00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening Hunt podcast, you can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store, nor where you stand with on X. Hey everyone, quick announcement before we get started. So this is a special addition to part podcast. Get your regular part which happens next, and then we got an extra special part which happens after that, so make sure you stay tuned. An extra special part has to do with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership working in conjunction with on X, and together they just released a new report called Inaccessible State Lands in the West, The extent of the landlocked problem and the tools to fix it. Now, if you remember if you listen to the show, and you obviously do, because here we are. We did a show with t RCP and on X a little over a year ago in which we outlined the findings of their Federal land Landlocked Report, meaning all kinds of land you and I could be hunting and fishing and covorting around on but we can't because there's no legal access to it. It's just like chunks of public land sitting there, but you can't legally get on it because it's surrounded by private land. And so they looked at that and how to take care of that, and they followed that up now with the State Land Report, which has some pretty like staggering findings in it with very real implications for anyone that likes to spend time outdoors. So stay tuned and thanks to t R C P and on next for pulling us together, and stay tuned to hear all about it after this here show. Okay, a couple quick things here. First, Mark Kenyan, here's one for you. Have you ever heard, you know, like words for big stuff like huge or toad, jumbo, mondoga. Have you ever heard a guy wrote in one and about where he's from in southern Ohio a big buck? I don't know. I think this might just be in his social circle. The big buck is a slender. You know, it's been g being pronounced the same as in giant. Yeah, I have heard of that slender. Now how I heard of it is there was a video production team out of Ohio. This substantiate it, and I'm pretty sure they were called slender hollow. And I just remember this because when I was in early college, they were they they specialized in big bucks from hollows. While I watched this, you could get the TV show online. I watched it in college. It was called again slender. I think it was slender hollo if I remember so? Did that? Is that why people started calling him slenders? No? No, no, I've never heard it used in that way, but that would make me think that could be where it came from, given their birth from Ohio. You don't even know about this. I never heard of a slender. Have we talked about that. I don't know if people in Ohio I should use the word hollow. I feel like it's cultural appropriation. No. I think if they say hollo, it's fine. Yeah, a hollow, that's fine. UM. I had a guy from his Missouri once I had dropped him off somewhere where I was guying him elk hunting, and I came back to him and he was telling me about how the bolt was hollering down there over in the holler. Have you guys heard this one dude rode in that. Um, he's saying he's saying, if you want tender backstrap, you hang the deer's carcass by the pelvic bone. Do you hear this? There's no strain. I have not heard that. I have a hard time buying hank. You're not in your head. I've heard this. But they put even a professional butcher will put a hook in the cavity and hanging like that because you don't want You want to stay by that microphone. Sorry about that? You want? You want? Then you want the hind quarters ninety degrees angle from the hanging carcass upside down. Yeah, when when you hang him under tension, the rigor mortis does more damage to the meat. I've heard it. I think you just made that up. You heard it by having executed on it. No, No, I still hang my dear and I don't know him hanging. I don't have a walk in cooler or anything like that. But you have heard this. And if you go to like a processor, I've noticed they hanged the ear and the cows that way. Do you um doing? You guys electrocute your dear right after you shoot him? Electric cute? Yeah? Not once? Never heard of? Did you ever hear there's this company, and I never got around to trying it. Man, I wanted to tender It's called tender buck because you know, you ever been to you ever watched them slaughter cattle and slaughterhouse. How they hit him with that captive bolt then they hang them up. I think they cut their jugglar and Na's app him with electricity. Uh and it does a number of things. But man, when I hit him with that, they just relax. So this guy made this thing and he was marking it to hunters. You run it off a car battery, but apparently you're supposed to like run over there, so damn, it's gonna be pretty quick over there, Like so damn quick that you there's there's like a there's a time limit. But yeah, I mean like when they do with cattle, it's within seconds. I mean, and you have to have a car battery with you. I've heard that guys like I've heard that like commercial shooters like down in Texas, that shooting on the go out and you know, shooting non natives that that going to the meat market that they did they use I don't know if they use that product, but they're out there shocking them. So what's the advantage. We're trying to get a meat scientist. There's this meat scientists I want to get on who's at Purdue University. And because I could tell you why, I think what it has to do with like how the animal goes through has to do with how the animal goes through rigor mortis mhm um, and there's some other complicating factors there. But I don't want to do it because I want to have a guy come in who really really knows. So for the hanging thing I did, uh, it was a professional butcher who who didn't gave him presentation. I was at a professional butcher you know. Um another one, Mark, we'll introduce everybody in a second. Here, Mark, what's the name of your trailer? Camp with trailer? Oh? I mean I haven't like named it. No, I don't mean that. If you did, I wouldn't even want to know. I wouldn't want to know. You mean, what's the model? The model? What is it? It's a Fleetwood Pioneer. I think we were I've been paying or Frontiers Pioneer Frontier one of the two. Yeah, that's a reasonable name because I've been me my wife are shopping for a new camper trailer. So I've been paying a lot of attention to camper trailers, like we're kind of like kicking around, you know, looking at the our our pod and other kinds. Was Now whenever I drive by a trailer, I check them out. And there's been like a weird shift in trailer names where now they give them like really aggressive names and paint like aggressive like claw marks in them and stuff. You know what I'm talking about it Yeah, uh, it just means that generation acts has come of trailer buying. It's like bone names. In the nineties, there was a lot of names like that executioner yo so I saw in their day called the Vengeance, like it's wants out to get vengeance upon you and they hook up their fifth wheel. And then there's one called the Prowler, which is weird. I've seen that one, But that's weird because if you have if you have a problem, you call the cops. True, he wouldn't want to haul it around behind you. Yeah, like the Spider. But yeah, they used to have names. I feel like they used to have names like yours, like the Pioneer I saw in the other day called the Solstice, which I can see Johanni liking. There's a lot like After States. There's the Montana, there's the I've seen the Wye Homing, I've seen the Forester. Yeah, but now it's like they're trying to be like that. They're badass, and they got like like claw marks or teeth. Yeah, but it just feels like it just feels like a camper trailer. It's like you can't put lipstick on a pig. It seems like a hard cell. But are you happy with yours? I know you had to remodel it. Margar remodels trailer. Now, why are you laughing at that? States the idea of remodeling the trailer. Yeah, I mean it was old and decrepit when we bought it. We got a great deal on it and but ended up finding that there was a lot more damna. So we had to replace the roof, putting new floors in, putting new hardware, and redid a lot of interior stuff, completely renovated the interior. So now it looks like a you know, our own design, all painted, all new cabinets, new stuff like that. So it's cool. It's nice. I've been inside of it. How many people sleep in there? Uh? To my wife and I and our son. But how many could sleep in there? You could do four? I guess if you put two like young kids on the pull out table. Yeah. See we had a third kid by accident, Yeah, which really like I like, and I knew that it was trouble when it happened, but I didn't even know about um the implications for camper trailer shopping. Yeah, you could stick one on the floor. They're like they camper trailer companies are generally don't like families of five. Yeah. I need to find one of those companies out of Utah where they make you know what I mean, because a lot of them don't see where you're going there. A lot of them don't cater to people who had too many children. Yeah, that's no joke. I spent two years in Utah and it's just one giant family after another. Oh yeah, people there would be like, how do you guys even't have more kids? When I walk around feeling like there's too many of them. Restaurants don't even have two tops and four tops. It's just nothing but sixes and eights. Like I told you, you're welcome to give it a test drum if you want to see how the family fits. Yeah, I think I might go out and take your camp or trailer out. It's cool. It's cool though. Yeah, we got new solar set up in it now after everything got stole, we got new batteries, we got new propane. Everything's fresh and radar rock and roll. Yeah. Did you hear this that Mark Um parked his camper trailer. I was in the car listening to that conversation. Yeah, and then someone ripped all of his stuff off, and the owner of the place he parked it was like, huh, Yeah, he parked it in a secure a lot, supposedly locked the monitor. You explain that it was like park at your own risk, Like he assumes no responsibility for this. Yeah. I don't remember, you know, last summer when I put it in there, if he gave me a rundown or maybe it was in the fine print, I don't remember. But now we we just dropped it off in a new store facility because we're still you know, we're still going to try our luck. But this place seems much more reputable. They've got surveillance cameras, barbed wire, fans great Gate. There seems to be something. There's human presence there more often, and they very clearly articulated, had a much more professional contract. The whole process seemed a lot more legit looking back. This guy, you know, he was the only one available, so we just went with what we could get. Yeah, I'm go on a place with like a dude with the eight seventy over his shoulder walking walking to the premier. I feel better about this one. But she did this time made it clear, like, hey, we do everything we possibly can. We have monitoring, we have the gate, etcetera, etcetera, But you do need to understand there's two people that have access to this facility. People can come out. Yeah, you might have got ripped off by another camper trailer or possible. You should go look through all the windows. They could. At this point I'm kind of over it, but I could. Yeah, look in their camper window, there's my battery. It's weird, though, is whoever did it had a strange agenda because, for example, they took our forks and knives but left the spoons. Were they sterling and the spoons were no? It was all just really cheap stuff. They took some paintings that my wife, but some cool artwork just kind of make it feel different. They took some left others they left that makes sense. They left yettie mugs, but took like cheap plastic wear. They took our batteries and our solar inverter, left the panels. They took some of my tools, didn't take some what kind of tools did they have? What are they like? They took like my ratches set, they took cordless drill took left my hammer, left some screwdrivers. Ah, did they go into your drill bit assortment and just pull out a certain diamond drill bits because they might have been doing something really specific man influence. Yeah, no, they took both of I had like two nice boxes full of bits and stuff all gone. So yeah, on the bridg how much money did you get wiped out of? I don't know. I probably put another like five bucks into replace stuff just to get going again. For the batteries, propane inverter, some basic tools, which just like to kill that guy. Man, it was it was shitty, like we just we were all excited to get to the camper because we've been traveling for ten days and we're like, all right, we'll get to the camper that's our home for the next six weeks. We can get in a routine. You know, it's challenging with a one and a half year old in the tent and trying to do that whole thing leading up to it. So when something like that happens to me, I spend months just thinking about how cool it would have been if I could have caught him and just defiled them, like like the things that I wouldn't even want anyone to know about. Um last thought on campers, and we got get to our business at hand. Is a complicating factor with the camper trailers. You know, I have an F one fifty. I want to pull up behind the F one fifty. I don't want to go buy a new Imferey going buying a whole new truck. You shouldn't need to have, no, but mean, I'm not gonna put like some five mile long fifth wheel on. Well you don't want that anyways, do you know? I want to be able to get into cool little spots. Yanni or he. Yanni's incredulous of a camper in general. He thinks it's stupid. I mean, I didn't like the Eddie either, but when it came to having kids and stuff and doing long trips like we're doing several months at a time. Um, it was the option, best option for that. Yeah, I want to be clear, this is strictly a function of having children. Yeah, we usually camp under a truck like car camp would be like if it rains, you've slide under the truck, like have a tent. But it's just now I want to be like all rigged up because by the time if all five of us are going camp and by the time you get five sleeping bags, fix sleeping pads to I just want all that stuff to be in something. Yeah, I get it, you know, load up the crayfish traps and hit the road, get after I like the size of those R pods like that. It's the size if I was going to get a new one, I would get something like that. Yeah, but someone's got to sleep out under the trailer, which is fine. I mean the youngest, a four year old. I was gonna say, sorry, buddy, you gotta sleep under the trailer and enjolia. I just feel like it limits yet a little bit where you're gonna go that. That's the only reason I'm a little it does. But yeah, but you Understand what I'm saying with the whole packing up situation. Understand. And then we're like a turn packing my truck with all that ship to set up a car camp. It's a pain. Yeah, And then like Turkey camp this year starts raining and we're out in the gumbo and then just everything just goes downhill. Then my wife's like, you know what, my time to head home. Once every you know, it's just like it's hard with We just had this conversation last night about marking the new kids coming. It's different. Oh, that's right, you're having a whole another one. Yeah, are you still being all secret you about your you know which thing that the other one? Remember the advice I had for you that was the contradicted your publisher's advice. Yeah, we can talk about its. Got a book coming out coming out, tell everyone real quick. Then we gotta get on what we're supposed to be doing. Yeah, I got a book coming out December one. It's called That Wild Country, an epic journey through the past, present, and future of America's public lands. So taking a look at you know, we all talked about this public land stuff, but I got into it from Outsider's perspective. Right, I'm from Michigan. The last decade, though, I've gotten to experience these places a whole lot, spent a few months every year. UM. So decided, like I personally wanted to learn more about what led us to this point that we're in where there's so much contention around the topic. So the book examines everything that that got us to this point, and it's told through a series of my own hunting, fishing all around the country, rafting trips, cross country, top to bottom. What's the fur to south? You get m hmm, Arizona. What's the fur to the east? Get Michigan. North is Alaska above the Arctic Circle. We're close to the Arctic circle west. Uh. Well, Nevada covered the whole damn country pretty close. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. The next time someone to ask you that, do think of something better? Because Nevada and Arizona are close together, you want to make it northern Nevada at least. Yeah, that's that makes me think, like northwestern Montana. That's pretty pretty far west. Um, And it comes up when can people go? By December one? I got a ways to go. You can pre order you can pre order that it's the best title. It's pretty good in any book in the world. Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate that. I also like Larry Mertry's all my friends are going to be strangers. But that Wild Country is a close second. Stems from a quote from Walt Stegner talking about you know how we still need that Wild Country if for no other reason than to, you know, sit there in the office and think about or walk to its edge and look over it. It's part of the geography of Hope, he said. And uh, and I that resonated with name. Did you think about naming it the geography of Hope? Uh? It seemed to to Uh. I don't want to say cliche, but it's been used, like people talk about this article titles the Geography of Hope and stuff like that. It's great, it's a great title. But I thought that that Wild Country would be a little bit off of that. But still speak to it. Okay, you can come back on in December when people can actually buy it. Yeah, people will pre order stuff, but they don't like to. Yeah. I get that. Um, okay, everybody's got to do themselves. Now, Hank, we already heard from you. You're talking about uh, hanging deer up, yep, yep, Hank Forster. Quality Deer Management Association A round the hunting heritage programs. So anything that educates or recruits a new hunter, that kind of stuff. One of the younger Hanks on the planet. Possibly, I haven't looked into that yet. Go ahead. Ryan fior Um, senior regional director, kind of in charge of grassroots operations, call the Dear Management Association, leaving Eagle Long Long Tong, Jannie and Matt Ross with the Quality Deer Management Association UM, the assistant director of conservation and I appreciate you having us. Yeah, great. How do we Let's say someone, you know, you're at a party or whatever, an elevator and someone's like, hey, what is uh, what's q d M A, What do you guys do? What do you guys rip out? What do you say? That elevator speech? Right? Like what do you stay? Uh? You know, probably the first thing I would say is, uh, we're a deer hunting organization. UM. If the person deer hunts, they might get that and they may not have heard of us, UM, but our conservation organization for deer hunters, that's what we are. When you say they might not. Yeah, every I think everybody, you know what, let's do this real quick explain where like q D M okay and q D M a and where one ends and the other begins. So, quality deer management is a concept that arrived around the mid seventies, and it actually came that early. Yeah, seventy four, there was a book UM named Producing Quality White Tails, that's the title, and al brothers Murphy Ray Jr. Wrote the book the both biologists out of Texas, and uh, that book was kind of the beginning of a paradigm shift and how people were thinking about deer um starting you know, at the turn of the century. Really we had started a program of protection and recovery and we can talk about the histological part of that, but uh, dear populations were starting to really skyrocket. And that book, the concept of quality deer management was more about managing for dear health UM habitat health. So it centered on three principles quality deer management. And you can really manage any game species really UM in the same way. But QDM is based on trying to manage the dear the population of what other whatever, and weal you're talking about UM to not exceed what the habitat could support, so not to exceed carrying capacity. That's the first principle. Second is to have a balanced sex ratio, so have as many males as females on the landscape. If you walk away from the dear population and there's no human influence, eventually gets close to one to one, two to one, where because they're born, they're born at one to one, straight up one to one basic humans. Uh, yeah, slightly heavier to to the males, but they're born yeah, slightly heavier. Um. So that that concept, like if you really walked away from a deer population, it would it would correct itself. Um. And then the third, the third principle of quality deer management is to make sure that their deer or whatever animal in all age classes, so you have young, middle aged, and older individuals represented, not in equal parts, but that there existent on the landscape. Again, walking away, Um, that's what would happen naturally and uh, but but but but not, it would be there'd be a stark drop off. Yeah, I mean it would be heavy. Like honestly, if you looked at naturally occurring population where humans aren't influenced, Uh, you would have like forty at least percent of the population be the first age class because it's it's correcting itself every time. Um. But go go back to that thing a minute ago about that they're born at a one to one male female ratio. Um. But but the females, like an unhunted population, both the females love way longer than the males. Uh they can, they do, yes, they do. But when you account for all individuals that are born in a year, you're seeing a slightly higher male to female ratio, but not by much. It's just a couple of percent. Like. But the reason I bring that up is if the females are longer living. If you went and looked at a total whole population, it's either they'd stick around longer. Like, what's the oldest male you've ever heard about? Uh, well, the oldest buck you've ever heard about in the wild. Uh, there's been bucks that have been killed in their teens, No kidding, really, yeah, you know, in the wild, even in the wild, I think the oldest yeah, late teens. Yeah, they look pretty haggard, they got to look pretty yeah. Yeah, and in captivity they can live older. I mean just where I hunt and I'm from New York and uh, the property that I hunt on before I started hunting there and kind of talking to people about quality deer management and hunting that way, they basically abstained from shooting doors, and we could talk more about that too, but I convinced them that we need to reduce the deer population. U let's start shooting some doughs. And they had had abstained from shooting doors for so long that within the first couple of seasons we sho had some really old deer and I'm I was, I'm very interested to see those ages. So we age all the deer that yeah, um box, not so much. I mean it was very skew because they were shooting all the bucks. Yeah, they were shooting all the bucks. It was very very skewed. Most of the box were young one one and two year old, but certainly one year old, but we had sent teeth away. I we aged the jawbones by their wear, but we I also send an incisor in for any deer that looks really old, including the does, and we one of the hunters on the property killed the dough second or third season. That was twenty and a half. Woh man, you should look this up, Steve, I think you'd like it. But I saw photos of a buck that made it to sixteen and his antlers kind of ms reverted to row deer shapes. They and I don't know if it's common, but they they're antlers just kind of deform or like backtrack into a different animal. Huh. It was really weird. Yeah, we were kids, like you know, wow, we had so many weird things, we believe. But if you got any kind of misshapen antler, like alimation, and we'd be like, that's a really old buck who used to be big. He's like always always what we thought, you know, and usually usually followed by the thought, we got to call that deer right, because there's something wrong there was you didn't know as a boy, and I remember this chance like I remember this. Kind of part of my interest in q d M is as a boy, everybody shot. If you shot, like you just shot any buck you saw, it would be a laughable idea that you would, like let a buck walk past. I remember the first guy, and I'm still friends with him. The first guy ever heard of passing a deer up was a guy, a gentleman by the name of Tim's Elton Rust who grew up on a farm, and everything in deer hunting changed all like two things happened at the same time. Three things happened. Uh, you started to be able to hunt from an elevated platform with a rifle, and that changed. How it just changed, how like people that had access to land, how they started to perceive the land. Because it used to be that if someone had a farm, everybody, not everybody, but like like everyone from church or whatever hunted that farm, and you just sit in the field corners or whatever. Then when alst you can home from an elevated platform, um, people who own the farms or their immediate family, right would all a sudden build these giants platforms, and then you needed less people out because you you can see so much more. And it was right around the time when people started like thinking about