00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the News show, ladies and gentlemen. This week, we’ve got the State of Georgia playing hardball with some big ass lizards that they don’t want run a wild. The Interior Department opens up a metric shit ton of hunting and fishing opportunities around the country, But what exactly is an opportunity. Colorado outdoorsman might have a chance to take the offensive against anti hunting efforts in the Johnny Denver State. A Minnesota guide keeps beating his own lake trout records, and what’s up with that? But first I’ll tell you it’s versus Bill Tong. You ever made Billtong?
00:00:37
Speaker 2: Have not made jerky? I’m assuming it’s close.
00:00:40
Speaker 1: It’s like a cousin. It’s a second cousin.
00:00:45
Speaker 2: The making of is different.
00:00:47
Speaker 1: How well you take You don’t slice it. You know what you make a jerky slice jerky, Billtong. You get a chunk, hear it, hang up the chunk, wait till it’s kind of dry, and then slice it and it’s gooey in the middle. Here this is a sample piece that I’m making, So I’m just trying to figure it out because I’m.
00:01:08
Speaker 2: Just hanging in my soft.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I’m just hanging this in my garage by trappers wire. I got him hanging all over damn place. You’re past one of those downokrin.
00:01:16
Speaker 3: There, Thank you, b I L L T O n G.
00:01:19
Speaker 4: Everybody.
00:01:20
Speaker 1: This is my sample batch.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: That’s a much different eating experience than jerky.
00:01:24
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this is good.
00:01:26
Speaker 1: Eventually I’m gonna be doing whole backstrap all the biltong dudes tell you like, no sinew, no this, no that, but whatever.
00:01:35
Speaker 5: That’s really good.
00:01:37
Speaker 6: It tastes like you’re just eating leftover steak from the night before.
00:01:42
Speaker 7: Yeah, A whole strap from a smaller animal like a pantlope or a white tailed dough.
00:01:47
Speaker 1: I cured at my fridge forty eight hours. It’s vinegar. It’s basically like salt, vinegar, stuff like that, some stuff that’s good to you add the working ingredients, vinegar, salt, it’s not overly salt, and then you add stuff that’s good to eat in there.
00:02:03
Speaker 8: Two days.
00:02:04
Speaker 1: Then you take some wire or whatever you got, hooks, paper clips, whatever, and just hang them around your garage.
00:02:13
Speaker 3: You can really appreciate the meat because there’s there’s tenderness in there, and.
00:02:17
Speaker 2: You feel like it’s the same.
00:02:19
Speaker 7: You’re getting a similar product to like it being hung like out in the sun and the wind.
00:02:25
Speaker 1: Mine’s not in the sun.
00:02:26
Speaker 7: I know, but isn’t that How they do it in Africa was dry?
00:02:30
Speaker 1: And I did it this time of year because I know what, because this time of year is what I pictured be in the time of year for that no sun, no sun in Africa they do the sun when I saw it done. But people also use ooh my bags, which I didn’t do. This is hanging in my garage. You’d walk in there and think something weird was going on.
00:02:50
Speaker 2: No, I wouldn’t I have been in your garage.
00:02:52
Speaker 1: It’s built tongue dude. M It’s time now for the TRCP Turkey Hunt Sweep Steaks reminder. Okay, every year we do this, we do We team up with me and Yanni Chimani the Lavvy and Lover. Every year we team up with TRCP to do a Turkey Hunt giveaway. We take a winner and a winner’s guest on a three night, two day turkey hunt. We cover all expenses. Our guys get birds. Our guys this year got birds Day one. They get birds. Go to TRCP dot org and search up the summer turkey hunt, sweep steaks giveaway. You’ll you’ll find it easy. You buy, it’s a raffle. You buy tickets to win again. We cover airfare, tags, food, lodging, We cover everything. You pay nothing. If you’re short on gear, we’ll get you. We’ll find you some gear. If you’re the winner, and anybody can win, anybody, well there’s some states you can’t win, which is like stupid, But just a guy who buys one tag. Listen, any Joe blow can win it. And we’ve got a list as long as your arm of satisfied past winners. We brought in a professional chef this year. We brought in a professional chef so that when you came in out of the woods, we had there was a professional chef cooking poot magoot. We had a hell of a good time this year. We’re eating fresh asparagus picked right out of the garden.
00:04:25
Speaker 5: What’s the what’s the deadline?
00:04:27
Speaker 1: Don’t know? Once you looked that up and chime in, I.
00:04:31
Speaker 5: Thought i’d do it in a more organic way if I were.
00:04:35
Speaker 1: I’d like to know. Actually, just put some urgency around it. When are they gonna do the drag.
00:04:40
Speaker 6: Ends at eleven fifty nine Eastern Time on seven thirty one, twenty six.
00:04:45
Speaker 1: Twenty of Time, seven thirty one, plenty of time. Buy some now and buy some later. Win Big Me and Yanni are gonna take care of you, man, We’re gonna take care of you. You guys, get your birds before we touch our shotguns.
00:04:57
Speaker 8: That’s our motto.
00:04:58
Speaker 6: And there’s also there their runner up prizes, right like, even if you don’t win the big thing.
00:05:03
Speaker 1: They’re gonna win the big thing, don’t. Yeah, Yeah, they’re gonna win the You. I’m talking to you out there. You’re gonna win the big thing. That’s right. Get your tickets. You’re winning.
00:05:12
Speaker 8: You’re up.
00:05:14
Speaker 1: A guy wrote in He says on last week’s show, Steve was confident that he was insulated from criminal prosecution for unlawful possession of native wildlife because we had a mouse that we detained momentarily and it got away. So I was it was pointed out to me that I was in violation of the law because I had, like had a wild pet, and I was that my wife would be who they’d have the problem with because she’s the one that took it home, and I was saying, well got away, so now nobody no case. A lawyer wrote in. He says, well, one problem, You’ve already confessed to it a bunch on the recording and made video evidence of it, so there might not be Yeah, He’s like, you might not have the mouse, but there’s there’s there’s room to make a case against.
00:06:07
Speaker 3: It’s also a career criminal prosecutor and he’s prosecuted numerous murder case.
00:06:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he says, I’m out of his jurisdiction, so he’s not going to prosecute me. But I’d like to clarify again, the mouse is gone.
00:06:19
Speaker 5: They ran off. Was there even a mouse to begin with? No, We’ll never know.
00:06:23
Speaker 1: No, And how would you know that that wasn’t a mouse from the mouse store? A guy wrote in. He says his brother in law has adopted a raccoon kit after his father killed its parents. I don’t think his father killed his parents. I think his father killed its mother. He says. We all live next to each other and we all work together. Huh the Phelps, that’s the Phelps family. Thanks Jason, Thanks writing in Jason Phelps. We all we all live next to each other, and we all work together. Every one of the family, aside from my brother in law feels that the raccoon is best left outside to let nature run its course. My etequate question is do I call fishing game and risk family turmoil, or do I let him raise and release the raccoon for me to trap and kill later. We kept pet raccoons and I was a kid. I think they’re delightful, but I don’t I’m not telling you what to do. Guy rode in, that’s it.
00:07:32
Speaker 2: That’s all you got for that one.
00:07:34
Speaker 1: I’m not gonna tell you what to do. I got. I got enough legal problems in his mouth. I don’t need to now be like eating giving legal advice. We kept pet raccoons when I was little, and they went back.
00:07:49
Speaker 2: To the wild after they turned vision.
00:07:51
Speaker 1: They turned mean, they start biting you all the time, and then they eventually turned themselves loose.
00:07:55
Speaker 6: My favorite part of this is the certainty with which it ends when he says let him release it from meet it, trap and kill.
00:08:01
Speaker 1: Well, but I would draw into question. See, we got our pet raccoons before they open their eyes, so I don’t know how far along that raccoon is. I don’t know if it’s going to live or not.
00:08:10
Speaker 2: Also, the kind of tacit.
00:08:12
Speaker 7: Silent agreement to this whole segment is that someone asked a question and you tell them what they should do.
00:08:17
Speaker 8: I’m just yeah, I just throw that out.
00:08:18
Speaker 1: There, but I’m feeling particularly vulnerable in the moment because of the because of the legal problem in right now with the mouse.
00:08:27
Speaker 3: So smart of you, Okay, I’ll hit this really quickly. Like dozens and dozens of people wrote in to say that I was wrong. I was wrong. I said that the capital of New York State was Buffalo. That’s not true, it’s Albany. I was just trying to give some context for Erie County, and so the county seat is in Buffalo, but the capital is in Albany. And someone pointed out that that Albany has been the capital of New York since seventeen ninety seven. So that’s how wrong I was.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: Uh. Guy wrote in, this is going back so far. People aren’t gonna recall Randall had some birds killing his chickens. Randall was joking about how he’s gonna kill those birds, and one guy wrote in, all worked up about that, but he’s just joking. Another guy just rote in and says, there’s an old timer trick you see.
00:09:19
Speaker 9: Yeah, and his solution, and again I hesitate to read this aloud for fear of whatever legal.
00:09:29
Speaker 1: Ability to shut him down hard.
00:09:30
Speaker 6: Don’t worry, yeah, he says. He says, you you put some two by fours together, put a little plywood square on the very top to make a nice attractive.
00:09:40
Speaker 1: Perch, basically build a fence post.
00:09:42
Speaker 6: And then on that perch you put a leg trap and you chain it to the two by fours and put that up so it looks like a real nice place for a big bird of prey to sit there and watch your chickens.
00:09:53
Speaker 1: Yep, and then you’re trapping that big bird of prey. I will point out to this fellah, that is very very illegal.
00:10:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, very.
00:10:06
Speaker 1: Very illegal. Yeah, with that.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: Don’t do that.
00:10:11
Speaker 7: Do we want to do the West Virginia fishing records. Yeah, we got a We got an email from a gentleman an angler in West Virginia who’s saw Spencer’s story on West Virginia state fishing records that were getting broken, and we we kind of went pretty hard at some of those fish, so.
00:10:32
Speaker 1: Much so that he says, in here, tell Steve he could suck it.
00:10:35
Speaker 7: Yeah, he says, don’t go trashing our new state records. And he goes on and makes a point that like a few decades ago, a lot of the water in West Virginia was so damaged by acidic rain that you couldn’t even catch a fish in them.
00:10:50
Speaker 2: So he’s got a good point there.
00:10:52
Speaker 1: They’ve done a lot of work on stream bank restoration and and and you know, he’s give it. Yes, I love giving credit for the half tat work to spend time. But you still catch it. Make beleef fish.
