platforms, but I don’t know how to use them, so you can find me on social media Instagram and Facebook. I think it’s Randy Nebergh Hunter. I have people who do that because I don’t know how to do it. I have a YouTube channel, frush Tracks, really large YouTube channel, and then I do two podcasts. Thank you for inviting me, Mark, But I have the hunt Talk radio podcast and the help Talk podcast, and those are probably the places to find me if you really want to see me interacting with audiences. I have a big forum called the hunt Talk dot com hunting forum. It’s about conservation and public land issues. It’s a different subset out of the hunting community. But we go out there and we argue with each other and then we all are friends because hey, we got to solve this problem. And so a bunch of us who we might argue about, you know, who’s doing this or who’s doing that, But when a tax come to you know the things we love where we all kiss and makeup and we’re pretty effective for uce there. But those are the places that people can reach me. And I just want to say, Mark, you and I have known each other for quite a while now, we’ve spent some time on the hill together, the hill in Washington, d C. But also the hill hunt bears and stuff. You’re doing great stuff. I just I am so thankful that there are people like you and others who have that interest in this and thanks for doing it. Keep at it. Someday you’ll be old like me and some young guy will be asking you these same questions and’ll be like, well, I think Newburgh said this back in twenty twenties. Now you’re right, you’re making a big difference, and keep at it.

01:33:06
Speaker 2: Appreciate you well, thank you, ry all the same right back at you, and let’s make a point to have another conversation like this discussing and celebrating the wins much sooner than five years from now. Let’s make it sooner. Absolutely, thank you, and that’s going to do it for us today. I appreciate you joining me for this special one thousandth episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast. It’s been a heck of a ride and I’m just so appreciative for this opportunity, for this platform, for all of you who have listened over the years, and I thank you for that time and attention. So hope this episode was one that filled you with inspiration and the desire to get to work, just as it did for me, and I hope you will join me in this next phase of my career as the Director of Conservation. As we get to work making good things happen for deer, deer hunters and hunters of all types, anglers, fish, wild places, waters, and everything in between. It’s gonna be a lot of fun, it’s going to be important work, and I thank you for being a part of it. So until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.