like bucks became like valuable. You know. It was used to be just like, oh, everybody comes out, we shoot deer and philidor tags, and then all of a sudden it became that like it just became much more restrictive because deer kind of co modified a little bit, you know, and then people then people will be like, well, they didn't want other people hunting because they were trying to grow big bucks well. And and then then the whole culture of deer hunting change in my area of Michigan. It was kind of a wave across the country. Really. I mean that that book was written, but this didn't happen till that. This didn't happen till the early to midnight nineties, right. So the way, the kind of the order of how things happened was that book was written, which is where quality, the word quality came from Quality Deer management, the concept and h our founder was a biologist for the South Carolina Department and not to Resources. What was the name Joe Hamilton's Yeah, and he's still with us today. He's he's been with us. We were thirty first year UM he uh was responsible And I don't remember the exact year, but it was in the eighties. UM of hosting a regional conference that happens in the South called the Southeast Dear Study Group meeting. Each state agency takes turns hosting it and it's where all of the agency folks get together and a lot of academics and they talk about the latest concepts of deer research. UM monitoring all all types of deer management related things, and South Carolina hosted it that year. Joe was an employee, and uh he invited the author of that book, producing Claudie white Does, to be the keynote speaker, because it was this new concept. It was five ten years five years older so at the time. And he took that thought and that and and hearing that person speak and went back to his job. Joe worked in a part of South Carolina, he didn't cover the whole state, and he worked with about eight hundred hunt clubs. And uh, the book really was starting a change in how people were thinking about dear going from you know, a time of trying to build a lot of the southern states were actually uh um, bringing deer in and and trying to build population restocking them. And a lot of hunters had that thought process of you don't shoot those it's you know, that would be almost a sin. We want to build deer populations. But at the same time, if you looked around, the habitat was really suffering. You could see brows lines everywhere, and the age structure was out of balance. Um, most males in the state, we're young. I'm talking about they wouldn't see past their first birthday. So Joe said, you know what, I think I'm going to start this local group. It wasn't meant to be a what is now an international organization to communicate good ways to manage those club properties. So we created a newsletter and named it something like the South Carolina Quality Deer Management Association. And these are clubs out of South Carolina. Yeah, in a region of South Carolina. UM, I think that was generally the low country. And uh, that just fast forwarding through time, grew to to a state specific organization. Within a short period of time, it was they covered all of South Carolina, and then eventually we were named the North American Quality Deer Measurement Association. And then just cut and may at some point, because around the time of the nineties, that concept almost burned like a fire, going from South Carolina up through the Midwest and everywhere. I'm surprised that it didn't grab holding Texas first. Uh, it's the birthplace of quality deer management. The concepts Texas whole is. Yeah, Al Al Brothers and Murphy Ray and a lot of their cohorror just they gave birth to the idea. But the Association was born in South and not hodifying it and organizing and the group was a South Carolina idea. Yeah, and you know, organizing deer hunters has historically been a pretty difficult thing. I mean trying to get deer hunters to agree on something. And Joe also that just help people, help people understand what you're talking. You know, there's a lot of dissension among deer hunters in terms of weapons used, UH stra adages, whether they're doing using dogs or drives or stand hunting, and it's hard to get deer honors. Also to see that there's a need for conservation in terms of there's a need for an organization to tell him what to do, because a lot of deer hunters feel like what grandfather, Grandpappy told me is what we do, right, So it's that that was difficult. But Joe had been spending some time in Australia UM and also uh Tasmania and UH. He had seen that they organized deer hunters through a group called the Australian Deer Association I think is the a d A and UH the way that they structured their UM grassroots activities and even what they name like we name instead of chapters, we have branches. That's that's fashioned after the ADA Australian Deer Association. And he had spent some time, he had been brought over there to speak as a keynote speaker on some events and came back and that's what's their program. I mean in Australian Tasmania they have a quality deer management Tasmania wide for all pretty much all the deer species down there. Deer all introduced. Deer, yeah, they're all introduced, but there again just trying to say, all right, looking at the deer, is there too many for what the land can support? What's the buckado ratio? And our deer represented in generally all age classes. That's the concept your night. I was out to eat with my wife and her body and uh guy puts a piece of fish down in front of me and says that's a Tasmanian UH ocean trout And I'm like, is that right? So I look online and it's a someone's like has an aquaculture facility and he's raising Pacific steelhead and Tasmania marketing and under Tasmanian Ocean trout. I was like, no one, I haven't heard of this fish literally a bait and switch. So when you said Tasmania at Perk Ducts, reminded me of my meal here at night, or a portion of my meal there at night. Um okay, So every gets all excited and it sweeps like wildfire. But you know, I got another question about this because I'm just like, I think of all this in context of where I grew up. Is it do you think it's possibly true that there were no like we didn't have trail cams. We didn't have trail cams when I was a kid, so late eighties, early nineties. But my feeling looking back on it is that no dear like that you could go out to a large property and say that there are no dear living here that are older than two, and if there's any of older would be surprising. Is that ever true for real? That no dear where you would actually walk into no box. I'm sorry because like looking at the enormous pile of deer that our collective group of family and friends at a property to kill every year, and the fact that I could point to one buck which is hanging on my mom's wall to this day, which was like a freaking giant because there was a hundred twenty in white Tail. Was like people came from far and wide to look at that deer and at a property scale, absolutely, and talking about a statewide scale in those years. Being Ryan's from Pennsylvania of the statewide harvest of bucks was one and a half years old before they started changing some of the things they did in Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania kills thirty thousand deer year, yeah, Ben, a hundred fifty thousand bucks a year and n or year in anifold. I wrote this into the show one time. I think you talked about covered it in the Mexico episode. He was the guy that wrote in about Pennsylvania's age class. Oh yeah, because Pennsylvania were similar, you know, And I would just imagine those statistics were pretty close. But to your point, our camp same thing, you know, maybe it had a like man like there was nobody passing a spike in arcamp. Man, it's going down. I remember we had a late season a late season bowl hunt once, not at once, but they they'd run like late archery. And I remember sitting there. It was in December, um and I remember sitting in the field and counting nineties does yeah, and not a single buck, and like, man, you shot if you shot every buck you saw. We were just talking about that as far as habitat, regeneration and everything. But I still hunt the saving camp in gun season that I did as a kid, and I mean we shot the deer, but no, it was sacrilegious to shoot at them. He there was just no way you were doing that. And you would go to stand the first day of buck season. That that's what it was. Was the first day of buck season the Monday after Thanksgiving, And it was almost like a badge of honor. Who saw the most dear? You know, you come in for lunch, I'm a dear. You see this more at forty seven? You saw forty seven? You know, it's just your your spots better in mind you saw thirty you know. Yeah, yeah, that's just waiting for a buck. Yeah, I mean we never had that. Like it was taboo and a lot of circles and even among my father's friends, it was taboo to kill doles. But he really encouraged dose shooting, but not from a management perspective. He just it was just stacking up deer, that's just And even in Pennsylvania then we had two weeks of buck season and then the fount that we couldn't hunt on Sunday, so Saturday the buck season went out. After the second Saturday, the following Monday was the opening day of doze season. And it was almost like, you know, the guys that hunted for two weeks in camp and hadn't shot a deer, They're like, no, we get to we get to unleash here. And just for three days it was that shooting you know, everything that walks in front of us type of deal because you finally get some shooting, kind of get some shooting in. You know, we're warm this gun up here. And then we were talking about I was just thinking, I remember being a kid, you know, like you and all you know of the of the hunters bringing deer back and camping. They were all looking back, know what I know now I probably remember I can count on one hand how many of the more two and a half years old. They were all a year and a half old. But I remember like the calm and conversation was, you know, you know that much for hamlers man, they got a big body, you know, every year and a half old, ninety pound, you know, white tail buck you know he's a big body or big The one guy on our camp used to age them. I swear to God he would call him slow walkers. You know, I'm looking for one of them slow walkers like that, and I still use that to this, uh slow walking slunger. Uh. So q DAM girls out of South Carolina and starts spreading around the country. And what does people's primary like, what is the primary motivation do you feel that most people who were getting into it? And when did it blow up? Like when did it become a national thing? I think in the nineties. I I joined and heard about it in the late nineties. Uh. And now I lived in New Hampshire at the time, so I think it took a while to get up to New England. But um, it became pretty commonplace, seeing like the outdoor literature, you know, all the hunting magazines out there. You'd see QTM throwing around in there. And we have this discussion internally, I think organically the hunting community was gunning that direction. If you think about when outdoor television started and then people started shooting bigger bucks on outdoor television and you know that, and then that magazine articles. You know, I remember when a hundred forty inch buck was huge and then fast you know that was probably the mid nineties of the late nineties, and then fast forward ten years and it had to be a hundred eight inch buck, you know, So it just kind of all happened together. You know, we ask you, we ask ourselves. You know, where will we be if it wasn't for television and vice versa? You know, we're quality your management. Do you mean you mean that television popularize the idea of shooting a big buck? I know, I don't want I think it say popularize that. You can look back at wait tail buck polls. You know, like in my community we have art the club. That's a good point, man. People have always wanted to kill big bucks. It's always been there. The one hunt club I go to. It's that they still have on in the bar their first buck pulls. You know, they're the people signed up for it and they kept you know, over all those years. So the attraction of shooting big bucks was all has always been there. But I think through the outdoor channel or outdoor media however you want to look at it, that just really boosted it. For sure. That that wasn't I mean, we talk often about QDM and a byproduct of it is Bigger Dear because you're trying to push dear into older age classes. But when Joe formed the organization, certainly that was probably the apple that he hung in front of some of those clubs. But he designed the logo with a basically a two year old buck. He didn't want to make it a gargage wan buck. Uh. It's standard eight point probably hunting hundred engineer with a doll next to it. Because it's all about trying to balance box and dolls. That's what QDM is really about, all right. This gets to like, I think, like a pretty important question is as people adopt QDM or joined q d M A, the primary motivation, regardless of regardless of what the mission is or the side benefits or whatever, the primary motivation is that you could grow a trophy buck on your property for the for the joiner, yeah, I mean just for the for the public, like that's what they see, right. I think it depends we have a pretty good mix. Some people want to learn how to manage the habitat for a lot of different species. Um, we have a lot of that information out there, But at the end of the day. And I I tell people this all the time. I mean especially you know, predominantly males or hunters. And just like buck poles started, you know, sixty years ago. So yeah, you know that the byproduct of bigger antlers is certainly an attraction for sure, especially if you're managing your own ground, you know. But I wouldn't say that that's the sole reason people seek us out. I think it's important to mention that we really try to deliver the science. I mean, that's what we do, is we keep abreast of all the search from the universities, and we try to communicate that to the deer hunter. And uh, you know, you you go out there and you talk to deer hunters, and there's so many urban legends or misconceptions of what dear do and how they work. And and I think that's one of the strong suits of Q. Main what they've done is we've really gotten people to understand, you know, how they view the world and what they see, what they smell, you know, all that kind of stuff. So but but to what end, you know what I mean, Like, what is the like if you had like let's say you had a vision statement, what's the q d M A vision statement. Remember where were the statements we're talking about their day annie vision and mission. Yeah, what's the like the vision like where would it lead? Like it would lead to what, you know, the goals that I was talking about. But you know, habitat herd and hunters. You know, we want to look out for the deer, their habitat and the future of hunting and what's like the in your mind, what's the worst thing that could happen to deer hunting? I think hunter loss. I mean that's what I'm paid to do. But I think hunter loss is the worst thing. You know, that's one of our dark clouds. And CWD of course, Yeah, well that's what I think. That. Yeah, that I think if if someone, if a hunter were to contract c w D from a deer, it would be the end of the game. Catastrophic. Well that's talking about trivializing the actual service that hunters provide. We do it because it's self serving. We want to go out, we want to experience out the outdoors, we want to get meat for our families, um, but we also provide a very big service to to to everybody, to all public by removing deer and keeping deer populations at bay. And if that was trivialized or even fractured to a point where people don't support hunting because right now, most hunter, most of the non hunting public supports hunting when when it's done for meat, it's two for deer and turkeys. Yeah, but if you who's that that support, um, it's not you know, we don't. We don't have it's a privilege to go hunting. It's not a right. So if we're not even allowed to do that to to sustain that, it would be catastrophic. On a byproduct of all that is that we fund the most of the conservation in this country today. I don't think you can say you hunt for conservation, but us hunting a byproduct of that is funding our state agencies and most of the conservation in this country. Yeah. I think that that byproduct thing is interesting because um, now that now that there's more public awareness among hunters or over around funding structures for wildlife management. Um, like there's even this this slogan like hunting is conservation, right, Uh, we could say like conservation is a like even at its most base level, conservation is a by product of hunting. But it doesn't necessarily mean that that's one's motivations. And to get into that by product thing is I think that that's like a little bit of what I imagine happens around quality der management, is like people are motivated to do it because they want to grow a large white tail on their property, and a byproduct of that, like an unintentional byproduct of that is probably like perhaps healthier deer hurts. I think it's kind of the kin to lots of times we'll talk about the natural progression that many hunters go through. Right, It's like you just want to figure out how to kill a deer, and then you want to kill a lot of deer, and then maybe you want to hold out for a bigger deer. Many people go through that kind of trajectory, not that you have to. Then eventually you're you're older and you just want your kids to kill a deer, and then you just want to see it. So then I think there's something maybe a little bit similar to that. As people get introduced to QDM, many people, no doubt about to your point, Steve, are drawn to it because they want to see bigger deer. They've seen it on TV or they've read about, Man, it'd be awesome to see deer like that, or two experience two big bucks fighting in front of me, Like that looks great, but I've never seen it in my neck of the woods. And then you find out like there's things that I can do here on my back forward that might lead to better experiences like that. That definitely lures people in. But I have found from my own experience and like talking to a lot of people that have taking a step into that world and explored it, is that many people go in with that initial idea, but then realize there's this whole breadth and depth to quality deer management. So you get these people that are interested in trophy bucks that five years from now though, are all of a sudden thinking about quality, the habitat, making sure that the dough harvest is in line, making sure that age structure and sex ratio and all these different things fall in place too. So you're kind of getting them in with that candy, that apple. But then there's a lot of byproducts benefits that people identify with and and follow through in the long term. Yeah, I can see that, Like it awakens you to this whole world. Hey, what was the what was the you said, two of Americans. Yeah, the most current data says that of the in public approve of hunting deer in Turkey, and when you go into other species like elk and stuff, it drops not not significant. We can't drop that much for elk, does it. I think it's in a low seventies or something, But there is a significant you know. I think it's just because you know, deer in Turkey in our backyards and you know, I saw a headline this morning that, um, seventy five of the people in Britain oppose quote cruel trophy hunting. So like you call them up and say, do you support cruel trophy hunting? And if that's not I want to hear from I don't like to hear what the dude. It's like, oh yeah, sure it's cruel, right, you sure it's cruel, because if it's cruel, I get behind it. We have it, which I think a better headline would be like, um, of the people in Britain are sadistic. We have the same data though, Um, you know, before this it was always at seventy percent of Americans have proved hunting for food. If you put trophy in that question. Yeah, what do you think that means? The people? I mean, I got all kinds of ideas of what it means. I think that they mean. I think they think it means that you didn't eat it. Yeah, yeah, I think there's all kinds of negative connotations. It's it's kind of ah, We've talked about the thousand time of song. I want to get into it, but it's pretty um that word needs a higher a pr agency. Well, I think it's important also point out is what you're seeing on a lot of the hunting shows is trophy deer management. And we of course kind of taught a lot of people the science of quality deer management and they took it a step further, and so we are all ignored other parts exactly, and so we are we're often viewed as like trophy deer preachers, but it's not. It's people have taken our stuff further than we you know, our guidelines and and if that's what they want to do, all power to them, but we're not slowly about that. You know, there is a traditional dear management of quality deer management and what trophy deer management. So you feel like you've got the lessons from your organization, where um, there's like a radical fringe who took the lessons from your organization and went off off campus. And how would one do that? Trophy deer management, Yeah, a lot of it. Where does one end and the other one? So trophy management is where um, there are some similarities in that you're trying to um do the same three principles, but where where you take it the next for the three balance a deer her within the habitat, have a balance sex ratio, and have deer in all age classes for both males and females. It's hard to argue those three principles, Yeah, you can't. Trophy management is keep keep deer within where the habitat can sport in fact exceed nutrition, so that each individual animal has excess nutrition, not just we try to optimize it with q d M where there's maximum hunting recreational opportunities where hunters get to see deer but they also get to shoot deer. Um. With trophy management, you're pushing deer populations to a point where there's lots of deer out there, but they still have lots of food. Um. You're also protecting bucks until they are at the maximum size of antler growth, which research shows is anywhere between five and seven years of age. All we say is past year links two and older is up for game where necessary. There's a lot of places in this country now. In um our latest White Tie Report, we have statistics tracking the percent of yearling bucks in the national harvest and eight when we were formed, it was close to sixty five of all bucks in the United States were one and a half in the harvest, and fast forward today it's about thirty and it drop. That's just and that's the box that could kill in this country or one of to have your yeah and you kind of can put up the mission accomplished sign. And in a lot of areas where there are deer that are now in all age classes, you don't need to protect the youngest age class anymore because by volunteerism, people shoot what they want and they're represented. Some people will shoot small deer and young deer. Some people will shoot older dear. You don't have to protect the youngest age class at all stages. It's only when it's imbalanced. Um so trophy management is pushing bucks until they're at least five or older. That's not quality deer management that's pushing deer intil. That's where they have their largest set of antlers is between five and seven. There's multiple research that shows those are the ages where they hit the largest size. And then for the sex ratio part, it's you would actually want to skew it a little bit and have it more males to females to make sure you meet that habitat requirement. Let's say there's a Let's say there's a fellow hypothetically and he manages a large ranch and he builds a dossier on all the deer that lived there as much as you can um and has candidates that he's selected for eventual harvest. And in order to not stress those bucks kills all that they kill, kills, all the books he can that aren't in the in the candidates for future harvest. With the end goal of every year he makes two giants and then he's got two giants coming up and then little ones that he's eyeball and based on whatever to to get him up through. What's that trophy management that's not cutem What what's he doing wrong? Well, I mean not wrong, but what what would acute like? What would be the difference there he's just taking it to an extreme. I mean it's intensive management that's biologically that the land is still healthy. So there's there's a lot of positive still happening with that. It's just is there a negative. It may be loss of opportunity for some folks, Yeah, but I can like an ecological negative. No, Nope. Often they're actually overharvesting those because I mean, these old bucks they don't want to be pestered by young deer. You know, if you if you create a void, that's where these old secluded bucks will will pull up. And you know, we're we're finding a lot from the research that you know, the bucks that live longer don't travel as much. They might not be prolific breeders. You know, the deer get in trouble when they walk across roads, are in front of our stands and stuff like that. So kind of these homebodies are the ones that are surviving um and especially to these super old age books that's also been shown site fidelity or their likelihood to be in the same place and also have home ranges that shrink goes with age, So as a as a buck ages, their home range doesn't expand they actually shrink, like, is he most