00:11:02
Speaker 7: Yeah, golden trout are he says, bro He’s correct. They’re bread and grown and hatcheries and uh, the big ones usually have some wear and tear on their noses and tails from from the cement race ways they’re.
00:11:13
Speaker 2: Grown up in.
00:11:15
Speaker 7: But he also goes on to say that they’re notoriously hard to catch, which wasn’t wasn’t my experience when I was ten years old with a pitching a salmon uncle, Josh, salmon egg. But that’s okay, he says, did you already get you wouldn’t he bets you wouldn’t pass up catching a five pound tiger trout.
00:11:34
Speaker 1: He says, I would not pass up correct, correct, Yeah, but I wouldn’t send pictures of it around and sign up and sign up for the state record. Sure I would catch it. I I would be like, hey watch, I’m gonna catch that.
00:11:47
Speaker 5: I held my tongue last time.
00:11:49
Speaker 6: I I just feel like you shouldn’t shame people for going out and catching a fish.
00:11:53
Speaker 2: No, we’re not shaming the people.
00:11:55
Speaker 1: The people. It’s I’m not hating the player. I’m not hating the player the game. Yep, No, I’m not even It’s not like this is the biggest problem. No, you know, it’s like it’s like a bigger problem than the Straightahr Mouz situation. But it’s not the biggest problem the country faces. Yes, sure, but it’s a big problem. Is if the state has broodstock in a tank and its tail is rubbed off from living in a tank, and one day they take it and they set it in a river and a guy catches out of the river, and then you go, wow, a new state record. I just it just it’s not Yeah, it’s it’s something, but not that. But this gentleman, yeah had some great because all the dump the dump parts of it are made up for by the good party.
00:12:46
Speaker 7: One of the fish that we didn’t bag on was the chain pickerel, because that’s a native fish.
00:12:50
Speaker 6: But then we proceeded to bag well I did. The room proceeded to bag on him for fighting it for ten minutes.
00:12:55
Speaker 1: Me I was all for him anyway.
00:12:58
Speaker 7: The gentleman who caught the state record pickerel, which is not a large fish relatively speaking, fought it for what do they say, twenty minutes?
00:13:06
Speaker 2: Ten a long time.
00:13:07
Speaker 1: He had a big tussle, says said he would have taken him three seconds to pitch that thing onto the bank.
00:13:14
Speaker 7: The guy who wrote in says the reason the fight lasted so long is that he didn’t have a net. Every time he tried to pick it up, it took off again. He was using four pound tests, so he’s.
00:13:24
Speaker 2: Like baby in the fish.
00:13:26
Speaker 7: Eventually he got tired of messing with the fish and lipped it, which you don’t do what chain pickerl because.
00:13:32
Speaker 1: They just shred shred your thought.
00:13:35
Speaker 7: Yes, And the interviewer asked him, didn’t the teeth cut you? The guy who caught the fish responded, bleeding, his temporary estate record is forever.
00:13:45
Speaker 6: Well, unless you’re breaking this is also the guy who’s breaking his own state record.
00:13:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, there’s holes in everything. You can find a hole in everything. I get the sentiment.
00:13:56
Speaker 6: People out there catching big fish.
00:13:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, half fun, go catch more state records.
00:14:01
Speaker 1: He points out that West Virginia likes Randall.
00:14:04
Speaker 6: Oh I didn’t even see that.
00:14:06
Speaker 7: That’s because the part, but the part of Ohio that Randall is from is not really Ohio. It’s more like Kentucky and West Virginia.
00:14:14
Speaker 1: I thought it was because his hair got wrong in the back for a while. Yeah. I think I just have a certain sensibility that West Virginia’s are looking at Randall now and being like, you changed, Randall. I I can’t put my finger on it, but you change, I will say, you gotta snob.
00:14:27
Speaker 6: There are some comments about the haircut, wondering if I got a haircut. I did, in fact get a haircut. I didn’t mean to get this much cut. But it will be back. It will be back, all right.
00:14:37
Speaker 1: That’s our news, your news and other news.
00:14:40
Speaker 6: Alrighty, so Phil, we have on the line here, Georgia DNR herpetologist Daniel Sullenberger. Daniel, thank you for joining us today.
00:14:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, no problem, thanks for having me on.
00:14:54
Speaker 3: So uh.
00:14:55
Speaker 6: I came across a few headlines yesterday about a uh an issue you got have going on down there with an animal lizard called a tagu. Is that the correct pronunciation?
00:15:07
Speaker 4: Could you that’s right? Yeah?
00:15:10
Speaker 5: Could you tell us the listener what is it tagu?
00:15:13
Speaker 6: And why are they in the news right now?
00:15:16
Speaker 1: Yeah?
00:15:16
Speaker 4: So they’re a really large South American lizard. They grow, you know, four to four and a half feet long, not commoter dragon size, but much bigger than anything we have here in the US normal normally, And they’ve become established in some places in the southeast. There’s a few different populations in Florida and now at least this one in South Georgia, and concerns of them becoming established elsewhere. And they’re as you’d expect a big reptile to do. They kind of eat what they want, and it turns out they can kind of live where they want.
00:15:57
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was reading that they they’ll actually brewmate, so they will shut down for the winners. They could maybe survive in colder climates than what you might expect for an animal like that.
00:16:07
Speaker 1: Right, what’s what’s to me?
00:16:11
Speaker 4: So there? You know a lot of people think is just say a lot of people think of South America as being like tropical rainforest all over. But you know where these tegus are from in terms of latitude, if you were to mirror it on to North America, you know, the southern end of where they live would be equivalent to like forty degrees south, which is roughly like Pennsylvania, wow, in the US. And there’s a lot of other things that determine climate, you know, But but just to give you they live in a very temperate environment, very similar to what we have in the southern US.
00:16:46
Speaker 1: Now, when you’re saying that that they get to four four and a half feet, do you think that right now in Georgia in the wild is a four foot specimen or is that just what it would get in native range or in a zoo? Meaning are they are they legitimately achieving that size in Georgia?
00:17:11
Speaker 4: I mean you’re asking if it’s like the broodstock trout.
00:17:14
Speaker 1: And yeah, are we talking broodstock?
00:17:18
Speaker 4: Are we talking about in terms of like actually be yeah, actually being a product of the environment? Possibly?
00:17:26
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker 4: I mean, so you know, we have harvested animals or the public has has shot them, and we’ve trapped some that are you know, three and a half to four feet in length. I mean they’re Yeah, we’ve had some pretty big ones. It’s usually the males that get that big. So yeah, I mean eventually, I’m I’m sure we have some four plus foot take us out there.
00:17:53
Speaker 1: Man, you’d hear that thing comes to.
00:17:56
Speaker 6: And for the DNR, the concern is is that they’re eating a lot of eggs of game birds and things like that. Can you sort of put a finer point on what the issue is as far as conservation concerns.
00:18:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, they so they’ll eat just about anything, plant, animal matter, whatever they want, but they really like eggs and so you know ground nesting birds. You know, a lot of songbirds nest on the ground, turkey, quail, reptile eggs. They’ll dig up the nests of turtles. They’ve even been found rating alligator nests in Florida, So you know the impact they could have on some of those things. You know, there’s a lot of concern right now for turkeys in the state, probably pretty much everywhere, and having an additional nest predator on top of the native ones that they’ve adapted to deal with. We’ve invested a lot of money and effort into go for tortoise conservation. The public’s got several new w m as out of it. We do, you know, prescribe burning for them and do a lot of management for tortoises and something like I take you digging up nests could undermine a.
00:19:09
Speaker 8: Lot of that work.
00:19:12
Speaker 4: Sure, they’re they’re egg eating activities are a big concern.
00:19:15
Speaker 1: That’s big enough just to go back to that bigness. It’s big enough if you could hit it with a bow and have to track it.
00:19:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, that’s a big yeah.
00:19:24
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you know, you get the blood trail. I ultimately wouldn’t do it, you know. Like so we do recommend that people shoot them. That’s usually the quickest way to dispatch one and not let it get away.
00:19:41
Speaker 1: I’m as just the observation. I’m not suggesting that people do that.
00:19:45
Speaker 6: Well, it’s that’s that’s the recommendation, is right, it’s killed. Oh sure, yeah, but the recommendation is to kill on site.
00:19:54
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, certainly. You know, if you see one and think I’ll call d n R. Let’s them know and maybe they can come trap it later. Sometimes we try, and sometimes we do get the animal, but it’s very common for those animals to just run off and they’re not seen again. At least not in that location. And so if it’s say now, if you live in an Hoa and you know Nan from across the streets walking her dog by, you probably shouldn’t do it in your front yard. But if it’s safe and legal where you’re at, and you have a firearm close by, just go ahead and dispatch that animal and then call us.
00:20:27
Speaker 1: Give me a wild ballpark. How many are in Georgia? Oh okay, let’s play a game. More than a thousand or less than a thousand?
00:20:39
Speaker 4: Okay, are we talking adults or like including all the hatchlings, because depending on the time of year adults, that number could adult. So like one year plus year old animals. That more than a thousand.
00:20:57
Speaker 1: Oh wow, all right, so it’s a real deal. They’re around.
00:21:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I will clarify, you know, the hold and cover up my shirt like that is a guess. That is a total wild guess.
00:21:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:21:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they do turn up over you know, two counties, which you know, we have one hundred and fifty nine counties, so our counties aren’t very big, but but there’re two of our larger counties kind of across that whole area, Like I don’t know, probably a few hundred square mile area or something like that that we’ve really had, you know, so to give you an idea, they turn up all over the state. Most of those animals are just people’s pets that have gotten loose, So they’re in Atlanta, Millageville, and mountains everywhere, and we think most of those, hopefully are just people’s pets. But just in those two counties where your vidalia onions come from, they we’ve had like thirty plus and animals that have been killed, captured, hit on the road, you know, something where we have a carcass or a photo of an animal, and then a lot of other credible sightings that where someone just you know, saw one run across the road and huh, you know, wasn’t able to get it.
00:22:17
Speaker 5: Do you and it again.
00:22:18
Speaker 6: I’m not asking you to comment on this as a as a representative of Georgia d NR, but just as a guy on the street. Have you heard anything? Are they good to eat? What’s the recommendation there?
00:22:30
Speaker 4: You know, I was sitting at last time like we’ll not really gonna ask, you know what, they’re gonna ask what they taste? Like, I’ve not had the pleasure. I’ve not had the pleasure of eating one, but I imagine it tastes a lot like iguana or something like that. A lot of reptiles kind of are similar to me.
00:22:47
Speaker 1: I thought you’re gonna ask you’ve ever been or something it’s embarrassing.