likely to be most uh ones the deer most likely to wander the most in the fall and in and oh yeah, definitely in the younger age classes they move around more. Yeah they there, they will every year they will. Their home range and core area shrinks a little bit. And there's research out there. I think it was done on the King's Ranch. Right, Um, two and a half year old age class did most of the breeding. Even the year and a half old age class will still make up. Even in a trophy management situation where you're pushing dear into extreme, you're still gonna have yearling bucks out there, and they still contribute about a third of the breeding to uh, the general population. You can't stim me stymy that to the point where they're not part of it. So the doll like so the dolls even was a big buck around the dolls. Let the dolls, let little bucks breed them. And sometimes it's multiple paternity. There's been cases where twins or triplets have different fathers sored a bout different fathers. How many how many bucks might have dough breed I believe or not. That's also been done in Texas. Um, how many will he breed. Don't know how many bocks will one dough have sex with? Uh, they will, they will in a in a in a cycle, and they will cycle. They will do it until she her extrius ends, so it could potentially be multiple times. No, but how like, has any ever paid attention to how many different bucks bread and individual dough. I don't know the record on that, but it's been at least three or four at least three or four. Yeah, because there's that those cases of triplets having three different fathers. I think it's of all twins have different fathers, and I have twins, and that was one of the first things he told me. You know that twins are sorry about different fathers, right, Okay, So when you see a dough with two fawns, of those pairs of fawns have different fathers, they're they're like half brothers and sisters. Yes, Now what about the opposite? How many different does might a single buck breeding a given fall? Has that been looked at? Yeah? So that and again not necessarily breeding occurrences, but in terms of contribution to the general population um out of Texas, Randy DeYoung at of Texas and m Kingsville did some really interesting research that showed that at least on the scale that they were operating, and it's a free range population, that the average buck sired no more than two or three fawns that made it to adulthood in their life, in their life, in their life. Because that would be that that would be like replacement. Yeah, you know, that'd be like enough to sustain a population. But again, you you think about the misconceptions or myths that hunters were taught years ago, was that bucks would have home ranges that would uh you know, expand every year into every until they were the king of the forest. Um, they would hair them up their dos much like elk, and that they were contributing the biggest antler bucks were just pumping out lots of offspring and that's how you get all these other older bucks. Yeah, yeah, he's gonna walk over the Yeah that's not the case. But there has been some advantage of being a big buck. Well, wasn't there some research that showed that large antlers were a sexual chosen They were chosen for a little bit, they were selected for a little bit more by dose. And that was just a couple of years ago. They were at our convention actually they were those in a pen would actually there were different bucks sectioned off in a pen with different sized antlers, and the does would pick which one they had to make with. Yeah. The Mississippi State, uh Dan Marina I think his last name was, did a study where they actually were able to use captive deer. They cut they're antlers off once hard and secured a attachment to the bottom of the antlers so that they could swap antlers out from individual bucks so they could make that buck who was big small and that buck who was small big antler wise, and would pair them with receptive dos, and the doughs generally chose bucks with larger antlers. Shellow Man, Yeah, Shellow really, Yeah, that's really fascinating. That's a good idea for a study. It was cool. It was really cool. Then they had the does were pinned up and they would literally like back themselves into in front of the buck of their choosing. It was really cool. I mean from that perspective. No, that's fascinating, man, that's a good idea. This is Hank mentioned it earlier. I mean that's really fun stuff like that. Yeah, we've been really concentrating again the big issues and what Our vision is what's the biggest uh, you know crises that are happening with deer and and hunting and conservation is we're trying to shift a lot of that and we are towards chronic wasting disease. But we have funded a lot of research on habitat management, teaching people, UM things on fire forest management. UM. This latest magazine has a really cool study in there out of Tennessee looking about you know a lot of people think if you fertilize oak trees, they're gonna make more acorns. Uh. That's when a that's not true. So we found Yeah, we funded a lot of research. Hank mentioned it earlier that you know, think of us broader wildlife implications all of that and uh, hunters working together cooperatives. There's a really cool study that's going to be published soon about when you get neighbors working together and form cooperatives, which are huge in Michigan, UM in Texas and many other places. The conservation of biodiversity that happens at the landscape scale is better and more intensive than places where people are not working together. UM. So that landscape level management, what's the cooperative look like? Uh? The average cooperative in the country is probably about fire acres and where between five and ten land owners working together, but it varies. There's ones out there that are hundred thousand acres with hundreds of landowners and it's a bunch of mugs who all agree to like a certain set of principles. Yeah, they met preseason and say, uh, you hunt your place, I'll hunt mine. But let's all agree to do this and we'll meet up next year and see how things are going. In Michigan today. These are formal, Uh, they don't have to be. It could be as simple as that. Erators we have some they're much more complicated. They meet, you know, quarterly even, but just some sort of immigram. But the important part is that I guess the successful ones you don't punish anybody. I mean you, you're part of a really good co ops. So you can just speak to that how yours works well at a at a kind of a scale in Michigan. Just to give you an idea of how popular they are. UM Michigan, there's an organization there that we partner with called the Michigan Michigan United Conservation Clubs. We I used to be a member of that when I lived there, because, uh, to sell for at the Ravana for auction, you had to be a member of Michigan Trappers Association, and if you remember Michigan Trappers Association, by default you were a member of muc C. And then you got the MUCC publication Michigan out of Doors, right, not outdoors but out of doors. Out of doors a good magazine. Man TV show like that too, there, Fred Trolls TV show. I believe that was Freends. Yeah, he was ahead of his time man, because you'd have a wild game segment. Kid. He always liked everything people made. He was never like dah, tastes like shit. He always like that's great. He seemed nice. Yeah, and he would get dear ras and to count the antlers if he could hang his wedding ring on it, they counted there. And he was running a metal ring nowadays, if he had a silicon ring, you have a lot more antlers on deer, yeah, a lot a lot of our points. You han't has some bitch on anything, man, but a metal ring was hard to hang on a little degger you have, he'd have a lot of thirty forty pointers coming off. But okay, Mucca said, I took a little trip on memory lane there. Man, that's okay. Uh, we have there's a person that works that's uh an m UCC employee, but q d M a pheasants forever we all fun part of that person's sality that works with cooperatives. And today there's over acres in Michigan in private landowner cooperatives in that state, which now exceeds actually more than what the state game area. Uh yeah, Now what are some of the tenants Like, let's just say you took some average cooperative So it's okay, Just just people understand we're talking about a bunch of different properties. They all border each other. Um that forms this contiguous block land. It doesn't have to be and it's like it doesn't have to be continued. It could be a hot like a checkerboard. Checkerboard. Now, a cooperative doesn't mean that you all get to go ever you want. You hunt your own place, but you hunt under certain guidelines. We will be an example of some of the guidelines. They hunt like we're all going to agree to shoot a shipload of dolls that would be one yeah, or we're all gonna pass yearling Bucks if they want to grow bucks and older age classes or and sometimes they advance that and individual properties go higher than others. UM certainly habitat management, coordinating habitat management, or even purchasing equipment together so they can get price deals on things because they're all in it together. Fertilizer, and then and then sharing information during the season after I found personally from being involved with some loose type cooperatives, UM, just the you kind of get the deer camp effect but expanded, and I have multiple people that are sharing stories. I saw this buck, I saw that one too, and after this season you kind of know what happened to different degree might have seen or there's other folks to help you get in there and track a deer down and then like oh I found this deer shed or I mean, it just builds that community effects. So there's benefits both socially and ecologically. But everybody's still gaming for sure. There's still everyone's got their own self serving sides to like, you know, you couldn't say to one dude, like we've decided that your place is the sanctuary. He's like, oh man, that's pretty cool though, And they don't need there's no they don't formalize it, but people will help them organize it. Yeah, we have employees in other states that do the same thing. In Alabama, we work with Alabama Wildlife Federation have employed there. We got two guys in Missouri that are co funded with the Missouri Department Conservation. They pay part of the salary, We pay part of the salary. But that's their their jobs. And you say you see increased biodiversity, about what measure It's a thesis that hasn't been published yet, but looking at digitizing those properties and looking at the the UM delineation basically the straight line of where different habitat types meat or those vegetation type will meet, and looking at nearby properties of similar scale and seeing if the diversity at least from the sky um is the same, and then asking the hunters that hunt those co ops questions about satisfaction. That's also been shown UM in Michigan. There's a published study that shows uh, generally, hunters that hunt in those situations have higher satisfaction up to like, whereas hunters that are just hunting their own place is not working with their neighbors are generally satisfied with the way that things are going in their state. So and one of the strongest things that's kind of an unofficial byproduct of them is state agencies being able to communicate something super effectively to a lot of landowners quickly. And in Michigan is a perfect example. When c W D hit in Michigan, um the the Michigan DNR was able to communicate with all of these private landowners basically through this one employee and her contacts with all of those leaders of those colors where they needed sampling, where they needed to do town hall meetings. And they could have done that equally but not as efficiently by just doing them in public places and announcing them. They were able to go and target certain places and uh collect more samples that way too. The biodiversity thing on managed properties, I think that's something people don't really understand well, where people manage for wild like you know, you can say like I managed for deer, but in some ways you're managing for wildlife. Earlier I mentioned a friend of mine from back home, Tim's eln rust. He's got he's got not a small property like by Western stands would be small. He's got a property he manages for deer. You go out there in the wintertime. It's unbelievable. The amount of bird life, rabbits, squirrels, birds, deer, bobcats, like, it's unbelievable. This is an area that's not like that, Like a a lot of this area's managed from maximum yield, maximum egg yield, or it's just getting developed. We have that and it's all disturbed. It's all disturbed like in that area. It's all disturbed landscapes. There's no like like it's it's a fiction to think that there's like a pristine right. This is like West Michigan, man. I mean people have been there and everything. There's no old growth timber anywhere. Everything's been disturbed. Virtually, everything's been killed at some point. Absolutely, everyone logged multiple times. There's no there's nothing like natural um isn't a thing there because you're not having like six you're not like forests aren't going through natural succession, you know what I'm saying. So he would like he to go in and take a piece of ground and I'm gonna do wildlife on this piece of ground, Dude, Like you can. You could go in there with a blindfold on and just listen. You'd be like, there's something different. About this point Ryan just mentioned, we actually did some research. There was ten at least years ago, but University of Georgia did a study that we funded where they went to properties that had been doing dear management and specifically had been putting in and food plots because we wanted to see the impact of food plots in forested environments and did small mammal trapping and bird surveys and found that within a buffer zone around food plots where they're punching holes in the forest canopy and putting a food plot in where their hadn't been, that there was higher species bio diversity in those areas compared to places that were just open or forested and not had been changed because the amount of how how very the area is. Yeah, he's got like he's got thickets, you know, hinge cut trees for betting areas. He's got food plots around, he's done water stuff, and it's like this big mosaic of all these different kinds of you know, hiding areas, feeding areas, trapped. Like he pays attention to travel corridors, allowing things to move around, and my god, does it make a difference. One of the biggest components. That's missing is you either have straight uh just land that's agg or you have forests that are overmature and they go through those stages of succession and those earlier succession young forest stages that we call him a seer uh serial stage one and two and a little bit of three is what is declining throughout a lot of the country where we're not letting those things kind of revert because once they start happening, you get kind of the hair standing up in the back of your neck, and people want to want to do it. They want to clean it up, they want to bushog it, they want to make it look like something that we visualize as nice and neat and clean. And there. You know, there's a lot of generalist wildlife out there. Deer one of them. They do well in cities, they do and well in grasslands and forests. They live everywhere. But there's a lot of species of animals that are niche specific, that rely on very specific stages of succession. Like you wouldn't expect to find a gray squirrel, which relies on forests in the middle of a grass fland savannah because they wouldn't be there, and you wouldn't find an Eastern meadow lark in the middle of the forest because they like grasses. So that was younger forest succession stages where you have thickets and young trees coming in um hosts a very wide birth of animals, and a lot of deer hunters are getting involved in programs like CRP or their hinge cutting, or they're doing something because they want to hold deer on their properties. There's a lot of food benefits to not just cover and that's why you're seeing the response from animals like that, and that's that's a byproduct of hunting. The hunters are trying to do that for deer, but you're seeing the response in other ways. Yeah, it gets into the this thing we got earlier, like the intended and unintended consequences, or it gets into this idea that that someone enters into that motivated by something that might be regarded as fairly superficial, meaning man, I wish I could have a big buck on my farm, and then a decade down the road you have these other sets of realizations about what you've kind of accomplished from a wildlife perspective, and that you like create some kind of menagerie. Yeah, And that's what I was saying earlier, is that you get a lot of guys and gals that get involved in it for the first first reason, but then they realize how much, you know, how much they enjoy the other part of it. That that getting dirt on your fingernails and doing something and watching wildlife respond. It's it's a it's an extremely satisfying thing to do. You guys have been involved in maybe I'm wrong, and I I don't think I am. You've been involved in promoting UH states putting up antly restrictions. Talk about that a little bit, like what kind of what the pros and cons are? What the public perception of that is? Why do some people? You know, why would one support it? And why would one not like it? All Right, so we have a a policy on Antler restrictions where we want them to pass a three part test in our eyes before we would support anything remotely close to that. The first would be, um, is it biologically needed? You do? You might explain Antler restrictions, no problem. An restrictions are a tool that that state agencies or private land managers will use. Let's talk about just like government level state agency level to move dear into older age classes, they can be UM something that would be selective and harvest, where you're saying only deer of a certain characteristic will be able to be shot. Point restrictions, so if a deer has so many points, spread restrictions, if it's antlers are so wide or why, or you can shoot them. Um. Sometimes there's combination approaches. Sometimes it's if they're antler beam lengths are long enough and you can judge that by looking at the deer in the profile. Those are all um antler restrictions where they would they would actually make select of harvest to the hunter who's choosing. There's other ways to actually move dear into older age classes too that are not part of that, which would be reducing total buck harvest by changing seasons, moving days, weapons, um, going from something that's easily uh, you know, like going from a modern firearm to a primitive weapon and all of those tools to say, instead of a hundred and fifty thousand bucks being killed in the state, let's killd twenty five thousand next year, and we're automatically moving twenty five thou more deer into the next age class. So that's another form of moving dear. It's it's a it's more of a quota based thing than selective harvest. So there are restrictions in over twenty states today, either statewide, um as the only buck you can shoot, as a selection of if you can kill a couple of bucks, maybe applied to one of those bucks that you can shoot, or in smaller areas. UM, what's the most typical antler restriction A point restriction because it's the most easily enforced. Yeah, like in Texas, there's some width ones. Yeah, Mississippi too, I've heard all that's true enough. We've had people right in and say that the width ones leave a lot of deer laying out in the woods. There's just too hard people to make a call, and they shoot him and they're shooting find him. You know, there's a valley we passed, We walked through a valley sheep hunting once hunting doll sheep. You know in the Alaska there's a lot of areas where it's gotta be a uh you know, there's a width requirement, like a fifty in requirement. And we found two moose skulls in a valley and almost like a forty seven and amost forty nine. Yeah, we always thought like, man, that seems pretty weird. You know, I've heard that comment before, and I know that it's older data, but it's been proven to be not be true to be true. Yeah, that that people aren't just shooting deer and let letting them lie. Um, did they get up and put a tape measure on there? Like? Yeah? Point restricted are the most common, but um, they're also the the they're not the best in terms of protecting to hear because you can have deer if if the goal is to move to hear from one to two, Um, you can have bucks that are spikes to ten points that are that are one years old. So a point restriction, there's a lot more slack in that, which is why some states are trying to push hunters either into with more reliable it's a more reliable predictor of age, but again it's subjective because it's harder to judge the spread. That's a good point about the point thing, man, because you could have like a little you could have anything from a spike to like a little eight point. Absolutely, and if it's a statewide restriction, there's a lot of variety there in terms of the productivity of a certain states. So you have parts of some states that are super productive. You know, the soils are there, there's a lot of agg and those deer are going to primarily produce larger sets of antlers in their first age than ones that might be on lower productive areas. UM. So, a lot of states, well it will uh make sure Like in Pennsylvania they have a split between the state and where part of the state it's a four point on a side and part of its three. But there it just comes down to law enforcement. That's where the Antler restrictions UM typically come to. Points point restrictions is because it's easier to judge. You should be able to count and uh you know, if a law enforcement officer catches up with you and checks your harvest and says, okay that one doesn't have enough UM or it does, it's easy for you know, black and white in terms of what the loss does. So the pros of Antler point restrictions is be that it just allows more dear to pass and do it allows more dear to pass through their year and a half old birthday. That is the goal and the best case scenario that first kind of rule of thumb that we use is is it is it biologically? Um? Is it created where it will protect the most yearling bucks if that's the goal, but allow the maximum number of two and older to be able to be harvested. Some of them there's enough slack there that it starts bleeding into the two year old age class. We don't want that to happen. So you want to make sure that the ant restriction, if it's necessary, is protecting the most uh first age class, but no other ones have you? Have you, guys ever supported or have you heard anybody put an idea that if the goals that have If the goal is to have um dear like you mentioned earlier, having dear of all ages, why don't you do a deal where once they're two and a half, you can't shoot them anymore, because then you have a whole shipload of deer that were of all kinds of age classes. Like if you made it you can only shoot spikes and forks, that would achieve your goal. There of all kinds of old bucks running around, it would have the least palatability probably by hunters. But it's yeah, I mean, if we're just talking about true core mission. Yeah, like mission, Like, the mission isn't The mission isn't that people shoot big giant bucks. The mission is that you have dear of all ages. Why do you want to kill them all once or two and a half just for maximum opportunity? Hunter satisfaction is to come into place somewhere. So that's what that that's that just has to do with it. That would be untenable to people. Well, yeah, I mean a big part of managing wildlife is uh the hunter, the hunter side of it. And that's actually one of the other things that we look at with a restriction is is it biologically protecting the most uh the right number of deer and allowing maximum harvest on the other one to the majority of deer hunter support it. If deer hunters in that state or that region or you know, management unit don't support it, it's not worth doing. And honestly, even before I go any further, we are fans of not mandating this stuff. Oh yeah. In my home state, New York, we have avoluntary educational program that the State of New York launched three years ago and it is showing a shift in deer harvest just by the state agency saying if you'd like to see deer of older age classes, don't shoot young bucks. There's no law or restriction. It's education. Oklahoma is probably the place that is the poster child for successful voluntary programs through education. They started a slogan in the early two thousands hunters in the know let young bucks grow. You could buy bumper stickers or they gave them away and uh that state routinely is in the top five in the country in terms of older bucks in their harvests, just by telling their hunters through education, no and no legal point restriction. Now tell me if this is correct or or add to this however you might want to met. But would you say that it is true that cdm A is a strong advocate of educating on the benefits of having bucks across all age classes. But it is certainly still in support of and encouraged, you know, hunters to make whatever decision they might want. If you want to shoot a your inn aff buck, if whether you're four to or four, and if that makes you happy, go for it like you. I don't think i've ever seen you guys say you can't shoot your inn aff hole bucks. I think sometimes you get these people There are individuals who do that, and