00:22:53
Speaker 6: Well, it sounds like a quick, quick hitting the deep fire is is what’s in what’s in order for the takers?
00:22:59
Speaker 1: Then? Yeah? Yeah? Uh?
00:23:03
Speaker 6: Anything else we should know before we let you go here, Daniel, No, I got I got one question.
00:23:09
Speaker 1: I see in the notes, Sorry, I see in the notes kill on site order? Is that true? Or is that something in our.
00:23:18
Speaker 4: Notes that’s your notes? Okay, we can’t yeah, yeah, we can’t force people to kill them.
00:23:26
Speaker 2: You really appreciate it.
00:23:29
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I figured that was something that generated on our end, But I just wanted to clarify that it wasn’t like the cops or like ticketing people. They’re ticketing people for not shooting the lizards.
00:23:41
Speaker 4: Yeah help, yeah, yeah, they’re eager to help you kill something that is something we generally can get people to help with without I.
00:23:55
Speaker 1: Do got one. I got, I got one last question. Maybe Randall’s got more. I got one last question. Uh, when you look at or around the nation, around the world. You look at battles with invasives. Usually, you know, maybe early on, when there’s an invasive species takes hold, maybe there’s some optimism or some hope that you’ll actually get rid of it right, But oftentimes it turns into a continued management issue, and people will point out that, you know, outside of some pathogen emerging, we’re not getting out of this problem. Asiatic carp. I mean, I could go on all day, but like asiatic carp in the Mississippi water sheds, zebra muscles, zebra muscles in the Great Lakes, wild hogs in Texas, no serious person is suggesting that we’re going to take care of the problem. In your mind, where do we sit on on on this lizard issue in Georgia.
00:25:03
Speaker 4: We’re still early in that curve, you know. But so it’s a thousand animals sounds like a lot. Let’s say it actually was a thousand, but it’s really not like that’s doable. And the area is fairly well known in terms of the extent of the invasion. The problem is it’s almost entirely private land. There aren’t a lot of people there. It’s it’s very rural farmland. Timberland, and there’s a ton of places for these animals to hide. It. It’s hard for me to say for sure. I think there’s some optimism to at the very least contain it to that area. Gotcha eradicating them? Well, we’ll have to see, you know. It’s really it’s gonna take a lot of help from the public on that, and there’s no magic yet for them. So thenk you’ll see where we’re at in another ten years.
00:26:06
Speaker 6: Sounds good, Daniel, thanks so much for joining us.
00:26:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, no problem, I appreciate it.
00:26:11
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. Thanks dam yep, y’all have a good one, you too, Okay. Next up here on the News show, we’re joined in the studio by Dan Gates from Colorado’s for Responsible Wildlife Management. Dan Gates has been on the show before. The reason he’s here now is we’re going to talk about we’re always reporting on all kinds of bad, crazy things coming out of Colorado of late right people looking to suppress rights and kind of subvert wildlife management to conform to a animal rights agenda in the state of Colorado. And rather than just pointing out all the things that are wrong with the world, Dan’s here to tell us about a way that hunters and angers might move forward in a more proactive and constructive manner with the passage of an amendment that would provide a concept institutional right to hunt and fish.
00:27:03
Speaker 8: Yes, sir, yeah, yeah, cal Whill three h two Initiative three oh two is what it is right now. If it passes and we get the signatures on it with the support of the International Order of t Roosevelt. Those signatures are due on August fourth, and if that, if we get the signatures, it’ll be on the ballot for people to vote on this year.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: How many signatures do you need?
00:27:25
Speaker 8: One hundred and twenty five thousand roughly, So we’re looking at probably trying to gather two hundred thousand to make sure that we have enough to clear the threshold and get certified.
00:27:32
Speaker 1: If that dude in Oregon could get the necessary number of if you could get the right numbers signatures to ban ranching and having rodeos, I feel like that’s control. Yeah, I feel like you should be able to get the right number of signatures to get this going. But is in all seriousness, is there a concern about signature gathering?
00:27:49
Speaker 8: Yeah, to some degree, there is Steve. I think that the biggest problem that we probably have in the long run is getting people to understand why you need something and what it does. Codifies what we have an existing statute, but it does it in a constitutional right manner, and it gives you another tool in the toolbox where you can go say you can’t do this unless we have the science and the data to be able to support that. This doesn’t give anybody the unequivocal ability or authority to hunt from January first to December thirty first on private property and all species and methods of take and no limit. The Agency Colorida Parks of wal Life still has the overwhelming authority just like what they should, and the Commission, even though it’s a bad commission at this point in time, still has the ability to interact with the agency and that process, so it just codifies it.
00:28:36
Speaker 1: So that’s kind of one of the main things I wanted to dig in on this issue. But I mean, I want to alert Colorado and to make sure to go get their signature taken care of. Yes, make sure to start telling, you know, when it makes the ballot right that they start telling, you know whatever their aunt who doesn’t hunt. Hey, heads up when this thing comes out, here’s what you got to do to support me. So make sure the word gets out. But I wanted to narrow not something with you. How many states have this now?
00:29:04
Speaker 8: Thirty twenty four, twenty four it would be the twenty fifth.
00:29:07
Speaker 1: Okay, Colorado, the twenty fifth state have a constitutional right to hunt fish. But here’s the thing I always wonder, how does it have teeth? Like? Are you aware of the of the states that have Are you aware that the states have ever been able to use the constitutional right to hunt and fish to combat a piece of a bad regulatory piece to combat a bill? Jimmy?
00:29:34
Speaker 5: Like?
00:29:34
Speaker 1: How does it become actionable? Like let’s say you’re sitting there and you have it passed, how do you then use it to litigate bad legislation?
00:29:43
Speaker 8: That’s a good point, and that’s some of the questions that we’ve been asked over and over, and then talking to the Travis Thompson’s and the Luke Hilgemans with the International Order. They did this in twenty twenty four in Florida, and there’s many other states have attempted to do this successfully through the legislator method or madness and the ballot side of this actually provides a level of constitutionality to the point where on certain circumstances, for certain issues, states have had to be able to turn around and challenge maybe an attack and assault on some sort of prohibition or restriction on hunting or fishing. But if you look at what it’s probably prevented. The states that have had this in place, they haven’t had the fight the fight because the people that are wanted to come to the table with those fights are like, if we go there, we better have the science on our side, and they don’t, and so it prohibits It’s like a I joke about this, but it’s like a windshield on a truck. It doesn’t stop a bee from hitting inside the head of every windows down, but it stops a lot of the stuff from coming right into the front. And it just helps codify, like I mentioned, the opportunity for game agencies to science base regulate what we have to do when it comes to regulation of our wildlife resources.
00:31:01
Speaker 1: Let me put the question, let me put the question to you a little bit different, not that you didn’t answer, but let’s play let’s play with time a little bit. Let’s say, let’s go back and say that ten years ago, ten years ago, Colorado passed constitutional right to hunt and fish, Okay, and then they had come up against two years ago. Now, when the hell was it the hunt? So the constitutional right to hunt fish was magically in place ten years ago. Right, Let’s pretend and up comes this ballot initiative to end all hunting of wildcats in Colorado. Do you feel that that constitutional right would have offered some protection to that prevented that argue to counterpoint to that wholeheartedly.
00:31:50
Speaker 8: I think that it would allowed us to be able to turn around and prop up the science based wildlife management and a manner to where it would be less likely to be attacked in the by the things that they’re doing. Just like we’ve got prairie dog petitions, we’ve had furbearer petitions, we’ve had attempts to turn around and restrict other forms of hunting, not just on the ballot measure, but through the legislature. It would have prevented that from even moving to those levels unless the agency had the science to turn around and say, hey, guys, we need to step back and we need to do some of this. But at that point it would also be an opportunity for the antis to say, maybe we should go to some place that is a little bit less prepared.
00:32:30
Speaker 1: I see.
00:32:31
Speaker 8: Typically they’re not going to places that have the constitutional right to hunt and fish and the manner that they try to do it, and the other places that don’t because they know they’ve got that roadblock that they’re going to have to fight. They can fight to get something passed, then they got to fight to turn around and keep it past.
00:32:45
Speaker 1: Doesn’t this seem it seems so strange to me. I’m sure it’s explainable, but it seems strange to me that Colorado and Washington have sort of become the oh good, yeah, have become the sort of test grounds for how to chip away at how to chip away at hunting practices in situations where you cannot point to hunting having you a detrimental impact on the resource. So it’s sort of like a like make believe problems. Oh yeah, right, like, oh, we have a lot of black bears. In fact, we have expanding populations of black bears, but you shouldn’t be able to hunt them, right Like that seems to have become those states.
00:33:29
Speaker 8: Look at Oregon IB twenty eight. I mean that mentality floats around that. You mentioned that when they want to turn around and make states a complete state and an animal sanctuary state for everything under the sun. It’s easy to say that that doesn’t happen in other states. But Colorado’s doing the exact same thing, except for we’re doing it individually, one little small thing at a time. Try this can’t accomplish that, Let’s go with this Oregon, They’re just trying the whole thing in one great, big sweep. And I think that you look at the Western United States one because of the public land side of things too, because of the big game resources that we have that other parts of the country don’t, and the people that move to those locations, there’s less of a population density of humans that you have to turn around and convinced to do something. It’s harder to do it when you’re in Alabama and got you know, twelve million people and seven million hunt or whatever that happen ours are. But when you get into a state like Colorado, we’ve got such a transient population that comes in just like an organ Just like in Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, the West is particularly vulnerable to the ideologies of people that come in, and it’s easy for those animal rights groups to sway them because it’s not in their heritage or their tradition.
00:34:35
Speaker 7: Yeah, but only in certain Western states, right, Like they’re not going to try. Like Wyoming is not at risk the same way Colorado.
00:34:43
Speaker 2: Oh no, you know what I mean.
00:34:45
Speaker 8: Yeah, but but but Wyoming is probably just as fragile. If you turn around and look at the influx of people that could move in to Wyoming and political yeah, yeah, mean you need you need less of those to be able to do so. Ours happened over thirty years. But you know what’s funny is if you look back pre COVID and the people that I know in those states that we mentioned, including Idaho and Montana, and people said, oh, we don’t have to worry about that gates, we don’t have to. We got that barrier. We’ve got something. COVID hit and all the people from Oregon, Washington, and California started moving to those other states, and everybody’s calling me, going, how the hell do we deal with this? Well, we’ve been dealing with it for thirty years. But everybody else thought that they were bulletproof because they didn’t have that sort of influx.