I think kind of bastardize your message many times, but that's not what you guys ever manned it right. There's there's been plenty of cases where we've opposed aniler restrictions because they just they either didn't make biological sense or the hunters didn't support it, So I no, I just won't do it there. I've actually spoken in front of commissions in places and said, we do not support this. Really, yeah, you guys much more. You much rather goal with like education and voluntary Absolutely in Layman's Army, who are we to tell anybody what to do with their hunting lis especially in Pennsylvania. I mean, we we have antler restrictions, but we could almost see ourselves getting behind with the hunter recruitment decline and such. You know, of time is a big issue. We're not allowed to hunt on Sundays there you have you know, as you put it, mugs working six days a week. They can't buy a hunting license if you can hunt Sunday, I mean, or if you get one day a week. It's pretty tough to tell somebody, hey, don't shoot that deer when you go out. You know, can you imagine when you were a kid saying that to your camp. You know in Michigan, definitely wouldn't have flowne. Do you guys push against blue laws? Oh? Yeah, who don't somebody out there? It blows my mind, man. I I recently heard a rumor that, um that when you actually saf like, who in the world would support a Sunday hunting band. I heard a rumor that like a lot of outfitters don't A lot of outfitters support Sunday hunting bands. And someone's like, because the reason I think it's not true is because they're like, oh, we'd have to work on Sundays. One decides this or not. It's been an ongoing battle in Pennsylvania and I just did a newspaper art a couple of weeks ago or an interview. UM, I've debated the head of you know, some of the people from the Farm Bureau in Harrisburg. They have a big stronghold on that, and I mean I've heard every reason under the sun. They don't want to have people bother them on Sunday like Diday. I've heard everything from the deer need to break you know shot you know that I want to be able to enjoy my property. I mean just and some of some of the arguments I get that, some of them just like come on, I mean, and my argument is especially they like to the One of the biggest arguments is the safety factor. And you're literally it comes in Pennsylvania with a two week guns season, it comes down to one Sunday, you know, like you're literally only talking about one day here. I mean, let's face it, like bow season, Like you know, how many bow hunters are gonna, you know, stumble across the hiker you know what I mean on Sunday on the state game lands or what have you. I mean, grouse hunters, how many squirrel hunters on it? I mean from the safety standpoint, I don't think that makes it pretty good. Oh yeah, the argument that Sundays are for hike and yeah, Sundays I don't want to shooting. Um yeah, I've never participated in civil disobedience. Well no, I kind of dicause I used to pick up road kill uh here before it was legal, and I did that with and I did it in a very brazen fashion, hoping to go in front of a judge and be like, yes, yes, I found a deer dead on the side of the road and ate it like ye, you knocked me up. Yeah, I mean I could have left it. I could have left there to rot, but I ate it. Uh. But I would imagine the Sunday hunting thing. If I lived in a state where you couldn't Sunday hunt, I would try to organize civil disobedience and just to have a big Sunday hunt. You know what's interesting, big Sunday squirrel drive me growing up not hunting on Sunday, I mean, growing up, and it's just it's just how it is. I've never had the urge to hunt on Sunday. Like, well, I mean I go to other states, but I guess in my mind in Pennsylvania, I'm just like, oh, yeah, I can't do it. Years. I have to go to Ohio or West Virginia or you know whatever. So you go hunt other people's stuff on Sunday. Yeah, I go to Ohio. Yeah, sure, dude, that's hilarious. If on the border and just like get like a hunt, licensing hunt Sunday in the neighboring states, that has to happen. Yeah, where I grew up. So I grew up six miles from the Maryland border and three miles from the West Virginia border in Pennsylvania. And I just grew up hunting all three states, and I can hunt Sundays and the other two on private land in West Virginia. So um, yeah, I mean, I just I'll just hunt in West Virginia though, this is how it was. Yeah, And then do you think it's gonna go away? I don't want. We don't need to spend too much time on because they don't have any wins. There's no state that you used to be able to hunt on Sundays a night you can't. Well, it's further anything, It's further right now than it's ever been, uh to passing. So eventually it will definitely go away. But just time will tell. I guess we've only had Sunday hunting. Like in North Carolina probably ten years ago, you couldn't hunt on Sundays, and then they allowed our tree hunting on private land. And now it's to some point I think you're not allowed to rifle hunt on public land on Sundays, and you can't hunt within two yards of a church or between nine thirty and eleven or something. I mean, it's just absurd because they don't want the fears that people coming out of church. I guess it'll interte people going into church. We'll see something a buck, You'll be like, never mind, I was gonna worship this morning. They grab their going to run off into the woods. Wasn't different than you can't buy a drink between before noon or one. I mean, we have all those kind of blue laws in the South. And do you think it sends people to church because you can't buy booze? But there's this historic perception of alcohol being like not a great thing right for a lot of people. But those same people, I would think, would view hunting as like a pretty wholesome activity. And let me get here's an interesting fact. You're like, in Pennsylvania, you can't hunt deer on Sundays, but you can hunt crows and coyotes. You're only a lot because yeah, you're allowed to hunt crows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday only, So you can't hunt crows Monday through Thursday. Coyotes are open game man seven days a week. Day later dark it's it's free rain on them babies. But dear no, we can't do it. It's just because you need a break, and you needn't break. You gotta take a Sunday. Off said, there was a couple of arguments that you could sort of relate to. What are the couple of the ones where you go, yeah, I can kind of get that. So you know, when I the somebody that opens their ground up to the public, you know some you know, hey, I just Sunday a farmer maybe, you know, just give me a day to feed the cows and get the horses moved around, etcetera, etcetera. I can almost see that. My argument against that is and your it's your property. Say that's where That's where I don't understand it, because the argument that guides don't wanna it's like you still have some level of autonomy in life. I mean, you make decisions, right. I used to. I used to trap fox uh uh Mennonite property and he wouldn't let you check on Saturday because they kept the historic Sabbath of sundown. I think it's sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Could be getting something's wrong, but it was it was not Sunday. It wasn't Sunday. It was like they I can't remember what I wish I could I feel like they're Mennite. Um. But anyhow, sundown Friday, sundown Saturday was their sabbath. He was like, I don't want to check in traps on my property during the sabbath, which meant on Friday you have to go poll because you couldn't know. You don't want to leave them out, you have to go pull and then reset on Sunday. And no, there's no loss saying this was just the guy was pretty clear about what he wanted going down on his property, right, And it wasn't like I didn't like try to debate him on it, right. Yeah, Well if you look at him my way, you know he's just like cool man, got it. I won't be all here, you know, I won't be on here on Saturday. Uh. Back to point restrictions, what are the cons like, Like, Okay, you solved the question that you guys like categorically think that every state should adopt a mandatory point restriction. That's not true. No, And in fact, if you look at the data that we talked about in the eighties, there was a lot of states that had and imbalanced in buck age structure, but that doesn't exist today. A lot of states have uh deer that represent two and three and older in their naturally occurring deer populations, they're in the harvest, So that's that's There are definitely small sections of states um and probably even in some cases whole states where a significant part of the harvest is still young bucks. But that's not the cases it was, you know, twenty five years ago, so we don't need to hunters have adopted this philosophy. One of the things that that also shows where people are really thinking about quality deer management differently is the general acceptance of shooting dose. It took until was the first or nationally the hunters in the United States killed more doze than bucks. So that was the first time in well talking about what that's a vest because that's a defendable we laugh about it now, but but talk about what drove that reluctance to kill those What was the the concept that you don't shoot those because that's what we were taught growing up because there weren't because there weren't any deer. But at the point of the mid seventies and going into the eighties, deer were almost at the highest point they've ever been, and definitely by later in that decade it was happening. Yeah, but I guess the point being, once upon a time that mentality was necessary. It was yeah, like when you had you could. I was looking at this chart that showed like what counties and again Michigan, I just know because my home state, but showing like every it was sort of like by five year increments or something, what counties you were allowed to hunt deer in. Going back into the early I mean there were times when you there were times when you were hunting just one little dinky corner in Michigan and the rest of it wasn't even open to deer hunting. And so that drove this thing like if we're gonna if we want to hunt deer at all, um, we need to grow dear population. So you can imagine you you'd sort of engender this great reluctance on the part of hunters. Two want to grow the hurt and now we act like it's like, oh, they're so not that not that you act this way, but but people perceive it like that it was just this macho that everyone was too macho to kill dose. But it was a really important thing at a time to not kill those because there was no deer. So to that end, quality deer management and really any game management is should be site specific. It should be at the property or management unit scale where you're looking at the popular population and temporally, what does it look like right now and where do we need to go. That's what a management plan is. When some state writes a statewide anment plan, or an individual property owner gets somebody to come in either through federal assistance or has a private consultant right them in management plan, they should say, Okay, here's the current inventory, this is what it looks like, the habitat the deer, whatever what other animal it is, and our goal is to get to be point be on the path within three to five years. But then you have to reevaluate not only annually, but at the end of that time period and say, okay, what direction do we go now. It's it's like accepting, uh, you know, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of just because it was good once, it's always going to be good. And QDM has been definitely thrown into that bathwater of we're always going to tell people to shoot older bucks and not shoot younger bucks. That's not the case, or that you always have to shoot dose. That's not the case. It's really site specific and time specific. So you could picture coming into a place and seeing a situation where you're like, man, don't shoot any dose because so I where I live in New York, I'm on the kind of the foothills of the Adirondacks, and there are definitely places north of me that have low deer density um their parts across many places in the country where the productivity of the land is not quite that good, and you would not need to shoot any dose because it just doesn't sustain it. Broad broad pieces of northern New England, the White Mountain National Forest, Green Mountains, Adirondacks, those places, there's in some places no dose season. It's not necessary, and people would like to see hunters would like to see more of them on the ground. Yeah, I mean, so in those cases, where would we go and talk to a hunter about adopting QDM. In those cases, they might want to improve the habitat and say, Okay, maybe you can build the dear population up a little bit um. That would be a way to abstain, abstain from shooting dose, because that's what's needed. What's your what's cute m as relationship with the agricultural community, and um, I hear about this, but I was gonna say that the automobile insurance industry, But I've had other people in your world, like in your community, say that the automobile insurance industry isn't really a main driver and trying to lower deer numbers like that. That's kind of a fiction, which I've always been told was true. They're like, they don't want to pay out so many claims on people crashing into deer, and so that they're one of the voices for that we need to kill deer, kill deer, kill deer, and then the agricultural community. It's indisputable. I don't mean to low them all together, but there are components of the egg community that generally advocate, Um, we would like to see lower deer numbers and have in lessen crop damage because we lose so much food to uh well, in terms of the the insurance companies, that's generally that is a falsehood, Like you don't get calls from them every day being like by god, no, yeah, yeah, I mean, oh you hear that. I grew up hearing that. But I've had a lot of people say like they're just not big players and deer management. Like I always say, like I just want to be part of that meeting where somebody's writing the check and handing it over like I hate you more deer this year. Yeah, here's a hundred thousand dollars. So you've really never heard of it never. I mean I've heard those stories. I never heard any like substantiation that, like all states calling up the calling up the Fishing Game Agency being like you go, boys, better kill all the deer. I mean, put it this way. I've heard it for probably twenty five plus years. I've heard that story, and I've never heard of a case where like it's never been substantiated, like nobody's I would feel like by this point, thirty years down the road, somebody would be like, you know what, I'm gonna blow the whistle on this. This is what I called me and Matt. You have insight and other people than the ORG, like kept have workforce, state game agencies. Right, so you've seen the inside the belly of the beast and that's just not happening, right. No, Yeah, that's true. You guys being paid off and you try to cover it. Up. That's funny parallel the I'm trip will get into chronic wasting disease a little bit, but the thought that states are making money off of chronic wasting diseases to make money off you can't. But that is a misconception that people say that they can't. They're they're spending money on it. But the same thing with the insurance companies is how are you making money off of that? I mean it just making money on cw D. So that the theory there what some of these I like it, I just can't. I'm not tracking. They're saying that this like they're getting all this funding appropriated to cw t D management. That's lining the pockets are keeping these guys in. Yeah, c w D turns into new pool. Yeah, I know, I saw them fishing game boys, got them new Tronic. We got a bunch of R pod campers. There's been recently new R pods. There's been a couple of recent bills trying to get new funding appropriated research stuff, which seems like a universal Yeah, absolutely, like let's support that. Even if you don't think cw is a big deal, even for those people, you should want that funding because it's going to help answer the questions regardless, though, those guys I'm seeing people post about online like yeah, of course they're trying to get more money. That's how all these guys are getting rich, just more and more money put into it. And it's it's it's crazy. It's just the general population of of hunters themselves, and I feel like they seek us out on were somewhere. But my two favorite conspiracy type theories are rattlesnakes being dropped out of helicopters to eat the turkey eggs. I hear that one was, Yeah, what is that one? I don't I don't know, and they don't because they don't like turkeys. They don't like turkeys, I guess, yeah. And then so you get a bunch of rattlers and load them into a chopper and throw them out that they'll eat the eggs. You know, I don't know. I haven't. I'm sorry I have heard it, but I love like how round about like if you task someone and you're like, dude, um, I need you to lower for whatever the hell reason, I need to lower turkey numbers. And this guy goes and he like he's like, hey, let me formulate a pant plan. This is when he comes up and it's like, Okay, here's here's how I'm spending the money. You got the you know what a rattlesnake is, right, So like it's so funny like with these things like how bad. You know, he really didn't come to it. If you really did come to a group of wildlife professionals and said I want to lower turkey numbers, I just don't think that they would that would be the proposal, right, I feel it would be like a different plan. Yeah. And then the next one is the introduction of coyotes, and I just I get that one a ton and I just got My favorite was this past fall, a guy cornered me in a gas station like four thirty in the morning. I was because he had a QTM shirt. No, he didn't know me from around town. I was going bow hunting and he was going bow hunting. And he actually worked in the coal mine in Southwest in Pennsylvania, and in their break room, one of his buddies knew a guy. This is how it went. His buddy knew a guy who was at the same gas station and we were getting coffee. You know, three weeks prior and there was a guy coming from Missouri with a trailer load of coyotes, said he was working for the Game Commission, and and I'm like, come on, you know that type of dealing. He's like, he has never lied to me before, why would he start now? You know that that type of deal. And I'm like, you don't even Like, I'm just like, I can't even argue that. Okay, Like what am I gonna? I mean, their mind's made up. But I've heard and he saw that they were just real quick, uh, bringing in coyotes to kill all the deer. Presumably yes, with what goal? I don't know. That's another thing. I mean, if you if you know anything about business, and you know the amount of money that I'm talking Pennsylvania that the white tail deer bring to the bottom line, the last thing you do is want less of them from a state agency endpoint. But even when you you make that logic, it's like, nope, nope, no, no, the state agencies are just a bunch of greenis and they don't want anybody hunting anymore. That you know, I can see that like line of thinking. It was like our famous one that we talked about too much. But it was the remember the one that the Clintons Clinton the Clintons that, uh, I would be covered it so off. I'll say it again that the Clintons wanted wolves back because they'd kill all the animals and no one would have any occasion to hunt anymore. Therefore it would destroy the firearm industry, which is another roundabout play. But yeah, conspiracy theories are fun. Man Um, we should get onto something that's more serviceable. Uh. Okay, I got one question that I do want to talk about c w D for a while. But here's my question, and you kind of already answered it, because you do feel an ovel gay and to like, as an organization, you feel an obligation to help people achieve what they want, right, because you want hunters to be engaged, involved, happy. But let's say you knew some thing. Okay, let's say you knew some truth that, uh, that you knew some truth where the best thing for deer like that the really the best thing for dear was in opposition to what hunters wanted. And it was turned out that some unforeseen thing like big box were detrimental to wildlife in America for whatever reason, I don't know what it is. How would you weigh that out? That would be a difficult conversation because we need hunters. Yeah, I mean, we will always stand behind the science, and ultimately would we would end up trying to educate hunters about what? But but I don't, Okay, that's that's because what does that I I say that all the time too, But like, what does that mean to you? To stand behind the science? Look at the preponderance of evidence that's out there, evidence based science that says what is beneficial to the environment, what is what is good for dear? Yeah, that's that's what I'm getting at. So let's say there what that's what That's what informs my my hypothetical. And it's a goofy hypothetical example though called this it's CWD related. But the one of the that's this is I'm doing SHREWD hosting. So because I'm getting into jump in the gun, go ahead and do it for me. So, so, some people are saying that you should not allow younger age class bucks to advance to older age classes in CDWD management zones, theory being that that would be detrimental and lead to the spread further, etcetera, etcetera. So how do you, as q d M A tackle that? So but here, yeah, great job. But but earlier what was interesting is how they decrease their home range, which is yeah, great point because my body this is his burning question, his burning issues, he feels. And he used to he used to he used to practice QDM you personally, I think so he used to practice QDM, but now he's concerned about where they have prevalence. I think it's some's prevalence, which is disturbing to him. And so now his like thing, like his whole focus has shifted, like the way he sort of views everything. And he was an early adopter and like really big into q d M. Yeah, I don't know he I don't know if he used it, if he used that term. Yeah, he know. He's got QDM posters handle over his house and ship. But anyhow, his whole focus is shift now where he thinks the primary concern right now is stopping CWD spread. So and he feels that that a lot of the QDM practices are anathema to slowing the spread of c w D because bucks have higher prevalence and travel more good word by the way, um okay, that means against so thanks for that. So, uh, Mark's asking about that specific thing. We q m A does not employ anybody that's a c w D expert expert, but we are not. It seems it could be like the high priority. I mean, I went to school for wildlife. I'm not a disease expert. You guys don't have like an epidemia like we We we align with the people that are the experts that we try to bring that, whether they work for you or not. In your dialogue. Absolutely, and in fact, the person you're talking about, we're in dialogue with him. We're on an advisory committee with about thirty other people and trying to push the c w D message across many different platforms. You know, he's staying at my house right now. He should have been here, Yeah, he's fishing. He's on a fishing vacation. Should be fishing. Yeah, geez, he would have been good too. Absolutely away. Anyway, he's actually sussing out my garden project when I left him. But go on, Okay, So Mark Mark's question about that point of c w D. There is a flead the Association Fish and Wildlife Agencies put put out in late eighteen Best Management practices that covers everything from surveillance to UH monitoring to management, um, all of these different strategies. We are in agreement with all of those things, and even to the point of pushing deer into older age classes to a point. Some of the science is a little quirky behind that I kind of got lost from it. Okay, back up, Association Fish and Wildlife Agencies put out of best management practices for all states and that's like all the fifty state all the fifty state game management agencies. Yes, they have a they generated best practices for themselves for yeah, for the agencies on how to communicate to the public um how to best And it's a living document. It's changing all the time. It's a really good document. Um how it covers the whole gamut of game management of Okay, so I think that the CWD is a part of this broader package. It's it's a cw D specific doctum understand and uh, you know, looking at what are the biggest risks, where is c w D spreading the fastest, We're all in general agreement that is, uh, moving live deer and moving dear parts. Like if you're a hunter and you're shoot a deer that is in a c w D area and moving the entire carcass either home or you're crossing boundaries where it doesn't exist. Has has that's happened? For sure? Absolutely? Yeah? And I mean that they they've traced they've traced the movement to carcasses. I know, their trace movement to to moving captive servants. They have done that. I thought you meant. Has legis have they have actually ever found somebody moving a dead deer? You know what I mean? Has there ever? Has there ever been a c w D outbreak that was somehow traceable to the movement of a deer's carcass. There's a there's an assumption in one place. I don't know if it's been proven, but you're not in your head, Hank, do you know? No, I don't know if it's proven, but it's definitely assumed that some you know, taxidermist had you know, thrown out some dear parts that have been brought to them that they think created you know, they created an outbreak. Yeah. Okay, So those are the biggest, the biggest factors that we see thought more so than just dear moving. Yeah, definitely, more so because dear don't they do disperse. We needn't talk about dispersal, but at younger ages, dear will leave where they're born and set up a new home range. That has been a concern with c w D UH and from a lot of folks are thinking about when deer dispersed, they're carrying that with them. You can't stop dispersal. It's natural, um and one of the one of the thoughts on antler restrictions and that thought process of removing antler restrictions in cases where dear dispersal might be moving the disease faster UM, that can be arguing. It's confusing for hunters because some states have remove them in some say states don't. Uh. Pennsylvania is a good example where they didn't remove antler restrictions. They got c w D and said that's not going to solve the problem because the majority, in fact, almost all of dear dispersal occurs before the deer is old or not old enough to actually carry the disease. So deer moving from when they're between eight eighteen months or or so of age and twenty months of age, they're moving to a new new place. UM. Anyway, dispersal is one of those factors that has looked at UM, but also dear movement outside of their home range. Yes, we talk talked about their home rerange shrinking as they get older, but deer also do something called excursions. That's probably the bigger culprit. Where deer will leave where they're where they are in the fall and go out on these one to three mile excursions looking for breeding opportunities, and then they return that may also be moving the disease are our thought process. Originally, some of the original research that came out was formed by models UM. One of the papers pop pav at all looked at disease transmission of chronic wasting disease through bucks and had some pretty quirky assumptions in there. They assume that of all bucks would be harvested annually UM to be able to to limit that. That was one of those things that we didn't think was quite realistic, So some of the assumptions were a little bit quirky. But originally we set a rule and and kind of our policy on managing hunters and managing c w D in those areas where c w D exists is that don't push deer to advanced age structures of like four or older, which would be trophy management, but continue harvesting deer at least at two or three UM and excel that harvest at that point. I have heard some cases though, in the West in Colorado where they're showing evidence of some of the management units where some of that has been shown to UM be the case where in places where they're managing for mature bucks they are seeing a higher prevalence rate existing. Yeah, so that is starting to show up. And we at q d m A we do base it on science, and we continually review our policies, and we're going through a pretty thorough review right now. It wouldn't shock me if at some point we have to revamp that. And in places where c w D exists, we say, you know what, starts shooting bucks at any age instead of uh waiting until they're two or older. Our contention there has always been you need hunters to be able to manage the gear, and in places where we don't have good science on it, a lot of this was based on modeling, not on real world scenarios. Before the Colorado examples popped up, we were talking a bit two hunters and saying, if we don't have hunters out there regulating the dear populations, we're kind of at a loss. You can look at Wisconsin as a perfect example of that, where they lost a lot of hunter support and with c w D management and a lot of people backed off, and now the prevalence rate in that state has hit In some places, the disease actually makes a UH. It's it's interesting somewhere around one percent prevalence, the disease goes from a density dependent disease to a frequency dependent, which in essence means it doesn't matter how many animals are on the landscape. It's the prevalence rate that really is impactful of how quickly it spreads. Explain that. So in frequency dependent UH diseases, instead of trying to regulate dear population numbers, you need to start monitoring how much UH interaction those deer have with each other through movements, through congregations and other things. So in those places where they're outlawing things like mineral blocks, feed, those all make a lot of sense. They do they do, yes, because in those places, that's where they're concentrating deer and they're going to be dispersing the misfolded proteins are called prions into the environment, and other deer are going to contract that. So we're fully supportive of that. UM. You know, uh Ted Nujam makes the point that you can't stop dear from All they do is walk around and smell each other, rub noses, roll up against each other, that they're gregarious, and that you can't you're not gonna prevent deer under your contact. He like describes him as the licking nous rubbing these things on the planet. Wouldn't you say, though, that mineral licks or baiting stations, that is just a disproportionately high concentration of that kind of stuff. So yes, there's gonna be interaction, there's gonna be contact, but if we can at least minimize those super high concentration zones, we're not going to get rid of it all. But maybe maybe it's a three better situation, and we should take a three percent better situation. Yeah, and that's probably going back to the discussion about UM telling hunters to shoot young bucks or not in those cases. You know, a lot of a lot of hunters have adopted the qdm UH concept, and really, what folks are saying is if we can educate the masses like we did, you know, twenty five years ago, maybe we can push people to shooting young bucks again to reduce that that disease. But it's we've we've looked at it pretty objectively and felt like if you don't have hunters managing the population and and luckily, you know, the disease is a very serious thing. But luckily it's still in a small, relatively amount of the of the country. What percentage of the country the landmass sense has cw I think the last statistic it's a little old, but it was about eight percent of counties have it in the country. And then how bad could it get? It could? Yes, how long do you think it would take? Well, if you look at if you look at a snapshot of ten years ago of the U. S g S puts out a map of it, it has probably expanded three times a size since two thousand ten, and where it was in the US and Canada. The only thing I care about, um, I only care about one I aspect to c w D is the risk of human transmission. That is the biggest risk. That's really all I care about. If not, it's just like another thing that kills deer and the tons of stuff that kills deer. Yeah, except for probably a secondary thing to really worry about is in those places, um, where it gets. Once it gets to about five prevalent, it's basically hard to stop. You can control it when it's before that. That's what a lot of state have been shown. Comparing Wisconsin Illinois as a standard peat thing, a lot of experts look at they've managed the same way. They've had it about the or they've they've had it about the same amount of time, but their management strategies changed at one point and Illinois today continues to have about a one percent prevalence, whereas Wisconsin in some places it's fort within the herd. And what do they maybe do differently? Uh In in Illinois, they the state has always maintained a UH when it's found in a new place, going with a target of removal. A lot of hunters here that and they think dear eradication, which is not the case. It is you go in and you remove a certain percentage of the deer to test and sample to see how prevalent it is. UM. Not eliminating all deer, but removing a percentage of it to be able to not only surveil and see how many, how how prevalent it is, but also to knock the dear density back so that the population is huntable in the future, but also keeping prevalence at bay. And since you know, the two thousands, Illinois has kept it around one by going into outbreak areas and shooting a lot of deer in the beginning, not every year, they do it. At the very beginning, they shoot a lot of deer. They reduced the deer density, and they're trying to maintain that deer density. So there's always deer in this and they manage it from the from further on by hunters. So they come in and they say, okay, you know whatever, we want to take deer out of here, and they do that, and then the years after that it's just they adjust hunter hunter numbers, hunting licenselles, dough allocations and yeah, but it's managed by hunters after that. And they started in oh seven, I believe, and it's been at one since then. Yeah, I'm not sure the exact year. But in Wisconsin, Uh, they've had it a long time and in the areas that have it had have had it the longest um they lost a lot of hunter and landowners to port based on going in and trying to remove a lot of deer with the help of hunters, um asking hunters to do certain things, but they basically lost trust and a lot of those landowners and a lot of landowners just held their hands up and said, you know, we're we're not going to allow access anymore. We're not going to shoot these deer anymore. And it's started to climb. And then there were a lot of political influences in terms of how the states started managing it, and in some cases has been kind of a let's watch it and monitor it and see how how it reacts. And that is now really exacerbated and there's a lot of issues. So the other thing I would worry about it, besides jumping the species barrier, is in those places where it starts reaching above five prevalence, it's always fatal disease. In those cases, we will lose dear, Dear populations will decline. It's been shown in Wyoming, Colorado, in Wisconsin that you're once the aigles above, it's a rain going downwards, and you're it's going to be hard to bring that population back up at any point, and it's always going to be in the environment, so whenever a new deer immigrates into that area, it will likely contract it and born and all those things. Yeah, I know this is beyond your like, this isn't your area of expertise, But do you feel like, in ten years or in the people you speak to, is there any path towards us knowing for certain what the diseases capabilities are in terms of that it would jump to cattle, that it would jump to sheet, that it would jump to humans. Will we ever? Will someone ever say, like, you know what, turns out it can't. I don't think anybody will say that because it's it's part of the family of t s S and other ts ese that's transmissible. Sponge deform and cephalopathys um have have done that, and the more interactions it has with those other animals and humans, every case is a possibility where it could. Uh they are um changing over time, disease has changed, so as it grows, it is possible. But right now there's research out of Colorado that says it won't jump to cows to livestock um and the best science out there that we there's conflicting evidence, but the best science is also saying that the species barriers to humans is pretty strong that it likely won't drink. Remember they came out with that some guy comes out of some people out of cannon like, oh, we gave it to a monkey the macaw thing turn out not being true. Dude. Stories like that pick up a lot more traction than the retraction faster. Not even fake news, just like like, that's a study that was done. It wasn't even reviewed and and there's a question in terms of how it was performed, and the sample size is pretty small. Um. But there's the other there's another study that's out of UM the National Health Institute at a Colorado UM that used the same kind of monkey and used a lot more of them. It was about a fifteen year study and they showed that the species barriers are pretty strong. So UM, right now the evidence is leading towards it being a strong species barrier. But I don't know if anybody would say it's never going to there's another cool um opportunity, and you might know it's I think it's like New Yorker p a. But somebody like a wild game dinner later realized that they served the CWD positive deer to like a group of a couple hundred people. They got like over a hundred people their tracking tracking them for a decade. Now, yeah it was New York and there was it was like two hundred people and a hundred some submitted, right, they submitted and they've been looking at it for a long time and haven't seen it. You know, do you find that the I find that most like this gets a little bit complicated. The other day I was asking Mark, what does the c w D denier nowadays, Because the c w D denier a couple of years ago was someone who's like it's make believe. But now c w D deny or doesn't deny c w D. They're just like it's not a big deal. Like you're running out of people who you're running out of c w D deniers who think it's make believe. Now they're like, oh no, it's for real. But don't worry about it. I have found and this like I hope they're right, Like I really root, like I root every day for c w D deniers to be right, Like I can't wait for them to be right, and that I was wrong and I'll be like, I'll be the first guy to go out and you know, buy him a beer. Like I hope they're right. I just don't know that they are, and I can't think they're not. But um, I have found that most of your big like don't worry about c w D people tend to be from the deer industry, captive deer industry. Is that what we mean? No, notice that like baiting supplements, like, they tend to have a connection interest. Yeah, they tend to have a connection to um selling ship you feed a deer, or move buying and selling deer and trade and deer and breeding deer. And is that do you find it that's true? We do find that that's true. And we held a special press conference at a t A this year about c w D and try to get as many of the people in the industry there to to that press conference to talk about that. And our CEO went on record of saying almost that exact thing at that press conference. Yeah, um, you know, I don't I understand the thought process there because what what is hunting I mean, is so tied to nostalgia and tradition and all of these good thoughts and good things that have happened to a lot of us. And you you you said the word hope. I hope it's you know, not going to be the case too. But the majority of vast majority of people know that it's a serious disease. And we we as hunters, you know, talking to the general listener here, we have to we have to align with that. We have to realize that it is serious and we need to do our part. Yeah, and the other thing about the like like again, I don't even know what a c W deny or is anymore, but I would think that anyone would be really happy about funding because if you're convinced that it's not a big deal, I would think that you'd be very eager to see this born out by the academic community exactly that they would look and but they would say that they wanted to be I think they would tell you that they wanted to be a big deal. My new thing was c W D deniers is I wanna get a bunch of positive deer and make and get a dozen or so of them and make a batch of burger and I'm even gonna grind some spinal cord into that that blend and make him a patty. I don't know fry that patty. And I'm gonna say, once you eat that burger, we'll talk. But if you won't eat that burger, I don't want to talk. Would be good. It's a good litmus test because if I see the slightest Yanni brought up, No, he's got to bring in his kid marks, No, he's got to bring in his kids. Maybe your kid eats that burger, we'll talk about And if you if you tell your kid to eat and he eats, and I'll be like, kid, this dude's a true believer. Now I want to hear he has to say, I don't know, I don't know burger to eat, man, I don't know. If there's anybody out there willing to do that, it would be a tough burger. And and we you know, we agree that. Uh, there are less of those people, thankfully. Unfortunately they have a pretty big platform the detractors of of how serious it is. And we just need more folks out there talking about the seriousness of it. And luckily there's been some pretty good press about seed due to the general public through some of the larger publications like the Post. Yeah, but there's been some hysterical there has as much as you want people to know and take it seriously. The minutes, this whole zombie deer that just it wants to being counterproductive man being It's that old adage like the only thing worse than not being written about is being written about. Um. Uh. Do you guys have a blanket policy on baiting deer? Uh? We do, um, and that's also being looked at right now. But the policy on I'm I'm beyond c w D now. Yeah, on baiting deer is in places where it's legal, legal, and it's already there. Um, we are supportive of it, but we are definitely we are not supportive of introducing it into new places. Yeah. Uh because the general public does not like baiting deer. Yeah, And we want support for hunting and uh, you know, if it's been there traditionally in a lot of a lot of hunters, that's part of the way they hunt. Um, instead of removing opportunity. Now, again, we also have thought processes with diseases, you know, so if something like chronic wasting disease pops up in there, we would support the state agency and removing that. Yah. Uh. That's a part of game management that I like. And I learned the principle from my brother who lives in Alaska, where they look at there's a prevalent there there. They put a lot of weight on traditional use practices, which I like, yeah, um that's what the hunters now, right. Yeah, It's like it's kind of like, uh, if you have like what's regarded as a successful system and you're not you know, you're not imperalleling species and there's a thing that has worked and it's how people have behaved and it's kind of like woven into the culture that you when it comes to management decisions, you prioritize traditional use practices. Um Like, generally I think it's like a pretty it's an interesting way of looking at and I generally find that Yeah, like I support that because for instance, like can't you never nailed bait bears in Montana? Um I, I probably, like I wouldn't support emotion to begin it, but in places where you can bait, I actively resist efforts to remove the right. Yeah, But that it doesn't mean I want to like introduce it in places where you cannot, you know, just like like honoring traditional use practices and what sort of things have worked for hunters. UM. One of the biggest Uh you know, what do you got right now? I like to touch on what they're doing to get some for the recruitment. I watched some videos of the q d M A put out and uh, get some new hunters on board if we have time for that. Oh yeah, lea, go ahead do it. Uh well, hey, I think that's tanks forte right, that would be me. I don't know where to start, man um, crossbows. Seems like you guys are putting new crossbows and all the new hunters. You guys like cross that's all you think people should be able to hunt with no no, all right, So I mean our goal is to create hunters. It's not you know, there have been recruitment programs in this country for decades and decades and decades, and really none of them are have been working. Well. We've focused on the kids of traditional hunters. Uh. You know, I'm down the gamut. It's really hard to kind of get into these new audiences. And that's that's what we've been doing. What you saw. We're about to release a video. UM, it's kind of a summary of our field of fork in Athens. Last year. But um, we set out, you know, with this our three movement Recruit, Retain, Reactivate, we're trying to stem the tide of declining hunting. And and the cool thing about our three what I love it's it's to increase hunting participation but also to increase the tidal acceptance of hunting. I think that's really big, and y'all touch on that a lot, but it was my best of my brother's view that he wishes he's the only guy that hunted, but he had a percent public support. Yeah, and you know, like you've you've touched always credit you on venison diplomacy. I don't know if that's correct, but I mean, like that's really what we're doing. Um, But we realized that the most efficient audience to create a hunters an adult, and um, the highest societal approval of hunting is food. So a buddy of mine, a colleague, Charles Evans, he's a George R three coordinator, and set on his steering committee. One day we were having lunch, like I had this idea to do like a game breakdown at our local farmers market because they were doing chef demonstrations and I just couldn't get my schedule to work. And I didn't feel like I was the expert to break down a deer in front of you know, a group of people at that point in my life. Um. But you know, fast forward a year, I was like, hey, man, let's just go set up a booth at the farmers market, offer samples of venison and see what happens. See if people would you know, we lead off with hey, would you like to try some venison? And um, and people are very receptive. It's amazing. Um. You know a lot of the vegetables that come to the farmers market are they're you know, they're hunting deer over even in in the months that we we can't hunt here with depredation permits. So you know, if you're supporting you know, veganism or food plant based, I mean there's still if you're don't have an eight foot fence or better there you're still you know, there's deer being harvested. So really, when you when you present hunting for food and you and you tell the actual story behind it, it's really hard to attack. And so that's what we've done, is we've just gone to a to a new audience. You know, I know that people that go to the farmer's market care about where their food comes from, local, sustainable, whatever. And we've got the the you know, the best bang for your buck. I mean, there's nothing more local and sustainable than the deer that are in our backyards. And that's kind of what we're teaching these people. And we do like cross spose because I can. We we recruit current hunts to mentor these non traditional or new hunters, and so we we leave them opening day. We're very fortunate down in Georgia. I mean we have dear season from September twelfth this year to January fifteen. I mean it's season. Yeah, I mean we're very fortunate. Are our limits are two bucks? Nintendos? I mean, we we have this opportunity here and and I'm a firm believer of the response and all this is there are so many people out there they want to learn to hunt, um, but they just they're daunted by it. They don't know where to start. Um. You know, my whole point is access as an invite. I don't care how much public access, private access you have. No one goes hunting without a mentor somebody to really get them through the steps. There's your outliers. There's a few of them, but we set up we use crossbows because we hunt the second weekend of both season, and that gives them the longest opportunity to continue their trial phase. Some take it up a immediately and they hunt with us or or tell us stories of hunting you ten, fifteen, twenty times that year. Some people, Um, it's about the rule in life. We're seeing a percent of our participants continue hunting to interrupt. I'm sorry, but we rewind just a little bit to to get people from the farmer's market to the crossbow because there's a bunch in the middle of it. Right, So you set up the farmers market, you give up venison samples, and then what are you doing? They take a bite, they're like, man, that's good. Well, and that's the thing. We're getting people who don't eat meat too. They're they're willing to eat the venison because and so um lead off with, hey, would you like to try some venicine? You know, nothing at the booze. I mean, we have a flyer and um, but it's not like there's not a lot of antlers or you know, firearms or anything. But it's hey, would you like to try some venicine? And then I'll fill them out and say do you eat a lot of vincent? And oddly enough there I don't know if it's like if they won't to seem like they're a part of the fold or whatever, but a lot of people say that they eat a lot of innicine, so they're getting it somewhere, whether they have a family member or a friend or someone. A lot of them say they're any medicine. And then I just continue the conversations that hey, we're actually here to recruit fifteen hunters to go through this program locally. And you know, it's two afternoon trainings in my office for three hours, and we take them on to organize deer hunt. Um it's a Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning deer hunt. But we're pairing them with local mentors and we try to get them to form that bond or that relationship to continue into you know, there's multiple levels of mentorship. I think becoming a hunters to confidence levels. We know that if you don't teach somebody how to take care of an animal, they'll never go out again because that fear of waste. Uh, just not being so you have to have the confidence. Yeah, we hear that a lot. I don't know what I'm gonna do once it's dead. And so if you aren't confident that you're not gonna go the responsible person and the majority UM. And then I think self identifying a hunter is the ultimate goal of our three. But that's confidence, you know, to go knock on somebody's door, or or even just self identify as a hunter. Like if you don't know what you're doing to get knock on somebody story like hey can I hunt your back fifteen or whatever, it just doesn't work. I think it's important too, especially the age demographics that you're seeing. You could touch on that. I think the first one was from like eighteen to sixty