00:35:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, they want it. It’s just funny. I don’t want to get political, but really, yeah, well there’s like, okay, this is a humongous issue. But it would be that people moved from left leaning states to right leaning states and then want to then turn them into the states they left in a little bit, not totally, but in a little bit of a mentality like you come and you’re like, I cannot believe these rednecks are allowed to hunt mountain lions. Yeah, I need to fix this.
00:35:57
Speaker 8: The amount of people that we saw during the one twenty seven campaign on the mountain lion deal in twenty twenty four versus the amount of people that we hear talking about this that are completely one hundred percent. Animal rights extremists often say in their testimonies and their op eds and their public engagement, I didn’t know this was going on. If I did, I would have stood up sooner. And I’m like, you’re seventy seven years old, you’ve lived in a state for forty four years. You don’t have a clue of what the hell’s going on on something, and now all of a sudden, it’s tragic because you heard somebody’s killing mountain lions or somebody’s managing fur bearers.
00:36:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it shows the depth of their knowledge. Yeah, which is the about this last week exactly.
00:36:34
Speaker 8: It is not going to stand no, no, And they don’t know anything about it except for what somebody told them. If you look at the testimony that these people put out, and not to get off on a tangent, but they all say the exact same thing. They don’t have an opinion for themselves because they’ve been told to say this, this script, this bullet point, this is what you say. And they get up and they repeat it over and over and over, and I’m like, it’s like deja vous. It’s like groundhog Day. They don’t say anything new because they don’t have anything except for what somebody told them to say.
00:37:03
Speaker 1: How do people how do people find I guess generally about ballot initiatives, we always joke about where they must go to get signatures, like, you know, you might go to I could they go to a Whole Foods? You can picture a guy with a little table set up, Oh yeah, out front.
00:37:20
Speaker 8: And that happens.
00:37:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, So how do people get the signatures? And how do people find you? If they want to join the ballot, if they want to join the signatures.
00:37:29
Speaker 8: Well, and honestly, in your in your waiting room out here, I was answering emails that people wanted to be able to get signature packets, and so they can become certified through the Secretary of State. It’s about a twenty minute deal. You’ve got to take online.
00:37:39
Speaker 4: Oh.
00:37:40
Speaker 8: Once you get that, they can reach out to me, or they can go to saveco Heritage dot org, which is the website for the international order process that we’re doing. You can actually get certified and have packets to be able to turn around and distribute. And you can’t get it’s not like a statutory ballot initiative. This is constitutional. So we need the signatures. Two percent of each of the signatures need to come from thirty five the thirty five Senate districts that we have, So you have to go to the smallest communities and the largest place is to get two percent of the voters in those communities.
00:38:12
Speaker 1: So you said again, I got confused.
00:38:14
Speaker 8: Okay, So it’s probably because the way I explained it.
00:38:18
Speaker 1: As I started hearing numbers, something happens in my head.
00:38:20
Speaker 8: So if there’s ten thousand people in the Senate district, you’ve got to have two percent of the signatures from that Senate district really for a constitutional amendment.
00:38:29
Speaker 1: So you need to walk away. How many districts make up Denver Fort Collins.
00:38:35
Speaker 8: It’s about eleven twelve in that general vicinity.
00:38:38
Speaker 1: You need to get two percent of all those.
00:38:40
Speaker 8: Two percent of all the registered voters in each one of those districts.
00:38:43
Speaker 4: Damn.
00:38:44
Speaker 1: Really.
00:38:44
Speaker 8: Yeah, But if you go to a Senate district like on the Western Slope, it might be very broad and very vast, but there’s less people there. So when people keep asking us, well, I haven’t seen anybody around, maybe those districts have already fulfilled the threshold and so you won’t see somebody there. You try to get the farthest way way once first and then concentrate on the ones that you know you’re going to have to have, you know, thirty five thousand.
00:39:06
Speaker 1: So you could have some guy out in eastern Colorado just kicking ass, but after a while it’s not doing any good.
00:39:11
Speaker 8: Done it do any good?
00:39:12
Speaker 1: You know, He’s like, I signed up the whole county exactly.
00:39:15
Speaker 8: All twelve of them, and pretty soon you’re in your one. And that’s that’s the frustration, because people don’t understand. Yeah, if you go statutory, you can stand out literally in front of one Whole Foods and downtown Denver and get whatever you want. That’s what cats aren’t trophies. Did our friends back in twenty twenty four. It wasn’t constitutional, it was statutory, so they could get all the signatures out of Denver if they wanted to. They didn’t have to go to these.
00:39:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah that man. See this is something I had ever understood. Okay, so where do you need where do you feel you need signatures?
00:39:48
Speaker 8: Well, the hardest places are going to be in the Denver, Boulder Fort Collins areas, just because of the vast amount of people that you and.
00:39:56
Speaker 1: You got a lot of people on the ground there doing it. Or should you be calling for like, should you be calling for guys to go do that twenty minute thing and get the packet.
00:40:05
Speaker 8: No, we’re asking people to do the twenty minute thing and get the packet.
00:40:08
Speaker 6: And the main reason, hey, by god, can can you bring in non residents to collect signatures?
00:40:14
Speaker 1: Carpet bag and we should go down there and that’s carpet bag. Knock bag down there.
00:40:18
Speaker 8: We can carpet bag down there. It’s just that you have to be you You don’t have to be a resident of the state to get the signatures. You just have to be a resident registered voter to be able to sign it. Right. And because there’s canvassers, they call them canvassers, the petition gatherers that come around and travel around the country. This is what they do. So we have a roughly.
00:40:35
Speaker 1: Guns for hire we should go canvas.
00:40:37
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I know where I’m I know where I’m going to put you though, where the Boulder Canvas right down on Pearl Street. You could do a meat either live deal down there, a Rockies game, you know.
00:40:56
Speaker 1: So if someone wants to become a signature collector and they’re not one of these roving guns for hire, they’re they’re just a person out there looking to do the right thing. They do what they come find. You know.
00:41:07
Speaker 8: They can send an email to us through Save the Hunt Colorado dot com. They can also get on that other website, save ceo Heritage dot org. Put your name on there for contact. They can reach out. We will send them the proper information to where they can go get certified. They get certified, they come back. I mean that the certification deal is kind of a a weeding out of the unwillful. You know, everybody wants to do something until they find out there’s an effort to it. It’s like I got to sign up for a test, and I got the Secretary of State and who’s who I am and where I live and they know that anyway, it’s just that now you’re actually putting your mark on your preferences and so forth. Sure, so you get that, you turn around, we’ll put you in touch with the canvasser coordinator liaison organizer, and then she’s been doing very very good of being able to just turn around and say, okay, you got your certification, here’s your packets, this is what you need to do. The certification actually came into place in December of twenty twenty five. It didn’t used to have to do that. But there’s a volunteer position that you consert that you can get the signatures on, or there’s a paid level to where this is a business and for X amount of dollars and I don’t know what the current number is, but X amount of dollars for every signature you collect, you turn around and get three bucks or five bucks or twenty seven dollars or whatever the heck it is. If it’s twenty seven dollars, there’s to be a lot more people out there. But you know, most circulators that you see in front of King Supers or Whole Foods, they’ll have a table set up and they’ll have maybe five different petitions for different ballot INITIATI. This is their job.
00:42:38
Speaker 1: I mean, see, I always associate the person collect and the signature with sort of the that that’s what they want to happen. But they could be indifferent to this.
00:42:45
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, they’re just money.
00:42:47
Speaker 6: There are some states. There’s some states where you’re required if you’re paid, you’re required to tell all of the signers that I’m paid, right, like different political transparency law, different states require certain things of these these canvassers. But it’s a whole network.
00:43:06
Speaker 8: It’s a complicated process.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: And while it almost sounds like, well I don’t want to call it criocket, but it’s not a cricket process. But I’m just surprised. I just feel like it’s got to be true believers out they’re getting them signatures.
00:43:19
Speaker 8: Well, and see going back to twenty twenty four on the cats Aren’t Trophies campaign, they were having a hard time getting their volunteers to get the necessary signatures. There was an agreement made by Governor Polis with the oil and gas industry about a ballot initiative, and the oil and gas industry backed off, so they didn’t employ the signature gatherers anymore. And those signature gathers were looking for a job, and they cut the price in a half or seventy five percent and went over to the freaking cats aren’t trophies people and said, hey, we’ve got these people available. You couldn’t pay twenty dollars like what we were doing before. That’s why the oil and gas industry was there. But now we made this deal. We’ll do this for X amount of dollars and cats aren’t trophies could be able to come up with that money.
00:43:59
Speaker 5: Wow.
00:43:59
Speaker 1: Man.
00:44:00
Speaker 8: Yeah, it’s a racket, huh. And there’s a good racket for people that are in it for a business because they’re really good at it. But other people are like, I don’t want to stand on the street corner and a hailstorm trying to turn around it.
00:44:11
Speaker 1: Getting all kinds of arguments to people and stuff.
00:44:14
Speaker 8: Yeah, there’s and there we have a tremendous amount of ballot initiatives coming up that people are trying to get signatures for to meet the deadline, And there’s some stuff I’d look and I’d like, I don’t want to argue with those people on that stuff. I argue with enough people. I don’t need to stand on the side of the road to the clipboard.
00:44:28
Speaker 1: So let’s move ahead. You get let’s say you get all this. Let’s you’re gonna get the signature.
00:44:32
Speaker 8: We’re going to get there’s no doubt getting the signature.
00:44:35
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, how do you think the election is going to go? Has any has any constitutional right to hunt and fish been beat at the at the ballot box?
00:44:44
Speaker 8: Not to the best of my knowledge. There’s been some that have not made it through the initial thresholds on legislative issues because of differences between the House and the Senate in a particular state or something. But when it gets on the ballot, I mean, the overwhelming majority of the general public agrees with legal regular hunting methods for wildlife management and a manner to the point where I mean Florida passed by I think sixty seven percent and they needed sixty. The difference was like on cats aren’t trophies. When we did the deal in our state, statutory you needed fifty plus one percent. That’s why the Wolf Deal passed because it was statutory. We need fifty five percent to meet that maximum minimum threshold on the constitutionality.
00:45:25
Speaker 7: It’s kind of make it a little easier dragging the anglers into it too.
00:45:28
Speaker 8: Oh tremendously, Yeah, especially in a place like Florida, because there’s a hell of a lot more fishing down there than there is hunting. But in Colorado, I mean, we’ve got roughly a million sportsmen and women in the state of Colorado. And my song and dance is, if you know anybody that hunts and fishes around the country, you need to turn around and get them to support this on their social media or outreach or something, because this is something the International Order wants to do nationwide. And if they can get done with Colorado and accomplish that make it the twenty fifth state, we’re pretty soon you look at maybe maybe Arizona, maybe New Mexico. They’re talking California, they’re talking Nevada.