four. It was so mid sixties. We've we've evolved over the years. The first year, UM, we recruited a fairly young group. We had a couple of undergraduates where Athens, Georgia college towns where we piloted it UM. But moving forward, we've had people of all different walks of life, from engineers to roofers to organic farmers to the farmers market manager. This year, UM, you know, both male and female UM, just all walks of life, but it's a it's a common desire to learn to hunt for food. We really do pre select we we do a very diligent we use surveys and before we select them, I want make sure that they didn't grow up hunting, that they don't have immediate resources, like their father didn't hunt, and they just didn't take them up on the opportunity as a kid. We really want to get those that wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity. But um, I mean, now it's eighteen to seventy. Um, it's it's really just uh, it's fun to do. Um, it's inspiring, but it just shows that how many people out there are interested and and to train them up. Your training them up and shooting cross boats like half of our training and shooting cross bus. The reason behind that is it's it's to become a new hunter. And think about this two points. If you're mid thirty five, forty years on, hadn and hunted yet, it's pretty intimidating thing to go up your buddy and go, hey man, we take me hunting this weekend with you. I mean, if you haven't done it at that point in your life, you know, forties, You're probably not gonna go seek somebody out to do that. I mean, statistics are low. So now the rules are reversed. You know, Hank and No. R three program or the Field to Fork program are asking, hey, do you want to hunt with us? Right? And then where the crossbow comes in play is it's it's a less of an intimidating weapon. You know when you start, you know, you put a thirty out six in someone's hand. There a first time hunter, especially for a female, whoa wait a minute here, this is you know, this is quite the undertake. I don't know if I feel comfortable with that. Crossbow is a little bit different. You know, they're less recoil. You know, they don't shoot that far you know, etcetera, etcetera. So that's probably it opens up more opportunity. Yeah, two nights ago, I had some I have some outtown visitors that I alluded to earlier, and we actually we cooked a whole deer leg on a pellet grill eight dinner. And then one of my bodies was talking to another body of mine and he's talking about that he never bowl hunted and he got a cross bowl, and I overheard him saying, man, it's like shooting him with a rifle. I've heard another guy bring up to me once. He's like, because you know, like the cross a community well often talk about, oh, efficacy rates aren't that much higher with crossbows. But we had a listener right in he had an interesting point. He's like, yeah, because you don't have lifelong hunters shooting them. If you had all these stone cold killers who've been shooting compound bowls their whole life and they really know how to hunt, if you gave them a cross bowl, they're gonna mop up. But like crossbow hunters are typically people who don't know a lot about deer, don't know a lot about deer hunting. They don't know about all the tricks of the trade, and so they tend to be less effective and less efficient. But if you gave like, you know, the real uh, the real pros that piece of equipment, it would be the you know to beat both season will be gun season. Another interesting angle too, is there's a difference I think in taking somebody hunting and teaching them to be a hunter and doing the field the fork in Athens per Se in other places we've done it. Most of these people living around suburban communities where a crossbow allows them to hunt. They can hunt in their their back half acre if they want to. They have then taken a right for etcetera, etcetera. So the idea is, we're gonna teach you how to shoot across bow. You're gonna become a hunter, and hopefully you're gonna replicate this and do it yourself on your own time, maybe even on your own property or an uncle's properly your cousin's property. You know, Ryan Zex absolutely right. You know, we we wanted to use crossbows to take advantage of the early archery seasons. You know, it's not cold long, you have daylight hours after work. I mean, somebody can show up him at hunting property at five thirty and hunt for a couple of hours, and you know, once they like seven time switches, you lose that. Um, there is a stigma against guns in this country, especially in these uh you know what we call, you know, a non traditional audience or something we found that. You know a lot of people at the booth will say I don't know if I could really do that, and then you can say, well, we're actually using archery equipment and they just perk up. I mean, it's there, it's it probably has a little bit more to that like Native America. Can you know, you just feel like you're a little more um um, you know it's intimate. Yeah, people say, well, people, there's this misconception to that people feel that it's ethical. Yeah, like that, it's more it's it's like such a weird piece of logic, but it's pervasive that it's like more ethical to shoot an animal with a bow than it didn't shoot animal of the gun, which is like I could see all kinds of reasons why bo hunt, Like I love the bo hunt bo hunt in my entire life. Um. And it has a lot to do with how the hunter's perception, meaning it's more challenging, it takes a greater it takes more skill to master it. It's like, you know, there's a thousand things but to say ethical, Like the most ethical way to kill a deer probably a captive bolt gun to the head, but probably like I mean that's what like with cattle, they've kicked around a thousand ways to kill coles and they eventually settled on the idea that a big pneumatic you know, a one inch diameternumatic thing driving down into their brain pan is a very ethical way to kill cows. So there's this, there's this that misperson that that miss it's like a misarticulation or like a kind of a confusion about what your personal journey is, and you're confusing that with sort of like how best to like put an animal down and kill it. And I don't make all my decisions based on what's the best way to put an animal down and kill it, because if I did, it would it would change aspects. There's a huge personal element to it, right, there's a huge personal element to it. I don't think anyone really is trying to strive towards like what is the absolute fastest, easiest way to kill things? No? No, And and we've actually seen you know, it takes in three hours. We can make somebody perficient with a crossbow and we limit their sh oh yeah, I mean it's as opposed to three years. Oh yeah, No, that's the difference is we couldn't do it with the vertical best. So you can get someone ready to kill a deer in three hours. Oh yeah, Well they just make crossbows. Why not just make it that you can use a crossbow doing gun season, you can not even why not just have it be that, have bow season be bowl season and then crossbows is part of gun season. That way, they don't if they're afraid of guns, they think guns are bad, they can just go hunt during guns season with a crossbow. That's a good idea, right, Yeah, I mean you can use a crossbow anytime. And in some states like Kentucky has a crossbows season, they don't allow them in their regular arches. S. Yeah, if if that's the argument, like, oh, you're like you think guns are naughty, I would just be okay. Then the home of the crossbow during gun season. Oh, I mean I've had people tell me that Phill the Fork is BS because we use crossbows. You know what I mean, you know that that's a stretch. Yeah, but um, but they're not saying it's naughty. They're just they're just more comfortable with it. Yes, I like, and I don't know. I mean, I just like, I haven't formed. I don't have a big Crossbowl opinion yet. So I can tell you this though, Like I can tell you this part of it, I would be bummed. I'm generally bummed when I see them without even knowing why I feel this way. I'm bummed when I see states opened up for cross bowls. Okay, yeah, I'm always like a really well, I'm not like I'm gonna go with like protests and like pick up the state capital or even like write a letter, but I'm always like, uh, that's my feeling, and it's like a lot of old man kind of stuff. Well, I can't hated crossbows. Yeah, probably where I can't support it because I'm looking for opportunity. I want to increase hunting participation, but that will cost I guess that the kicker is of our participants. It's probably even out now, but in our first couple of years, they went out and purchased rifles. After learning to hunt with a crossbow, they went and purchased guns. They wanted to get even better. I mean toward a lady from Philadelphia last year, and she actually seeked us out. She was a vegan. At one point their doctor told her she needed protein, so she wanted the most organic form of protein and thought, I want to become a hunter, and I just did that. She shot shot a deer. A video was awesome and really cool. She broke down and cried and you know, but it was really neat move moment. But literally two weeks two weeks later, she sends me a picture of a deer rifle, like I'm going on. It was funny because you know, she was very skeptical at first, and then when she got it behind her, it was a matter of two weeks and it was almost like now they're all done. Now, Like I got a gun and it's just how many am I allowed to stack up here. I've never I've never I've taken a lot of first time hunters out over a long long period of time. I have never ever had someone regret that they did it. I've had people not pick it up. I've had people be like, oh, that was great, and then what they think they're gone, and then they don't. I've never had someone be like, man, I really wish Like when I went to Disneyland or Disney World, what ones in California. I went to Disneyland and I wish I hadn't right. I was like, I regretted going. But I've never had I've never taken someone hunting and been like, man, I really wish I had made a different decision and hadn't gone and done it. Everybody. This is like it changes people's worldview and they might not start, but they liked having done it, and it totally rewrites their understanding what it's and it changes you as a as a mentor. I found I much rather watch someone else get something to me get as long as I get half of it. Yeah, No, I'm serious, man, If you asked me like to go turkey, and I'd much rather watch someone get like calling a turkey and watch someone get a turkey than than than me get a turkey, unless it's, be honest, for someone who's got a whole bunch of them. Now, now, Hank tell me this, there's a big leap from going out hunting once too then converting that into a future hunter. And I think you guys have kind of dialed in a scalpel way to do that and correct me if I get these details wrong. But you kind of a system where you right, there's a couple days of education and then there's a mentor hunt. But then the key thing is there's follow up. So it's not like we take your hunting once and you go and then that's it. You have a follow up meeting with everyone again again and then also have mentors that stay in touch afterwards, right, can you kind of explain that? Yeah, that's good because I think that it's Remember a body mind participate in a program like this and he's like, oh, you can get people to come out on a hunt all day if you're like, oh, I'll take you to my this participating farm, and then they have a great time and then they go home and like, what the hell is he gonna do? Yeah? No, Um, the one and done events don't work. And we know that that's a big part of the our three movement stuff is just let's actually evaluate and track the data, like let's see if we're being successful. And that's how I can say that Actually this year, six of our hunters continued hunting program. Yeah, but you know, and what's your guys, like, what what's the secret to success there? Well, the secret is is there self selecting. We're it's not it's not Billy's dad that signed them up for this hunt. They see me at the farmers market and they're like, this is something I want to do, and actually it's usually a good point. I've been wanting to do this for ten years or five years. I mean, and you meet him, You meet him where you go to them. That's what no one's doing. You know, we're noting hunting. Um. You know, the philled to fork made the Wall Street JOURNALI it got all these views, but that's the first time we got it in front of a new audience, you know, having filled and stream right about field, the fork is only going to a hunting base. Mostly they're like, and so we've yeah, we've got to get hunting in front of new audiences. And by going to the farmer's marking that happens. But to your point, that's a good point, man. The self selection rather than being that that you know someone's like, damnit, son, you're going to know they're they're self selecting. There they went to a place where there it's like, here's people that are interested in there, in there interesting food. You're meeting them in on in common ground where they where they are already focused on that type of environment, right and important factors. They don't think Hack mentioned it filled the forks in Georgia and then I didn't want in Pennsylvania. But there's always a wild game component at every meeting. So whenever they're there for the training, we're cooking wild game when and then the post uh, you know, the post mortem if you will, cooking old game. And then we didn't want In Pennsylvania, my brother in law is an executive chef, and we had a whole butchering segment and cooking. Every meal we ate was a wild game. He taught us how, taught him how to make sausage, you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So it gave them ownership of you know, they they left. They're very confident in you know, I can actually kill this animal, I can take care of this animal, and then I can cook and eat this It's delicious, you know. So it was now it does. That is some work on the mentors part to pull that off. But when you do it, I think that's what has why you get successful. That's what that's that's the thing I like, because I think you're creating like a good I mean say like good hunters and bad hunters, but you're creating good hunters because I think everyone now, like in the last few years, everyone likes to pay lip service to whatever field, the table, feel, the fort because it's because like people like it, they're interested in it. But then you'll have guys will be like, oh, I killed thirty five big game animals this year. It's like, is that right? And you're big field the fort guy, Huh, pretty hardy couple of meals, you may. It's like it's just gotten to the point where people just use it now as like a tool, as a marketing tool, and it's so it's so full of ship with some people who like are talking about something they really don't care about. It's like they're harping on some things. They know it cells and that, and I just know they don't care, like they talk about it because people like it and then they live with hypocrisy. But I think that like in this idea of like finding people through interest and food is it's it's it feels like honest to me because people are coming into it with that interest and going into food. I think it's also important to talk about wild game consumption among hunters and and educate hunters about it better. Yeah. No, um, I mean I could go back to Mark's point of our our you know, our schedule of how we do it, but he's absolutely right. We do. We do two after nuds of training, we do an organized hunt. Really, the value of that is to get it on the calendar. It's like it's it's a date that they have to do it, you know that that they they start. But the success of the program is in the follow up opportunities whether um, you know, I've got a local landowner now who's thinking about you know, giving a lease per se, not not a monetary exchange, but you know, allow create a hunting camp for these new hunters. Yeah. Um, you know they're seeing the success. They're they're a part of it. But we we do serve wild game at every you know, at the farmer's market. At both trainings, I'll cook you know, vincent tacos or burgers or whatever I have at the time. Um, and then we have a culinary social We usually back it up a couple of weeks from the organized hunt so more people will get out hunting because I really want them to share their story as the group. We're finding that you know, it's social support that creates that hunter. And it's the same thing I talked about earlier, like different levels of mentorship. We're creating a group and it's all local. It's not like hey, let's go you know, five hours away and let's go hunt it just wouldn't be as sustainable. We've got this community now, we've got like fifty people in Athens and and we've expanded to we'll have twenty field to fork events this fall. People have to pay to goal. We we charge fifty dollars and some have gone away from that. I mean, as it's replicated, it's different. I don't we do it just as like a little bit of buying, like hopefully they'll show up for fifty bucks. And I mean everybody on on the back ends, like, man, this is like the best investment I've ever made in my life. Give it. Give example of how those follow up opportunities might work. Where a mentor might send and like a group email out to everybody, and we've we've done you know, group texts which can get a little text and we have a hidden Facebook group for the Athens one. I see email chains and it'll just like hey, I've got you know it'll be a first time hunter or whatever. And it's like I've got Thursday and Friday afternoons free, you know, anybody want to take me hunting or a land donner. You know, be like, hey, guys, I'm available this weekend if you want to come hunt. Come on. So it's not like they always pair up with the same one. And sometimes I'll take four four of them hunting with just me, you know, because I can take Cara and if if we get lucky and stuff and you go out somewhere where someone's trying to get some doles removed after person and um, yeah, we're not selective. I mean, if if it makes them happy and they want to put it in their freezer, let's you're married. That's an interesting Have you like found people to date through this? You probably can't talk about it because you're like at work. Yeah, we have, we have a filled to fork matchmaking service and no, no legitimate we there is a field match. It is not a true matchmaking service. But it has happened, not personally. But you don't stand in the way of it happening. And now because yeah, I'm always like gaming, like I'm so far away from being single, but I'm always like imagining single. Oh, I mean that's what I'm always thinking about. Yeah, and I try a lot of my theories my wife. But you know what I do if I was single and then no, But I mean it's just created this community. It's people of all different walks of life that are you know, share this common bond of wanting to have a better connection with their food. I mean what we hear is they won't. It's for the meat, it's a connection with nature, it's the meditative aspect of sitting in the woods. What it really is, they don't know what it really is. Yeah, no, I'm telling you what it really is is that you'll never put your finger on it. Well, it's more than just the meat. Because if you said to them, if you said, hey, man um, you found him at a farmer's market and you get to talk about it, you're like, hey, there's one or two things we could do here. I just dump a deer off at your place, or you can come do this thing. If it was just the meat, yeah, they'd be like, we'll just drop it off whole package of things. But the meat does the meat does? The people have it like it's a huge part and it's important. But people have a thing where they need to like make this balanced image in their head of wildlife management, sustainability, self sufficiency, and they and they and the people that are suspicious to hunting or didn't grow up around it are checking boxes in their head, and it's like yeah, not not. I don't even like justify makes this sound negative, but it's like they're like they're they weigh this thing out and they're like, I need to know it's good for me because I want to eat the stuff, but I also need to understand some basic things about like how wildlife works, Like what does the story of wildlife in America? And you need to answer that in a satisfactory way because people aren't gonna go like you might give them all the meat in the world. They might kill all the meat in the world, need everything, but if they feel that they're doing something it's detrimental to the environment, yeah, that's not it. It's like it's like self sufficiency, being like a constructive participant in um like a sustainability or betterment for wildlife, not eman for the environ RMIT. Like people got to know all this stuff like I'm talking about when dealing with people who are like completely outside of hunting. Yeah, it's like the meat, yeah, but it's like that's very important, but there's a bunch of other things that need to be satisfied in their mind. Absolutely, And and that was one of the shocking things for me, you know, kind of starting this program is they're so interested in the ecology of money and it's and I think, you know, part of where I see the success of the program is they're going back to their perspective peer groups and they're sharing their venisine and they're sharing their story and that it's venisine diplomacy to entirely new groups. And they also need want that ecology and an understanding of the value of hunting because they've got to go back to their peer group and explain what they're doing. And like, you know, like I imagine you probably don't create closet and hunters. No. Now these people are out there. They're my best advocates. Um, you know, we have a waiting list for the Athens program. We wouldn't we probably wouldn't never have to get to the farmers market again. But I can't call me these How many of these you do it every year? Just one in Athens? Uh, we know your How many is q d M A putting on? We'll do about twenty five this year and um, you know about twelve states. And here's one of the things really powerful about what you guys have done here is you have developed you've systematized this thing. So for a long time people have said, you got a mentor hunters, you gotta take them out there and connect them with food. But you guys have put in place a structure and a curriculum, a toolkit that can scale. So you guys have correct if I'm wrong here, but right, you guys have a toolkit that if someone listening says, hey, I've always wanted to do this, this sounds looks such a great program. The numbers bear it out. You have the resources people need so that Joe Blow can go get this information, get the curriculum, get the whole plan, print out the stuff and show up with their farmers market next week and and start executing on this with your guys support. Right, yeah, no, And and that's what I'm doing as I'm HOWL, being to facilitate the expansion of this program and working with people of all walks of life, all different conservation organizations in w T F, B H A. UM, you know, all the different state agencies from each state. We're partnering with them. I want to try to bring in, you know, a collective make these more sustainable. But um, we have a standardized education. We we wrote an e book, you made this guide, the Successful Deer Hunting. It's probably been four years ago, but it's a great resource. We just got back from Massy Oak in Films about a fifteen part video series on how to deer hunt, which will be a great resource for curriculum for Filled the Fork. But I am of the mind set that we need to do the education necessary in person. But I want to give these people the resources where they can go home and learn video. You know, we give them resources like your website. Um. You know, we actually sit down with them at the UM this second afternoon and say what what are we missing? What you need from us? And we do the same thing at the Culinary Social it's what do you need now? What are what did we not touch on? You know? A lot of it's always like hey, places to hunt, you know what about local public lands. We send a lot of information for it on that. But we are trying to create this and you know, I'm not trying to keep it all under the qum A banner. I'll run. I'll run for Filled to Forks this year with b h A OK. So I'm participating in mentoring a cutum A slash B h a joint Field of Fork event this year in Michigan, and I think that's such a cool opportunity. It's important to note too that it doesn't have to be I say, limited to a group thing. I mean, any one of your listeners can do this on their own. Basically. That that's what we want. That's for the program to be successful. That's what has to happen. People need to introduce new people hunting outside of their proverbial box. Yeah, at the end of the day, I mean, organized programs aren't going to move the needle. I mean, we we want to scale it, we want to get it, but it's going to be individual hunters that that either increase hunting participation or not. We need individual hunters to mentor um and that's kind of what we're going. But we've taken field to Fork and as we've replicated around the country, I've tried to prove a few different models. I've gone to Texas and done destination filled the forks on large branches where people travel in and and it works. But I will only take people from Texas because to take somebody from New York and take him to Texas to teach them that deer hunting. It doesn't