00:46:05
Speaker 1: I met a guy in Nevada who’s pushing for it, and he’s adamant. And people keep telling him, don’t do it this way. He’s adamant that he wants to go for hunt, fish and trap, and they’re telling them, man, you’re you’re you’re, you’re clouding the waters. He’s like, but I I if he pulls it off, I think it’s a stroke of genius. Oh yeah. But some people are like, you gotta keep it hunting fish. Write it in such a way, write it in such a way that it covers what you want. But once you throw the word trapping, they’re like, it just is gonna get hard. Yeah. But he’s the guy I met, and I don’t even know how serious he is about He is a he’s a lawmaker, state lawmaker. He wants to go for hunt, fish and trap. And he’s like, I’m not. He don’t want to leave anything unspoken.
00:46:49
Speaker 8: Well, and there’s there’s something that needs to be mentioned too, because this talks about traditional methods, and legally, it talks about the the traditional methods that are legal at the time a passage. So when people keep coming home and saying we’re going to get bear hunting back, not through this year. Not We’re going to get trapping back, not through this year. Now, see the trapping Amendment. In nineteen ninety six. Amendment fourteen was a constitutional amendment Initiative ten, which was the Spring bear hunting, Pounds, bait and everything in ninety two that passed by sixty nine to thirty one percent. That is not this is not going to bring that back now. If you want to go back and try that after, this is an effect. But anybody that believes that you’re going to get that stuff back by putting this into place, those laws proceed this.
00:47:33
Speaker 1: This is protective what you have now.
00:47:35
Speaker 8: Yes, yes, And if we want to go back down that road at some point in time, you won’t be able to hunt wolves with this. That does not give you that privilege to be able to do so.
00:47:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s not like, hey, go hunt anything you want, you know, the rest of your lives.
00:47:45
Speaker 8: And I’ve had guys come up and say, well, now I could kill a big horn sheep.
00:47:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, like.
00:47:51
Speaker 8: If you draw a tag, you know it’s it’s not. And you know, a guy from the guy from Mississippi comes up, has one point now and he wants to kill a big worn cheat and he thinks this is going to open it up.
00:48:02
Speaker 4: It’s not.
00:48:03
Speaker 8: This is very strict and it’s very sideboarded, it’s got blinders on it, and there are laws, rules and regulations that adhere to this. It still gives the agency the overwhelming authority to be able to manage our wildlife resources and proportuity. Excellent, It’s good.
00:48:18
Speaker 1: Everybody needs it, man, Good luck on that.
00:48:21
Speaker 8: We’re trying. We’re trying to do everything we possibly can. Money is a deal. Everybody needs a turn around and figure out a way to help every other state on the money side. I already gave the websites and stuff, but if you don’t mind, I’ll give a plug real quick.
00:48:32
Speaker 1: Please.
00:48:33
Speaker 8: The raffles that we’re doing that we’ve got going. The big one is on the Hill Ranch. The deadline for that is the twelfth of June. But it is a tag that non residents cannot get through the draw. This is the only way you’re going to hunt this unless you pay an exorbitant feed. It’s thirty four points to be able to get on that if you draw through the Ranching for Wildlife program through the COLWORID of Parks and Wildlife Draw. Nobody’s going to draw that for what elk Elk, Yeah, for Elk on the Hill Ranch and it’s I mean, it’s we we encourage people and that money goes to you guys for this far every single thing.
00:49:09
Speaker 1: Oh dude, I’m doing it.
00:49:10
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean. And then and then we’ve got a fishing trip up and say tell me how I go do that again? So you can go to s c I Colorado dot org for that and that we’ve got stuff on Instagram and Facebook.
00:49:23
Speaker 3: Uh.
00:49:23
Speaker 8: But Bobby and Dotty Hill at the Hill Ranch contributed to this. This is this is where the bunch of the big guys hunt. This is where they do a lot of they’re filming and and this is an opportunity that everybody should take advantage of because you’re just not going to find it. This is Lorenzo Sartini. He commented when we did the Go Hunt podcast and he said, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be able to get on this ranch. And so that’s that’s there’s a fishing trip and that one. They’re combined on the same deal. SCI Colorado dot Org. It’s raffle, raffle. I’m going drawing is drawing is June fifteenth.
00:49:54
Speaker 1: I’m going to win. Feel it, my bones.
00:49:57
Speaker 5: We gotta get we gotta get buying tickets.
00:49:59
Speaker 8: Here, you get buying tickets, and if you do that, you got to come if you if you win, you got to come down and collect signatures.
00:50:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, deal, deal, Dan Gates, Thanks for coming out, man, appreciate your time. Keep us posted on the fight. We’re here to help get that thing on the ballot and we’ll be we’ll be plugging away on it.
00:50:17
Speaker 8: We’ve got a ton of information coming down the pike. And you seem to be interested in Colorado stuff anyway, because it’s it’s always flavorful.
00:50:23
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, going on, smell it. Smell it from up here. Yea Brody spent many a good year down there, Yohan, you live down there.
00:50:32
Speaker 5: So what’s the signature deadline again?
00:50:34
Speaker 8: Signature deadline is August fourth, August fourth, Yeah, and once we get that, then it’s going to be a certification and after that it’s full blown election cycle, just like what we’ve done every other time.
00:50:43
Speaker 1: On All right, I’m buying them tickets.
00:50:45
Speaker 8: Okay.
00:50:46
Speaker 1: Appreciate your guys the time. Yeah, man, appreciate it.
00:50:48
Speaker 5: Thanks.
00:50:50
Speaker 1: Speaking of initiatives and petitions and whatnot, we just touched on that thing in Oregon where they’re they’re fixing the there’s a ballot initiative coming out to It’ll never in a million years pass a ballot initiative that would ban ranching rodeos, it would ban hunting. Okay, it’ll never pass, But they got the signatures to put it on the ballot, and Oregon’s Governor, Tina Kotech came out and publicly announced her opposition. Is it worth playing the video?
00:51:22
Speaker 5: We can play the first sure?
00:51:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she’s getting a lot of calls.
00:51:27
Speaker 10: Hi, Oregon Governor Kochek here after hearing from concerned Oregonians, I want to take a moment to be very clear about where I stand on IP twenty eight.
00:51:37
Speaker 2: I oppose it.
00:51:38
Speaker 10: Criminalizing activities like hunting and fishing would be wrong for Oregon. I know tribal leaders, family farmers and ranchers, and Oregonians across the state who care deeply about protecting our land, waters and wildlife. This petition does nothing to help them and a risk criminalizing common agricultural practices that are critical to Oregon’s economy.
00:52:01
Speaker 1: Oh keep playing, Oh okay, because there’s a little there’s a there’s no no no, no no no no, keep playing.
00:52:10
Speaker 10: After that, I believe that we can have an honest conversation about responsible conservation and animal welfare out attacking.
00:52:19
Speaker 1: That’s there’s a little like you’re watching it and you’re like, hell, yeah, go and then she does that. Sure we could have an honest conversation about animal welfare. Yes, she’s got what does that conversation look like?
00:52:34
Speaker 7: She’s got to acknowledge a certain segment of demographics, and.
00:52:38
Speaker 1: She’s throwing she’s thrown a little bone. But still, thank you, governor, thank you, thank you. Okay on the National Wildlife Refuges. A lot of news, This gets tricky, a lot of news. I almost wanted it’s not it.
00:52:58
Speaker 7: Can I start by saying that the headline that I saw, please, okay, we’ll leave it.
00:53:04
Speaker 1: Then I’m gonna do then I’m gonna do the whole Yeah.
00:53:06
Speaker 2: I feel like this will give you a place.
00:53:08
Speaker 1: Please.
00:53:09
Speaker 7: I got a text for my buddy last week or the week before with a headline that said Trump creates ninety two million acres of hunting and fishing access.
00:53:19
Speaker 1: Yes, okay.
00:53:21
Speaker 5: And then there’s the Times headline.
00:53:22
Speaker 1: Yes, then there’s the Times okay. During Trump one, during the Biden administration, and during Trump too. We have been witnessed to we have seen a general relaxing of hunting and fishing regulations on certain federal.
00:53:43
Speaker 2: Lands, which create opportunities.
00:53:45
Speaker 1: Trump one picked it up where they would look at be like, well, why can’t you fish here? You know. Let’s I’m just pulling out an example, not a concrete example, but a loose example. Be like, let’s say there’s a there’s a waterfowl refuge that hosts where birds spend on their mind migratory journey. They’re spending time there in the winter. But someone realizes that for some reason, you can’t fish there in June, you know, and there’s no birds, right, So they said, well, why can’t you fish there in June? And so they would open up and they say, you know what, there’s no real reason you should be fishing there in June. So we’re going to increase these opportunities. Trump one started it under Secretary Bernhardt’s that started up.
00:54:21
Speaker 5: I think Obama Obama did Obama do something.
00:54:24
Speaker 1: Biden did some. Trump too, though, has announced the biggest one, like this is the biggest one. So just to give you a little fact about it. Okay, there’s a press release the Interior Department put out and here’s some lines I’m going to give you some lines from the press release. This is from the Department of the Interior. Okay, so lines such as the Department of the Interior today announced major actions to expand hunting and fishing access across lands and waters managed by the Department. The actions include the US Fish and Wildlife Services proposed largest expansion of hunting and fish hunting and sport fishing opportunities in agency history, alongside National Park Service actions to remove unnecessary hunting related restrictions across National Park System units where hunting is authorized by law. That’s an important thing. Where authorized by law. Now, But just just this is coming from me, not the DOI. Before anyone gets excited here, we’re gonna be throwing around National Park System units. But just trust me, we’re not talking about hunting a Yellowstone or Yosemite or whatever. Not, not these big marquee national parks.
00:55:42
Speaker 2: This isn’t national park derangement syndrome.
00:55:44
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, these National Park System units. Okay, So we’re not talking about No one’s hunting Yellowstone, no one’s hunting Yosemite. So put that out of your mind. All right back to the DOI together. These actions reflect the Department’s commitment to expand responsible access to America’s public lands while maintaining strong conservation stewardship, and aligning federal management with state wildlife frameworks where appropriate. Okay, there’s a quote from Secretary of the Interior Doug Bergham. He says, America’s public lands belong to the American people, and they should be able to access them without unnecessary bureaucracy standing in the way. We are he goes Burgham goes on, we are expanding opportunities for hunters and anglers, reducing duplicative restrictions, and making federal land management more practical, consistent, and acceptable. Okay, And they go on to say, here, you’re going to throw some numbers your way. They’re proposing to open or expand. Now you got Here’s all this stuff is where the words start to matter. And this is good. I’m not saying this is good news, but let’s just look at it in a measured way. Open or expand more than one four hundred and fifty hunting and sport fishing opportunities across one hundred and eleven stations in thirty two states. Okay, sounds huge, It’s good. It’s good. First off, let’s define opportunity. When they say open up an opportunity, what they mean is open up an opportunity for a specific species on a specific unit. Okay, so there could be a place where for whatever reason, and this this is a be a totally normal example of something that there’s a refuge where you’re allowed to hunt. You’re allowed to hunt big game, you’re allowed to hunt waterfowl, you’re allowed to hunt upland birds. Well, drop that one because of the example I’m gonna use, I’m making my own think confusing. You’re allowed to hunt wild pigs, you’re allowed to hunt deer, you’re allowed to hunt waterfowl. But for some reason it was the alligator hunting. But all of the surrounding areas are open for alligators the state, like, the state allows alligator hunting and all the surrounding areas, but for whatever reason, the refuge was closed. If you then make it that you can hunt alligators at a specific time of year in a place where you couldn’t before, that is counted as an opportunity.
00:58:21
Speaker 7: And let’s say there was ten thousand acres on that refuge, that adds ten thousand acres of opportunity to hunt for alligators.
00:58:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, And likewise, let’s say there’s a ten thousand acre refuge and historically you could hunt alligators on nine thousand acres and they open up the remaining one thousand for alligator. That would be binge an opportunity. They don’t split hairs on fish, okay, So fish is like fishing on fishing off like meaning if you could fish bass and all of a sudden they’re like, hey, now you can fish crappie. They’re not calling that an opportunity, so they’re not trying to inflate the numbers by doing weird little things. They treat a fishing opportunity as fishing, right, but they would look at if you open up big game hunting where it wasn’t previously done, that might create multiple opportunities.
00:59:11
Speaker 6: Or they might even do it where it’s like you could hunt grouse and you could hunt some other upland bird, but you couldn’t hunt pheasant, and now they’re allowing you to hunt pheasant there. So now that whole ten thousand acres where people are already hunting grouse and other upland birds, when they add pheasant, that’s ten thousand acres out ten thousand acres.
00:59:30
Speaker 7: Another example, I think it’s not specifically go.
00:59:34
Speaker 1: Ahead, I got a million, I got millions, But.
00:59:37
Speaker 7: Like I used to run into this in Nebraska, where you would go to a National Wildlife refuge to hunt deer. When you get there, it says non toxic ammunition only.
00:59:48
Speaker 1: Dude, I got a whole segment on this.
00:59:49
Speaker 2: Okay, go ahead, then.
00:59:52
Speaker 1: Thank you though, and you got excited.
00:59:55
Speaker 6: This is all good stuff, but it’s you wants.
01:00:00
Speaker 5: As much as I hate to use the word, it’s good news.
01:00:03
Speaker 1: It’s good news, but it’s not as good a news as some people want it to be. Some people want it to be bad news. So some people, yeah, okay, this is new though, this is this is the new part. That’s interesting. Okay. The Department of Interiors new perspective is this, when it comes to lands under their management, consider it open unless otherwise used to be historically was considerate closed unless otherwise. So they’re they’re they’re flipping the sort of philosophical angle at which they look at these not hey convince me that it should be open for alligators. It’s you’ll have to convince me that it shouldn’t be open for alligators. It’s just flipping how they look at it. That’s big, right, here’s an overstatement. Uh, there’s an organization that comes out says that the proposal would make more than ninety No, they’re own, sorry not, this is not an organization. The proposal itself, The Department of Interior itself says the proposal would make more than ninety two million acres, or more than ninety five percent of National Wildlife Refuge System lands available for hunting. It’s important to point out that it would be that around ninety one point six million r already. Yeah, so but you look at that, you’d be like, my god, where are they finding ninety two million acres of land open up? What they’re saying is with these additions, the number jumps to ninety two million from somewhere around ninety one point something million. Yeah, but it’s a.
01:01:47
Speaker 6: Little it’s it’s all in the presentation.
01:01:50
Speaker 1: It’s a little misleading. Um, I’d have to check where this came from. SEI was feeling that it was going to open around two million acres of new open or expanded lands now expanded or opened for hunting. I think that the other organizations have looked at that, and I think it’s probably about a few hundred thousand acres, not two million, but a few hundred thousand, which is a ton that these expansions and openings will affect and create opportunities on a few hundred thousand acres.
01:02:26
Speaker 7: Yeah, and getting rid of the kind of like red tape or like confusion around regulations is huge too.
01:02:34
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the New York Times. And I’m a New York Times subscriber and reader. I get a lot of great news from New York Times. I read a lot of different things. I intentionally guard myself against bias by reading. I recognize that all things have a bias. So I just read things that I recognize the bias on one side, and I read things where I can recognize the bias on the other side. And I don’t pretend that there’s a flat line of no bias this. There’s no bias on this show. No, this is the only non biased news source out there, the New Show. But the New York Times, they looked at this and they tried to find the weirdest things, the most alarming things they could find. So they do nothing to point out like all the you know, common sense. Yeah, like the fact that there used to be places where you could hunt invasive hogs all around an area, but you couldn’t hunt them on the refuge, even though, like, why would you not be able to hunt the invasive hogs on the refuge? Trying to get rid of the hogs? Anyways, instead of pointing out those things, they point out like that there’s a new rule that would make it that you can clean that. They’re like, good, Lord, according to this, you’d be able to clean fish in the bathroom. This is in the New York Times. We’re still trying to figure out what this is tom about. But it would open up the cleaning of I think that that sounds like good news, but they found it to be very alarming. This this idea is somewhere. Was it in Louisiana?
01:04:02
Speaker 6: I forget it, but it’s like one specific refuge. Those restrooms are now open.
01:04:06
Speaker 1: They’re not closed for fish cleaning. And I’m like, if you know what’s going on with this, please write in there. There is obviously more to the story here, but the New York Times has read it to be that now they could clean fish in the bathroom. You know, there’s some story here that I don’t know.
01:04:23
Speaker 7: If I walked into a bathroom, somebody was in there cleaning fish, I’d be like, huh, And then I’d go into the bathroom.
01:04:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, take a leap. I’d be like, what’d you guys catch? And if it was little kids, if feels kids, yeah, I would go boys. Make sure you clean that up. Yeah, because you’re gonna get someone all pissed off. Just make sure you clean nice fish, nice fish. Yeah, just clean that.
01:04:45
Speaker 6: The Lake Meredith National Recreationary in Texas specifically you can clean fish and game in the bathroom.
01:04:53
Speaker 1: There’s more to the story. So if someone down there can write it, tell me why this is the thing. Please let me know in every article about this. I’m all for you clean fish in the bathroom, scaling them on the toilet seat. I’m joking, but there’s gotta be more to the story. New York Times also pointed out that there’s like a place in Colorado where you can now shoot from or across trails, without mentioning that you can always shoot from or across trails on all national forest land in wilderness areas. Like if you’re walking down a footpath and you see a deer, you don’t have to step across the footpath. It’s not unusual. And again I don’t know the specifics of the area, but that in and of itself is not unusual because on any national forest land, when you’re out there, you’re there’s designated marked trails. There is never rules about shooting from trails roads.
01:05:48
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, but that’s just like I just see that as like a typical example of a disconnect from a New York Times writer with.
01:05:55
Speaker 1: Someone saying, yeah, I wish I was pointing out to someone today. I wish uh Jim Robbins has written the article. But yeah, because it’s meant to be, people are meant to read it and go like, good lord, yeah, the world’s coming to an end, and it might not. Okay, now we’ve shot down. Okay, we’ve talked about extremes on both sides. There’s the there’s the extreme. The good lord, they’re gonna there’s gonna be hillbillies cleaning fish and bathrooms and and there’s gonna be people shooting from trails. That’s terrible. Two people kind of like a little bit overstating the benefits here, and the benefits are many, Like, let me give you an example. There is a four thousand, three hundred acre complex of uh prairie and wetland in central Montana, Okay. It used to be called the Half Breed nw R is now Grass Lake National Wildlife Refuge. All right, it was previously close. So four thousand, three hundred acres flat out, four thousand, three hundred acres was previously close to all hunting, not no more. So that is a straightforward opening of hunting opportunities on four thousand, three hundred acres like like like from off to on.
01:07:14
Speaker 2: And that’s the problem.
01:07:16
Speaker 7: With the name, like the name National Wildlife Refuge, because a lot of people hear that name and they’re like, how could you ever allow hunting on a wildlife refuge?
01:07:25
Speaker 1: It’s all over the place. Yeah, I know, but it’s just like you can hunt, you can hunt virtually all of that.
01:07:30
Speaker 2: A lot of people don’t. It’s just a problem with that name.
01:07:33
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know.
01:07:34
Speaker 1: Uh Neil Smith National Wildlife Refuge. Here’s another one six thousand acre property. It was established in nineteen ninety Okay. Its purpose is to its purpose is to restore and protect tall grass prairie and oak savannah. Okay. Previously so it’s it’s it’s all grass prairie and oak savannah. But for some reason. Previously you could not hunt waterfowler, upland birds, but you could hunt some big game. You can now hunt birds and waterfowl on six thousand acres that you previously could not. So that’s just flat out that’s good stuff. Okay. It creates first ever hunting or sport fishing opportunities at fourteen refuges and three fish hatcheries. Another thing it does is it sometimes you’ll have regulatory rules. Here’s Brody’s lead thing. I think I’m on the lead thing now. Sometimes you’ll have regulatory rules that apply in all the surrounding lands, but they’ll be a little bit different on the refuge and it can create confusion. So where they can where possible, they’re taking away refuges having seemingly are arbortrariya restrictions that sit alongside the regular state restrictions that that govern all the surrounding lands. For instance, there’s a there’s a location where there’s a refuge location where for some reason sunday hunting was prohibited and it didn’t conform to the surrounding lands. Okay, that would be a thing this could take care of. You have hogs, which are an invasive, exotic deleterious species. You have New Trio, which are an invasive, exotic deletarious species. There’s some refuges where you used to be able to hunt them part of the year, you’d now be able to hunt them year round. Okay. At Padre Island you’ll see an expansion of hog hunting opportunities. For some reason, there was a refuge where you weren’t allowed to hunt from tree stands, but the surrounding lands you were allowed to hunt from tree stands. That tree stand ban would be lifted. Also, taking a look at areas where refuges have different rules about lead, shot shells and fishing tackle. Okay, So they’re looking at and all this stuff is open to public comment. The public comment period runs through June twenty six.