work, but um, I've will. We're gonna host a field to fork for TRIGGER employees this year. Last year, I hosted a field to fork for twenty four employees of Ruger and six Hour American firearm manufacturers. And that was because an engineer, a young lady when we held our first field to fork and posted about it on Facebook, reached out. Her name was Emily Monroe, and I clicked on her Facebook profile and she was an engineer at Ruger. Seriously, she was a M I T small bore national champion. I mean she she didn't get a scholarship to M I T. I have misquoted that many times, but she even you know, competition small bore rifle shooting and always wanted to learn how to hunt. That is how bad we've done as an industry and as a group. We're not even recruiting our own. We've hosted Phillip the Forks for q MA employees, where I just hosted from my you know, twenty office employees who want to learn to hunt. But yeah, we had to cap it at twenty four in American firearm manufacturers who wanted to learn how to hunt. Yeah, it's just we're doing a terrible job, and and you know, we've just I think a lot of hunters have kind of been isolation us. If it's a terrible job, it's just a job that's never really been needed to be done. When I when you look in the grand scheme of things years ago, most people hunt it that's just what you did, especially in the Northeast, right, everybody was a hunter. I mean, I want say everybody very relative. It's still at ten percent or less, right, Yeah, but it felt like it felt like that's just what you did where I grew up, Like, I mean, you when you were twelve years old, you got a deer license and you went hunting. Us is how this is how it was. But now again in gram scheme of things, twenty five years isn't that long a time. It's a different game out there, you know. So it's not that we've done a bad job, but just didn't recognize that the job needed done. I think now it's very apparent that you know, we're trying to play catch up. I think to almost a certain extent. Yeah, I mean four and a half percent of American population hunts. We have to understand that becoming a vast minority of the population is going to have negative consequences. And I don't know how many of the percentages of American population we could actually support as hunters, but we we need to do what we can to try to increase high participation. Alright, man, that was your question. Thank you, good job. Anymore, we gotta wrap it up. You gotta wrap it up. And everybody's teeth are floating at this point. You mean people, Uh, that's like euphemism for the bladders. Their back teeth are floating on the back teeth, teeth, the float. Um. Is there anything humongous things that are like major misses that we missed, not like little trifling things, but like really really like damn it, damn well, I got a major thing. I'm really a major thing. Yeah. I'm holding Mark accountable from intoring a new hunter this year. Um, he asked me to. And he's also going to be a part of our field a Ford program, but I think he's going to mentor another hunter outside of that. Yeah, And really, I mean that's what we want to try to get every hunter to do. So we have a staff challenge amongst D field staff members to hunt a mentor new hunter every year, two or three years now, dude, mean Yanni Crank come out like Henry ford Man. Two people, we are two people hunt in this spring, and weirdly one of them, h this is kind of weird. One of them has property. So now I'm like, you know, maybe we go hunt your place. She's like, that's great. Everybody thinks so just like, you know, totally outside of the fold. But yeah, we're meeting these people that fifty acres and we'll go walk in and show where to hang the air stands. You know, it's not it's not just this total any other humongous mrs. All right, guys, people find you imagine you type into your computer q d M A. Yeah, you'll find us. Don't type in q d M. They'll probably find anyway they might they might. All right, I encourage people to go have a look. And if you gripe about q d M A, I'd be curious to have you go look and be like, Okay, what exactly don't you agree with? Like what exactly is the problem people writing and tell us about? Be interested? Like when you like, actually look like what the organization says and does? Where's the like show me the part you don't like, Yeah, that's that's the big misconception that's there for years. It's yeah, it's other people doing certain things get the q d M a label applied to them, and it's like it's misappropriated, and then people think, oh, that's what Kitty May is and and it's not really like you said, when you actually go and see what these three folks here and their organization really are speaking about doing in the field, what they have on their website, those those missions, it's hard to argue with that. Yeah, and I think an important note from our CEO down you know, Kip, Matt Hank, myself, honestly, we're just passionate deer hunters. I mean we work in the industry, yes, but we all got there because we were deer hunters first. And so it's not like there's any hinting agendas that we're trying to do this. We're trying to do that at the I mean, you know, our CEO hunts hundred days a year probably you know, he's a deer hunter man. He's not Peter that. I mean Kip, I mean kIPS, you know, our head wildife Ball just Mac works for He is a passionate deer hunter. It's just all there is too. We're just hunters. Yeah, alright, guys, thanks coming down man, We appreciate it. Kay, ladies and gentlemen. As promised, we're not going to get into our our special report. And again this covers a collaborative partnership between Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and on X, who just released a new report. It's called Inaccessible State Lands in the West, the extent of the landlocked problem and the tools to fix it. And out of the kindness of their own hearts, these two organizations tr CP and on X pulled together to try to get an assessment, to try to put their arms around the extent of the landlocked public lands problem in the American West and to help maybe present some solutions to figure it out. Again. If you remember, we recently had t r c P and on X on UH about a year ago or so to discuss the report which looked at landlocked federal lands, and they had identified nine point five two million acres of land that you and I as American taxpayers own but can't get to because they're surrounded by private land and the only way to get in there is to have permission from private landowners. Well they filed that up with this new state report. So we're talking about inaccessible public lands. Are talking about plots of ground right that are theoretically open to the public and they're owned equally by all of us as Americans, but being that they're entirely enclosed by private land, the land is unreachable unless you have permission from a private landowner. So there they are, we own them, we just can't get on them. Well, TRCP and on X wanted to investigate exactly how great the Western States landlocked problem really is and how to identify some collaborative solutions that could help open up more land and for all of us to use for hunting, fishing, outdoor recreation. And discussing this, we're joined by Joel Webster, Director of Western Lands at TRCP, Randall Williams, t r CPS Western Communications and Engagement Manager, Lisa Nichols, who's the g I S supervisor on X, and Eric Siegfried, who's the founder of on X. Now, before we get into the main thing, I had sort of given a little homework to Joel Webster where I had a question that's related to land access but not related to the report, and I wanted include in. Here's I thought was interesting, is Uh. It had come up a lot recently and talking to friends of mine, Like, let's say you're sitting there looking at a piece of private or public land on a map and there's no way to get to it, but an interstate cuts through it. Uh, And we're talking about this, like whether or not you can pull over unlimited access highway. So say, like I ninety fifteen whatever, pull over unlimited access highway and jump out of your car and go access some little chunk of public land that you've identified on X. It's funny because I was talking with this, talking to Joel about this, and then a couple of days later I had a body mind visit from out of town. He went out, went out antelope hunting, and text me away point and asked, can I legally get into this? Because he was curious can I pull over on the side of a of an interstate and head off to hunt? So here's Joel on whether or not that's okay. Do you know how there's like certain things like if you're like law abiding hunter angler, like there's certain things that you do thinking they're perfectly legal, and then you realize later that wow, actually maybe that isn't allowed, and and then you like to change your behavior, and it kind of ruins it for you after that because you thought, you know, you're perfectly fine, and this is one of those issues for me. And so I did a little digging into this. I didn't look at a lot of states. Um so this is how I understand one Wyoming, and there's state law. This is a state law stuff. There's state law cifically prohibits. Let me ask, why is it not because there's no federal oversight of the highway system, Like there's no federal enforcement on a highway system, right is Yeah, state placed and I don't pull you over for speeding on an interest not usually now depends on what you did. Yeah, that is true. Uh So the state of Wyoming, there's state laws specifically prohibits stopping along a controlled access highway. I feel like a Montana there's actually no laws saying you can't stop. Um so, actually stopping there is perfectly legal as I read it. What's illegal as it says you cannot go outside of the lines and that you must enter and exit the interstate it designated spots. And so when you see somebody in talking about Honting, they're just talking about whatever. Just whatever. And so you know when you're driving along the road and you accidentally sort of swerve over and hit the rumble strip, like you are breaking the law the same way somebody is when they pull over in park to go hunting. As I read the law, um new can its special special permits for um on and off, like you've got to get permission to do that. But but here's the thing, is I actually if you look at the Montana Access Guide, you look at the Montana Fish Walife from Parks Regulations, it says nothing about this. There's nowhere stated anywhere that I can find because it would be redundant because it's already covered in just the general highway law. Now you've you've got to go in and read statute to find it. And it took me forty minutes to find it. And uh, I don't I mean from what I understand, like I think it's it's I think it's a traffic law first off, not a game violation. And so it's like getting a speeding ticket versus being a poacher. Right, Um, But as as I understand it, like, it's not really all that you know, unless it's like actual sort of no no parking signs along the interstate. It's really not advertised anywhere that you can't do this. And so I've always assumed this look because people do it all the time, and I've never heard of anybody getting cotton. In fact, I actually know of a block management area where a portion of it. The only way I know how to get to it is by parking along the interstate UM in Montana, So which is kind of bizarre now that I know this, but that's my understanding of controlled access highways. And I would assume that there are some requirements placed upon the state in order to get federal money that they have to, you know, have these types of rules, but they're different for each state. Okay, now we're gonna move on to the on x TRC report. And I asked the question why was it important to investigate the issue of landlocked state lands in the first place. Here's Eric. Our whole team is passionate about helping people get outside. So it's just like in our DNA. So we look at these landlocked lands and we want at least make the public aware of what's out there, and we do see them as opportunities to help the public get outdoors more so that's really in our DNA and that's why we're interested. Okay, from here, I think it's important to move on to to the next thing. Um, let's get clear on what is meant by landlocked land, Like, what does that look like, what does that mean? How does someone go and determine that, Yes, in fact, a piece of public land is inaccessible or as we keep saying, landlocked. Here's Lisa explaining that and also talking a little bit about how on X obtained and analyzed the necessary data. So there's a lot of different ways to define landlocked. But what we went with for this report was public land that cannot be accessed from a public road or uh cannot be access from an adjoining piece of public land. I mean, even if you are willing to walk in, you walk forever. So if there's a ten acre parcel and there's one road that cuts through just a little corner of it, we consider that entire ten tho acre parcel as being accessible. Um, even if you have to cross topography and rivers. Um. This was just talking about legal access as opposed to logistical within the g i S department. G i S is Geographic information Systems UM or Geographic information science, and basically it's a compilation of data sets that all have a location component to them, and they're all stored into a big database UH, so that you can make maps or you can run different analyzes and understand how maybe one feature on landscape interacts or impacts another type of feature on the landscape. So UM, not only do we take the government lands data sets and the private land data sets and reconcile them with each other, UM, we also are classifying all of the government lands data so that was really key in this analysis as well. So we were able to zero in on all of the lands that had you know, the the state land ownership type attached to them UM, and then basically we were able to compare those against our extensive road database UM and figure out which parcels of state land did not have road access, and each parcel that did not have road access got flagged in a big database and then UM we basically ran through and calculated all those acreages together to get the numbers. The big challenge here is that there is no public versus private road data set available in the United States, and so we did have to kind of come up with our own definition of what a public road is based upon the data that is available. So we said anything at the county level or higher plus certain classifications of four service roads and certain classifications of BLM roads. UM. So there's a lot of areas where there's these two tracks that were like, we don't know, we can't tell if they're open or closed to the public, and so um. After we went through and had results from the federal analysis last year, some folks with t RCP actually went out to some areas where we're like, we don't know, Like we can't really tell in these specific places, like there's two tracks going out to these large areas, but we can't tell if there's a way to get to them. And I would say, what was it in like eighty or ninety percent of those those are the largest ones. So those are like edge cases. I was gonna say, we had, I mean that we were going out to some of the bigger parcels and even flying around on like Google Earth. If you go to street view, you can sort of look at what the road looks like and see if there's a private road sign UM so on X is doing some of that, but we we literally had people driving up to gates and seeing how it was marked. Most of them didn't have we're not public. Yeah, And we also worked with the BLM and Forest Service at the lands and realty level. They actually looked up the records for us well to find pieces that were gating shouldn't have been looking up just to see if there were recorded Eastman's Across because that's one of the funny things is driving around um, especially in the eastern half of this state. In other areas in the west too, is like where you'll have public roads, but ranches will kind of grow up around them, so that when you start feeling like there's no way I can be on this road where you're sort of like five yards off a guy's front step, his barns on one side of the road, his dogs are running around in the road. You can almost look in and they're eating dinner. It's like you're on the two track, but on the map it's like that's a road. And the fact that no one comes out and shoots at you, you realize like, wow, this is like a road. This two track is a public Eastman. Well, part of the problem is that most Eastman files, most Eastman documents are still on paper file. They have been digitized yet that's actually something that we're working on, UM, is to try and get the federal agencies the resources they need to turn Eastman recorded Eastmans that are still in file cabinet at local ranger districts actually into a computer system and so you can just click on them and it says this is a public road or it's not. UM. It was obviously the county side, which is a whole another nuts crack. But UM, the Forest Service nationally estimates it has thirty seven thousand easements UM some of the road he has sum or not, and only five thousand of them have been digitized. So the rest of them are sitting in file cabinets and local offices and hoping that the office doesn't burn down UM, which would be terrible if something like that to occur. But that's a real challenge with this type of work UM, and so we've had to do a lot of the work ourselves by actually trying to run down whether or not some of these places are open or closed. And again here's eric We're unique in that fact that we brought the public land data together in the private land data, and we've made this more accurate mesh. You can imagine a fabric of these parcels in the US. Really only one who has that complete meshed network, which is key to doing that analysis when you're looking having an algorithm look the corners and everything we're cross over. So we've got done that for public lands, and we've done that for roads. So the fact that we've brought all the roads data together and the landownership data together uniquely positions us to be able to do this. And this is Randall Williams chiming in. I think there's some people who probably have exclusive access to these lands, a bunch of people because this, But there's also some people that are great and they allow the public in and so it all depends on the let me let me rephrase it. I would be if I lived on the edge of that place, I would be like, um, I'd be sweating it. I would kind of want I'd be like, man, I hope people don't get worked up about how I got all this land. It's not mine. Personally. I think you'd be arranging for when you died that your your land would go to the public absolutely once I'm dead, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't care anymore. As it turns out, the volume of landlocked state public lands is pretty shocking. Joel and Lee to describe the scope and distribution of that western land as in exactly where is it and how much is it? I actually am a bit shocked about the fact that there's only forty nine. We looked at the eleven western states this time. So just the public land states, um, and why are they called the public lands because they're the states in the West that have the most public land and so um, you know, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, um Idaho, Nevada, California, organ in Washington and what state am I miss in like Utah, um and so those those lands generally have just sort of a higher proportion of federal public lands than anywhere else in the country outside of Alaska, which is its own beast. It's interesting. So even the Dakotas don't come anywhere close to the Dakotas have quite a bit of public land on that western edge where there touching the public land states, But the eastern side of the coatas are more are sort of that those Great Plains type states where it's you know, corn, soybeans. Most things are privatized, um, which a lot of it has to do with just how good a farm land it is. And so it went into private lands and stayed there, private hands and stayed there. Um. But yeah, I mean, so there's only forty nine million acres of state land and there's here's the number, six point three five million acres of landlocked state lands across these eleven Western states. Um, how many total lakers of state land are there in these eleven Western states? There's forty nine million, and so six point three five million of those. So it's wasn't it yet? Six point three nine million acres? We can't get to six point three five three five million acres? We can't get that's right? And we found four of those states have over a million acres. And those are Montana again, which has one and a half million, really one point five million acres of inaccessible state that's at least do you want to run through this? Sure? So Arizona has one point three, Montana has one point five, uh, New Mexico one point three again, and Wyoming one point one million acres. Those are all the plus million states. Yeah exactly. Okay, so we know where these landlocked state lands are and we know how much of it there is, but you might be asking these questions next, like how did this come to be? What are state lands? How did states get land, what do they have the land for, and in some cases, what the hell happened to all that land. It all started back in seve um with the General Land Ordinance, which was a law passed that established the grid system. And so township UM six by six square miles is right square miles, Yeah, but six six miles by six miles um individual sections thirty six seven within each township. So that basically the whole western side of the country three um was divided up into these this grid system UM and a lot of other states as well. Yeah, but it's I mean, so I started has a township like a township system that was the West back in the day. Yeah, they have a township system and they have and they have like school trust lands that sit on that township system. It's even like a specified number. So yeah, it's the the old Northwest Territory. So it's you know, how do you bring order and pose order on a territory landscape that you really don't have any understanding of familiarity with. UM. So yeah, it kind of rolls westward as the country does, and it's what makes corner crossing so fun to talk about. Yeah. UM. But so it started in eighteen o three, was the first state, Ohio, to get a land grant. And so what the federal government did is they passed these enabling acts UM where they actually gave individual states UM starting with just one section per township, so one out every thirty six acres in that state, UM would get a section, starting with Ohio in eighteen o three. And so the Feds say, like, you guys are gonna become a state. You're like a little state, You're Ohio. Now you're gonna become a state, and we're going to gift to you the state one out of every thirty six square miles that you own. That's right, That's how it started, and for the purpose of supporting public institutions, generally schools. And so they started with Ohio and there's I think twenty nine states got their lands this way, and early on there were very few restrictions on how that money would be used and so most of the states just sort of sold off the lands really states before in eighteen fifty, But was that the intent when they gave him the land? Was the intent like here go sell it? Well intent think the intent evolved. But there's some states like Mississippi that held on to their state lands. I guess sort of early on, like we're gonna hold onto these and we're going to generate revenue over the long term. And they actually had a commitment to that. They played the smart they played the smart thing, and like Ohio has, from what I can tell, nothing left um. At least there's not enough acres there that I can find any record of there being anything left UM. And a lot of states just went and sold it along the way, however, and as a result of that, they were sort of misusing the money. So here's an example Alabama, UM, you know, near Mississippi. Mississippi held onto their lands. Alabama sold off their lands and like they invested in stuff. Really like you find that there's sort of a theme and a state that's right, even like these neighboring states that two sort of different approaches. And we find that in the West today, and we'll get into that. Um, but so the state of Alabama like invest they sold off a bunch of their lands. They invested the money and stuff that failed, and so they had basically nothing to show for it. But also what they would do in Alabama is um, so if you lived within the town ship where that section was, you were the ones that decided whether or not to be sold. And so, which is totally corrupt, right you have like does my neighbor sell their property or not? Yes, so I can buy it, um. But then they also would give out that's like the that's like where local control kind of goes a little off, now, that's right. And they'd also give out personal loans. They had a school fund that they created, but it's kind of like an endowment with the idea that the interest would go towards um those schools. And they give out personal loans to people in Alabama with never actually make them pay them back. Um. And then they also did like nine year leases and so if you were had a grazing lease or whatever, you can do it for ninety nine years and probably I don't know if the terms were fixed, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were. And so like in the eighteen forties, they were making year leases that didn't expire until the nineteen forties, which is