01:10:24
Speaker 8: I believe.
01:10:26
Speaker 1: Let me make sure that’s right June twenty six. Public comment period ends June twenty six, So you can go chime in about all this. Right, But there’s some refuge lands where they have banned lead fishing tackle. I understand, a waterfowl refuge land. I understand. Well, you can’t use lead for right, you can’t use lead for waterfowl federally. Okay. Well, let’s say there’s refuge land, waterfowl refuge land where you can hunt pheasants, and you’re allowed to hunt peasants will lead, And the refuge would say, because it’s the waterfowl refuge area, we want you use a non toxic shop pheasants. The conversations such as that, I’m totally open to. But the lead thing is even moved over to fishing tackle, which I’m skeptical of. Banning leadhead jigs, banning lead sinkers. I have a hard time accepting that you would ever accumulate any kind of meaningful quantity of leadhead jigs and lead sinkers. It’s tough for me to accept lead shot. I get it, I get it, get it, get it. Lead fishing tackle seems a little extreme anyways. Revisiting lead restrictions in Indiana and on refuge land in Indiana, revisiting lead restrictions in Maryland, revisiting lead restrictions in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine, Okay, in other places. So big news, biggish news, huge news, huge news. If you live next to one of these places, it might be somewhere out there is some lucky fellaw, some lucky person who all of a sudden realizes that all of a sudden, now they have, you know, next door down the road, hours drive away, four thousand acres of new waterfowl hunting opportunity opened up. If so, congratulations with all that. The final caveat I want, not a caveat I would like to add, is there will be situations where there will be situations where you’re gonna have to have restrictions in order to make the refuge make sense. You know, there’s a refuge in this state that hosts a you know, there’s a refuge in this state that hosts tons of my migratory waterfowl. You can’t hunt it in the fall. You can hunt around it, and it creates phenomenal waterfowl hunting around it. If they were to come in and say, hey, you know what, anybody can hunt it anytime, and all of a sudden, guys are zipping around the boats, you’re gonna you’re gonna negate the quality, You’re gonna negate the purpose of that refuge. Right. So, I don’t think it should It shouldn’t be like all regulations need to go away. But when we’re talking about the ones that aren’t compromising the core mission, of the refuge. I agree, let’s get rid of the unnecessary regulations. If it winds up being that it’s that the restrictions create the core mission of the refuge, like providing a sanctuary for migratory waterfowl, which then drives phenomenal waterfowl hunting opportunities all around the region because you have safe roosting ground. Keep it, don’t throw it out. It’s like they should be doing wildlife conservation on these lands. But agreed, they shouldn’t be doing arbitrary, unnecessary restrictions because someone decided twenty years ago that they could.
01:13:52
Speaker 6: Yeah, good job.
01:13:58
Speaker 1: Steve, Thanks many.
01:14:01
Speaker 5: It’s a sprawling topic, m hm.
01:14:04
Speaker 1: It is somebody’s topics so big you’re hesitant to get into them.
01:14:07
Speaker 6: I dug up an old press release for one of these announcements because it’s they, you know, like annually they make these, and and this one is formatted in a way it says this rule opens the following refuges to hunting for the first time colon, and then it says it, and then it’s they do it in a much easier to understand what it says, expand migratory big game bird hunting. And then the next sent and says, this is already open to game bird hunting, migratory game bird hunting.
01:14:35
Speaker 1: You kind of lost me there.
01:14:37
Speaker 6: I think like there’s so much information in these announcements. The way that it’s presented, you have to really dig in to wrap your head around, you know.
01:14:45
Speaker 1: And it makes you almost want to not talk about it because it’s so competent.
01:14:48
Speaker 6: I know, it’s like, do you even touch it because it’s just sprawling.
01:14:52
Speaker 7: Just go check the REGs for the National Wildlife Refuge near you.
01:14:56
Speaker 6: Sorry to deflate deflate the strong ending to your segment.
01:15:00
Speaker 1: Ye powerful, didn’t it? Yeah? And then you kind of chimed in and kind of ruined it.
01:15:04
Speaker 6: I was trying to get the banner going again because I feel like the work.
01:15:07
Speaker 5: Stands stands on its own.
01:15:11
Speaker 1: Would you like to tell us about what you’re going to tell us about?
01:15:14
Speaker 5: Are we going to do the Texas Mountain Lion?
01:15:17
Speaker 1: Did I skip something? Oh?
01:15:18
Speaker 2: Just real quick?
01:15:20
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, Uh. We discussed Texas having this outlandish idea that you’d have to report your mountain lion harvest. A lot of people got worked up about that. We talked about people getting worked up about it. I kind of explained my take on it. Well, the proposals is withdrawn. If you are a Texan who does not want to tell any government official that you got a mountain lion, rest easy. You will continue to not tell. You will be able to continue to be able to not see you a little secret. It’ll be your little secret because they withdrew the proposal that you should tell.
01:16:03
Speaker 6: All right, on the more federal news here. President Trump signed an executive order on May twenty ninth that rescinded two long standing executive orders which guided federal management of off road vehicle or off highway vehicle use on public lands. And these are two again he rescinded to pre existing executive orders, one from Nixon one from Carter that were sort of the framework of how the federal government manages vehicle travel.
01:16:38
Speaker 2: Is this correct me if I’m wrong.
01:16:40
Speaker 7: This is tied to when you get to a trailhead and you see those little signs and they’ll have like a jet with an X through it, yes, and it’ll say or there’ll be a horse and that’s okay, and a dude and that’s okay.
01:16:52
Speaker 5: And yeah, exactly.
01:16:53
Speaker 6: So the first executive order that got rescinded was Nixon, and he ordered the heads of public land management agencies to develop regulations and policies to designate where you can use motorized vehicles and where you can’t. So he’s basically he basically just said you need to plan for this, and it outlined what they should consider when designating motorized routes soil damage, watershed impacts, vegetation, minimize harassment of wildlife, and minimize conflicts between different user groups. And part of that order is that in developing these regulations that the public.
01:17:36
Speaker 5: Has to have a say.
01:17:37
Speaker 6: So it’s follows like the public public process. The second order that was rescinded came from Carter, and that basically stepped up what Nixon had laid out, and he empowered agencies to issue emergency closures when motorized vehicles are causing damage to a resource, so they don’t have to you know, that doesn’t have to go through a full planning process, but when there’s considerable adverse effects to the resource, the agency’s empowered to shut down that motorized route. And it also we were just talking about how on refuge lands and respect to hunting and fishing, and they’re closed unless open and they’re moving towards open less closed. That was sort of what Carter put in place with this executive order that routes are closed to motorized traffic unless designated as open.
01:18:31
Speaker 5: So that’s out the door.
01:18:34
Speaker 6: The argument behind the executive order rescinding these two prior orders is that it was too vague. These are too vague, and they put unnecessary restrictions on access to federal lands. They want to reduce regulatory burden and increase public access, and the administration says that NIPA, which is a National Environmental Protection Act, and the ESA provide sufficient framework for managing motorized vehicle use on public lands. They also make a point here that I thought was interesting. They say that restrictions on motorized vehicle use amount to de facto bands on hiking and other forms of recreation that require accessing remote areas, all while doing little to benefit multiple use of public lands. So again, this is one of those one of those things where you have to read past the headlines because there’s folks on both sides that are either cheering or or criticizing this. It doesn’t open up the floodgates to just drive your vehicle anywhere you want on national parkland or national forest land or anything like that. It’s kind of hard to predict what the exact results will be. But those executive orders that were rescinded created a framework for rule making, and so do doing away with them doesn’t get rid of the rules that resulted from that. Yeah, it just means that in future travel management, planning, things of that nature, it’s gonna look different, and it’s important that people keep a close eye on what’s going on there.
01:20:16
Speaker 1: I give that a big old boo. Dude, I don’t like it. Yeah, I always say it, man, I’ll think call me crazy. I just don’t think we’re going to run out of roads. I don’t picture of future where people are like, dude, what happened all the roads?
01:20:34
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that you can’t.
01:20:35
Speaker 1: Go nowhere now. It’s like what we’re going to run out of is places that don’t have any roads. That’s what we’ll run out of.
01:20:41
Speaker 6: Yeah, there’s something like I saw the statistic that they’re at the end of World War two there are one hundred thousand miles of road in the National forest system. In fifty years that quadrupled, and at this point we have ten times as many miles of forest service road as we have in the interstate highway system.
01:21:07
Speaker 7: It’s it’s damn hard to find a place in this country, like in the lower forty eight where you can walk five miles without hitting the road.
01:21:14
Speaker 1: Now real, But people act like it’s just like that, they’re just locked out. It’s like, yeah, dude, this world’s lord damn place you’ve ever been up in a like, well, one you’ve been out driving around or two should you ever be coming into some airport look out the window. I just they’re just every where I looked, is the road. Yeah, we got one right here up against the office. Yeah.
01:21:34
Speaker 6: And it’s important that like the travel management planning that is meant to mitigate the impact of recreational use of these places, like that doesn’t affect the agencies can still use those closed roads for fire suppression and all that stuff.
01:21:50
Speaker 1: The minute I saw this headline without even you know, I understand it better now. The minute I saw the headline, my initial feeling was that ain’t good. Yeah, because I know, like I know, the secret conversations happened. Do you remember years ago, years ago, we interviewed Rob Bishop, Congressman Rob Bishop from Utah and it was. It was not right when but the word access was becoming a real buzzword. You know, it had always been, but people were really narrowing in on access, access, access. And when people in my circle are saying access, we were talking about being allowed right opening up new lands where you’d be allowed to hunt fish, or maintaining or maintaining access to public lands, and that if people wanted to sell public lands, that would reduce access. So we were like, oh, I’m pro access, meaning I’m pro having these places where we can go. He those This must been seven eight years ago. He was shrewd enough to say, oh, I’m pro access. We need more roads. And I was like, oh yeah, it’s I mean that kind of accent.
01:23:06
Speaker 7: People who are kind of anti wilderness area like that ain’t the kind of access they want, right.
01:23:12
Speaker 1: They’ll talk about there needs to be access to that and you’re like, well, hey, i’m pro access. Tell me more. And it’s like, well, what I’m talking about is roads. Yeah, we need roads.
01:23:21
Speaker 7: And like Randall, in your research you may have come across I don’t know, but like the kind of back room conversations like is this.
01:23:32
Speaker 2: Setting up?
01:23:34
Speaker 8: Yeah, Like is.