a long time, right, And so that's sort of an example of how states sort of got rid of their lands UM. And then in the West, so where this report is the eleven Western states UM. Starting well, California is the first Western state to get become a state, and they actually got section sixteen again. But after that they started getting sections sixteen and thirty six, and so they got two square miles per township UM. And so like Oregon, Montana, Idaho UM, a number of states got two sections per township. And then at the very end they got even more generous and they gave Utah, Arizona, New Mexico four sections. So how does this system work out If there's already someone occupying the designated land that's supposed to go to the state, what does the state do? Then they had this thing called in lieu selections, And so if it was down in New Mexico, right, which is a very late state to become a part of the Union, if it was you know, let's see a Mexican land grant for example, or an Indian reservation, or it was already private um. They were not able to select those lands that then were able to select. They were not they were not giving those um In that case it was six sixteen, thirty two, and thirty six and those later ones they got four those four sections really like the deal kept getting better, it keep getting met it, but they were still like spaced apart, and so they're all separated, which is still creates the same arbitrary it scattered pick does. But then they were able to correct select these in lieu of areas. And that's where we get some of these big chunks of landlocked land. And so they'd be like, well, we can't have any of there's like this big you know, eight acre land grand or whatever. We can't have any of those lands inside of there. And so they go select some really big areas somewhere else. And then they might be like that, I'm gonna take all four of my my sections, my square miles, I want them all together. That's right. So I got a sweet little chunk, were thirty sections together or whatever, And and so you get some really some significant holdings. Maybe not, And so that's that's going to how that worked, which has left as legacy of all these isolated parcels um and then states took to either hung on them or sold them off. That's right. Now we'll get into something you might have heard about, which is the political and social push to transfer federally managed lands over to the states. Why is that idea so distasteful to so many hunters, anglers and conservationists, Like what are they so afraid of? Basically, there's a whole idea that the federal government should transfer their lands to the states. Right, A couple of years ago, there was a big push for it coming out of Utah. It comes up now and then yeah, and and and um and and a lot of us pointing to the history of state lands for why that's the terrible idea, because some states have been really bad about selling their lands and it was such a bad there was such a bad history with it. That's the federal government actually started to impose restrictions on land sales towards the end of westward expansion because the system was being so abused by the Western states as part of the terms of the land grant. That's right, Yeah, yeah, I can see to be like if you left your like you have like a wayward kid and you leave him. That's why we have trust trust fund kids. Yeah, I mean this is like they couldn't trust the kids to give them all the money. Well, this is like because you'll just blow it if you're give them a little to your kids graduating from high school, right and you you like give him a used car or something to get started. And that's sort of how I mean. The intention of it is to bring these other states up. Uh, what's your equal footing? Equal footing, bring them up on equal footing with the current existing states. So they had to treat like children, but some of those kids, yeah, and so like here's you know, so it's so you're not it's sort of to break that dependency on the federal government for public services, and also not to put them at a disadvantage with the thirteen colonies, plus the three states that had already and become states, Like they already had institutions in place, and so you know New York or Massachusetts for example, they've been around a while, they had institutions, and so when they're creating these new states, they didn't want them to be at such a disadvantage that they created this thing called the equal footing doctrine, and this was part of it where they gave him these these these state lands, these trust lands. At the time they were just called school lands, um with the thinking that they could raise money off of those too, to establish these institutions that would put them on equal footing with the early States. When we were young, we would use we would go down I didn't have a Platt book, but you could go down to the township office in photo copy the Plat books at the township's office to find out who own what. Then you'd go talking to the column or whatever and ours would even our ours were labeled on these maps just school trust land in Michigan, and it had like a different color in Michigan has some It is interesting to see how states actually learned from other states over time their mistakes. And you can tell that Congress obviously learned and they started making these rules as it went on. So give it to you, but you can't just run out and sell it. It's like after the first three kids sell those used cars and just blow it on booze and whatever else. You know. They could sell it, but they put conditions around the sale and so that they had to have a permanent fund, and then only the interest from that permanent fund could be used to support the schools. And they also set minimum sale prices so much like trust fund killing. So they were these states were like selling these things to their buddies, you know, for nothing, and and so then they you know, they set minimum prices to make it so they wouldn't you know, they wouldn't have the incentive to do that. Okay, So here's what's next. The crew at on X and t RCP, they're not really comfortable and it's not really their job to sort of like, uh, talk about who should be ashamed of themselves and who historically did a good job and who did a bad job through here to help. But you might ask who are the good apples? I mean, which states do a good job of retaining their lands in a way that serves the public, or to do a good job of managing access on their lands. State trust lands were given to these states to generate revenue for beneficiary, okay, And so they're not multiple use lands. They're not like national forest lands or BLM lands where wildlife and recreation are supposed to have equal consideration with development. And so you could actually say we're not going to develop a lot of these lands because of these other values. That's not how trust lands are managed. They do need to generate profit. However, some states have decided most states in the West, actually almost all states in the West have decided that recreation UM can be a part of that management approach for generating profit or it's compatle compatible with the idea that these lands that be managed to generate profit. Right, and so the idea that the public be a part of it, that they serve some sort of larger public good is compatible with the idea that these lands generate profit. There's another side to it, which is a much more sort of dollars and cents and you know, the state because it is considered more of something they have to deal with. And I think when you look at if a state um is doing a really good job from the perspective of hunters and anglers in terms of how they manage their state trust slans UM, the ones to do a really good job have more of a welcome at versus um a you can't welcome at versus you can't find anything about it, or it's a no trespassing sign. And a couple of states that have done a really good job. UM our Montana for example, where UM in the state, nearly all the lands are open and available for the public. UM. They have some basic rules about you can't shoot within a quarter mile of an occupied structure. UM. You know, you can only drive on routes that are open, and things like that. UM. And Montana Fishwife and Parks. UM. When you buy your conservation license to hunt for hunting and fishing, you spend two dollars in the state of Montana, and that money goes to support the schools in the state. They generate about a million dollars a year through that UM and and and as a result, it's actually benefit benefiting those schools UM in a way that also supports public recreation. And also the state of Montana has been great in the fact that I'm talking about landlocked lands. You know, they're being about a million and a half federal landlocked lands and a million and a half state landlocked lands in the state of Montana. UM. The state has actually created programs. UM. There's one called the mt Plan, which actually is a grants program where they can give out grants to create easements across private land that would open up these public lands. UM. Montana Fish Wife and Parks has a couple of programs. One again is a brand new one they just passed UM that again would enable the state to spend money on establishing easements. Another one who provide tax incentives for landowners who allow the public across their private land to access these state lands. And also, yeah, it's really cool stuff and this is something that's bipartisan's coming out of the legislature. Montana's is just sort of a shining example. Um. You know, wash intends another state that's doing a really good job. Um. They you you buy an an access pass US thirty dollars a year, which supports part of that go to supporting that that state trust revenue. Um. But those lands are open and accessible and you know they've got good signage like that. You go to their website, it's very welcoming. Um. And so that's something that they've done. You know, New Mexico and Arizona are two other states that actually charge of fee um for the public to use these trust lands, which because they're multiple use lands, I think is just fine. That's the way to support the trust responsibilities that also support the public. And now we'll get into what al call the bad apples at least bad from my perspective, as you know, like a general outdoorsman who likes a roam around outside a whole bunch. The sort of flip side to that are states that um would would manage state trust lands for exclusive use, and so you'd lease them to an individual who basically would control access to those lands. And Colorado is the only state in the Mountain West. What are the eleven western states that we looked at that actually does not allow public access to the vast majority of its trust holdings. It's so Oncolorado, Like you know what John Denver Blissen, any it just doesn't doesn't it feel on you you loose to live in Colorado? You know, he doesn't feel on Colorado. Like I agree. I wasn't really aware of it when I lived there, and it just never came across. Yeah. But yeah, you remember, like the outdoor retailers, they got all mad at the state of Utah. They're like, my god, We're going down to Colorado because they do it right. Mm hmm. Yeah. No, it doesn't seem to fall in line with the way they act normally. And so Colorado has almost two point eight million acres of state trust lands, how many landlocked? Four and thirty five thousand acres are landlocked, but one point seven eight million acres of accessible land are closed to the public by state policy. God, that just seems And also if you think, I said, you did a great job of land out how it came to be, and you pointed out the intent was not that people could go run around messing around, I understand it. It just feels as though, what a missed opportunity. Well, so I want to point out that Colorado, so they do have a program where the State Landboard in Colorado, Parks and Wildlife are partnering to make lands accessible. Um And up until this hunting season there were um they have a hunter program like a sportsman's program. Plus there's also there's some lands that they leave for state parks in wildlife management areas that are open to the public. It's about five hundred and fifty eight thousand acres total there and this year they're actually gonna open up another hundred thousand acres through that program, with the intent that they opened up another four thousand acres in the next two years, which would bring the state total to write around a million acres U of land accessible to sportsman, and so I think that you know, they deserve a pat on the back for that. You take a step back and you compare them to all the other states in the West. They're still the only state that will have less than half of their land accessible to the public. And one of the things too, even if it's sitting there not actively being used. Yeah, if even it doesn't have a lease on it for recreation, you can't use it unless there's it's unless it's at least two CPW Colorado Parks wild Life in that state real quick, and that state, let's say there's a Colorado, you find a you guys do your report, and you find a landlocked state section in Colorado surrounded by a cattle ranch. Okay, Um, is that operator of that cattle ranch prohibited? Like he doesn't necessarily have rights to go mess around there's like anybody else does. Right, It's theoretically he could have this chunk of land and his thing that he's not supposed to walk across. I think they would have to at least that for recreation if they wanted to. Okay, so it's not de fact or his land. He might if he was. If he's like super law abiding, there could feasibly be a situation in which he's like, I can't even go on it, and I own the periphery of it. And here's something that you know, we uncovered sort of done some research that makes this all a little bit more bothersome is that the people of Colorado change the Colorado Constitution to require that state trust lands, in addition to being managed for sort of sustainable profit, not maximum profit, that they also be managed for wildlife and aesthetic values for the long term and sort of for future generations of Colorado's And I'm sort of paraphrasing there, but that actually has stated in their constitution, and that was a change that was made by the people of Colorado. But yet it's and that's something that I'm not aware of any other state in the way to having. And so you could theoretically said their constitution is the most public access friendly of any state with state trust lands, but yet they're sort of management of recreation is the least friendly. And so I want to give him an a for this recent sort of project UM to help expand access UM, but they have to do it three more times to be sort of in parody with like Montana. It's like a super bad kid who all of a sudden, like isn't quite so bad. Well, it's good, they did it good, they did the right things. Great. Yeah, but if you'd like But if you if you compare it to other states based on what lands are open, what lands are not, it is the one outlier. And there's a couple other states outside of the sort of Mountain West that least their state trust lands, UM, just for sort of private use. And those are Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Those are the ones I'm aware of. But UM, state trust lanes in Alabama open. They don't have a lot left, like twenty eight thousand or something like that. UM, Minnesota, those lands are open. How about Texas? Texas didn't get land grants the same way, neither in Alaska because they came into well it's just a different state. I don't know the history of Texas. I do know that they did not get their grants the same way. UM, and they're probably I don't want to know handouts. I don't There was no federal land in Texas for the way, there was no federal lands, So that was one reason the feds were doing. That was like, instead of being taxed on this federal land, we're gonna give you these state lands to help you. But I think Texas did get some sort of land grants, but it was just a whole different deal. Um, Hawaii, Texas, Alaska, they all they're kind of unique. Then there's a different category of bad apples. States that sold off their public state lands and don't have it anymore. I think we need to talk about the oldest kids. Those are the ones that might be even worse than some of the ones we just talked about. They were granted over a million, maybe sometimes two million acres of state tress lands, and they don't really have any right now, So it could be all these are mainly in the Midwest. As you go east to west, you're basically going from oldest kids to the youngest. So I mean, those are probably the worst. It could be a completely different game in Iowa or Kansas doesn't have any. They sold them off if I mean they were granted Yeah in Kansas, man, like they had two point nine million acres. Could you imagine Kansas got good hunting like if they had retained those if they were open to the public, My question is now out of those states, these like they're the worst of the kids, because we feel like they sold off all the lands, but did any of them then sort of shine because they have something to show for it. Although they don't have these lands, they didn't sell them off to their bodies and and then squad of the money on wine and song as to you said, but they do have the best institutions across the country. Or people spend money on song, like in the same wine women in song like you gather You mean like they bought alcohol, like they took the engagement prostitution or took women out to eat. But what's the song part live like concert tickets? Yeah, it must have been the opera karaoke machine, you know, karaoke machine in karaoke eyes might have not looked into that, right. I do not know the size of every state's permanent fund, their endowment for their schools. I do know that states like Arizona, New Mexico have done quite well, and they've retained the vast majority of their states. They've monetized their lands without selling them. That's right, um, And well, one thing, Arizona has been very selective about what they sell and so like they have lands in like Merria County down where Phoenix is, and so they've been able to sell that money for it's an absolute toime that that land for an absolute ton of money, UM, but it's a general policy they've really refrained from selling lands and so they've been able to generate a lot of revenue New Mexico, I mean, the Premian basins down there, UM, oil and gas is a big issue, and so they've leased a lot of their lands for oil and gas and that's really um more of a factor of just having a resource that's very valuable, and so they've been able to I mean just sort of annual profits. I know New Mexico makes a lot of money um off of their state trust and so you might have certain states that squander right UM, and that's not the right way to go about it, where the money is not going to the institution. But then you have the other side where they're so focused on the business that um that they're not thinking about the resource or the public in other ways. So to what degree are people aware as in is it like common knowledge that there are landlocked public lands all around us in the American West? I found um like last year, when we're trying to verify some of the larger federal parcels, it was most useful to talk to like a game warden in the area because they knew exactly where they're busting people for being on inaccessible land. And so I feel like a lot of this knowledge is at the local level, and that's a lot of what this project is is trying to compile it all to actually wrap your head around the issue. Have you have you have you thought about taking the analysis and then looking at the pieces of land that are sort of I don't want I'll use the word offending, though I shouldn't, that's not the right word. Like where you look at these like big chunks land people can't get to, and then you look at the easiest way to solve that puzzle, and then you look into what is going on with that chunk of land? Does that chunk of land for sale with the person wish to sell it? Uh? Like what is the status of that thing? That's generally what land trusts do, where you have groups like the Rocky Mountainknock Foundation where they've got folks actually out there drinking coffee with landowners and talking about how to transfer or sell a piece of land to open it up, you know, for the public. And so there's actually groups out there, a lot of them that that is their purpose is to work cooperative landowners identify these opportunities, but they don't have always the best information about um where those inaccessible lands are. And that's really where this project comes in. It's always actually does two things that helps inform um where those inaccessible lands are. To help people sort of be like, hey, there's an opportunity here and then you start then and then those folks can look at around that landlocked parcel where there might be you know, five different private holdings and a couple of them are close to a road, and they can be like, you know, is build a good you know what's that person like? They you know, pretty public friendly and public access friendly and and sort of have a conversation and sometimes it takes you know, several years to sort of work something out with a landowner. But also, um the other side of this is state policies and and federal policies and actually having programs in place that help provide the money. And you know, at the federal level, they've got like the land and water conservation and in three of that fund is dedicated for access. Between fifteen and million dollars a year must be used for access. UM. You know, at the state level, they can actually use state side FUNDINGWCF dollars must go UM too. States and they have the ability if they wanted to to use UM some of those dollars for access, but they may not realize that, and this report helps them see that. Also, UM there's certain states that just really recreations isn't a thing for them, well UM, and they're not thinking about it. And so that's we're hopeful that this information will also be used that way where UM people be like, hey, look at what Montana is doing or New Mexico they've got this this new council where they've actually pulled together this group and they're trying to figure out like how to open some of these lands up and also what are some of the restrictions on these state lands that maybe we could change a little bit um to make it more sort of recreation friendly and uh. And so maybe we can help bring attention to that through the this work. And so states like Wyoming, who has a lot of landlocked lands, might be like, hey, you know, what we could create an access program that will help create easements to these state parcels. And you know what, it's not only going to increase recreation to these lands, but it's also gonna make it easier for us to manage them to generate revenue for a beneficiary because we'll have access for these other reasons too. So, now that the report is out, what's next We're gonna be looking at nationwide. We'd love to, like I said, our main goal would be to get to this landlocked data set that's nationwide. Keep working with local land Trust BLM, everybody to make sure we have a solid data set that has all those easements in there and we know for sure, yes this one's accessible, this one isn't. We'd love to get to that point in because there's there are some real contested easements out there. Those are prescriptive easeman steve, which are different than recorded easeman so and that's a state law issue. But if they're and so it's different from state. But you think it like the crazy amount. I mean, you just hear various ones like well, I mean I've heard of some down in Colorado to like tested easement. So if there's the tested rule. I shouldn't say easments contested access points, roads and things that were historically regarded as a county road. But someone wants to argue that they're not, in fact the county road, that's right. But with the easements, if it's written in paper that there's an eazement there, it's not contested. But there's some places, because of continuous use um that you can get a prescriptive easement by going in front of a judge. It's a very contentious way to go about it, and it doesn't make a lot of friends, um, but there are places where that's happening, and that's why we want to get in front of that and try and get cooperative work done that brings landowners and hunters and anglers and other folks together to actually open lands up in a way that works to everybody. And that's the preferred the way to go about this. Okay, guys, you heard all that. If you care about getting state public lands that we all own opened up for us, there is definitely something we as American citizens can do right now. You can go send a message to your lawmakers. There's a website that t RCP has helped facilitate that for you. Now, you can just go to ww dot TRCP dot org and scrounge all around and find it. Or you can go to this not entirely handy website address which I'm gonna lay out for you. Www dot t r CP dot org slash unlocking, dash public dash lands. That's right as and gentlemen, trcp dot org slash unlocking, and you do a little dash mark public, another little dash mark lands. The hell of the website. Scroll down to where it says the key to unlocking public lands. Read all about the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is a fund that helps unlock inaccessible lands, and send your message to your elected official right there. L w CF money is there to help on facilitating access to our public land. Make your voice heard, take action and help unlock public lands for us all. Thank you,