01:23:36
Speaker 7: It setting up opening everything up to roads for development of one form or another.
01:23:42
Speaker 6: No, And I didn’t, you know, I saw suggestions not only in response to this immediate news, but I saw reports from a few months prior that suggested the administration is looking at overhauling or doing away with travel Management Plan. I looked as best I could for any sort of official communication of that, and I didn’t see any but taking in hand with the roadless rule recision.
01:24:12
Speaker 1: And I was just going to bring that up. There’s no question what they’re gunning for here. I mean, they want to repeal the roadless Rule.
01:24:17
Speaker 6: And so I think, like my takeaway from this was it’s not the end of the story, right, There’s a next move because what this does isn’t necessarily clear in terms of on the ground impacts. But I did talk to cal and he said, you know, no mistake about it. This is a serious thing that happened. And he says, you know, whenever you talk about access, it’s always a trade off between impact on the resource and access, you know, no matter if you’re talking about a hiker, a biker, a side by side, whatever else. Like when you talk about putting more people on the ground in more places, it always is going to have an impact on the resource. So it’s not like a conversation you can have in absence of the other conversation.
01:25:05
Speaker 1: I want to do a terrible analogy on some of these things. We brought it up when we were talking about the M forty four devices, where let’s say you tell your kids, don’t even ask me if you can go spend the n at your friend’s house. I’m not open to even there’s a prohibition on you even asking, right, And then one day you say I’m open to you asking. They might be like sweet, yeah, but I still have to say yes or no. So some of these things what they’re doing, like on the M forty four thing, it was don’t ask, don’t even ask. Now it’s like, okay, we’re open to you asking, yeah, right, but you still know how the decisions are going to end up being made. So some of these pieces like this say like, okay, we’re removing the absolute ban, but it’s still case by case. Right. How bad was that analogy?
01:26:06
Speaker 6: Like on a one to ten, No, I think it’s I think it’s I think it’s fair because this is something that signals future action. Yeah, and and you can guess what that future action is and from where I’m sitting, it’s not good.
01:26:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like my kids, if I said, okay, I’m open to the question, Yeah, that’s good news for them. If you’re a dude who likes the hot dog around in the woods, yeah, off trail or whatever around like seldom use trails and like to burn it up, you could probably read just as good news. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t immediately mean anything to you yet. Yeah.
01:26:40
Speaker 6: Yeah, I like, I wouldn’t take my dirt bike and just rip across the Lamar Valley and Yellowstone kicking that I’m off the hook there. But I read the dude, I read the coverage in the Times that said he’s opening all public lands to do whatever you want. But I mean I do, like, you know, it’s it’s one of those things.
01:27:02
Speaker 5: It’s like.
01:27:04
Speaker 6: You know that they’re not doing this for no reason, right, Like there’s a longer play in mind, and so you know the groups that the groups that stand up for roadless areas are they are waving the red flag at this point.
01:27:19
Speaker 1: It’s making me nervous.
01:27:20
Speaker 5: Yeah, it’s making me nervous too.
01:27:22
Speaker 1: I’m excited about those I’m excited about those new fishing and hunting opportunities on the refuges, and this is making me nervous.
01:27:28
Speaker 2: You’ll be able to drive right to those new opportunities.
01:27:30
Speaker 1: You know, it’s making me hungry. These new lake trout records.
01:27:34
Speaker 2: These these don’t get eaten.
01:27:39
Speaker 7: Yeah, so out of Minnesota lakes up here, this is gonna be a record fish thing that’s about real fish, unlike.
01:27:46
Speaker 1: Spence, unlike Spencer’s bullshit reporting. Yeah.
01:27:49
Speaker 5: So it’s Virginia.
01:27:49
Speaker 1: I love you, Phil.
01:27:52
Speaker 2: Can you pull up the number one photo?
01:27:55
Speaker 1: Yes? Okay, my.
01:27:58
Speaker 2: That gentleman’s name is May Joe Buddha.
01:28:02
Speaker 1: Go help Star Wars character. What’s his name?
01:28:05
Speaker 2: May hyphen Joe Buddha.
01:28:09
Speaker 1: Bo u t a Jedi night.
01:28:11
Speaker 8: On Maying Joba would say Majo on lake trout.
01:28:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, Maynight’s lake superior this year.
01:28:19
Speaker 1: Holy cow.
01:28:20
Speaker 7: Look at that fish, forty five and a half inches long. Now, that fish was landed vertical jigging and approximately one hundred feet of water on the are you series fifteen minutes to bring it to the net, and it’s certified as the most recent Minnesota catch and release UH lake trout record. Look at that estimated to be a largest fish man estimated to be about thirty pounds.
01:28:47
Speaker 1: I hate to do this.
01:28:48
Speaker 6: I hate to do this, then, don’t I wanted to find the spelling of Majo Buddha. Yeah, you might have had a transposition er where you deleted that it was caught on May ninth, and you deleted a nine in a comma before.
01:28:59
Speaker 1: It’s a Joe.
01:29:01
Speaker 7: Well, he’s known as may Jo Buddha now because he catches records in May.
01:29:05
Speaker 2: That is what happened. I like October. That’s awesome.
01:29:11
Speaker 7: Now you should be thinking, Wow, that’s a great fish, right, Joe.
01:29:16
Speaker 1: Okay, let’s star wars he but still fish.
01:29:23
Speaker 2: Yes, Okay, what a beautiful fish.
01:29:26
Speaker 5: What a beautiful fish.
01:29:28
Speaker 7: Fish beat a record that was caught a month ago on Lake Superior that measured forty four inches long.
01:29:35
Speaker 1: Pull it up, Phil, not as I mean, it’s the good old days.
01:29:41
Speaker 2: Forty four inches long.
01:29:43
Speaker 1: That dude was fish on a nice calm day.
01:29:45
Speaker 2: Man also caught in Minnesota Lake Superior.
01:29:49
Speaker 1: Look at that thing.
01:29:50
Speaker 2: That was the catcher release.
01:29:51
Speaker 7: State record for like two weeks.
01:29:55
Speaker 2: Here’s the thing.
01:29:56
Speaker 7: Both of those fish were caught. These guys were alliance of a guide named Ethan whiteashik I hope I’m pronouncing that right. He’s got a business called Lake Superior Jigging Guide Service.
01:30:10
Speaker 1: He gets right to it with that name.
01:30:12
Speaker 7: Yeah, yep, they’re out of Twin Heart, two Harbors, Minnesota. Whitashik focuses on using electronics to find large lakers and catches them by vertical jigging with two ounce lead leadhead jigs with a white tube tipped with smell.
01:30:28
Speaker 8: Oh my god, that’s so.
01:30:32
Speaker 1: You’re probably thinking this this this Guyan Whiteashik.
01:30:38
Speaker 7: Now listen that it doesn’t end there. Last year, Whiteashak guided Isaiah Bartlett to what was then.
01:30:50
Speaker 2: The state record catch and release Lake trau.
01:30:53
Speaker 1: My goodness, Isaiah Bartlett, look at the heads on those things. That is a fish.
01:31:00
Speaker 7: And the year before that, why tash It guided Kelsey vander Hayden to the state record catch and release lake trout at forty two and a half inch.
01:31:11
Speaker 1: Look at that thing.
01:31:12
Speaker 5: My goodness.
01:31:13
Speaker 7: Now you might be thinking this guy’s just catching the same fish each year, But I don’t think that’s.
01:31:18
Speaker 1: A big body of water. He’s got some good electronics.
01:31:22
Speaker 2: If he’s like this guy knows what he’s doing.
01:31:26
Speaker 7: Man U the and uh so Minnesota like a lot of states keeps traditional state records, which are based on weight. You got to kill the fish and bring it to a certified scale. These are catching release records, and there’s like a you’re seeing this in more and more states that have this category for anglers that want to let the fish go.
01:31:49
Speaker 1: And what’s his company’s name?
01:31:50
Speaker 2: Again, what’s what’s that?
01:31:52
Speaker 1: What’s his company?
01:31:53
Speaker 7: It is Lake Superior Jigging Guide service. He’s getting he’s gonna get a lot of call.
01:32:00
Speaker 1: Dude, those fish man, he’s gonna be getting calls because you go off that dude, drop man. You talk about fun man, it’s good.
01:32:09
Speaker 2: Practice for halibut fishing.
01:32:12
Speaker 7: So for catching release record, you need multiple photographs that clearly show the fish being measured, a witness who can sign their name, and the fish has to be at least one quarter inch longer than the existing record.
01:32:26
Speaker 2: So these fish met all those qualities.
01:32:28
Speaker 1: They don’t want to be splitting hairs on it.
01:32:30
Speaker 7: No, especially with catch and release stuff, since you can’t you know, you don’t have the fish right there. Lake Superior has like been a traditional uh big giant lake trout fishery, and this just shows that it’s it’s still going on, which is like a lot different than other Great lakes that have had trouble with lake trout fisheries. Lake Erie where I grew up, Like, there’s hardly even any lake trout left there.
01:32:57
Speaker 2: I’m not sure where.
01:32:58
Speaker 1: Lakes they can’t. They came back good in Michigan, they didn’t come back.
01:33:02
Speaker 7: Yeah, But the reason why Lake Superior is so good for lake trout is extremely cold, deep water with abundant forge fish such as Cisco’s and smelt like. To grow a lake trout like that takes thirty to forty years.
01:33:16
Speaker 1: I think, Man, you put that, you just picture that sucker into smoke or just that dripping off there. Man, I’m glad he threw him back. That’s cool.
01:33:24
Speaker 7: The one guy he had the record, but only for a couple of weeks, and now it’s it’s it’s Majo Buddha’s.
01:33:30
Speaker 1: Record now Majo.
01:33:32
Speaker 7: Yeah, thanks for pointing that out, Randal, because I did not. I feel like that’s a weird name.
01:33:37
Speaker 6: Well, then I want to go back to the guy that the West Virginia guy he said bleeding his temper estate record is forever.
01:33:48
Speaker 5: Vertical Chicken Guide service.
01:33:51
Speaker 2: I should have had a picture of Ethan, but I’m sure you can. You can find a picture of him the actual guide.
01:33:58
Speaker 7: So yeah, good news at a good news out out of the Minnesota side of Lake Superior.
01:34:02
Speaker 1: Hell yes, please subscribe to the Meat Eater podcast YouTube channel. If you’re watching, if you’re seeing this happen on a video screen, go sniffing around down there and hit subscribe. If you’re listening driving around in your car or whatever, hit follow wherever you listen, so that this show gets served up to you every week and so you can keep up on all things going on outdoor news. Thanks for listening.
Read the full article here